Biological weapons: U.S. must not repeat the failure of imagination
the failure is presidential. If there is no comprehensive presidential policy with sustained funding, then the professionals at DHHS have no clear guidelines and means to achieve meaningful progress. Without White House leadership, the department becomes vulnerable to industrial lobbying, blind budget cutting, and internal squabbling over priorities in public health.
The failed history surrounding the decades-old effort to develop a second generation anthrax vaccine underscores how broken White House leadership has been under both Bush and Obama.
No assessment of DHS should ignore the commendable work done by DHS’s Secret Service. No department is more aware of the BW danger. No leadership has been more driven to protect against these threats.
Prevention and interdiction are not core DHS responsibilities. DHS only contributes scientifically to the mission. The essential ingredient of BW deterrence is microbiological forensics. Because of the Amerithrax case, extensive work has been done and progress made on forensics. DHS, FBI, and DOD have worked together and must continue to work together to improve this science and convince our potential adversaries we have this capability.
In summary, the ability to prevent or deter a BW attack will always be low because of the nature of BWs. Every effort must be made to do so but no faith should be placed in our ability to do so. The ability to detect an attack and diagnose the agent or agents deployed in real time is a possibility, which the nation is pursuing, but has not yet achieved.
HSNW: Are DHS’s current chemical and biological safety measures adequate effectively to respond to a large scale attack using these dangerous substances? As a follow up, has DHS done enough to work with first responders and public health officials to create disaster plans in the event of a mass casualty chemical or biological attack?
JM: Congress and this administration have given much attention to regulations surrounding the handling of dangerous pathogens. This is useful, but too much credit is given to a plutonium or “lose nukes” paradigm.
Keeping dangerous pathogen from state and non-state players is not easy, especially given the availability of certain agents in nature. In its offensive BW program, the United States created strategic weapons from three agents: tularemia, anthrax, and SEB toxin. These agents can be found in nature. The easiest agent for a terrorist to acquire and produce weapon’s material from is SEB. By 1968, the United States had determined SEB could effectively neutralize large