Bioterrorism

The term bioterrorism is a relatively recent addition to the English language, even though the concept and practices behind it are ancient. Bioterrorism today sports a number of different official definitions from international, national, state, and local organizations. Most definitions involve the deliberate or threatened use of biological agents (especially biological weapons agents) or toxins by nonstate actors in order to incite fear, spread sickness, and/or achieve political ends.

Despite the fact that the number of incidents of bioterrorism has so far remained low, official perceptions of the rising threat of bioterrorism in the late 1990s and the subsequent anthrax mailings of 2001 transformed bioterrorism into a significant subject of U.S. national discourse, policy, and action. Concerns about bioterrorism prompted many U.S. health security policy and infrastructure changes and heightened the need for effective risk communication about biological threats before, during, and after actual or predicted outbreaks, whether naturally occurring or humaninduced. In this way, bioterrorism preparedness and risk communication share much in common with pandemic preparedness and food security, as all three require timely, accurate, and ongoing communication among members of diverse publics, political leaders, news outlets, emergency personnel, and government and nongovernment organizations.

Bioterrorism is related to but conceptually distinct from biological warfare, the use of biological weapons by nation states, because it involves the use of biological materials such as fungi, viruses, rickettsia, bacteria, or toxins, as weapons. Historically, biological and chemical weapons have sometimes been treated synonymously in public discourse. Both belong to a class of what are now called chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) weapons that pose significant potential for mass casualty and/or disruption. However, many weapons experts differentiate between human-made substances known as chemical weapons and organisms known as biological weapons agents. Ricin, for example, is a toxin derived from the castor bean and is frequently cast as a chemical weapon instead of a biological weapon.

The 2002 Public Health Security and Bioterrorism and Preparedness Act requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to maintain a list of biological and toxin agents that present high risks to public health. Under its auspices, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), along with other federal agencies, have identified a number of agents that bear a significant potential public health impact. The most dangerous among those include Bacillus anthracis, Clostridium botulinum toxin, the viruses that cause smallpox and tularemia, Yersinia pestis, and hemorrhagic fever viruses such as ebola, Lassa, and Marburg. Other agents of concern include but are not limited to those that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Q fever, hantavirus, and H1N1 flu.

Standard histories of bioterrorism recount long-standing examples of human efforts to infect, poison, or sicken others, from ancient times to the present, as part of warfare, criminal activity, or what would today be deemed terrorism. These include using cadavers to contaminate water supplies, creating poison-tipped or infectious arrows, disseminating disease-spreading textiles, infecting livestock and crops (now known as agroterrorism), and contaminating food or drink. Biological weapons were used to infect allied livestock during World War I, but their use achieved more widespread attention during World War II, when Japan's Unit 731 established a large-scale biological weapons initiative that tested applications on prisoners of war. Other nation states that developed biological weapons programs in the 20th century include Germany, the United States, South Africa, and Great Britain. Industrial development of biological weapons by nation states provided potential pathogenic materials for bioterrorism [Page 117]attacks. In fact, the anthrax agent used in the 2001 anthrax mailings is believed to have originated from the U.S. biodefense installation, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Disease (USAMRIID), headquartered at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

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