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From: eugene@nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Anthrax
Message-ID: <1991Feb5.035254.2230@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 5 Feb 91 03:52:54 GMT
References: <1991Feb4.050514.12630@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: NAS Program, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Lines: 51
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: eugene@nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
In article <1991Feb4.050514.12630@cbnews.att.com>
HANK@TAUNIVM.TAU.AC.IL (Hank Nussbacher) writes:
>|Problems as a weapon: Can be treated if detected in time (depending
>|on form).  A vaccine exists (but crude), Iraq probably only has limited
>|quantities.  Possible contamination if facilities attacked, unknown.

>You can thank the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) in
>Atlanta for supplying their Iraqi counterparts with anthrax in 1985.
>Iraq did not have any anthrax spores up till then.

This is very true.
This is partially because you need to have the disease to make vaccines.
If one have developing countries (Iraq a developing country?)
interested in raising sheep, one wanted this.  Any specialist in
biological warfare knows that biological technologies are two edged swords.
Converting a factory making beer, yogurt, vaccines, baby food,
whatever into a weapons plant is not that difficult.  That's why this is
poor man's warfare.  Similar situations exist with other disease vaccines.
Vaccines are weapons.

Open air military experiments have been conducted around the world.  These
are acknowledged to some degree in the US and England.
Small patches of land and buildings have been contaminated.  Any suggestion
that these lands or structures might return to a pre-contaminated state
is a joke.  [A relative had to deal with 5,000 dead sheep in about 1968 in
a test which the US Army to this day will refuse to acknowledge (suspected
a test of the nerve agent VX), they didn't know what they were dealing
with at the time.]

It is arguable that the CDC should not keep stores of disease
agents (smallpox came up for discussion a few years back).  The CDC
is not military, it is part of the public health service (but one can
see the twin edges).  Take one, stick it into an egg or culture,
and one has the beginnings of a self-contained weapon.  For some disease
agents, it is that simple, no big separation plants like for fissionable
materials.

It is also Dept. of Commerce/State (political) problem.  You get into
the political here [helping the foe who was once (still is) the foe of thy
enemy].  In the past, salt was sown into Hannibal's lands.
Let's hope similar incidents using biological warfare agents don't happen.
The world is facing a very grim threat.

--e. nobuo miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
  {uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene
  AMERICA: CHANGE IT OR LOSE IT.
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