INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this analysis is to educate about biological weapons, Fort Detrick’s role, and U.S. policy. This is also a call to action. The situation urgently demands opposition to the bioweapons arms race that is on the horizon, opposition to the massive expansion of biowarfare facilities planned for Fort Detrick, and support for the imperative of international arms control. The U.S. government has used 9-11 as a pretext for invading and occupying Iraq. We have thus shredded the fabric of international law. At the appalling cost of thousands of lives and billions of dollars, we are only managing in Iraq to expand the threat of terrorism. (The number of major terrorist attacks worldwide exploded from 175 in 2003 to 625 in 2004.) Similarly, the U.S. government has used the (homegrown) anthrax letters (of October, 2001) as a pretext for an explosion in spending on so-called “biodefense.” This only promises to shred the international biological arms control treaty, to incite a bioweapons arms race, and to expand the threat of biowarfare.

This analysis is not meant for publication in a scholarly journal. There are practically no footnotes. But it is based on a lot of research. The internet is an amazing resource. I have also maintained a file of newspaper articles on Fort Detrick since I moved to Frederick in 1981. I have spoken to a lot of “locals” who have worked at and who have resided near Detrick. I have read a number of books on the subject of bio-warfare, including The Eleventh Plague and Clouds of Secrecy: The Army’s Germ Warfare Tests over Populated Areas by Professor Leonard A. Cole, as well as the very recently published The Problem of Biological Weapons by Milton Leitenberg. Mr. Leitenberg is affiliated with the University of Maryland as well as the Center for Arms Control, and has made himself available to me for consultation. Hegemony or Survival by Professor Noam Chomsky is a good example of a reference for some of the more general political analysis herein.

PREAMBLE

Ebola: In the best selling book, The Hot Zone, published in 1994, author Richard Preston, describes the discovery of a disease christened “Ebola Zaire.” The effects of Ebola Zaire on the human body are described as follows:

Ebola Zaire attacks every organ and tissue in the human body except skeletal muscle and bone. It is a perfect parasite because it transforms virtually every part of the body into a digested slime of virus particles. It works as a relentless machine, a molecular shark, it consumes the body as the virus makes billions of copies of itself. First, blood clots form. As the clots thicken and drift into the capillaries, blood supply is shut off to various parts of the body, causing dead spots in the brain, liver, kidneys, lungs, intestines, skin, etc. There develop hemorrhages under the skin. Ebola attacks connective tissue with particular ferocity. It multiplies in collagen. Inexorably, the body’s structural proteins turn to mush. Spontaneous rips appear in the skin, and hemorrhagic blood pours from the rips. Literally, every opening in the body bleeds. The tongue sloughs off, or its skin is torn off during rushes of black vomit. The lining of the windpipe sloughs off. The heart bleeds into itself. Ebola attacks the lining of the eyeball. Ultimately, the blood is stripped of its clotting factors. The liver liquefies, and the kidneys fail. In men, the testicles bloat and turn black and blue; in pregnant women, the child is aborted spontaneously and is infected with the virus as well. Ebola destroys the brain more thoroughly than the virus called “Marburg.” Ebola victims go into epileptic convulsions, which splatters blood all over the place, thus giving the virus a chance to jump to a new host.

This virus does not spread by droplets in the air. If its genetic make-up were only very slightly different, so that it had what biologists call a “respiratory component,” the emergence of Ebola Zaire would have been a species-threatening event.

The Ebola virus is viewed as a potential bioweapon by the US “biodefense” establishment. Transforming Ebola into a weapon is being explored in American laboratories with the justification that we must anticipate possible bioweapons so as to derive defenses in advance.

THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN “BIODEFENSE”

In April 1943, the USA began its biowarfare activities by establishing Camp Detrick as a biological warfare facility. This was of course back when Frederick was hardly populated. The British work on anthrax, or "N" as it was codenamed, as a weapon led in 1943 to the design of an "N" bomb suitable for mass production by the Americans. This munition weighed 4 pounds. 106 of these "bomblets" were to be packed into a 500 pound cluster-bomb canister and dropped over enemy population centers. An initial pilot batch of 5,000 N bomblets was produced at Camp Detrick in May 1944.

By the end of WWII, the US BW program at Detrick comprised some 250 buildings and employed approximately 3,400 people. Its name was changed to Fort Detrick in 1956, when it became a permanent Army installation. During the years that the US maintained an overtly offensive BW program, the Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick supported research and products destined for potential use by the CIA, including the development of CBW agents for assassination purposes, and a covert program of anti-human, anti-crop and anti-animal agents.

In 1969, President Nixon unilaterally declared an end to the nation’s offensive biological warfare program. This was partly in response to the world-wide protests against the US use of gas and herbicides in Vietnam, and a reluctance on the part of the US military to give up chemical weapons. The policy argument that prevailed at the time was that it was in the national security interest of the US not to continue to advance the technology and to try and halt further development while the technology was still in the hands of a very few nations. This led directly to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the international treaty that bans the development, production, stockpiling, acquisition or retention of biological weapons, which treaty was signed in 1972 and entered into force in 1975.

In 1975, it was discovered that the CIA had disobeyed the 1969 Presidential order to destroy all US BW stocks, and had retained a large catalogue of pathogens and toxins for its own use. In the 1980’s, the Reagan and Bush Administrations revived the dormant budget for “defensive” biowarfare research, increasing it by 500%. It was in the 1980’s that we supplied Saddam Hussein with the technology and ingredients that enabled him to create Iraq’s biowarfare capability.

