The Darker Bioweapons Future
By dobermanmacleod, Section News
Posted on Mon Dec 1st, 2003 at 05:01:07 AM PST
The Darker Bioweapons Future was released as an unclassified report by the CIA
on 3 November 2003. In it, a panel of life science experts convened for the
Strategic Assessments Group by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that
advances in biotechnology, coupled with the difficulty in detecting nefarious
biological activity, have the potential to create a much more dangerous
biological warfare (BW) threat. The panel noted the following:
* The effects of some of these engineered biological agents could be worse
than any disease known to man.
* The genomic revolution is pushing biotechnology into an explosive growth
phase. Panelists asserted that the resulting wave front of knowledge will
evolve rapidly and be so broad, complex, and widely available to the public
that traditional intelligence means for monitoring WMD development could prove
inadequate to deal with the threat from these advanced biological weapons.
* Detection of related activities, particularly the development of novel
bioengineered pathogens, will depend increasingly on more specific human
intelligence and, argued panelists, will necessitate a closer-and perhaps
qualitatively different-working relationship between the intelligence and
biological sciences communities.
The Threat from Advanced BW
In the last several decades, the world has witnessed a knowledge explosion
in the life sciences based on an understanding of genes and how they work.
According to panel members, practical applications of this new and burgeoning
knowledge base will accelerate dramatically and unpredictably:
* As one expert remarked: "In the life sciences, we now are where
information technology was in the 1960s; more than any other science, it will
revolutionize the 21st century."
Growing understanding of the complex biochemical pathways that underlie life
processes has the potential to enable a class of new, more virulent biological
agents engineered to attack distinct biochemical pathways and elicit specific
effects, claimed panel members. The same science that may cure some of our
worst diseases could be used to create the world's most frightening weapons.
The know-how to develop some of these weapons already exists. For example:
* Australian researchers recently inadvertently showed that the virulence of
mousepox virus can be significantly enhanced by the incorporation of a standard
immunoregulator gene, a technique that could be applied to other naturally
occurring pathogens such as anthrax or smallpox, greatly increasing their
lethality.
* Indeed, other biologists have synthesized a key smallpox viral protein and
shown its effectiveness in blocking critical aspects of the human immune
response.
* A team of biologists recently created a polio virus in vitro from scratch.
According to the scientists convened, other classes of unconventional pathogens
that may arise over the next decade and beyond include binary BW agents that
only become effective when two components are combined (a particularly
insidious example would be a mild pathogen that when combined with its antidote
becomes virulent); "designer" BW agents created to be antibiotic resistant or
to evade an immune response; weaponized gene therapy vectors that effect
permanent change in the victim's genetic makeup; or a "stealth" virus, which
could lie dormant inside the victim for an extended period before being
triggered. For example, one panelist cited the possibility of a stealth virus
attack that could cripple a large portion of people in their forties with
severe arthritis, concealing its hostile origin and leaving a country with
massive health and economic problems.
According to experts, the biotechnology underlying the development of advanced
biological agents is likely to advance very rapidly, causing a diverse and
elusive threat spectrum. The resulting diversity of new BW agents could enable
such a broad range of attack scenarios that it would be virtually impossible to
anticipate and defend against, they say. As a result, there could be a
considerable lag time in developing effective biodefense measures.
However, effective countermeasures, once developed, could be leveraged against
a range of BW agents, asserted attendees, citing current research aimed at
developing protocols for augmenting common elements of the body's response to
disease, rather than treating individual diseases. Such treatments could
strengthen our defense against attacks by ABW agents.
Implications for Warning
The experts emphasized that, because the processes, techniques, equipment
and know-how needed for advanced bio agent development are dual use, it will be
extremely difficult to distinguish between legitimate biological research
activities and production of advanced BW agents.
* The panel contrasted the difficulty of detecting advanced bioweapons with
that of detecting nuclear weapons, which has always had clear surveillance and
detection "observables," such as highly enriched uranium or telltale production
equipment.
Consequently, most panelists argued that a qualitatively different relationship
between the government and life sciences communities might be needed to most
effectively grapple with the future BW threat.
They cited the pace, breadth, and volume of the evolving bioscience knowledge
base, coupled with its dual-use nature and the fact that most is publicly
available via electronic means and very hard to track, as the driving forces
for enhanced cooperation. Most panelists agreed that the US life sciences
research community was more or less "over its Vietnam-era distrust" of the
national security establishment and would be open to more collaboration.
* One possibility, they argued, might be early government assistance to life
sciences community efforts to develop its own "standards and norms" intended to
differentiate between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" research, efforts
recently initiated by the US biological sciences community.
* A more comprehensive vision articulated by one panelist was for the
bioscience community at large to aid the government by acting as "a living
sensor web"-at international conferences, in university labs, and through
informal networks-to identify and alert it to new technical advances with
weaponization potential. The workshop did not discuss the legal or regulatory
implications of any such changes.
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