Bio-terror or Bio-error?

Jett Li
Mr. Heugh
3/12/15
6th Hour
Thesis: Bioterrorism laboratories in the U.S. are much more hazardous than
the threat of bioterrorism and must be controlled.
I. Biological Weapons

A. Description and threat

B. Types
1. Bacteria
2. Viruses
3. Fungi
4. Toxins
II. History
A. Early biowarfare
B. Bannings
C. Recent attacks
III. Acts and Agents
A. Project BioShield Act
1. Funding
2. The fast track
B. Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act
C. Dangerous agents
1. Anthrax
2. Botulinum
3. Ricin
4. Smallpox
IV. The Real Threat
A. Accidents
1. Aral Sea
2. American laboratories
B. Laboratory statistics
C. The truth and future
My Search Story
Had the wind been blowing in a different direction, hundreds of thousands
could have died. That could have been the aftermath of the so-called

biological Chernobyl in Sverdlovsk, Soviet Union where instead, 64 died.

Bioterrorism laboratories have had a terrible history of leaks and devastating
accidents. Yet in the U.S., multiple laws have been passed to fund these
dangerous laboratories and bring their medicines into the public faster with
less safety tests. Bioterrorism laboratories in the U.S. are much more
hazardous than the threat of bioterrorism and must be controlled.
It was a long journey to achieve my final paper. My original goal was to
find out about bioterrorism and why it was extremely necessary to build
defenses against these types of attacks. After researching, I discovered many
shocking facts and my view turned completely around. I realized that the
threat of bioterrorism was very low and the truth of laboratories that are
meant to help us. My adventure began when I chose my topic and I was soon
looking through databases for sources. Several databases had outdated or
basic articles that did not fit for my paper. However, I found and printed
seven solid articles and wrote source cards for them. After learning about the
CRAP test, I used it on two websites and found a good website for research.
At the same time I began a working thesis statement and outline.
In the following week. I completed 50 notecards and threw out a few
more unfit sources. In addition I wrote and performed my poll and finished
my final outline. And, with the help of EasyBib, I created a Works Cited. I
faced a few challenges at this point, including the need for more notecards
and to revise poll questions that were not turning out correctly. In the end I

completed about 30 more notecards and decided not to use the poll
questions that did not work. Now with everything set up, I began writing.
My Poll Process
When deciding between an interview or a poll, I determined that a poll
would be a better choice in my case because I wanted to see what people
believed was true about bioterrorism and if it matched my view of it before
delving deeper into the topic. More importantly, I wanted to know their
opinions about the topic. All my questions were statements in which the
person being polled would answer agree, disagree, or neutral.
I polled a wide range of people to get every opinion: three Larson
students, my family, two Larson teachers, an Athens teacher, and an Athens
student. Three of my statements popped out in particular. When given the
statement Bioweapons are more dangerous than nuclear or chemical
weapons, 20% of people polled agreed. This let me understand that many
people did not believe bioweapons were as dangerous as other large-scale
weapons. Then, when given There have been bioterrorist attacks since
2001, 80% of those polled said agree. The truth was that there were not and
this made me realize that majority of people thought bioterrorism was a
bigger threat than it truly was in the past decade. Finally, when given the
statement Biolabs are needed to protect us from the threat of bioterrorism,
90% [FIX] of those polled agreed. This confirmed my belief that people
believed they needed laboratories to continue research on biodefense.

My Search Findings
Biological weapons are very powerful killing agents. They are defined
as live, disease-causing agents with the intent to harm or kill. They are also
classified as weapons of mass destruction alongside chemical and nuclear
weapons (Bioterrorism). This implies that people take this very seriously as a
very dangerous weapon. In fact, they have been banned by most nations in
the world (Bioterrorism). The reason for this is because they are extremely
powerful and unique. They can have long-term effects (compared to i.e. an
explosion) and can be invisible, odorless, and/or tasteless. Furthermore,
under the right conditions, bioweapons can be 100-1,000 times more
effective than chemical weapons of the same weight (Bioterrorism). This can
make a bioweapon a more superior and very alarming weapon.
In addition, bioweapons have a broad range of categories, including
bacteria, viruses, fungi, and toxins. Bacteria are single-celled organisms that
cause diseases including anthrax, dysentery, and bubonic plague. Viruses
are 100 times smaller than a bacteria and work by copying itself onto a host
cell (Bioterrorism). This can make a virus very hard to detect or stop. Some
examples are smallpox, influenza, and Ebola virus. Fungi generally live in the
ground and decompose organic matter, so they can be used to destroy food
crops (Bioterrorism). This can make fungi an indirect bioweapon because
they can starve out large areas of people. Finally, toxins are powerful poisons