Ever since 1956, Fort Detrick has retained its pre-eminent role in activities related to biological warfare. As part of its “war on terror” and its response to the anthrax letters of October, 2001, the Bush administration has increased appropriations by billions of dollars for the creation of a new generation of bioweapons research and development, with Fort Detrick at the helm. The plan is to make Fort Detrick the site of a National Interagency Biodefense Campus (NIBC), to include a new facility for the already present US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), and three more new facilities to be operated by the National Institute of Health (NIH), by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and by the Department of Agriculture, respectively. The size of the DHS facility alone, which is to be called the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBAAC), is planned to be 160,000 square feet (about 4 acres). The Center for Disease Control (CDC) recently announced it also wants to join this campus “confederation.” The CDC at Fort Detrick will assess the risks “environmental pathogens” pose to public health, and will investigate new ways to prevent harmful exposure. According to the CDC spokesperson, it is premature to say which agents CDC will be working on at Fort Detrick, but anthrax could be on the list.

In May of 2005, the Army announced that the new facility for USAMRIID is planned to measure “more than one million square feet” (at least 45 acres of facility space) at the cost of $1 Billion. Both the USAMARIID and the DHS facilities will include thousands of square feet of BSL-4 (Level 4) laboratory space. These kinds of laboratories are used for experimentation with infectious agents such as the Ebola virus – infectious agents for which there exists neither a vaccine nor a cure. The scope of this new bioweapons programming dwarfs the size of the U.S. program back when we were overtly producing bioweapons for offensive use. This is reminiscent of the USSR program at its height, when it involved the Soviet Union’s Ministries of Defense, Agriculture, Health and its Academy of Sciences, and employed a total of approximately 60,000 people.

BIOWEAPONS GONE AWRY

In 1979, an accidental release of anthrax spores in aerosol form, from a Soviet biological weapons facility located in the city of Sverdlovsk, about 850 miles east of Moscow, killed at least 64 people. This was caused by workers forgetting to replace a filter in an exhaust system. All of the victims were downwind from the facility. It has been estimated that if the wind had been blowing the other way, the resultant deaths could have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The Soviet’s program was terminated in 1992, pursuant to a trilateral agreement with the US and the UK.
In the summer of 1942, the British conducted a deliberate release of anthrax on Gruinard Island, off the coast of Scotland. A film was made of the experiment, and remained classified until 1997. Sheep were taken to an open field, secured in wooden frames, and exposed to a bomb that scattered anthrax spores. The sheep started dying three days later. They were examined and then burned. Other tests involved dropping anthrax bombs from a Wellington bomber. Despite attempts to disinfect Gruinard Island, the anthrax spores left there by the experiments kept the island in quarantine for five decades. The final report on the Gruinard Island experiments suggested that anthrax could be used to render whole cities uninhabitable "for generations.”

In 1998, a string of accidents at the Israeli Institute for Biological Research was reported to have killed four people and injured 25. On one occasion, reports circulated that anthrax spores had been released into the air. One of the accidents was so serious that security forces were at the point of evacuating the surrounding town of Nes Ziona. The threatened expansion of this Institute then became a major issue in Nes Ziona’s local election campaign.

HOMELAND SECURITY AT FORT DETRICK

According to the Bush Administration plan, one of the two major functions of the new Homeland Security (DHS) facility will be what is referred to as bioforensic analysis, i.e., analyzing a bioattack so as to determine the source; i.e., who was responsible. The small scale attack that was the anthrax letters of October, 2001 resulted in USAMARIID at Fort Detrick suddenly being deluged with over 30,000 suspect envelopes, packages and other items. USAMARIID was also called upon to test about 320,000 environmental samples from such places as the Hart Senate Office Building and Washington, D.C.'s Brentwood Postal Center. Ultimately, it came to light that anthrax had escaped containment and was found all over offices at USAMARIID where it did not belong. (See “Anthrax slip-ups raise fears about planned biolabs,” USA Today, 10/13/04.) How much potentially contaminated material would descend on the new bioforensic facility in the event of a larger scale attack? And how does bioforensics really contribute to defending America? If there has been any kind of determination after more than 3 years of investigation as to who was responsible for the anthrax letters, it certainly has not been made public.

The other major function planned for the DHS facility is referred to as “bio-threat characterization.” Task areas for biothreat-agent (BTA) analysis and technical-threat assessment have been summarized as “Acquire, Grow, Modify, Store, Stabilize, Package, Disperse.” Classical, emerging, and genetically engineered pathogens are to be characterized for their BTA potential. Aerobiology, aerosol physics, and environmental stability will be studied in wet-laboratory and computer-laboratory settings. “Computational modeling of feasibility, methods, and scale of production” will be undertaken, and “Red Team” operational scenarios and capabilities will be assessed. BTA use and countermeasure effectiveness will be studied “across the spectrum of potential attack scenarios” through “[h]igh-fidelity modeling and simulation.” These proclaimed (admitted) activities would appear to be in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), to the extent they serve offensive purposes.

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND THE BWC

So it is no wonder that in 2001, our government rejected an effort by other signatories of the BWC to conclude a protocol that would provide for international inspections and verification measures. This effort was ten years in the making, which included years of trying to satisfy Clinton’s chief negotiator, a hold over from the Reagan and Bush administrations. (Reagan and Bush Senior disapproved of the BWC altogether.) In 2001, the U.S.A. was the only country to favor terminating efforts to create a legally binding inspection and verification mechanism to strengthen the BWC. This crippled efforts to make the BWC more meaningful. The BWC cannot be expected to work when the world's only superpower is rejecting inspections and verification at the same time as it is greatly expanding its "bio-defense" establishment. After ten years of futile efforts, there remained no desire among proponents to pursue such a mechanism, (unlike with the International Criminal Court, the Landmines Treaty and the Kyoto Protocol, with respect to which most countries persevered despite rejections by the Bush Administration).

In the context of other international arms control treaties, the US has repeatedly taken the position that enforceability depends on inspections and verification. The reason the Bush administration has rejected inspections and verification of our so-called bio-defense facilities is that it is determined to expand offensive capability in violation of the BWC. This is in keeping with the fact that on October 23, 2002, when the UN Disarmament Committee adopted a resolution reaffirming the 1925 Geneva Protocol “prohibiting the use of poisonous gases and bacteriological methods of warfare,” the resolution passed unanimously, with two abstentions: the US and Israel. US abstention amounts to a veto: banning the resolution from being reported.

