BIOLOGICS
SOUGHT BY TERRORISTS
New York
City Office of Emergency Management: a multi-agency overseer coordinating
the efforts
of the FDNY, NYPD and many other federal, regional and local agencies during
a major
catastrophe.
TAGS:
NYC OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, MEDICAL SURVEILLENCE SYSTEM,
NYPD
INTEL & COUNTER TERRORISM, FDNY, FDNY HAZ MAT, HAZ TECH,
EBOLA,
EMERGING DISEASES, WEAPONIZING VIRUS AND BACTERIA,
BIOLOGICAL
WARFARE, THREATS, RISKS,
NATIONAL
SECURITY, NYC METRO SECURITY
(Wednesday September 17, 2014)
In post September 11, 2001 America, virtually every aspect of society and its institutions
ability to function properly has an enhanced importance. Under the rubric of national security, there
is not much that the government federally, by state and locally does not have
some influence in or financial support invested. One might be surprised to learn the breadth
and scope of the national security umbrella and, in many respects it is
difficult to find fault with this metrics.
Public education is important
because in the past two years 24% of the young men and women seeking to enlist
in the Armed Services could not even pass the Military Basic Aptitude Test. So, essentially, 25% of the pool of those who
want to serve haven’t the basic skill levels required. Public health is very important for many
reasons not the least of which relates to the circumstances above. 32% of military applicants were deemed unfit
on medical/health grounds to serve with juvenile diabetes and obesity as
impediments for that segment of the willing.
These facts seriously affect the fighting forces we are able to utilize
and, if necessary, deploy.
There is another component in
the public health arena that is of grave importance to the government, military
planners and public health officials and that is the threat of a biological or
chemical agent being effectively weaponized and unleashed among us here on our
subways and buses, shopping malls and other locations with high population
density. The nature of potential biological weapons is the most
concerning. A sophisticated biologic
could be introduced somewhere among us in America and it might take days, weeks
or even months until the public health community realized what they were seeing
in their patients was something of an offensive weapon. It is for this reason that every city in
America has a medical surveillance system in place. Hospitals, clinics and doctors are required
to supply weekly statistics in some locations such as here in New York City and
the Metropolitan area reporting what ailments they are seeing, in what
concentration of patients and other clinical markers that may indicate a
biologic has been unleashed on the unsuspecting public. In computer modelling game scenarios and from
advanced tracking algorithms, it has become obvious that a highly contagious
bacterial or viral agent could remain latent for an elongated period of time
before people began showing symptoms and would seek medical attention. This provides a bacteria or virus with more
than adequate lead time to spread.
New York City and our
immediate Metro Area have one of the most robust medical tracking and surveillance
capabilities in the world. Given the
significance of NYC to those seeking to attack us here, the density of our
population, large far reaching commuter networks including Amtrak trains, long
distance bus depots and, of course, three of the busiest airports in the
country, NYC cannot afford to have anything less than the sophisticated
tracking system that has been incrementally developed since 2001 and now, as an
“up and running sentinel” stands as the premier system of its kind in America,
perhaps, the world.
AMTRAK AND ANTHRAX
The “Acela Corridor” is the
segment of the Amtrak network that travels in a mere 3 hours from New York City’s
Penn Station to Union Station in Washington, DC. Its non-stop express service runs several
times daily with local trains interspersed in the schedule. A “local” train makes several station stops
in New Jersey, then on to Philadelphia, Baltimore and ultimately the District
of Columbia. In October 2001 just weeks
after the 9-11 attacks, a highly sophisticated weaponized “aerosol powder” of
anthrax was sent to several TV network personnel, members of the Senate and to
a tabloid newspaper. Each of the letters
containing the potentially fatal powder was mailed from the same mailbox near
Princeton, NJ; a point not far from several Amtrak stops. Despite an enormous effort spanning years, the
case of these mailings which claimed several lives has never been adequately
explained or closed. It is mentioned
here more as a forgotten side note but also as an example of what one dedicated
individual possessed of certain, specific scientific talents and knowledge can do
if so motivated. The nagging thought
that still perplexes and causes sleepless nights among some of those deeply
involved in the long, fruitless investigation has not dissipated. The next time could be the “real thing”; not
just an “attention getter” by a lone actor trying to prove a point as many have
since dismissed the case.