produced from biological agents, such as botulinum and ricin. Each one of
these bioweapons has its unique properties and uses.
There have been early uses of bioweapons as well as recent
bioterrorist attacks. Bioterrorism has been traced as far back as 6th century
B.C. when Assyrians used fungi to poison enemy wells (chemical). This
highlights that bioweapons have had a very long history. In 1347, Tatars
catapulted plague-infected corpses over city walls in Kaffa (present day
Ukraine). This act is what some historians believe to be the cause of Black
Death (chemical). This shows how a small infection can lead to a massive
outbreak. Other instances of biowarfare include British giving out smallpoxinfected blankets to enemy Native Americans and France and Germany
contaminating food exported to enemy countries (chemical).
After World War I in 1925, the Geneva Protocol was initiated, banning
bio and chemical weapons in war. Later in 1969, President Nixon announced
that the U.S. would terminate all offensive bioweapons program. However,
they would continue biodefense research (Bioterrorism). This confirmed that
the U.S. would not use bioweapons ever again in war. More restraints were
placed on bioweapons in the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).
170 countries signed the BWC, which bans producing or using bioweapons
(Bioterrorism).
Despite the efforts, use of bioweapons continued. In 1984 a cult
contaminated a salad bar in Oregon with salmonella, infecting over 750

(chemical). Most recently, letters with anthrax spores were mailed to media
companies and two senators in October 2001, infecting 17 and killing five.
The mailings were traced to biodefense researcher Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, who
killed himself in 2008 (Bioterrorism). This attack underlined a hole in national
security and most likely turned Americas attention to bioweapons. The
history of biowarfare and recent attacks set the stage.
The U.S. is heading the wrong way with biodefense by going too far to
fund and protect dangerous laboratories, lower safety tests, and keep agents
that are much too dangerous to be on American soil. Through perilous acts
such as Project BioShield Act and the Public Readiness and Emergency
Preparedness Act, the U.S. government is pushing the U.S. closer and closer
to a deadly outbreak. There are thousands of bioweapons labs scattered all
over the country, each with dangerous biological materials (Scutti). How did
they get there? After the frenzy to raise biodefense following 9/11, Congress
passed the BioShield Act in 2003, raising the funding for biodefense from
$576 million to over $8 billion by 2005. These funds go to the Department of
Human Health Services (HHS) to develop medicines (Scutti). This new
funding dipped deeply into Americans tax dollars and began the creation of
reckless labs. Before, the FDA would approve a medicine with extensive
tests, but now BioShield lets a new medicine be sped up in review and even
possibly be used in emergencies without any tests (Scutti). This indicates
that with fewer tests, a new medicine could be flawed and make many in the
public sick from it. Later in 2010, he Public Readiness and Emergency

Preparedness Act was passed. It provided liability to companies producing

the harmful drugs (Scutti). This implies that the government is now
supporting companies to create dangerous new drugs.
Another issue with biolabs is that they are holding on to incredibly
treacherous biological agents. The problem is that the HHS funds creating
bioweapons as well as finding cures to them (Scutti). The CIA estimates that
one gram of anthrax can kill of the U.S. population (Bioterrorism). Now
imagine that bacteria in every one of the thousands of labs in the U.S.
Moreover, the botulinum toxin is thousands of times more poisonous than
snake venom (Bioterrorism). This means a small mistake could instantly kill a
lab worker working with this toxin. Next, ricin is a toxin that can cause death
if ten-millionths of a gram is inhaled (Bioterrorism). This could prove
threatening to a lab because only such a small amount needs to escape to
kill someone. Finally, smallpox is a very highly infectious disease that kills
approximately of those who are infected by it. Furthermore, it has been
eradicated from nature (The last person to die from smallpox died from a
laboratory leak) (Bioterrorism) and only exists in U.S. and Russian labs
(Scutti). This highlights that the U.S. has no more use for it and should
destroy the virus. The only way that someone could get infected is from
ourselves through a small mistake in a laboratory. Even with all these
pathogens being tested, laboratories often do research in which viruses are
purposely made stronger for vaccines to be made against them (McNeil).
This means that viruses that are powerful enough are being made more