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND ARMS CONTROL IN GENERAL

The general pattern in the Bush administration’s policies is to reject international arms control in favor of arms race. Consider what the Bush Administration is doing in the realm of weapons in outer space. The US remains the only one of the 66 member states of the UN Conference on Disarmament to oppose commencing negotiations toward barring the militarization of outer space. In 2003, at the UN General Assembly, a resolution to prevent militarization of space passed 174 to 0, with four abstentions: US, Israel, Micronesia, and Marshall islands. As stated above, a US abstention amounts to a veto.

We continue to spend more and more billions on our “Star Wars” program, previously referred to as our “Strategic Defense Initiative” (SDI), now referred to as our National Missile Defense system. Just as the ambiguity between defensive and offensive is being played with in the realm of biological weapons, so has such an ambiguity so obviously been played within the context of “Star Wars.” Star Wars is not meant to protect America. It is a tool for global dominance. The shield of Star Wars works with the sword of our overwhelming superiority in offensive capability. In the presence of the shield, everyone else in the world is put in the position of being less able to deter or to retaliate against American projection of force. Everyone else in the world views “Star Wars” in this light. Star Wars is also correctly viewed as part of the American program to militarily control outer space.

Star Wars and our “bio-defense” strategy can be compared in two other respects: a) It is technologically impossible to accomplish an effective defense against biological as well as missile attack. (Compare: At best, a given vaccine can be effective only against one particular strain of one particular infectious agent, while it is relatively easy and inexpensive for the adversary to develop brand new strains, by only slightly altering existing ones. Similarly, it is extremely difficult to intercept an incoming missile, while it is relatively easy to divert interceptions with decoys, camouflage, etc.) b) Since the goal can never be reached, Congress will continue to be persuaded to line with profits the pockets of the military industrial complex, which is metastasizing to include a biotech industry component.

The Bush Administration’s approach to nuclear weapons very clearly follows the same pattern. The Bush administration wasted no time in revoking the ABM treaty. In 2003, at the UN General Assembly, the US voted alone against implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, was the only country besides India to vote against steps toward the elimination of nuclear weapons, and was the only country besides Israel and Micronesia to vote against steps to prevent nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. The Bush administration has also declared opposition to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) with regard to the obligation on the part of existing nuclear powers to work toward ceasing the nuclear arms race and achieving nuclear disarmament. Pledging not to use nuclear weapons in a “first strike” has also been rejected. The Bush administration’s next step has been to propose the creation of a whole new generation of “useable” nukes, including “bunker busters,” which in destructiveness and perniciousness are more than 10 times the magnitude of the Hiroshima Bomb.

What the “neocons” Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, etc. argued during the 1990s should be our goal has become our National Security Strategy – it is to achieve “full spectrum” dominance. This really means dominance in all military realms, including in the realm of biological weapons. The goal of security from attack is subordinated to this quest for global dominance. This explains choosing the creation of a whole new generation of bioweapons, despite its subversion of the BWC, just as we are about to choose a new generation of nukes, despite its subversion of non-proliferation.

FORT DETRICK’S LOCAL IMPACT

These choices and priorities negate any real concern about the safety of the community of Frederick, as Fort Detrick expands its biowarfare facilities. This is not new. Throughout the existence of Fort Detrick in Frederick, military goals have trumped concerns about safety. Over the years, the conditions that have caused many premature deaths, of people working at Fort Detrick and people residing near Fort Detrick, have gone unacknowledged, unaddressed and unrectified. (See, for example, “Cancer questions: Residents point finger at Detrick,” front page, Frederick Post, 7/1/03.) Fort Detrick records acknowledge that three workers have died of infection with agents that were being researched as biological weapons. The records show that two men died of inhalation anthrax, and one died of Bolivian hemorrhagic fever.

There was a seven stories tall building at Fort Detrick known as the Tower, which used to house anthrax bacteria during the period when the U.S. had an overtly offensive biological warfare program. Since 1969, the Tower remained out of use and off limits, despite being rigorously and repeatedly cleaned with special chemicals. A 1993 Fort Detrick publication stated: “The primary agent grown at [the Tower] was anthrax, a dangerous organism which can lie dormant for thousands of years in a spore state [and then become reactivated].” In 2003, the Tower was finally demolished. There are indications that the rubble was then deposited in the Frederick County Landfill, without notice to, or a permit from local authorities.

It came to light in the 1990’s that the water supplies of nearby residents had been severely contaminated by leakage, dumping and other activities at Fort Detrick. Water samples taken revealed the presence of TCE and PCE, both cancer-causing chemicals, at levels between 1,000 and 5,000 times the levels determined to be safe by the EPA. The clean-up process has dragged on for years, because of what has amounted to inadequate appropriations. The clean-up has unearthed over 2,000 (metric) tons of hazardous waste. Recently, sanitation crews were shocked to find vials containing live bacteria. As well as the vaccine form of anthrax, the discarded biological agents included Brucella melitensis, which causes the virulent flu-like disease brucellosis, and klebsiella, a cause of pneumonia. (“US finds evidence of WMD at last - buried in a field in Maryland,” The Guardian, 5/28/03.)

Over the years, there have been a number of “whistleblowers” at Fort Detrick, who have gone unheeded. They have reported stores of pathogens (deadly germs) being handled sloppily and others disappearing unaccountably. (See, for example, “Scientist faults lab’s security; ‘You could walk out with anything,’ researcher says,” front page, Frederick Post, 1/21/02: “Interviews with more than a dozen current and former Fort Detrick scientists provided a rare account of what they described as a lax security system, that could have done little to prevent an employee from smuggling the ingredients for biological terrorism out of the country’s premier biodefense lab [at USAMRIID]… ‘Anybody could put anything in a vial and mail it anywhere…’” Also, see “Detrick lost pathogens: Army audit,” front page, Frederick Post, 1/21/02: “Lab specimens of anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens disappeared from [USAMRIID] during a turbulent period of labor complaints and recriminations among rival scientists…”)

Pathogens can spread by various means besides human fallibility and human depravity, such as by wind and by insects.