EBOLA AND OTHER JET SET VIRUSES
There is no shortage of
horrors in the world today. Bloody,
barbaric wars rage ceaselessly, humanitarian crisis of almost incalculable
magnitude, and the ever present scourge of terrorism requires constant
vigilance. As if all these “man-made”
killing fields, death, and catastrophe were not enough to try to engage in some
way for positive, or at least less brutal resolutions, one of the most
primitive forms of life on the planet, a virus, namely – Ebola – has once again
emerged from the dark, damp jungles of western Africa. Ebola is one of a viral family known as
“hemorrhagic fevers” because the untreated course of the disease will always be
some systemic shutdown due to the massive internal and external hemorrhaging
that are likely its florid defining end stage.
The mortality rate for Ebola patients is between 50 to 90% making it
among the most lethal viral infections known to man.
American Doctor Kent Brantly,
contracted Ebola while treating infected patients in Liberia this past
July. His recovery was in some
significant ways remarkable but he had the advantage of immediate treatment
after he was brought back to the United States and administered an experimental
treatment protocol. In his testimony
before a senate sub-committee yesterday, he said of this on-going outbreak,
“Many have used the analogy of a fire burning out of control to describe this
unprecedented Ebola outbreak. Indeed it is a fire-a fire straight from the pit
of hell. We cannot fool ourselves into thinking that the vast moat of the
Atlantic Ocean will keep the flames away from our shores. Instead, we must
mobilize the resources needed to keep entire nations from being reduced to
ashes”. While it may indeed be among the
most hellish of disease processes, it came not from Satan’s lair but from local
host reservoirs in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone primarily, and isolated pockets
in Nigeria, and Senegal. It being a blood-borne
illness to get the infection one must come in direct contact with the body
fluids of an infected human or other primate. One species of bat is known to
carry the virus without being infected.
In the first wave of this outbreak, “Patient X”, the epidemiological
designation of the “first patient” may have been a two year old boy who came
into contact with bloody fluids from an infected animal.
THE NATURE OF A VIRUS
Viruses, as far as pathogens
are concerned, are very different from bacteria, fungi, and parasites. They are small collections of amino acid
produced proteins assembled not by cellular DNA material but rather by RNA, the
pseudo-negative template of raw DNA.
They cannot live by any definition of the word except in a host’s
cell. They insinuate their way into
cells, use that cells genetic machinery to replicate themselves until they are
of sufficient quantity to fully crowd that cell to the breaking point when all
those untold copies of that virus are released into the host blood stream. This method of subatomic machination makes
viral borne illnesses among the most difficult for medical science to treat.
Viruses can be as difficult to
identify due to the fact that they remain hidden as they replicate in the host
cells. Each cell they infect becomes a
virtual clandestine virus factory and will not be vacated until the virus, now
exponentially multiplied, vacates the now useless host cell. But, as with other pathogens, there is a wide
variety of viruses. They range in
severity from the “common cold” causing rhinovirus, up through the spectrum of
mortality to the hemorrhagic viruses including Lassa fever, Dengue fever and
Ebola.
Viruses’ can also present a
particular diagnostic challenge. While
replicating in the host cells, the outer membrane of those infected cells serve
as “good cover” for the virus factory just beyond that thin membrane. But, it is that membrane and its receptors
and other immune system gadgetry that is more than adequate to protect the
immune system from any suspicious intracellular activity. As in Ebola, this “latency” period, the time
between acquiring the infection until the onset of the initial symptoms can be
as long as three weeks. With a three
week head start, once symptoms are obvious the disease process is already well
established and replicating at an exponential rate. The virus has the upper hand in this scenario
and typically always does.