powerful, making them much more perilous. Because the government is

creating and protecting unsafe laboratories, reducing safety protocols, and
holding onto hazardous disease agents, the U.S. is at a higher risk for a
laboratory accident or outbreak.
The history of laboratories is broken and imperfect and lab safety
standards are not where they should be because the government is not
standing up to set standards. One example of a devastating leak was in 1971
in the Aral Sea. After a smallpox leak from a nearby lab, several people
became infected with smallpox and three died. 50,000 residents were
immediately quarantined (Scutti). This is an example of a careless leak that
wasnt cleared in time before reaching the public. There have also been
several reckless accidents in American laboratories. A Texas A&M University
student was contaminated with brucella from a room not authorized for
research. And, in 2008, a bird knocked out power at the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) Emergency Infectious Diseases Laboratory for an hour. It was
dumb luck that no one became infected with the deadly strain of flu being
tested at the time (Scutti). This is a clear example of an unavoidable
accident caused by a single bird. Even if human error can be limited,
accidents like this always happen. Just last year in July, the leader of the
Bioterror Rapid Response and Advanced Technology Laboratory, Michael
Farrell, suddenly resigned. This was due to two careless accidents. In one
incident in June, a scientist had an incautious communication error over the
phone regarding instructions and led to 62 CDC workers becoming

potentially exposed to anthrax. Just weeks earlier, a contaminated sample of

flu was shipped to a lab. Researchers soon noticed something was wrong and
alerted CDC. The director of the CDC said that no workers were infected, but
it took way too long for it to be reported (McNeil). Both these incidents were
results of irresponsible communication issues.
Laboratories are ranked by biosafety level. BSL-3 and BSL-4 are ranked
as the most dangerous labs. In 2009, the Government Accountability Office
(GAO) recorded that there were 1,356 BSL-3 labs and 15 BSL-4 labs in the
U.S. Yet in 2013, GAO said the number had increased, but there was a lack of
counting methods to provide an accurate estimate (Scutti). This is a troubling
statement from GAO. They are a government agency, and yet they cannot
keep track of the number of labs in the U.S. GAO later reported, There is still
no one agency or group that knows the nations need for all U.S. highcontainment laboratories, including the research priorities and the capacity,
number and location, to address priorities. They are saying that nobody
knows important statistics about every laboratory in the U.S. This means that
a lab can run into a leak or accident and the government does not know
anything about that lab! In fact, there are no national standards for creating
and operating biolabs (Scutti). This makes it very hard to assess safety. Every
parent knows the first thing they care about for their child is safety. If the
government cannot keep the laboratories safe and in check, they must not
be allowed to continue creating and funding them!

Ironically, despite all the accidents that occurred in recent years, there
has not been a single bioterrorist attack since 2001 (Scutti). The truth is that
many people believe the risk of bioterror is very high, yet they fail to notice
the risk of bio-error. In fact, bioweapons can be so uncontrollable that they
are rarely used (Scutti). For example, in World War II, Japan used many
bioweapons against the Chinese, however they were eventually halted when
hundreds of their own troops died (Bioterrorism). Even so, in 2013 Congress
reauthorized BioShield for another $2.8 billion (Scutti) and since 2001, the
U.S. has spent over $60 billion on biosecurity programs (Congressional). Still,
Congress will continue funding new labs, like the 574,000 square foot
biodefense lab near Kansas State University. A tenth of that space will be set
aside for BSL-4 labs handling fatal, air-transmissible pathogens with no
known cure (Scutti). Would you like your child to go to Kansas State
University? A long record of laboratory accidents combined with low safety
standards are very prevalent in laboratories in the U.S.
Bioterrorism laboratories in the U.S. are too dangerous to be trusted
and must be controlled. The United States is a country ruled by the people
and for the people. So, unless we open our minds, realize the dangers of
biodefense laboratories, and voice against continuing the acts that boost
them, we are putting our country in a dangerous hole that we dug ourselves.

Works Cited
"Bioterrorism." Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Gale, 2015. Web. 28 Jan. 2015.
"Chemical and Biological Terrorism." ELibrary. ProQuest, 27 Jan. 2009. Web. 29 Jan.
2015.
McNeil, Donald G., Jr. "Leader of Troubled Lab Steps Down, C.D.C. Says." ELibrary.
ProQuest, 24 July 2014. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.
Scutti, Susan. "The Only Thing Scarier Than Bio-Warfare Is the Antidote." General
Reference Center Gold. Gale, 21 Mar. 2014. Web. 28 Jan. 2015.
Testimony, Congressional. "THREAT OF BIOTERRORISM:LEONARD A. COLE,
PHD." ELibrary. ProQuest, 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.