The Real Bioterror Threat

Richard Ebright, a chemistry professor at Rutgers University, has emerged as one of the leading critics of the U.S. bioterror defense program. I spoke with him earlier this week about the government’s “lone madman” theory.

GoozNews: Could Bruce Ivins have done this alone?

Ebright: It was done on the kiloton scale in the U.S. weapons program in the 1960s through 1990s. To do it on the gram scale in a location that was part of a previous offensive weapons program by a person who had access to the information about how they are prepared . . . would not be difficult. This is routine technology used to prepare products daily in the pesticide and pharmaceutical industry with approaches that are far more sophisticated and easier to procure than what was available in the 1960s through 1990s.

GoozNews: Yet some accounts insist that this anthrax preparation was so fine that it must have required access to the more sophisticated technology than what was available in Ivins’ lab.

Ebright: There’s been just one semi-official comment on that. Douglas J. Beecher, who works in the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, published a paper in 2006 where he called that a “misconception.”

[Here’s the full quote:

Individuals familiar with the compositions of the powders in the letters have indicated that they were comprised simply of spores purified to different extents. However, a widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production. The persistence credence given to this impression fosters erroneous preconceptions that may misguide research in preparedness efforts and generally detract from the magnitude of hazards presented by simple spore presentations.]

It remains entirely open if this person operated alone or in concert with others. But the idea that he didn’t have the means to do it is absurd.

GoozNews: Do you think he did it?

Ebright: Any number of individuals in that laboratory had access to means to carry this out . . . alone. Did someone suggest this to the perpetrator? Did someone assist the perpetrator? This is something that you can’t get from a technical analysis.

GoozNews: Who benefited from this crime?

Ebright: The administration has milked this for all it is worth by allowing the misperception to remain that this was an external attack, possibly from Iraq. That was useful to the administration in building a case for any number of actions, including the intervention in Iraq. The vaccine industry, particularly BioPort and its successors, have exploited this misperception. The drug industry has benefited. The academic-industrial complex that has arisen from this incident has exploited it. I don’t think they did it, but they certainly benefited.

GoozNews: You’ve said it has distorted infectious disease research priorities. Explain.

Ebright: About half the resources in bacteriology and about a third in virology were shifted to biodefense. We’ve spent $57 billion in biodefense since 2001. The annual budget for NIH is only $30 billion. The spending has been disproportionate to the level of threat.

GoozNews: You’ve also said the spending on bioterror defense has made us less safe. How?

Ebright: The moment it was known that it was internal threat rather than a product of Islamic terror, which became clear in the spring of 2002 with the publication of the genetic information, an effort should have been made immediately to curtail the number of individuals with access to bioterror materials, and put in enhanced controls on those who had access. Just the opposite was done. There are now 14,000 individuals authorized to handle bioweapons materials. And this was done without an enhancement of security, or an enhancement that was perfunctory at best. There isn’t even video surveillance of work areas. The Bush administration with characteristic stupidity expanded the sector and therefore expanded the risk of attack.

GoozNews: Can we put the genie back in the lamp? If we curtail the program, won’t there been thousands of scientists with bioterror experience looking for work, just as there was in Russia?

Ebright: There is plenty to do in legitimate biomedical research. Most of them would once again be eager to work on those programs. These persons weren’t created out of air. They were shifted from other areas of scientific research into this area when the funding shifted. If the funding shifts to scientific priorities instead of military and political priorities, most of them will return happily to research on scientific and medical priorities like tuberculosis for a bacteriologist, like the diseases that kill people in the U.S. like MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), which now kills more people than AIDS each year, and AIDS itself. Most researchers would prefer to work on subjects that actually matter.

Posted by gooznews at August 14, 2008 05:45 PM