Before the expansion into National Interagency Biodefense Campus (NIBC), Fort Detrick is already a major source of emissions that have contributed to the EPA designating Frederick County as in violation of ozone limits. The Fort is already the third largest source of nitrogen oxides, and the fourth largest source of both particulates and sulfur dioxide in Frederick County. The Fort has four incinerators – two for municipal waste and two for medical waste. The Fort already demands large quantities of water. NIBC promises to further contribute to the water shortages already being experienced by Frederick City and Frederick County. The Fort already causes considerable traffic congestion.

In May of 2005, residents downwind of Fort Detrick woke up one morning to find their residential properties coated with flakes of a soot-like substance. A former Mayor of the City of Frederick telephoned City Hall as well as the County’s Health Department. It was not until the Fort was confronted that it acknowledged that there had been an unusual emission. The Fort’s spokesperson claimed the emission was not “generally hazardous,” but that it should be cleaned up immediately. The spokesperson further claimed that the incident merely related to a malfunctioning boiler in the heating system. It has since come to light that the emission was the result of the incineration of animals used in experiments conducted at the Fort. So, first the Fort failed to alert the community to the occurrence, and then, upon being confronted about it, misled regarding the emission’s origin. This does not bode well for what the community can expect from the Fort in the event of a more threatening occurrence.
On August 18, 2005, there was reported a “suspicious odor” at the Fort’s wastewater treatment plant. The Fort’s spokesperson (Public Affairs Officer Christian Devine) stated that an “unknown source” dumped an “unknown substance” into the sewer line at the steam plant. The Frederick Post (August 19 edition) reported that the Maryland Department of the Environment had been contacted.

What with the hysteria surrounding the prospect of terrorist attack instigating the explosion in the size of our “biodefense” establishment, there is nevertheless no apparent acknowledgement of Fort Detrick itself becoming a more and more attractive “soft target.” (The option of flying a commercial air liner into the Pentagon may be foreclosed.) To the extent security measures are to be supplemented, the City of Frederick will become more and more militarized – more razor wire fencing, increased patrols, air cover, etc.

The Bush administration and the US military tell us that it is necessary to further establish Frederick as the largest center of biowarfare development in the world. In case pandering to fear and patriotism is not enough to win support, there is the irresistible enticement of money and jobs. That most of the money will be in the form of inflated profits to contractors from elsewhere isn’t thought about. That most of the jobs will go to highly trained outsiders is not realized. That much more pressure will be imposed on Frederick’s already beleaguered infra-structure, also is ignored. We are sacrificing our safety and our morality. Growing an economy around the development of ever more efficient means of jeopardizing our lives and our environment is both evil and senseless.

THE ANTHRAX LETTERS OF OCTOBER, 2001

The only bioattack that has ever taken place in the United States, beyond the practice in the 18th and 19th centuries of spreading smallpox among Native Americans with donations of infected blankets, was the anthrax letters of October, 2001. Despite intensive investigation and forensic analysis by the FBI, as of 3 ½ years later, there have been no arrests. But this much has come to light: a) The original source of the strain of anthrax involved, called the “Ames strain,” is Fort Detrick. b) The concentration and dispersability of anthrax involved (one trillion spores per gram) reflects a secret technology that almost certainly originated in an American laboratory and is only at the disposal of American scientists. As early as October, 2001, the US government revealed its belief that the perpetrator(s) of the anthrax letters were American when it vetoed an effort made by France to have the U.N. Security Council condemn the anthrax incidents. The US explained its veto on grounds that the anthrax letters constituted “a domestic criminal matter.” (The Problem of Biological Weapons, page 144).

It was only after the anthrax letters happened that the Army admitted it had been secretly developing weapons-grade anthrax. There follows excerpts from a Washington Post article on the subject that appeared on December 13, 2001:

“An Army biological and chemical warfare facility in Utah has been quietly developing a virulent, weapons-grade formulation of anthrax spores since at least 1992, and samples of the bacteria were shipped back and forth between that facility and Fort Detrick, Md., on several occasions in the past several years, according to government officials and shipping records.

The Utah spores, grown and processed at the 800,000-acre Dugway Proving Ground about 80 miles from Salt Lake City, belong to the Ames strain -- the same strain used in the deadly letters sent to media outlets and two senators in September and October. No other nation is known to have made weapons-grade Ames… [E]xperts said yesterday they were surprised by the revelation that a U.S. lab was producing such lethal material…

Army officials said yesterday that all the material they have made has been accounted for and that they are cooperating with the FBI in its investigation [of the anthrax letters]. “This is a very important lead," said one person involved in the government's investigation, speaking on the condition of anonymity…

Dugway's production of a powdered form of Ames anthrax was first described in yesterday's Baltimore Sun. Dugway officials said in a statement yesterday that it became necessary to process virulent bacteria into a dangerous powder form to conduct certain defensive experiments… Spores must generally be processed into a fine dry powder for them to become airborne and enter the lungs, where they can trigger the most serious "inhalational" form of the disease…

Army and other officials have said the anthrax spores in the letter to Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) were highly concentrated and were produced in a powder made of particles smaller than three microns in diameter -- well into the size range that would make them extremely dangerous if released into the air. They were mixed with silica, an additive.

Army officials in Washington said yesterday that Fort Detrick does not have the equipment for making dried anthrax spores. But Fort Detrick does have a machine that can kill bacteria with irradiation -- equipment Dugway lacks. Thus, in some instances, when Dugway scientists wanted to work on dried spores without risk of infection, they shipped samples to Detrick to be sterilized.

The most recent shipment of the deadly spores to Fort Detrick left Dugway Proving Ground June 27. The spores were to be irradiated at the Maryland lab to render them harmless, according to shipping records and interviews with officials.

