Bio-terrorism is terrorism that involves the release or dissemination of biological agents such as bacteria, viruses or toxins intentionally in a natural form or human modified form to cause illness or death in people, animals or plants. These agents are typically found in nature but is mutated or altered to increase their ability to cause disease, resistant to current medicines, increasing their ability to spread into the environment. Terrorists tend to use these agents as it is extremely difficult to detect and don’t cause illness for several hours to days.
It is an attractive weapon as the agents are easy and inexpensive to obtain, easily disseminated and cause panic in public beyond actual physical damage. Its limitation is that it is difficult to employ a bioweapon in a way that it only affects the enemy not the innocent ones.
The US Center for Disease Control and prevention have evaluated microorganisms into 3 categories based on the efficiency of disease transmission, potential for initiating fear in public and difficulty of defending agent:-
Category A agents are highest risk agents with potential for mortality, initiating fear in public and easily disseminated. Small pox falls in this category as the vaccination is stopped throughout the world and is highly transmutable, moderate mortality rate and lack of effective antiviral therapy.
Category B agents are the relatively easy to disseminate with low mortality and produce moderate morbidity. These agents are food or water borne.
Category C are the pathogens that have potential for mass dissemination and highly morbidity and mortality.
There are various examples of bioterrorist attacks throughout the world.
In 1972, two college students of Chicago, Allen Schwander and Stephen Persa, had planned to poison the city’s water supply with typhoid and other bacteria but was unsuccessful as they were arrested by police.
In 1984, there was food poisoning of individuals in the Dalles, Oregon through the deliberate contamination of salad bars at 10 local restaurants with salmonella in the hope to incapacitate the voting population of city so that their own candidate would win the 1984 Wasco country election by a leading group of follower of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. This was the first and largest bioterrorist attack in the United States. The biological agent used was salmonella enteric typhimorium. 751 people contaminated salmonellosis, 45 of whom were hospitalized but no fatalities.
In June 1993, the religious group Aum shinrikyo released anthrax in Tokyo but it was a total failure, not even affecting a single person because of using vaccine strain of the bacterium.
In 2001, one week after September 11 attack, letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and 2 Democratic US Senators which killed 5 people and infected 17 people.
In 2003, ricin, a highly poisonous protein, was coated on two letters in between October and November, which were mailed to the white house and another one was with no address in South Carolina.
On April 15 2013, a letter coated with ricin was intercepted at US capitol’s office site mass faculty in Washington.
On April 17 2013, an envelope addressed to then president of US, Barack Obama, was coated with ricin.
There are various bodies of government that works in the prevention of attacks by the biological agents and to combat the situation in case of attack. Various laboratories are working on advanced detection systems to provide early warning, identify contaminated areas and population at risk and to fascinate prompt treatment. Forensic technologies are also used in the identification of biological agents, their geographical origins and their initial source. Various vaccines and treatment against the potential biological threat, also known as, medical counter measures, have also been taken into the account.
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