Army Chemical Review presents professional information about Chemical Corps functions related to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, smoke, flame, and civil support operations.
Issue link: https://chemical.epubxp.com/i/759309
Army Chemical Review
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stated that local and government officials and incident re-
sponders did not know much about hazards or mitigation ca-
pabilities of biological terrorism and that lack of knowledge
led to a diminished ability to make appropriate choices in
a biological terrorism attack situation.
10
The results of this
study can be seen throughout the world.
A great deal of money is spent on nuclear weapons and
defense; and chemical defense receives a great deal of atten-
tion, given the widespread use of chemical weapons during
World War II, events such as the sarin attacks on the Tokyo
subway, and industrial accidents that occur more frequently
than anyone would like. However, according to a paper pub-
lished by the Military Institute of Preventive Medicine in
Belgrade, Serbia, "Biological weapons are nearly as easy to
develop, far more lethal, and easier to deliver than chemi-
cal weapons; and unlike nuclear weapons, they are inexpen-
sive to produce and the risk of detection is low. Progress in
molecular biology has made fast and easy biotoxin produc-
tion possible."
11
Unfortunately, the information is too easily
available through the Internet; all that is needed is a little
source material cultivation. Many developed nations initi-
ated biological weapons programs in the late 1920s and con-
tinued until the creation of the Biological and Toxin Weap-
ons Convention in 1972. Some even continued beyond that.
12
This means that many developed nations had the source
material needed to create biological weapons. Although
those programs should have been dismantled and the source
material safety destroyed or transferred to less nefarious
programs, they may not have. With the know-how and the
availability of the material, it is only a matter of time before
another biological terrorism event occurs.
When another biological terrorism event occurs, micro-
bial forensics will play a much more important role than it
has in the past. With the lessons from the Amerithrax in-
vestigation, we now know how important microbial forensics
will be in identifying the source of material and a suspect.
Simply identifying the type of biological material will do lit-
tle to narrow the suspected source of the material. The iden-
tification of a particular strain or substrain will be vital in
discovering the origins of the biological material. The goal of
the investigation will be to identify the biological material at
a level of scrutiny that will allow for this type of character-
ization. Earlier identification of the source material narrows
the scope of the investigation sooner, which will hopefully
result in the earlier identification of a perpetrator or perpe-
trators. This chain of events can counter the proliferation of
the know-how and material required to carry out a success-
ful biological terrorism attack.
Conclusion
This article discusses microbial forensics as a tool for use
in the investigation of biological terrorism. There may be
a plethora of uses for microbial forensics in the future; but
for now, it fills a niche in biological attack incidents that no
other technique is capable of filling.
Endnotes:
1
Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Amerithrax or Anthrax
Investigation,"