Military

DATE=October 11, 2001

TYPE=Dateline

NUMBER=7-35421

TITLE=Bioterrorism

BYLINE=Anna Zalewski

TELEPHONE=619-1287

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Neal Lavon

CONTENT=

INTRO: After the September 11 attack, Americans were worried about additional strikes. As security in airports tightened in the United States, fears emerged that terrorists could turn to other weaponsmost notably those involving biological agents. Bioterrorism fears were confirmed when three cases of deadly anthrax were reported in Boca Raton, Florida, producing one fatality. Neal Lavon has more on biological warfare and bioterrorism in this Dateline report.

TAPE: CUT 1, OUTBREAK CLIP, :05

"Don't mess with this stuff. You got to be ready for anything. There's nothing in here that can't kill you, including the air."

NL: In 1995, the American film Outbreak potrayed a country at the mercy of a biological epidemic. Six years later, that celluloid fear is much more real as Ameriacns are deply concerned that terrorists may use biological agents if they strike again at the United States. These fears were fueled when several cases of anthrax were confirmed recently at the headquarters of the American Media Building in Boca Raton, Florida.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has ruled out any link between the 19 suspected terrorists who took part in the September 11th attacks and the Florida anthrax cases. But Washington officials and those in Florida were especially concerned since some of those suspected terrorists lived in apartments located within a few kilometers of the American Media Building where the anthrax bacteria was detected.

At the same time experts say that it is highly unlikely that this particular anthrax spores originated from the natural source. Doctor Sue Bailey is a former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.

TAPE: CUT 1a, BAILEY, :10

"Well, we know it didn't come from the usual sources around animals or in farm areas. This was in the building and it seems to be a deliberate release of anthrax."

NL: Anthrax occurs from time to time in animals but is rare in humans, at least in the Unites States. People who handle hides or carcasses of infected animals occasionally catch the disease through the skin, in a form known as cutaneous anthrax. Dr. Martin Hugh-Jones, an anthrax expert at Louisiana State University explains.

TAPE: CUT 2, HUGH-JONES, 1:04

"It usually happens when somebody's skinning a dead animal and there is a lot of blood around and the blood with the bacteria gets into the cut on the person's hand or arm and you don't need many organisms at that and this sets up a local infection in skin. The characteristic part about this skin lesion is that there is inflammation, little blisters on it, but there is no pain, and I repeat that: the significant point is that there is no pain associated with that lesion. You can also get a disease from eating meat from the infected animal. This is quite common these days in Central Asia and in Central Russia as well as in Africa. The pneumonic lesion comes usually from people working in wool mills and hair mills and is due to the dust that flies out. It is not common at all these days, in fact it is quite rare. It is essentially an industrial disease."

NL: The reasons that the illness has traditionally been so deadly is that its symptoms are mistaken for the flu and patients often do not seek specialized treatment until it is too late. So how can we detect it? Dr. Emily Senay is a medical correspondent for CBS "Early Show".

TAPE: CUT 5, SENAY, :10

"One very important thing is that anthrax has a very particular look on a chest X ray. It's not like a classic pneumonia, it's a little different, you see something a little different."

NL: Experts say that to be used in a biological weapon, the anthrax bacteria must be converted into spores which are then released and inhaled. Recent attempts by radical groups in the 1990s to use anthrax weapons failed yet experts still fear its potential. Why is anthrax a favored biological weapon?

TAPE: CUT 6, HUGH-JONES, :31

"I think that the original reasons were because when you make the spores, at the resistant stage of the bacteria, the spores are very robust, they will survive for a number of years with ease so when you're making weapons you can make it and store it. If you are working with other disease like plague, it is very difficult to store it, you can't keep it for weeks before you have to make more. And this was the big attraction with anthrax."

NL: In fact during World War II, when Britain tested anthrax-laden explosives at Gruinard Island off Scotland, the spores were still viable four decades later, when Britain was forced to use formal dehyde mixed with water to decontaminate the island. Several countries are believed to be studying anthrax and may have stockpiles of the spores. Eric Croddy, senior research associate at Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey Institute of International Studies draws a historic picture of using anthrax as a biological weapon.

TAPE: CUT 7, CRODDY, 1:01

"Probably the first major development was in WWII. That is when the U.S. but also England produced a great quantity of the bacteria that causes anthrax. And there were plans and weapons designs and that sort of thing but none was really that effective even at the war's end although they started to get a sense of how it would be best delivered. Then of course the Soviet Union paralleled our own program , I think probably in '56, or there abouts it's a good place to start when G.K. Zhukov made a speech about weapons of mass destruction, how the future wars would look like (.) The United States of course renounced biological warfare in 1969 and later ratified that, and so did the Soviet Union but the Soviet Union did not pay much attention to that treaty(.) Iraq is significant in a sense that they've already proven that they have been working with anthrax and they still may have a development program underway."

NL: The only known biological terror attack in U.S. history was in Dalles, Oregon, in 1984, when members of the Rajneesh cult poisoned 751 people with salmonella. No one died. The largest known chemical-terror attack anywhere was in Tokyo in 1995, when a radical cult released sarin gas into subways, killing 12. But while such prospects are terrifying, the challenges for terrorists are steep. Nobody has seriously hurt more than a handful of people in an actual chemical or biological terror attack. Many of the substances that could be used are scarce and difficult to handle, according to Dr.Sue Bailey.

TAPE: CUT 8, BAILEY, :10

"It is important to realize that it is not really that easy to get anthrax. You'll have to have thousands of spores inhaled in order to get the most deadly type which is inhalation anthrax."

NL: Additionally, there are numerous which influence whether an anthrax attack will prove deadly. They range from the scientific sophistication of the people handling anthrax to pure chance. But the most important question is whether we are prepared. Sam Nunn, former senator from Georgia, was a past chhairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

TAPE: CUT 10, NUNN, :27

"We are doing some things, I don't think the public should think that we are as unprepared as we were six months ago or two years ago. We need people in the public health arena, people in HHS that are prepared to explain to local doctors, to emergency officials, to veterinarians what they should do and how they should deal with their own inquires from a lot of concerned citizens."

NL: That is exactly what public health officials were doing since the September 11 attack. Family doctors and internal-medicine physicians are key to detection. The National Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued three alerts after the September 11 attacks, asking doctors nationwide to look for unusual pattern of illness. And the United States Senate and Congress held hearings on effective responses to bioterrorism threat outlining a proposal to spend nearly $1.8 billion immediately, including $625 million for improving state and local health agencies, which are likely to be first to respond in the event of a biological attack.

MUSIC: VIRUS, 6:16, SNEAK AND HOLD UNDER:

NL: As horrible as the scenes of hijacked jets crashing into skyscrapers were to Americans and people around the world, the prospect of attacks by microscopic agents unseen to the human eye may be even more frightening.and more deadly. This edition of Dateline was written by Anna Zalewski. I'm Neal Lavon in Washington.

MUSIC: VIRUS, 6:16, BRING UP IN FULL TO TIME.