Biodefense Research and Biological Weapons

Recent History and Public Concerns

 

In September and October 2001, anthrax in letters which were sent through the U.S. postal service killed five people.  This was the first and, to date, only deadly bioattack in the United States. (The other documented deliberate use of a pathogen involved the contamination of food with the pathogen salmonella, which sickened 177 people in 1987.)  The source of the anthrax letters is widely suspected to be U.S. Army biodefense scientist, Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide as he was being pursued by FBI.   

 

The 2001 anthrax attack set off a massive flow of federal funding for research on live, virulent, bioweapons agents to federal, university, and private laboratories in rural, suburban, and urban areas. However, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the need for this rapid increase in weapons research.

 

Among the federal agencies building or expanding biodefense laboratories are the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).   Between 2002 and 2008 approximately 400 facilities and 15,000 people were handing biological weapons agents in sites throughout the country, in many cases unbeknownst to the local community.  The rush to spend more than $57 billion since 2002 on bioterrorism research has raised many serious concerns.  Among these concerns are:

 

·        runaway biodefense research without an assessment of biowarfare threat and the need for this research;

 

·        militarization of biological research and the risk of provoking a biological arms race;

 

·        neglect of vital public health research as a tradeoff for enhanced biodefense research;

 

·        lack of standardized safety and security procedures for high risk laboratories;

 

·        increased risk of accident and deliberate release of lethal organisms with the proliferation of facilities and researchers in residential communities;

 

·        lack of transparency and citizen participation in the decision-making process; and

 

·        vulnerability of environmental justice communities to being selected for the location of these high risk facilities.

 

 “Is this federal research agenda [begun] under the Bush administration the biological equivalent of its misadventure in Iraq?” http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/laura-h-kahn/a-dangerous-biodefense-path

 

Are we, as the Government Accounting Office and many others have concluded, less safe as a result of the proliferation of biodenfense research?

http://www.propublica.org/feature/biodefense-program-poses-its-own-risks

 

See the Sunshine Project website for the most comprehensive map of biodefense research sites in the United States through 2008.

http://www.sunshine-project.org/biodefense/

 

 

Major concerns:

 

Lax Safety and Little Surveillance

 

Since 2002, the exponential growth of federal funding for biodefense research has driven rapid growth of laboratories and researchers handling dangerous and deadly bioweapons agents, thus multiplying the risk of accidental or deliberate release of organisms such as anthrax, plague, smallpox, and Ebola.   A lack of standardized safety training, transportation regulations, and security measures has left numerous communities in which these laboratories are located terrified of the risks they pose.  Currently a bill in Congress, the Select Agent Program and Biosafety Improvement Act, mandates personnel training and strict security requirements in handling bioweapons agents.  But why was the funding for very high risk research allocated before safety measures are in place? 

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=postal-anthrax-aftermath

 

            Proliferation of labs with little oversight, no public accountability, and few safety

            committees

• Expert Testimony submitted to a Congressional hearing on the silent proliferation of biolaboratories summarized grave safety breaches and negligence in these laboratories.  Many labs are built without federal funding and conduct research on dangerous organisms, such as SARS coronavirus, plague, pandemic flu strains, foot and mouth disease, and so on,. without any local or federal oversight.  Institutional Biosafety Committees (or IBCs) mandated by federal law are non-existent or barely functioning, and not keeping adequate records of research protocols, organisms, accidents and releases.  Information on lab accidents and accidental releases is not released to the public and is barely surveilled or acted on by the federal government. Freedom of Information requests about these accidents are generally stonewalled.  Voluntary compliance of federal guidelines for recombinant DNA research and bioweapons agent research by the private sector laboratories is minimal to nonexistent.  http://energycommerce.house.gov/images/stories/Documents/Hearings/PDF/110-oi-hrg.100407.Hammond-testimony.pdf 

 

Proliferation of labs and potential theft of bioweapons agents

·      May 2009 study of security in DoD biodefense laboratories concludes that that the security systems of high biocontainment laboratories cannot protect against theft of bioweapons agents.

      http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2009-05-Bio_Safety.pdf  

 

·       Proliferation of labs and world security

This rapid growth in bioweapon agents’ research sends a signal to the world of U.S. bioweapons development for potential use, a signal that could stimulate a biological arms race. 

 

Inventory of biowarfare pathogens in top government laboratory is incomplete: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/17/AR2009061703271.html

 

 

 

No Realistic Assessment of Need for Growth in Biodefense/Bioweapons Labs

 

Although written in 2000, this policy paper, “An Assessment of the Biological Weapons Threat to the United States,” by Milton Leitenberg is still timely in findings and recommendations.   Between 1900 and 2000, one person died in the US from deliberate use of a biological weapon (Altogether 6 have died, by 2009) This contrasts with more than 100,000 deaths per year from three public health causes, namely firearms, air pollution, and food-borne disease.    Most threats of bioweapon use were hoaxes and most intended uses were personal. Contrary to popular and public official statements, weaponizing biological agents is extremely difficult, requiring immense research money, effort and expertise.  Thus, the threat of chemical and biological terrorism with mass casualty – a threat that government has exaggerated without a basis in fact and without any rational threat assessment – diverts resources from true public health needs, such as gun control, reducing air pollution, research on TB resistance, and so on.   http://www.fas.org/bwx/papers/dartmouthb.htm

 

Lynn Klotz, a fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, calls for a combined risk assessment which includes the risks of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and staph infections, a potential influenza epidemic, as well as the risk of a bioweapons attack in order to apportion health resources where they are most needed.  Such an assessment he argues will support prioritizing public health needs over the political hype that creates an “overblown fear of a big bioweapons attack.”

