Biological Attack - in Living Terrors by Michael T. Osterholm and John Schwartz

Biological Attack

In Living Terrors by Michael T. Osterholm and John Schwartz, the threat of biological attack on the United States is introduced to the public. Using Living Terrors and a number of sources that are extremely knowledgeable on the question of preparedness of the United States to a biological attack, I will argue that the United States is in no way prepared to handle a biological attack on its soil.

Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are all considered weapons of mass destruction. However, unlike chemical or nuclear weapons, biological weapons combine maximum destructiveness and easy availability. According to Richard Betts, “nuclear arms have great killing capacity but are hard to get; chemical weapons are easy to get but lack such killing capacity; biological agents have both qualities” (9). In 1993, a study by the Office of Technology Assessment concluded that “a single airplane delivering 100 kilograms of anthrax spores by aerosol on a clear, calm night over Washington D.C., could kill up to 1 to 3 million people in a three hundred square mile area surrounding Washington D.C.” (Osterholm and Schwartz 9).

Biological weapons are a dangerous threat to the United States. According to Eric Noji, associate director of bioterrorism preparedness for the Center for Disease Control, “the threat of chemical and biological intentional releases is a clear and present danger” (Fialka et al B1). However, there is evidence that the United States is not taking the threat of a biological attack seriously. The investigating branch of Congress named the General Accounting Office or GAO, “charged that the government has failed to properly manage the medical stockpiles developed to protect the public from the scourge of potentially devastating biological weapons” (Cohen M2).

Lack of Government funding against a biological attack is also evidence that the United States is not taking the threat of bioterrorism seriously. Mohammad N. Akhter, who is the executive director of the American Public Health Association, was quoted as saying that he “barely had the budget to deal adequately with a severe outbreak of the flu, let alone contain a smallpox epidemic” (A23). In the fiscal year of 2000:

The Department of Health and Human Services received $238 million out of a total government counter terrorism budget of $10 billion. That $10 billion budget request included only $43.4 million for research and development against biological terrorism, with $40 million to develop and procure drugs and vaccines for the national medical stockpile. The National Institutes of Health received $24 million for research and on diagnostics, vaccines and other treatments. Finally, a mere $41 million was procured for public health preparedness in the fifty states and the major metropolitan areas (Osterholm and Schwartz 173-174).

The nation’s public health infrastructure is not in anyway prepared for a biological attack on its soil. The nation’s hospitals would be at the forefront of any biological attack, and “a study of 200 hospitals this year revealed that only one in five had any response plan for biochemical weapons. Less than half had decontamination units with showers” (Fialka et al B1). Steve Cantrill, “associate director of emergency medicine at the Denver Health Medical Center (Connolly A29)” warned in an interview with the Washington Post that “most hospitals could not handle a sudden surge in patients caused by a biological assault without degenerating into chaos” (Connolly A29).

The first responders to any biological attack would not be agents from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), but rather local emergency responders such as “doctors and local public health authorities” (Cohen M2). However, many emergency workers don’t have the training to deal with biochemical threats. Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies reported “only about 3% of likely domestic emergency responders have been trained in the past five years in dealing with the effects of weapons of mass destruction” (Fialka et al B1). In fact “few doctors have ever seen a case of smallpox, plague or anthrax. Few, if any, medical laboratories are equipped to diagnose such conditions” (Cohen M2).

In the event of a biological attack, federal stockpiles of medical supplies would be critical to saving lives. However, the GAO:

criticized multiple government agencies for managing the stockpiles so poorly that they might be unavailable in the event of attack. The GAO found both shortages of vital drugs and deficiencies in the amount of emergency supplies supposed to be on hand (Cohen M2).

The Chemical Biological Response Force, a Marine Corps unit created to treat civilian victims of a biological