Those spores apparently sat at Fort Detrick for more than two months before being shipped back to Dugway on Sept. 4, less than a month before this fall's spate of bioterrorist attacks began with a Florida photo editor's fatal case of anthrax…

Shipping records obtained by The Washington Post indicate that the June shipment from Dugway to Detrick involved two small vials, one containing 180 milliliters and the other 160 ml. The return shipment contained five vials, each with 150 ml, for a total of 750 ml. An Army spokesman yesterday could not explain the discrepancy.

A previous shipment of Ames went from Dugway to Detrick in August 2000. Two weeks later, six times the original volume of material was shipped back to Dugway.

New revelations about the technical sophistication of the material used in the letters to Daschle and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) have only deepened the debate over who could be behind the attacks. Some prominent anthrax experts believe the signs point to an American scientist with connections to the U.S. biological weapons program or one of its contractors.

‘The anthrax in the letters was probably made and weaponized in a U.S. government or contractor lab,’ Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a microbiologist and director of the Federation of American Scientists' Working Group on Biological Weapons, concluded in an analysis released by the Federation on Monday…”

OVERVIEW

Our “Bio-defense” escalation is much worse than terribly wasteful. It destroys our security a) by encouraging adversaries to engage in similar programs, and b) by inventing ever more dangerous infectious agents and means of delivery. The example of the anthrax letters strongly suggests that the most likely source of a bio-threat is our own so-called bio-defense programs. As we expand the number of laboratories involved by the hundreds, and the number of individuals involved by the thousands, we dramatically increase the magnitude of bio-threat. (“Bioterror fight may spawn new risks: As field of study expands, concerns grow about potential pathogen leaks,” Baltimore Sun, 6/27/04.) There is the growing threat of accidental exposure. There is also the growing threat of one or more of these individuals perpetrating an attack themselves, or selling the technology and/or materials, or being coerced into a transfer. In other words, at the cost of billions, we are developing pernicious technologies that may very well end up under the control of the “enemy,” technologies that the “enemy” would never be able to develop on its own. On top of this, at the cost of more billions, we then plan to develop defenses to all of these possible varieties of pathogens, defenses that have as much chance of being effective as the National Missile Defense project (“Star Wars”). Instead of chasing all the missiles and all of the decoys that might enter our air space at any time, any angle, any speed, we will be chasing the endless variety of pathogens, of unpredictable genetic make-up, that at least theoretically can be delivered at any time, in any place, by an endless variety of means. This is the military approach to satisfying the insatiable, boundless demand for security on our own terms.

* * * * * * * * * * *

There follows this writer’s adaptation of another writer’s summary of reasons for why our government should not be expanding as it is our bioweapons establishment.

1) NO NEED FOR NATIONAL INTERAGENCY BIODEFENSE CAMPUS (NIBC)
There is no evidence of a foreseeable bioattack against the United States. There is no evidence that any terrorist group possesses or is about to develop significant BW capability, as this requires sophisticated equipment, expertise and experience. After years of scouring Afghanistan and Iraq, no evidence has been uncovered that Al Queda ever acquired or produced any biological weapons. Dr. David Franz, former director of the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID): “People don’t understand how difficult it is to pull off a biological attack.” Dr. C.J. Peters, formerly a senior virologist at USAMRIID: For a chemical or biological attack with mass casualties, “you have to have a state or the equivalent.” Dr. Margaret Hamburg, former Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, on October 9, 2001: “The risk [of BW terrorism] hasn’t changed, or our vulnerability; just our perception.” This perception has of course been fueled by exaggerated fear mongering on the part of government officials and full blast media attention. The General Accounting Office, testifying to Congress in the context of both biological and chemical terrorism, noted that efforts to combat terrorism “have been based on vulnerabilities rather than an analysis of credible threat” and that “agencies’ initiatives appear at odds with the judgment of the intelligence community,” suggesting a failure to distinguish between “what is conceivable or possible and what is likely in terms of the threat of a terrorist attack.”

The only bioattack in recent history originated from the US own biowarfare program. At present, naturally occurring pandemics (such as SARS and the WHO-predicted avian influenza) are the most deadly biothreat to the US population. This threat is exacerbated by the weakness of our public health care system.

Historically, chemical weapons (cyclone B, agent orange, sarin) and conventional weapons have been used as far more efficient and practical than biological agents.

2) ETHICAL NORMS
“Studies” on biowarfare agents with greater lethality, environmental stability, difficulty of detection, and resistance to drugs and vaccines resemble the Nazis’ approach to human targets and are unacceptable to most people. Equally unacceptable are “Red Teaming” simulations of imaginary attack scenarios. “Red Teaming” involves role playing the part of potential (imagined) adversaries. The US must not take any action that has even a remote possibility of developing weapons against its own citizens or the world population. Nevertheless, we appear to be committed to pursuing whatever technology of annihilation our scientists could possibly achieve. A current example relates to genetically engineering a more pernicious variety of small pox. Ethical norms appear to play no part in limiting this kind of activity.

3) NO BENEFITS
The only “benefits” from spreading public fear of “biothreats” are income to and employment with federal corporate contractors, biotech and pharmaceutical companies, newly sprouted government agencies, and the military. We are creating a new growth industry. This very profitable industry will lobby hard for programs to continue in order to ensure economic stability and growth. Corporate economic interests will drive public policy. It does now. This is a dangerous driver for a dangerous policy. This is directly counter to the need to eliminate these materials from the face of the earth. This is the wrong kind of economic growth.

The new diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines against non-existent outbreaks will be developed at a high cost, and sold back to the government for stockpiling at a high cost. There have already been a number of scandals associated with massive vaccine programs. There are strong indications that the “Gulf War Syndrome” that has afflicted thousands of veterans of the first Gulf War was caused by vaccinations against non-existent threats. The military has continued to impose vaccinations without the consent of the soldiers affected. The current Gulf War has spawned additional varieties of untested vaccinations which appear to be responsible for terrible side-effects, including, in some cases, suicide and homicide.

