Bipartisan Commission Warns of Anthrax, Spanish Flu Terrorist Attack Within 5 Years

“The U.S. government has done a great misdeed by endorsing and encouraging the deliberate creation of extremely dangerous new viruses. The 1918 experiments will be replicated and adapted, and the ability to perform them will proliferate, meaning that the possibility of man-made disaster, either accidental or deliberate, has risen for the entire world.”

—Edward Hammond, Director, Sunshine Project, a bioweapons watchdog

The Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism warns that the United States can expect a terrorist attack in the form of either nuclear or germ warfare, including anthrax and the Spanish Flu, within the next five years. Yet if a terrorist attack involving the Spanish Flu were to occur, the fault will lay squarely at the feet of American government officials, who allowed the flu to be genetically recreated for the purposes of research and the “benefits to public health”.

The Commission, headed by former Senators Bob Graham of Florida, and Jim Talent of Tennessee, released a report to Vice-President-elect Joe Biden outlining future terrorist threats to the U.S., including both nuclear and biological warfare, with the warning that the “biological threat is greater than the nuclear”:

“The biological threat is greater than the nuclear; the acquisition of deadly pathogens, and their weaponization and dissemination in aerosol form, would entail fewer technical hurdles than the theft or production of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium and its assembly into an improvised nuclear device,” states the report.”

In an interview with the AP, Graham stated that anthrax remains the “most likely weapon” as well as contagious diseases such as the Spanish Flu, or the Influenza Pandemic of 1918, which has been cited as the world’s most “devastating epidemic in recorded world history”.

Also known as the Spanish Flu, the pandemic lasted two years and left an estimated 20-40 million dead worldwide. American soldiers fighting in the WWI trenches overseas may have transported the flu back to the States, where an estimated 675,000 perished. Half of the U.S. soldiers who died in the war, an estimated 43,000, succumbed from the influenza.

Influenza typically affects older adults and young children, yet the pandemic was “most deadly” for those 20-40 years of age. Twenty-eight percent of all Americans contacted the flu. The flu’s mortality rate was 2.5%, compared to previous flu outbreaks, whose mortality rate were less than 1%.

People were struck with illness on the street and died rapid deaths. One anectode shared of 1918 was of four women playing bridge together late into the night. Overnight, three of the women died from influenza (Hoagg). Others told stories of people on their way to work suddenly developing the flu and dying within hours (Henig). One physician writes that patients with seemingly ordinary influenza would rapidly “develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen” and later when cyanosis appeared in the patients, “it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate,” (Grist, 1979). Another physician recalls that the influenza patients “died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth,” (Starr, 1976). The physicians of the time were helpless against this powerful agent of influenza.
–Stanford, The Influenza Pandemic of 1918

The pandemic killed an estimated 8 million in Spain in May of 1918 but the flu appeared earlier, in the spring, in Kansas, and military camps throughout the States. Scientists found where the flu once more entered the states via the Boston port during September. A staggering 200,000 died in October. By November the disease had infected millions worldwide, while entire fleets of military ships fell ill, and soldiers, on both sides of the war, became too sick to fight.

In America, gauze masks were distributed by public health officials. One-quarter of U.S citizens were infected while stores were barred from having sales, and funerals were limited to 15 minutes. Some railroads required passengers to have a signed certificate before they could take a train, while there was an acute shortage of those who worked in the death industry: gravediggers and morticians, as well as not enough coffins.

Britain’s National Risk Register found that a flu pandemic from natural causes “outweighs” any potential terrorist attack, even though they believe an attack will happen, and that the pandemic could possibly “infect half” of the population with an estimated 750,000 deaths. Britain has stockpiled “enough doses of anti-viral drug Tamiflu” to treat an estimated one quarter of the population.

The Commission specifically cited the virus, the Spanish Flu, as one such biological weapon that could be used by terrorists in the next five years. Yet Spanish Flu wasn’t available until the Center for Disease Control, in 2005, genetically sequenced the virus then allowed the data to be shared with the scientific community.

