Home | Site Index | FAQs | Contact | RSS  | Podcast

• Related Materials

  • Responding to Chemical Attacks
    Backgrounder
    Updated: January 2006

  • Responding to Radiation Attacks
    Backgrounder
    Updated: January 2006

  • Responding to Nuclear Attacks
    Backgrounder
    January 13, 2006

  • FBI and Law Enforcement
    By cfr.org editorial staff
    Backgrounder
    Updated: January 2006

  • Fire Departments
    By cfr.org editorial staff
    Backgrounder
    Updated: January 2006

  See Also

  Counterterrorism

  Academic Modules

  Academic Module: America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism

  Hot Topics from GlobalSecurity.org

  • Next Generation Bomber
    
  • Op. Iraqi Freedom: 5 Years
    
  • VH-71 Marine One Problems
    
  • KC-45 Tanker Boeing v. Airbus
    
  • F-117A Nighthawk
    

  More From:

  GlobalSecurity.org

  ISN Security Watch

  • Letters from Somalia: Risking education
    
  • Sadr Movement at a crossroads
    
  • Dissuading China
    
  • Letters from Iraq: Testing Sadr's control
    
  • Lebanon resumes fragile dialogue
    

  More From:

  International Relations and Security Network

  Responding to Biological Attacks

  Updated: January 2006

  • How dangerous could biological terrorism be?
  • Have terrorists experimented with biological weapons before?
  • How is the U.S. government responding to the threat of bioterrorism?
  • Will the increased spending help?
  • What diseases are authorities most worried about?
  • How would health authorities discover that a biological attack was underway?

  ---

  How dangerous could biological terrorism be?

  The anthrax-laced letters mailed in the fall of 2001 infected twenty-three people and killed five—a toll that only hinted at the damage bioterrorism could cause. In a 2001 government exercise called Dark Winter, a simulated “worst-case” terrorist attack with smallpox virus—a germ more worrisome than the anthrax bacterium because it’s contagious—was projected to cause some 300,000 smallpox cases within three weeks, about one in three of which would be fatal. Plague, anthrax, and other diseases could also be major killers.

  Have terrorists experimented with biological weapons before?

  Yes. CIA Director George Tenet has testified that documents found in Afghanistan showed that the al-Qaeda terrorist network was pursuing sophisticated biological weapons research in Afghanistan. Aum Shinrikyo, a doomsday cult in Japan, had an ambitious biological weapons program and released anthrax spores and botulinum toxin in Tokyo on several occasions, but none of the attacks inflicted any known casualties. Iraq, the Soviet Union, and other countries experimented extensively with anthrax bacteria and other germs as recently as the 1990s. (The United States abandoned its offensive biowarfare program in 1969 and destroyed its biological arsenal in the early 1970s.)

  How is the U.S. government responding to the threat of bioterrorism?

  Through a wide variety of measures including:

  • The Department of Health and Human Services has established a new Office of Public Health Preparedness to address bioterrorist threats.
  • In July 2002, Dr. Julie Gerberding, an infectious diseases expert noted for her work combating anthrax and bioterrorism, was named director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
  • In December 2002, the Bush administration announced plans to start inoculating some ten million health-care, emergency, law-enforcement, and military personnel against smallpox before making the vaccine available to the general public on a voluntary basis in 2004.
  • In January 2003, the Bush administration created a system designed to detect the release of deadly germs like anthrax and smallpox within twenty-four hours by adapting many of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 3,000 air-quality monitoring stations nationwide.

  Funding to combat bioterrorism, which was increasing even before September 11 and the 2001 anthrax letters, has shot up in their wake. A June 2002 bioterrorism law provided $4.6 billion for stockpiling medicines and vaccines, enhancing inspections of the nation’s food supply, increasing water-system security, and improving hospital preparedness. In President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address, he proposed spending $6 billion more for research and production of vaccines and other treatments against agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, Ebola, and plague.

  Will the increased spending help?

  It should, experts say. The threat from bioterrorism is serious, but quick and effective public health and medical responses could save many lives. Preparedness has improved significantly in recent months, and public health authorities are on alert. Nevertheless, state and local governments are inadequately prepared to cope with a major bioterrorist attack. The new spending is earmarked for scientific research, public health initiatives, vaccine and drug stockpiles, hospital preparedness, and disease surveillance and response systems at the federal, state, and local levels. Down the road, the planned expenditures should also produce indirect benefits for public health in general, experts say.

  What diseases are authorities most worried about?

  The “Category A” list of biological threat agents—as classified by the CDC—includes the germs that cause anthrax, botulism, plague, smallpox, tularemia, and hemorrhagic fever viruses such as Ebola. These infectious diseases cause potentially high death rates, could trigger public panic, and require special action to cure and contain. A few are contagious (smallpox, plague, and Ebola). More than a dozen other types of biological disease threats are classified by the CDC as generally less dangerous but still capable of killing many victims.

  How would health authorities discover that a biological attack was underway?

  Bioterrorism can be hard to detect, experts say. Environmental monitoring might be able to pick up signs of an airborne release of germs, assuming authorities knew where to look. But an attack could go unnoticed until victims feel sick and visit hospitals. A 1984 outbreak of food poisoning in a small Oregon town that sickened 751 people was initially believed to be a natural outbreak; only a year later did authorities realize that a religious cult called the Rajneeshees had deliberately contaminated salad bars with salmonella bacteria.

   

  Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.

• 

  New CFR Books

  

  In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.

  

  America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.

  

  In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.

  Complete list of CFR Books.

  

  

  Task Force Reports

  U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality

  This report identifies four emerging issues—poverty and inequality, public security, human mobility, and energy security—that represent fundamental challenges and opportunities for Latin America and for U.S. policy toward it.

  U.S.-China Relations: An Affirmative Agenda, A Responsible Course

  This report takes stock of the changes under way in China and what they mean for China and for U.S.-China relations.

  About Independent Task Forces at the Council.

  

  

  New from the Council: Policy Options Papers

  Kenya

  In this POP, Adjunct Fellow Michelle D. Gavin suggests steps the Bush administration could take to promote political and ethnic reconciliation and to restore the viability of Kenya’s governing institutions.

  Pakistan

  In this paper, Senior Fellow Daniel Markey poses a set of recommendations for the United States to consider in response to Pakistan’s ongoing political crisis.

  

  

  May/June 2008

  • Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times calls "Beyond Darfur" by Andrew Natsios, an important article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.

  

  

  

  Publications Information

  To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1-800-537-5487, fax +1-410-516-6998.

  For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1-212-434-9516 or email publications@cfr.org.

  

  

  Permissions Requests

  To request permission to reuse Council materials, please email publications@cfr.org or fax +1-212-434-9859.

  Please include the complete information of the requested work—author, title, sections/pages to be copied or reprinted, and number of copies to be made—along with a brief description of where and how you would like to reuse the work.

  You may also request permission for Council material through Copyright Clearance Center. For more information, please click on the logo below.

  

  

•  

By Region  |  By Issue  |  By Publication Type  |  The Think Tank  |  For The Media  |  For Educators  |  About CFR

Home  |  Site Index  |  FAQ  |  Contact  |  RSS  |  Podcast

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.