While some of the new knowledge and technologies may be tangentially applicable to management of naturally emerging infectious diseases, there are no overall benefits for our country or the world.

4) INSTIGATION OF AN INTERNATIONAL BIO-ARMS RACE
The US is becoming a driving force in a world-wide qualitative and quantitative increase in biological agent and toxin research which can ultimately only be harmful to the world population as a whole. Global proliferation of programs with potentially offensive capabilities invites the historically demonstrated flow of technologies (e.g. nuclear weapons) to states and terrorist groups which copy or modify those, using bought, stolen or leaked designs and materials. This and the evoked counter-measures make a biological disaster a reasonably foreseeable consequence, regardless of the purpose and the origin of the program. The likelihood of the disaster increases proportionally to the undermining of the norms established under the international bio-arms treaty, namely the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).

In 2003, DOD was selling surplus equipment that could be used to produce BW pathogens to middlemen who then resold to buyers in the Phillipines, Malaysia, Egypt, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Such equipment included incubators, centrifuges, evaporators, full body protective suits. Selling prices were pennies on the dollar. A Congressional subcommittee commented: “DOD should not be a discount outlet for bioterrorism equipment.”

5) SABOTAGE OF INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION AGAINST WAR & TERROR BY UNDERMINING THE BWC
In August 2001, our government rejected a protocol to strengthen the BWC with a system of mandatory declarations and inspections. Immediately afterwards it started massive, unjustifiable spending on “biodefense” which is now 18 times that of the 2001 budget. Since distinction between a defensive and offensive biological program is merely a matter of intent, international scrutiny is the most effective means of preventing a spiral of bio-arms race. It ensures that no illegal activities are conducted and that no strategic and political miscalculations take place. Obviously, no country can be responsible for reviewing the BWC compliance of its own biodefense program because of the clear conflict of interest, and thus no state may justify its secrecy by merely claiming peaceful intentions. In fact the presented spectrum of the NBACC activities (to develop, test, produce, bioregulate, weaponize, disseminate, deliver both new and old, genetically-engineered biological agents) has the appearance of an elaborate offensive program, according to our own previously applied definitions.

6) POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC IMPACT ON EVOLUTION / ENVIRONMENT
Genetic manipulation of any microorganisms carries the inherent danger of creating new pathogens and thus is supposed to be regulated by NIH Guidelines, as recommended by its Bioethics Committee. But research categorized as related to “national security” is not subject to the NIH Guidelines. It is inconceivable that the research to be conducted at the NBAAC, for example, will be in compliance with the NIH Guidelines, as it purposely aims to generate novel threat agents for which no effective countermeasures exist, but whose long term impact on the planet is excluded from analysis. This could result in degeneration or extinction of animal and plant species, followed or not followed by emergence of new ones better suited to survive at the expense of others. Obviously human health would be gravely jeopardized on a global scale, to an unpredictable degree. The only certain conclusion that can be drawn from a review of the proposed activities at the National Interagency Biodefense Campus (NIBC) at Fort Detrick is that its environmental impact cannot be estimated.

7) DOMESTIC ACCIDENTAL OR INTENTIONAL RELEASE OF BIOAGENTS
Statistical chance of human error and wrongdoing increases proportionally to the number of facilities and personnel involved. To date about 12,000 staff in over 320 US labs have been approved to work on bioterrorism, and the number is rapidly growing. A number of mishaps have already been reported. Less than 1% of applicants for jobs have been turned down. History suggests that most leakage results from wrongdoing of insiders rather than accidents or attacks. Spies, terrorist sympathizers, sociopaths and rapid-profit seekers can be expected to be overrepresented among the staff in such a morally dubious field. (Millions can be made from the sale of pathogens, remedies and know-how back to the government and elsewhere). Security at 104 laboratories at ten universities is lax or non-existent. This danger is significantly enhanced by the notorious failure of coordination among individual US institutions. Further, there is the potential impact of calamities like hurricanes, fires, floods, quakes, power failures, gas explosions and transport accidents.

8) TECHNOLOGY CANNOT PROVIDE REALISTIC, PRACTICAL DEFENSE
The objective of NBACC is unattainable since the number of all hypothetical pathogens and their specific technical innovations is infinite. Starting with nature's innate variability, and compounded by commercial genetic engineering as well as the use of antibiotics, nowadays synthetic microbes are built, fragmented and reassembled at random. These readily recombine with naturally occurring organisms to further increase the constant and dynamic evolution of the microbial genome. The correct prediction and full coverage of the variants is physically and hypothetically impossible. Additionally, the host immune response is also highly variable, yet vaccines against the putative bioterror agents cannot be tested on humans, due to the lack of natural outbreaks of these diseases. While bioterror is a global concern, there are no international programs, nor joint projects with EU, Canada and other countries of advanced biotechnology. Creation of a new International Forum on Biosecurity was proposed by the National Research Council in 2003, but it has not been implemented. Overall, the absence of a cohesive system of supervision, coordination, transparency, peer review and international collaboration leads to unjustifiable, risky and redundant projects funded by the American public against their interests. The $7.6 billion biodefense budget for 2005 is not only irrelevant to the needs of national medical research; it is counterproductive as it is creating the very dangers that the government supposedly seeks to combat. The cost of this reckless conduct is exemplified by the enormous expense to clean up and track down (unsuccessfully) the anthrax released in 2001.

Five letters generated 77,000 false alarms and hoaxes that cost $100 million to respond to, $1 billion in costs of decontamination, and caused 11 million Americans to take antibiotics, thus contributing to the conditions that are feeding drug resistant infections, currently the cause of 30,000 American deaths per year. The cost for future preventative measures in the US postal system is estimated to be $5 Billion.

