PerspectiveBioweapon Threat Didn’t End in Cold War, Experts Warn House
Picking apart flaws in the government’s system of monitoring for bioweapons, a panel of scientists warned House lawmakers Thursday that America is grossly unprepared for a bioterrorist attack. Asha George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, noted that U.S. funding for bioweapons protection has been on the decline since the end of the Cold War — this in spite of the relative ease by which terrorist groups can weaponize biological agents or, even more easily, get their hands on materials that have already been weaponized by the former Soviet Union.
Picking apart flaws in the government’s system of monitoring for bioweapons, a panel of scientists warned House lawmakers Thursday that America is grossly unprepared for a bioterrorist attack.
Megan Mineiro writes for Courthouse News Service that Asha George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, noted that U.S. funding for bioweapons protection has been on the decline since the end of the Cold War — this in spite of the relative ease by which terrorist groups can weaponize biological agents or, even more easily, get their hands on materials that have already been weaponized by the former Soviet Union.
She writes:
Both al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have publicized their pursuit of biological weapons, and North Korea is suspected to be actively developing a program to roll out bioweapons.
Faced with the risk of a strike that would hit the country with deadly disease on a massive scale, or cripple the economy with a pathogen-induced crop failure, Democrats and Republicans alike at today’s hearing of the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery called on the Trump administration to take such threats seriously.
Experts testifying in the hearing warned meanwhile that the various faults with the Department of Homeland Security’s system of collecting and testing air samples for biological agents has resulted in false alarms or delayed notification on lethal pathogens.
Mineiro notes:
The Department of Homeland Security has so far deployed a dozen detectors known as BD21, short for Biodetection 21. George said they go off at least once a day.
One flaw the experts flagged in the new system is the government’s failure to integrate environmental data, ignoring factors like pollen count and air quality.
Meanwhile the alarm itself actually causes little response because there is no operational plan in place to direct state or local officials, or federal agencies like the Defense Department or FBI, to properly respond to an attack.