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/bsp.2007.0026

 

 

Neglect of Vital Basic Public Health Research

 

In March 2005, 750 top microbiologists, who comprised more than 50 percent of U.S. scienctists studying bacterial and fungal diseases, wrote their major funding agency, the US National Institutes of Health, to argue that the agency’s emphasis on biodefense research had diverted research away from germs that cause more significant disease.  Between 1998 and 2005, grants for biodefense research increased 15-fold.  During the same period, grants to support non-biodefense germs that cause major sickness and death (such as TB resistant microbes and influenza) dropped 27%.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7074-top-us-biologists-oppose-biodefence-boom.html

 

Toothless Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention (BTWC)

 

The 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibits the use of biological weapons in war.  The 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons (BTWC) Convention prohibits all offensive biological weapons research, production, and stockpiling programs, that is programs intended for first-use of biological warfare. However, signatory countries are not prohibited from developing defensive bioweapons for use in response to a bioweapon attack.  Thus, the weakness of this convention is that it allows bioweapons programs that may purport to be defensive but which can serve offensive purposes.  In other words, the convention does not protect against militarized biological and toxin weapons research, development and production.  A second core flaw of this convention is that it has no provision for a Verification Protocol to assure compliance with the convention nor for an independent organization to monitor compliance.   Further, no United States administration has shown interest or leadership in achieving a strong Verification Protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, a persistent policy neglect which increases the likelihood of a wider international resurgence of interest in biological weapons. Under the Bush administration the United States resisted and derailed international attempts to craft protocols for the BWTC that would provide for bioweapons’ inspections and an organization responsible to do them.

 

Additional Resources on Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention

 

Trust But Verify? Not This Time: For Biological Security, Transparency is Best Policy.

 

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention Website: http://www.opbw.org/

 

Perspective on and analysis of BTWC: http://boudewijndejonge.googlepages.com/Institutional_governance_OPBW.pdf

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4688

 

Information on NGO action to improve the BTWC, see the Biological Weapons Prevention Project: http://www.bwpp.org/

 

 

Environmental Justice: Case Study of Community Activism against the Boston Biodefense Laboratory

 

In February 2002, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), an institute within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), launched its Biodefense Research Agenda.   To achieve the Biodefense Research Agenda, NIAID developed a plan to select and fund multiple laboratories to expand research on the most high risk disease organisms that could potentially be used for bioterrorism.   Laboratories doing research on the most high risk organisms are commonly known as BSL-4 laboratories.

 

In February 2003, Boston University submitted a proposal to NIAID to construct a facility with a BSL-4 laboratory (also known as the BU Biolab) that would be sited in the midst of the BU Medical Center. The medical center is located in a dense, urban neighborhood with a majority low-income and minority residents nearby.  The process of proposal development, site selection and subsequent approval for funding took place in secret, without informing and consulting the local community.  Although the site selected for the BSL-4 laboratory was pre-determined prior to undertaking a NEPA-mandated review and without involving the surrounding residential and working community – in violation of federal policy, NIAID approved the proposal for $128 million.

 

The outfall has been a classic struggle between an environmental justice community -- a community that is overburdened with health disparities, waste facilities, bus depots and that is home to the majority of social institutions, such as the county prison, homeless shelters, mental health facilities, and a heroin detox center which other neighborhoods have rejected -- and a powerful academic medical institution in alliance with a federal agency and the majority of city government and federal politicians.  While there is a strong and vibrant network of communities and individuals organizing against military contamination and pollution, among them the Military Toxics Project website, this struggle is unique in that it is, to our knowledge, the first environmental justice protest and action against a high-risk biodefense/biowarfare facility.

 

This paper, The Boston University Biolab: A Case of Environmental Injustice authored by attorney (Eloise Lawrence), lead community activist (Klare Allen), and environmental justice scientist (H Patricia Hynes) locates the "David and Goliath" struggle within the social and environmental injustice dimensions of the BU Biolab and the community protest strategies. These strategies which include persistent community organizing, public protest, use of media, coalition building among the community, local politicians, legal and science experts, and two community-initiated lawsuits. It was presented at the State of Environmental Justice in America Conference held at Howard University Law School in May 2008,

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Learn more and be active in the campaign against Boston University Biolab 

• Executive Summary: An Alternative Vision for the Boston University National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory
• The Safety Net Website:  http://www.stopthebiolab.org/safetynet.php
• The Safety Net is the premier organizing coalition which has spearheaded a sophisticated community campaign against the siting of the BU biodefense in an environmental justice community.

 

Public Policy

 

Summary Recommendations for National  Policy on Biodefense/Bioweapon Research:

 

1. Conduct fact-based integrated assessment of the risks from naturally occurring disease and bioterrorism for sensible allocation of biomedical research resources

 

2. Declare national moratorium on new biodefense facilities until integrated assessment is complete

 

3. Re-focus biomedical research on more significant public health threats

 

4. Work with other signatories of the Biological Weapons and Toxins Convention to build international monitoring and an independent monitoring organization into the BTWC.

 

5. Create comprehensive federal oversight of all biodefense and bio-safety laboratory research in order to assure:

• compliance with safety and security,
• mandatory and fully functioning Institutional Biosafety Committees (IBCs). 
• increased transparency and security;
• mandatory national reporting system for high risk laboratories
• public disclosure of accidents and releases. 

 

6. Include meaningful citizen input in national policy and at local level where facilities are operating or being planned.

 

7. Sign the Citizen Letter for Congress prepared by Beth Willis of Frederick Citizens for Bio-lab Safety and Vicky Steinitz of Safety Net which includes these recommendations.  

 

 

Progressive Municipal Regulation

 

The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts has developed some of the most strict and protective local regulations on bio-laboratory research with high risk organisms. Contact slipson@challiance.org for Cambridge Biosafety Committee Policies and Procedures.

Film Resources
http://www.anthraxwar.com/1/