Bioterrorism
[1] These agents include bacteria, viruses, insects, fungi, and/or their toxins, and may be in a naturally occurring or a human-modified form, in much the same way as in biological warfare.
[7][8] Bioterrorism may be favored because biological agents are relatively easy and inexpensive to obtain, can be easily disseminated, and can cause widespread fear and panic beyond the actual physical damage.
However, technologists such as Bill Joy have warned of the potential power which genetic engineering might place in the hands of future bio-terrorists.
Shortly after the start of World War I, Germany launched a biological sabotage campaign in the United States, Russia, Romania, and France.
[12] At that time, Anton Dilger lived in Germany, but in 1915 he was sent to the United States carrying cultures of glanders, a virulent disease of horses and mules.
[12] In 1972, police in Chicago arrested two college students, Allen Schwander and Stephen Pera, who had planned to poison the city's water supply with typhoid and other bacteria.
Although the disease has been eliminated in the wild, frozen stocks of smallpox virus are still maintained by the governments of the United States and Russia.
They infected salad bars in 11 restaurants, produce in grocery stores, doorknobs, and other public domains with Salmonella typhimurium bacteria in the city of The Dalles, Oregon.
Until recently in the United States, most biological defense strategies have been geared to protecting soldiers on the battlefield rather than ordinary people in cities.
Global defense strategies have also been put into place including the introduction of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in 1975.
[55] Laboratories are working on advanced detection systems to provide early warning, identify contaminated areas and populations at risk, and to facilitate prompt treatment.
He explains how, even though the United States would be better fending off bioterrorist attacks now than they would be a decade ago, the amount of money available to fight bioterrorism over the last three years has begun to decrease.
The broadcast stated that a bipartisan report gave the Obama administration a failing grade for its efforts to respond to a bioterrorist attack.
The news broadcast invited the former New York City police commissioner, Howard Safir, to explain how the government would fare in combating such an attack.
Furthermore, Safir thought that efficiency in bioterrorism preparedness is not necessarily a question of money, but is instead dependent on putting resources in the right places.
[66] In a September 2016 interview conducted by Homeland Preparedness News, Daniel Gerstein, a senior policy researcher for the RAND Corporation, stresses the importance in preparing for potential bioterrorist attacks on the nation.
He claims there has not been a serious plan of action since 2004 during George W. Bush's presidency, in which he issued a Homeland Security directive delegating responsibilities among various federal agencies.
This past May, legislation that would create a national defense strategy was introduced in the Senate, coinciding with the timing of ISIS-affiliated terrorist groups get closer to weaponizing biological agents.
In May 2016, Kenyan officials apprehended two members of an Islamic extremist group in motion to set off a biological bomb containing anthrax.
[67] Bill Gates said in a February 18, 2017 Business Insider op-ed (published near the time of his Munich Security Conference speech) that it is possible for an airborne pathogen to kill at least 30 million people over the course of a year.
Senator Joe Lieberman, who was co-chair of the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, said a worldwide pandemic could end the lives of more people than a nuclear war.
Lieberman also expressed worry that a terrorist group like ISIS could develop a synthetic influenza strain and introduce it to the world to kill civilians.
[79][80][81] In 1999, the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biomedical Informatics deployed the first automated bioterrorism detection system, called RODS (Real-Time Outbreak Disease Surveillance).
[78] On February 5, 2002, George W. Bush visited the RODS laboratory and used it as a model for a $300 million spending proposal to equip all 50 states with biosurveillance systems.
[86] This is an obviously beneficial tool in fighting bioterrorism as it provides a means through which such attacks could be discovered in their nascence; assuming bioterrorist attacks result in similar symptoms across the board, this strategy allows New York City to respond immediately to any bioterrorist threats that they may face with some level of alacrity.
The US military has specialized units, which can respond to a bioterrorism event; among them are the United States Marine Corps' Chemical Biological Incident Response Force and the U.S. Army's 20th Support Command (CBRNE), which can detect, identify, and neutralize threats, and decontaminate victims exposed to bioterror agents.
"[91] The New York Times wrote a story saying the United States would spend $40 million to help certain low and middle-income countries deal with the threats of bioterrorism and infectious diseases.
Victims exposed to biological weapons have shown an increased presence of clinical anxiety compared to the normal population.
[94] In February 2018, a CNN employee discovered on an airplane a "sensitive, top-secret document in the seatback pouch explaining how the Department of Homeland Security would respond to a bioterrorism attack at the Super Bowl.
However, one aspect of defense would receive less money: "protecting the nation from deadly pathogens, man-made or natural," according to The New York Times.