EMERGING VIRUSES
Ebola was first identified in
1976. At that time in the years shortly
thereafter, several other never before seen pathogens were responsible for
outbreaks primarily in west sub-Saharan Africa.
Some of these pathogens were found to be zoonotic; they had originated
in an animal population – usually a member of the ape family – and tended to be
clustered along the lines where new towns and villages were suddenly
encroaching on the local ecosystem in a negative manner. These pathogens have probably been present in
their natural hosts for millennia; it was only as human industry such as lumber
and mining companies began altering dramatically these ecosystems; fragile,
complex ecosystems that had not changed for centuries. Settlements and towns were constructed to
house the lumbermen and miners, new routes of overland travel, an unprecedented
spike in prostitution along these new trade routes, and the recipe for disaster
was in place for whatever “opportunistic” disease happened to emerge first.
One of the most frightening
developments in virology is that some emerging viruses, through the biological
process of natural selection and subsequent mutation, now contain human and
mammalian genetic characteristics. These
mutations
are of particular concern because they further the means of the virus
towards its ultimate ends; death to as many healthy host cells as possible
while leaving at least some of the host cells available for further replication
of the virus. With a disease as lethal
as Ebola, a supply of rip for the infecting hosts is a necessity. If it kills all available hosts in too rapid
a time it will literally burn itself out.
Such “burning out” of the virus population in a community or settlement
is one of the fundamentals of modern epidemiology.
Ebola as it is in nature is
not a likely choice for bio-terrorism; it is too fragile outside its host and
native environs and requires “blood to blood” contact for transmissibility. But it does represent the potential of what a
similarly lethal pathogen could do to a wide population if deployed. There
is also the specter of what epidemiologists have called the “Jet Set” biologics
such as a genetically altered strain of an existing scourge or of an old
predator such as Small Pox. The theory
is that a person or persons infects themselves with a fatal pathogen, hops on a
plane from where ever they are with a ticket for the United States. If properly timed that terrorist could wander
the subway system here for days if not weeks before eventually taking ill and
succumbing to the disease but he could have infected millions in that short
time.
USAMRIID: U.S. ARMY MEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE of INFECTIOUS
DISEASES
The bucolic campus setting
here in Frederick, Maryland belies the history of this institute as well as
what was once its core mission. The
United States officially got out of the “bio-weapons” age decades ago after some
very dark episodes. Today, with a new mission and purpose
its easy to forget that this entire enterprise was once in the business
of creating death on a horrific scale. Now
days, it enjoys a loftier pursuit. We spoke with a physician here to gain a perspective on the potential of a biological attack. A conversation
with him rapidly becomes an interesting game of “fill in the blanks”. He is easy and open in tone but will only go
so far when asked direct questions about his work. For the sake of this discussion we will refer
to him as Dr. Jones, a native of table-top flat Kansas holding both MD and PhD
degrees. Dr. Jones admits that USAMRIID
has divisions devoted solely to combating any among the jet set viruses. He
explains the term jet set as, “In our interconnected world today, with many
largely open international borders, it is literally possible that a man living
in Senegal today could be working in your local McDonald's next month. He brings with him from his homeland
pathogens native to that part of the world which may cause sickness to others
who are here. Imagine a person who
undertook such a mission purposely, with the intent of coming to the United
States already infected with some exotic bug.
That one person, that “Patient X” would be the terrorist version of
Typhoid Mary. It is a very sobering thought.”
TERRORISTS SEEKING BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
It is no secret in or out of
government, the intelligence community and law enforcement agencies that
terrorist groups from al Qaeda to ISIS have long expressed interest in the
development and ultimate deployment of biological weapons. Terrorist groups that were active as far back
as the 1960’s sought all manner of biological and chemicals for
weaponization. It has largely been only
through luck and the difficulty terrorist cells have had in weaponizing certain
agents that we have not seen a full-scale biological attack since World War II. It certainly has not been from a failure
towards that goal on their part. It is
well known and documented that al Qaeda sought to develop biological weapons
and had even progressed to the testing phase by using dogs as the test
subjects. For a myriad of technological
problems, they were never able to develop a delivery system for any
non-conventional agent.
