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<H2 class=inline>Editorial: Know your bioterrorist enemy</H2>
<UL class="straptext notlist highlight colspacer">
<LI>07 October 2006
<LI>NewScientist.com news service </LI></UL></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV>
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<P>FIVE years ago this week Bob Stevens, a picture editor in Florida, died after
opening a letter laced with dried anthrax spores. There were six more envelopes,
four more deaths and 17 further infections from which some people have never
fully recovered. Yet despite the massive investigation that the FBI insists is
ongoing, the anthrax attacker is still at large. The agency has not even named a
suspect. There has been one significant outcome of the attacks, though: a
massive investment in biodefence by the US government - $44 billion since 2001
(see <A
href="http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19225725.000"><I>Fortress
America</I></A>).</P>
<P>Fear of bioterrorism had been growing in the US well before the anthrax
attacks, fuelled partly by post-cold war insecurity over who America's enemies
were and partly by revelations about the size of the bioweapons arsenal built up
by the Soviet Union. Many think the attacker was a US biodefence scientist who,
after 9/11, wanted to push the government into taking more action. Whoever it
was, that was certainly the effect. Yet since then there has not been a single
bioterrorist attack anywhere in the world. Given that the actual risk of such an
attack remains unclear, and that experts believe terrorists are far more likely
to use conventional explosives because they are easier to handle, has the US
reaction been inappropriate?</P>
<P>Perhaps. There is always a chance that someone will try, and a low risk does
not mean we should do nothing. But consider this: we are at far greater risk
from natural diseases. Since 2001 the world has twice been threatened by a major
natural pandemic. The first was the SARS outbreak in 2003. Had it not been for
uncommonly resolute action from the World Health Organization - and some
old-fashioned luck - the virus would have got out of control and would still be
killing people across the world. Of course, the threat of an H5N1 bird flu
pandemic is still very much with us. The virus hasn't learned to spread readily
in humans yet, but the chance of it doing so is at least as great as that of
Al-Qaida posting us all anthrax spores.</P>
<P>We are faced with two bio-enemies: one real, one largely imagined but
impossible to dismiss. What the Bush administration appears not to have grasped
is that we can kill both with one stone. Many pathogens have common points of
weakness; it might be possible to attack several with the same drug. Moreover,
our immune reactions to many diseases are similar even when the attacking bugs
are not. As our knowledge of both areas expands, we can expect better prevention
and treatment for all manner of infections. With serious funding, this could
lead to wide-ranging defences against many of the infections nature or humans
can throw at us.</P>
<P>This is a far better strategy than that taken by biodefence tsars in the US,
who are throwing all the money at the threat that seems least likely to
materialise.</P>
<DIV class="straptext colspacer highlight">From issue 2572 of New Scientist
magazine, 07 October 2006, page 5</DIV>
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