Terrorists and the Spanish Flu

The Spanish Flu, or H1N1, was genetically sequenced, by the CDC and NDIC, which has led to a raging debate: should the government have even opened the Pandora’s Box known as the Spanish Flu?

“Science is publishing this study because it provides information necessary for developing drugs and vaccines that could help prevent another global flu pandemic. We carefully considered the implications of publishing this research and concluded that the knowledge we’re gaining to potentially protect public health far outweighs the risk of working with this virus,” said Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science.”
-BioMedicine.org

According to Arthur Caplan, Director, University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, and Glenn McGee, Director, Alden March Bioethics Institute, terrorists now have a “cookbook” for the Spanish Flu, courtesy of GenBank, a “gene-sequence database set up to enable the free and open exchange of genome data” courtesy of the CDC.

“A decade ago, the manipulation of deadly viruses could be restricted to a high-security vault… Today, however, the super-secret stores of deadly viruses have been reduced to a set of instructions, which might at some point become a cookbook for terrorists and other malcontents or amateurs.”

Terrorists or rogue states can access the 1918 pandemic genetic “recipe” to recreate the virus, or “steal existing stocks” and then unleash the virus upon an unsuspecting and unprotected public. The virus naturally disappeared but is now available in genetic databases such as GenBank.

Proponents for the public availability of the virus’ genetic recipe argue that “the government’s top scientific institutions gave the green light to publish the genome”.

“The authors [of the Science article about the recreated 1918 virus] were urged to consult with CDC director Julie Gerberding and with Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. Amy Patterson, director of the Office of Biotechnology Activities … at the National Institutes of Health, was also informed. All three felt that the public health benefits of the study far outweighed any biosecurity risks.”

—Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-chief, Science

Do the public health benefits, such as research, potential drugs and vaccines, “outweigh” any “biosecurity risks”?

Of Mice and Men

Given that a terrorist attack, using a biological weapon such as a recreated Spanish Flu, could lead to an estimated 200,000 deaths and a two-year cycle of the flu here in the states, which the government is not prepared for, we wondered, what “public health benefits” were gained which “outweigh” these types of potential morbidity numbers, which some estimate could eventually reach worldwide in the millions?

It seems to be a matter of timing. To date there hasn’t been a vaccine, nor drug developed, that effectively targets Spanish Flu. There are FDA-approved flu antiviral drugs, oseltamivir and amantadine, which have been shown to be effective against viruses carrying certain genes from the spanish flu virus, as well as vaccines which contain the Spanish Flu HA gene, which protected mice. But it could come down to time, or lack of, if the conclusions of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism prove true: that the U.S. faces a bioterrorist attack where the Spanish Flu is used, may occur within the next five years.

Lethal viruses have escaped before from ostensibly secure facilities. In 2003, a SARS virus escaped accidentally from a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory in Singapore, and in 2004, two additional escapes occurred from similar labs in Beijing. And lethal viruses can be deliberately removed, as with the anthrax used in the 2001 letter attacks. Who’s to say the 1918 flu couldn’t get out, either by intentional or unintentional means, particularly since not just the CDC but other laboratories can work with it?
-Nova

Philip Sharp, molecular biologist and Nobel laureate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that “because a pandemic infection is dependent on many unknown properties, there is no certainty that the reconstructed 1918 virus is capable of causing a pandemic.” And yet, the opposite could easily be argued: anything that has “unknown properties” cannot be so easily dismissed as “not capable of causing a pandemic”.

Richard Ebright, Rutgers University bacteriologist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, warned that “If this virus was to be accidentally or intentionally released, it is virtually certain that there would be greater lethality than from seasonal influenza, and quite possible that the threat of pandemic that is in the news daily would become a reality.” Ebright also “believed that this research should not have been performed”.

What’s amazing is the certainty of those in our government who genetically sequenced and then released the scientific data containing the genetic “recipe” of the Spanish Flu, that the “public benefits” far outweigh any potential terrorist biological attack. If proven wrong, the results would be catastrophic, with deaths in the hundreds of thousands, and untold suffering, yet the public was never asked their opinion. The decision was made by officials in the government, whose track record of late has been a mass bailout by tax payers in order to save financial institutions to the tune of billions of dollars. Government oversight, designed to be a “watchdog”, failed, and failed big time, yet citizens are supposed to “trust” these same officials in regards to recreating the Spanish Flu, whose consequences could cause massive death and devastation not seen since 1918.

