Detection of Biological Agents

VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1, 2000 LINCOLN LABORATORY JOURNAL 3 B   have seldom been used throughout history [1–4]. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972 outlawed the possession and use of biological weapons; this convention has been ratified by all but a handful of major nations [5], and no nation has an overt, declared biological-weapons capability. Despite these facts, it appears that the threat of biological attack is increasing. Indeed, biological weapons may become the weapons of choice for rogue states and terrorist organizations. Several factors contribute to this trend. First, the very horror associated with biological weapons serves to make them attractive to modern terrorist groups. Second, proliferation of biotechnology equipment and expertise has made it relatively easy to produce bioagents. Equipment needed to produce these bioagents can be found in pharmaceutical industries, food-processing plants, and even microbreweries. Such equipment is widely available on the open market. Likewise, there is a large, worldwide workforce trained in the basic techniques necessary to make biological weapons. The relative ease of making biological weapons is illustrated by the Iraqi program. (See the sidebar entitled “Iraq’s Biological-Weapons Program.”) Within only a few years Iraq clandestinely generated a substantial arsenal of biological weapons. Third, small quantities of bioagents can cause huge numbers of casualties. For example, a lethal dose of anthrax spores is less than a microgram. Thus, less than 1 kg of anthrax would, if optimally distributed, be enough to give a lethal dose to every man, woman, and child in the United States. Even if not optimally distributed, relatively small amounts of bioagent can cause large numbers of casualties. The World Health Organization estimated that attacking a large city with 50 kg of anthrax spores would produce 95,000 deaths and an additional 125,000 sicknesses [6]. The U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment estimated that an attack on Washington, D.C., with 100 kg of anthrax spores would produce one to three million deaths [7]. The estimated casualties vary over a wide range because, fortunately, we have no empirical data on such an attack. Whichever estimate is accepted, casualties in a biological attack could be impressively large. Finally, the combination of the relative ease of production of biological weapons and the potentially large number of casualties they can cause makes the biological weapon the “poor-man’s” weapon of mass destruction. A relatively poor, technologically unsophisticated nation may well believe that developing biological weapons offers an advantage over an otherwise militarily superior adversary. Likewise, a terrorist organization can believe that the threat or actual use of biological weapons will gain them what more conventional acts of violence have not.