Certainly, on September 11,
2001, one of the primary questions on many minds after the two planes had
struck the Twin Towers was if there were biological or chemical weapons that had
been secreted on board those massive jet airliners. Even on that eye opening morning the issue of “unconventional
warfare” including biologics and chemicals was not an absurd assumption. So seriously was it taken that many
government agencies including the EPA began monitoring the air in and around
the World Trade Center site. (Unfortunately
for many who suffer and die today the EPA did not perform sufficient testing on
the quality of the air being inhaled by rescue and recovery workers and
residents in the adjacent and immediate neighborhoods. That’s a discussion for another day.)
As daunting as the challenges
are pertaining to the Ebola outbreak that seems to be spreading at a rate initially
thought not possible, President Obama announced that he will
deploy 3000 US troops in an effort to “contain and control” the lethal
spread as well as provide treatment beds, facilities, personnel protective
equipment for care givers and forces for security management, that are
necessary for our national security. The
spread of this hemorrhagic death threatens
to destabilize some of the most already unstable countries on the African
continent. It is also a humanitarian
effort aimed at preventing mass migrations by the families of the sick, dying
and dead. As is always the case when
chaos reigns some modicum of control must be enforced.
IN HARM’S WAY
One of the most degrading,
depersonalizing and over used terms in Washington today is “boots on the ground”. The term itself makes light of our various
military commitments and the fact that we are actually deploying troops – young
men and women – into various battle theaters or areas of highest risk. What each deployment means essentially, even
after all the political rhetoric and haggling is that we, our Commander in
Chief, with or without a do nothing Congress is placing the lives of American
servicemen and women in harm’s way.
Sometimes the old “boots on the ground” metaphor is meant to soften the
blow; at other times it is meant to lend an air of “safety”, or “low threat” to
our troops and their actual mission.
President Obama will send his
3000 troops, primarily medical personnel, into the African nations most
afflicted by this latest outbreak of a deadly virus. However, despite the humanitarian gloss to
the mission lurk unforeseen risks, the inevitable “laws of unintended consequences”
and how they have the distinct tendency to upset even the best laid plans. Our personnel
will not be entering a welcoming environment no matter how well intended their
mission is designed. It would be beyond naive
to believe that our medical, logistical and security presence in those
unfriendly, unstable nation/states will be perceived by all on the ground as a
purely “gesture of goodwill”. This
mission is as wrought with the potential for unforeseen negative blow-back as
has been every mission we’ve undertaken in the past decade. The absence of some formation of at least a “semi-united
African face” on our endeavor may backfire to a degree not yet recognized nor
calculated. We need the African allied
nations with resources to participate in this mission or it is, sadly, doomed
to fail. We have experienced
interventional failures far too many times since 9-11-01 and we do not need a
new front of hostility to be opened in West Africa.
CONSTANT VIGILANCE
The watchwords of our post
9-11 America cannot be repeated often enough.
Constant vigilance must be our stance regardless of the circumstances on
the ground where ever we have troops deployed.
The world is a small place; we learned that the hard way back in 2001
when not many of us could pin point Afghanistan on a map. We have learned a great deal over the course
of the intervening years. Some lessons
were learned harder than others; some are still sinking in but, on balance, we
are more secure today in very many ways than we were 13 years ago last
Thursday.
But, we can never
underestimate the motivation, mindless dedication and absolute commitment of
our adversaries. We fight people who will go to any lengths, who will gladly
sacrifice their own lives for the cause to which they are inextricably
bound. Indeed our world is as small a
place as it has ever been and our proximity to the zealots and extremists bent
on inflicting death and destruction here is as close as the next apartment,
mosque or café. This reality needs to be
what drives us, our foreign policy and our policies and practices at home.
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Brooding Cynyx 2014 © All Rights Reserved
