The Threat Of Bioterrorism
Center For Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
The experts who will direct the new Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) consider bioterrorism to be the greatest national security threat of the 21st century. Bioweapons attacks could cause death and suffering on a catastrophic scale, comparable only to the effects of an atomic bomb.
Particularly of concern is the capacity for bioweapons to be used in multiple and ongoing attacks – if attackers can create one kilogram of anthrax, they have the capability to makes tens or hundreds of kilograms of anthrax. Such attacks could create enormous social disruption; even naturally occurring epidemics have the capacity to create governance dilemmas and threaten core infrastructures and critical democratic processes. Bioattacks could do far more damage.
An intentional, malicious spread of contagious bioagents in U.S. cities also would lead to enormous economic costs. Naturally occurring epidemics, such as SARS, illustrate the type of economic impact that is possible. Recently, the World Bank estimates the South East Asian economy lost $25 billion due to SARS and the disease cost Toronto approximately $1 billion in lost income.
Bioweapons are very attractive to terrorists. The knowledge and materials needed to build and disseminate bioweapons are widely available and cheap. Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to assign attribution. For example, the perpetrators of the anthrax attacks of 2001 have yet to be identified.
Modern societies are highly vulnerable to bioattacks because global travel enables rapid spread of contagious diseases and adequate response is not dependent on military strength, but on medical and public health systems and the availability of effective drugs and vaccines.
A New Paradigm for National Defense – public health and medical research on the frontlines To counter the threat of bioterrorism, this country must develop a new paradigm for defense, and realign its national security priorities and investments accordingly. Hospital personnel, clinicians, public health officials and bioscientists are the frontline defenders in this new security era.
An effective defense against bioattacks must include the design and construction of new operational systems that can deliver emergency medical care to a large number of critically ill. Society must have the capacity to immunize whole populations of cities and regions on an urgent basis and develop vaccines and therapies needed to treat bioweapons-related diseases. To accomplish this, the time to develop new vaccines and create new drugs must be dramatically reduced in order to respond to unanticipated or bioengineered weapons.
Alarmingly, the nation is not prepared to do these things and is not yet on a course to reach these goals. The government cannot build these systems alone. The bioterrorism threat can be confronted, and these systems built, only with active leadership of health care centers and scientific institutions. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, through the Center for Biosecurity intends to address these challenges.