“[R]elease of the virus would be far worse than an atomic bomb. Analyses have shown that the detonation of an atomic bomb in an American city could kill as many as one million people. Release of a highly communicable and deadly biological virus could kill tens of millions, with some estimates in the hundreds of millions.”

—Ray Kurzweil, inventor, and Bill Joy, founder, Sun Microsystems

So while the government has just been warned of a future biological terrorist attack within the next five years, it was the government who, in the guise of “public health benefits”, genetically sequenced the Spanish Flu then made the results accessible to those who may perpetrate a biological attack.

It was Dr. Terrence Tumpey, a staff microbiologist for the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID) who recreated the Spanish Flu.

Center for Disease Control Press Release, October 5, 2005

Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have successfully reconstructed the influenza virus strain responsible for the 1918 pandemic, a project that greatly advances preparedness efforts for the next pandemic.

“This groundbreaking research helps unlock the mystery of the 1918 flu pandemic and is critically important in our efforts to prepare for pandemic influenza,” said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding. “We need to know much more about pandemic influenza viruses. Research such as this helps us understand what makes some influenza viruses more harmful than others. It also provides us information that may help us identify, early on, influenza viruses that could cause a pandemic.”

In the same press release, the CDC defended its action of releasing the information to the “scientific community at large”:

To evaluate the benefits of publishing the information contained in these manuscripts and any potential threat from its possible deliberate misuse, both manuscripts were reviewed by the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity (NSABB). The NSABB advises the federal government on strategies for the conduct and communication of research that might yield information or technologies that could be misused to threaten public health or national security. The Board was unanimous in its determination that it was critically important to make these findings available to the scientific community at large to not only validate their significance, but also permit further research on the development of diagnostic tests, treatments, and preventative measures.

Not only did the CDC recreate the virus, but the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity allowed the information to be stored in genetic databases such as GenBank. At this juncture, the procurement of such information could fall into the “wrong hands” while there are little in the way of drugs nor a vaccine which effectively treat the Spanish Flu.

“[T]he tangible societal benefits of sequencing and reconstructing the 1918 pandemic influenza virus remain poorly defined. Considering the high risk of abuse, the availability of alternative research avenues, and the limited added value to public health, this particular research project seems to be one of the few cases in which the risks outweigh the benefits and that therefore should not have proceeded….”

—Jan van Aken, former member of the Hamburg Center for Biological Arms Control, Hamburg, Germany

And what “risks” they are: a potential pandemic with literally hundreds of thousands of lives at stake. If the NSAB and CDC are wrong in their assessment, that the “public health benefits” outweigh the “risks”, who will ultimately face the consequences?

If terrorists are able to acquire and recreate the Spanish Flu, because of decisions and then faulty measures implemented by the government, the public will face the consequences of a pandemic not seen since 1918, where an estimated 20-50 million perished worldwide. Until then it’s a race between scientists and terrorists: will research develop an effective vaccine before terrorists strike, and will the government be able to stockpile enough of the vaccine?

What we do know is that terrorists now have a way to potentially access the genetic recipe for the Spanish Flu, courtesy of the United States government, but that the government allowed this information to be released to the “scientific community” before any vaccines or drugs were developed. As in the case of the current trillion dollar bailout forced upon tax payers by the government to “save” various financial insitutions, due to ineffective government oversight, this doesn’t bode well for government “accountability”.

Again, if the United States is hit with a terrorist attack using the Spanish Flu as a biological weapon, it was the government, under the aegis of the CDC and NDIC, who genetically sequenced the virus and then allowed the “recipe” to be “handed out” to the scientific community “at large”. Yet if such an attack were to occur, it wouldn’t be the government, but the public, who would face the “consequences” of another pandemic such as the one that occurred in 1918.

By LBG

Image – Le Grelot

Tags: biological warfare, Pandemic of 1918, Spanish Flu, terrorist attack