9) LACK OF CREDIBILITY
US biodefense has a reputation of recurrent and current betrayal of public trust. An aftermath of the anthrax letters of 2001 was the first acknowledgement that the Army had weaponized anthrax (produced a dry powder version of the Ames strain) since the US commitment to banning biological weapons in 1969. In the late 1990s, the CIA undertook secret programs to construct a model biobomb and build a bioweapons lab. Meanwhile, DOD engaged in the production of a genetically modified strain of anthrax that featured anti-biotic resistant characteristics.

In Sept 2001, these undeclared American biowarfare projects came to light, all of them in violation of the Confidence-Building Measure declarations regime of the BWC. Even the responsible person in the US National Security Council was not aware of two of these projects. The US also failed to declare the operation of three aerosol test chambers, all apparently much larger (in the range of 30 times larger) than what is commonly supposed to be adequate for defensive purposes. The US has maintained that all of this is justified as being a matter of “threat assessment.” According to a April, 2002 government statement to the US Senate, the CIA was also involved in “genetic sequencing of microbes with terrorist implications.” The Department of Energy has conducted studies of the DNA sequencing of human disease pathogens, searching for the genes that influence virulence and antibiotic resistance and ability to override the protection of a vaccine. Again, the justification for developing and producing virulent strains of new biological agents is that the intent, the purpose, is to derive defenses to these potential threats. As of Nov 2004, the US Army still retains its illegal patent on a biogrenade designed to deliver biological and chemical agents (US Patent #6,523,478), in explicit violation of the BWC.

Over the years, the wide-spread noncompliance by US biodefense labs with the Freedom of Information Act has been monitored by the Sunshine Project. Its recent evaluation of 390 Institutional Biosafety Committees across the country (IBCs are supposed to review research programs and to provide public access to records) revealed failure of transparency on the part of 80% of IBCs.

10) PUBLIC HEALTH COST
Our existing health care system is unsatisfactory (US infant mortality and life expectancy rates are far inferior to those of Canada, Australia and the EU), and it is incapable of managing natural (not to mention induced) epidemics due to a large population that does not have health insurance. The leading causes of death in the US are unrelated to infectious agents, and the fastest growing cause of death is Alzheimer’s Disease. The NIBC initiative jeopardizes the tax-payers’ health by diverting public funds from urgent national needs, and by converting this money into a new health hazard. In 2004, biodefense already occupied one-third of the budget of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), NIH’s infectious disease branch. 32 states cut their spending on public health between 2001 and 2003. As Dr. Muin Khoury, Director of the Office of Genomics and Disease Prevention at the CDC stated in February 2003: “Public health is in disarray, and this emphasis on terrorism is eroding the public health infrastructure even more.”

In March, 2005, hundreds of US biologists signed a letter protesting at what they see as the excessive use of bacteriology funds for the study of bioterror threats. "The diversion of research funds from projects of high public-health importance to projects of high biodefence relevance represents a misdirection of NIH priorities and a crisis for NIH-supported microbiological research," the letter states. This shift is preventing important advances in science and public health, and actually increases the risk of a bioterorrism incident. “Bioweapons agents cause, on average, zero deaths per year in the United States, in contrast to a broad range of non-prioritized microbial pathogens that cause tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths per year.” Its 750 signers include two Nobel laureates and seven past presidents of the American Society for Microbiology.

Some Statistics: Food-borne disease in the USA results in 76 million cases per year, 315,000 hospitalizations per year, 5,000 deaths per year. “Medical error” in the USA causes between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths per year. Hospital-contracted infections in the USA causes 20,000 deaths per year. Flu in the US results in 50,000 deaths per year. Obesity in the US kills 400,000 per year. Tobacco-related illnesses in the US kill 400,000 per year. Air pollution in the USA results in 50,000 deaths per year. Firearms in the USA result in 35,000 deaths per year. Tuberculosis and Malaria result in global mortalities of 2-3 million people each, per year. HIV/AIDS results in global deaths of more than 3 million people per year. Measles results in global deaths of 750,000, despite the fact that a vaccine that costs 11 cents per dose effectively prevents measles. In the US, there are shortages of standard vaccines against basic childhood diseases such as meningitis. The US ran out of flu vaccine in 2003, in the face of the World Health Organization predicting that an international flu pandemic of the sort that killed 50 million people worldwide between 1917 and 1921 was almost inevitable and long overdue. Only 36% of American health workers received flu vaccinations. Meanwhile our government is establishing Project Bioshield which is a $6 billion plan to procure vaccines and antibiotics against pathogens that could be used in potential bioterrorism incidents. As antibiotic resistant strains of non-BW agents continue to increase in number, US pharmaceutical manufacturers are cutting back on their efforts to develop new antibiotics apart from biodefense projects.

Bioshield-type vaccinations have already been known to cause permanent neurological damage and death. These vaccinations also introduce new epidemiological factors whose immediate risk is unknown and the long term risk even less so.

11) IN CONCLUSION

The purpose of biological research should be to eliminate pathogens from the face of the earth. “The real key to bio-security, to not having to deal with deliberately spread epidemics, is to make sure that these materials are not produced.” (Vivienne Nathanson, Head of Ethics, British Medical Association).This can be ensured by delegating domestic oversight of all bioresearch to the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, NIH. Our government should be promoting international collaboration within the World Health Organization, and international transparency under the Biological Weapons Convention.

There follows excerpts from a recently published article entitled
“Courting Armageddon -- How the Bush Administration’s Biological Weapons Buildup Affects You” by Heather Wokusch.
www.dissidentvoice.org
April 14, 2005

“News that a U.S. company recently sent vials of a 1957 pandemic flu strain to laboratories across the world by accident is only the latest outrage from the billion-dollar boondoggle called the federal biological weapons program.

As you might recall, the Bush administration started its “biodefense” spending spree following the September 2001 deadly anthrax attacks, and one of its first projects was to genetically engineer a super-resistant, even more deadly version of the anthrax virus.

A US Army scientist in Maryland is currently trying to bring back elements of the 1918 Spanish flu, a virus which killed 40 million people. And a virologist in St. Louis has been working on a more lethal form of mousepox (related to smallpox) -- just to try stopping the virus once it’s been created.

