Berry Kellman, a professor of law and director of the International Weapons Control Center at DePaul University College of Law wants to change that. He has written a decent treatment of the threat presented by bioterror. Take a look at it. (Bioviolence: Preventing Biological Terror and Crime)
Professor Kellman who has also been a consultant to Interpol on biological crime is bothered by all the attention paid by governments and the media to nuclear and radiological threats including atomic weapons deployed by rogue states. He is convinced that biological weapons present a greater clear and present danger.
For some time the Geek was paid to consider the possibilities and drawbacks in the use of biological weapons. As a result, while he shares some of Professor Kellman's concerns, the Geekmo isn't quite as willing to lose sleep over the problems of bioterror--or embrace the fixes proposed by the professor.
The professor views with great alarm several potential biological agents currently classified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as "Class A" pathogens. The CDC classification is predicated upon medical considerations of virulence, morbidity and difficulty of treatment. These are legitimate medical criteria. They are not necessarily relevant to the use of the pathogen as a weapon either of war or terror.
Nor do the CDC criteria consider the extensive field testing data available from often criticised US government research back in the Fifties and Sixties regarding difficulties of initial dissemination and the level of exposure needed to ignite a self-replicating plague. Even with improvements in dissemination technology made over the past forty or fifty years, there are still difficulties in establishing a "hot zone" where human-to-human transfer would provide for fast spreading infection.
Even the oft-cited scenario of spreading the infection in the "closed" environment of a transoceanic airliner has far more difficulties in practice than in principle. (For example, the supposedly closed airliner cabin has more changes of air per hour than the typical hospital room. The new filtration systems make it cleaner air than most hospitals as well.)
Since the professor deals with law and consults with law enforcement agencies, the Geek isn't surprised that he focuses on new laws, both domestic and international as the largest portion of the defense against bioterror. History hasn't given the Geek as much faith in the effectiveness of law as a defense against hostile action.
Controls over the manufacture, possession and transfer of potential pathogens is a nifty idea. The Geek has no problems with it.
But, there is a problem with the concept.
Get a grip on this.
Most of the most dangerous pathogens, the kind that make people really sick exist in nature. With the exception of smallpox, all the real Class A nasty critters can be easily cultured from natural hosts. No amount of international or domestic law can change that.
Professor Kellman's suggested remedies won't work. The only real defense against bioterror is a combination of good intelligence on organizations likely to use it, credible deterrence (which we don't have at the moment for non-state actors) and very good public health system responses.
Meanwhile, join the Geek in not losing too much sleep over the threat of bioterror. It's attractiveness is far more apparent than real.
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Actually, I'm a little more concerned about this one, but I don't think it would be aimed primarily at human-to-human as much as aimed at our livestock. Be a tough hit, if successful.
Course, then it's a "rush to judgment" by all parties, and in all honesty, the most irrational will probably win out. And I'm fairly doubtful it would be Dick Cheney (in spite of what a lot of the tin foil types think), because there's way, way too many others (specifically in congress; in both parties) who would set new standards for irrational behavior in this type of situation.
Stupid as it sounds, I think attacking our food supply would probably result in the gloves coming off with a vengeance. For all those folks who want to go back to the 12th century, this would probably be the trigger to us getting them there (unassisted).
The point about the vulnerability of US agriculture to biological attack is very well taken. There is no doubt but that the livestock component of agribusiness is quite liable and that the effects of a hit on this sector would be large and exciting.
Crops are even more vulnerable. Given the monoculultre nature of so much farm production, and the ease by which plant pathogens can be acquired, extracted from indigenous sources, and distributed as well as the crunch existing currently with regard to basic outputs such as feed corn and cross-elastic animal and human feeds, a hit on North Dakota winter wheat, Iowa corn or Idaho potatoes would have a potential for enormous economic damage--even if human health was not immediately effected.
Much of the appeal of bioterror exists not in the number of kilo or megacorpses which it would cause or even in the public health panic which might ensue but in the economic consequences. This aspect of biological warfare (or terrorism) has not been the subject of much public awareness. In the past (most of the period between the end of WW II and the Nineties, the US agricultural sector including crop stockpiles had sufficient reserves to dampen the economic impact of a biological attack on either livestock or crops.
In more recent years with the shrinkage of stockpiles, the increased demands globally for US crop outputs and even the poorly thought through legislation regarding domestic production of alcohol as a gasoline extender, the American farm and the crops it produces is a very lucrative target constellation.
So, whether cows or corn, pigs or potatoes, chickens or soybeans, the inventive bio-terrorist has a wide field to plow.
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