Lack of oversight and runaway spending are exacerbated by the Bush administration’s disrespect for the internationally-recognized Biological Weapons Convention. In short, reduced pressure on weapons labs to issue declarations and allow inspections means less accountability – and more opportunities for secrecy and abuse.

The increasing number of stateside bioweapons blunders should come as no surprise. In February 2003, for example, the University of California at Davis (UCD) took a full ten days to inform nearby communities that a rhesus monkey had escaped from its primate-breeding facility. Coincidentally, UCD had been vying for government funds to set up its own "hot zone" biodefense lab which could use primates for biological weapons testing. If that monkey had been infected with ebola, or some other virus...

Doesn’t inspire much trust in the transparency of US biological weapons programs. And things appear only to be getting worse.

In 2004, a whopping $6 billion went up for grabs for federal biodefense programs, and laboratories across the country went ballistic trying to get their hands on some of that cash. Predictably, cases of fraud and abuse and negligence quickly surfaced.

In 2004, a military biodefense contractor called Southern Research landed in hot water by accidentally sending live anthrax across the country from Frederick, Maryland to the Children’s Hospital of Oakland (California). To make matters worse, it turns out that Southern Research’s lab in Frederick, Maryland didn’t even maintain the institutional biosafety committee required by federal research rules. The punishment for these acts of gross incompetence and irresponsibility? The Bush administration gave Southern Research the task of safeguarding a new $30 million biological weapons facility being built near Chicago. [In the first section of this essay, under the heading “Fort Detrick’s Local Impact,” there is a reference to the demolition of the “Anthrax Tower” that took place in 2003. Southern Research provided the so-called “Safety Representative” assigned to that demolition process.]

In September of the same year, three lab workers at the Boston University Medical Center were accidentally exposed to a potentially lethal biowarfare agent called tularaemia bacterium. The lab didn’t report the tularemia infections until two months later though -- after it had won a contract to build a new, $178 million biodefense laboratory.

Concerns about lack of transparency and monetary waste aside, the administration’s bioweapons buildup raises obvious ethical problems. Why should the U.S. create newer, even deadlier viruses? Who are these catastrophic weapons going to be tested on? What populations will they ultimately be used against?

These questions take on urgent meaning given the Bush administration’s military adventurism coupled with the US media’s poor coverage regarding war victims. For example, eyewitnesses to the late-2004 attack on Fallujah claimed that US forces used poisonous gases, and “weird” bombs that exploded into fires that burned the skin despite water being thrown on the burns -- a telltale sign of napalm or phosphorus bombs

UK reaction to the revelation was swift and strong, with demands that Prime Minister Blair remove British troops from Iraq until the US ceased from using such savage weaponry. Labor MP Alice Mahon demanded that Blair make "an emergency statement to the Commons to explain why this is happening.” No similar outrage in Congress. In fact, no comment at all. The US mainstream media didn’t cover the “weird bomb” allegations.

But it doesn’t take a genius to put two-and-two together: if we permit our government to ignore international weapons-control conventions and then say nothing while fresh billions are invested in barbaric new weaponry, we lose the right to act surprised when our own military uses that weaponry on innocent civilians abroad.

Or even on us.

You may be surprised to learn that in 2003, the Pentagon quietly admitted to having used biological/chemical agents on 5,842 service members in secret tests conducted over a ten-year period (1962-73).

In operations called Project 112 and Project SHAD, the Defense Department tested its own weapons on service members aboard Navy ships, and in all sorts of other nasty ways – such as spraying a Hawaiian rainforest and parts of Oahu. All in all, tests were conducted in six states (Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Utah) as well as in Canada and Britain.

Many military personnel were not informed when the toxic agents were being tested on them. Only decades later, as crucial documents slowly become declassified, have the veterans’ health complaints been acknowledged.

You might think such barbarism could never happen again: too many legal protections for citizens in place. Think again.

There’s a tricky clause in Chapter 32/Title 50 of the United States Code which states that the Secretary of Defense can conduct a chemical or biological agent test or experiment on humans in certain cases “if informed consent has been obtained.”

So far so good. But check out a different part of Chapter 32, Section 1515, entitled “Suspension; Presidential authorization”:

The operation of this chapter, or any thereof, may be suspended by the President during any war declared by Congress and during the period of any national emergency declared by Congress or by the President.

In January 2005, US Senate majority leader Bill Frist called for a new Manhattan Project (referring to the WWII-era nuclear weapons bonanza) for biological weapons. Frist told an audience at the World Economic Forum, “The greatest existential threat we have in the world today is biological," and he went on to predict a biowarfare attack "at some time in the next 10 years."

How ironic that while Frist cited the 2001 US anthrax attacks as proof more biological weapons research was necessary, he failed to mention that those incidents involved anthrax produced right in the good ‘ole USA -- or that the primary suspect in the attacks was a US Army scientist. Frist also didn’t clarify how developing even more biological warfare agents will make the world safer.

The original Manhattan Project ultimately led to US forces dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the resulting slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people. It’s terrifying to consider the potential repercussions, both domestic and foreign, of the Bush administration’s biological weapons Manhattan Project.”
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THE SAME ADMINISTRATION THAT CONTENDED THE INVASION OF IRAQ WAS FOR DEFENSIVE PURPOSES IS CONTENDING THAT OUR SUDDEN EXPANSION OF BIOWEAPONS RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IS FOR DEFENSIVE PURPOSES.

OUR SECURITY IS NOT ENHANCED BY EVER GREATER “DEFENSE” SPENDING. OUR SECURITY IS BEING EVISCERATED BY OUR EVER GREATER “DEFENSE SPENDING.”

RISK PEACE. FIGURE OUT PEACE-MAKING WHILE SOME OF OUR STRENGTH AND VIABILITY REMAIN, NOT AFTER CATASTROPHE, BANKRUPTCY AND CHAOS HAVE PUT RATIONAL CHOICES OUT OF REACH.