LIFESCIENCE: new articles on Biowar

[schoefbaenker@magnet.at]

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
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The July/August 1999 volume of the Bulltin of the "Atomic Scientists" (Vol.
55, No. 4)
contains two new articles on Biowar (also on the Web). And an ongoing
controversy whether the US has used biological weapons in the Korean War
between between Edward Hagerman/Stephen Endicott, authors of "The United
States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the early Cold War and Korea"
and their critics. (Only in the print version of the 'Bulletin'.


1)
http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1999/ja99/ja99bulletins.html#anchor315344
Anthrax hoaxes: hot new hobby?
by Leonard A. Cole

[...] abridged

Bioterrorism movies like "Outbreak," and novels like The Eleventh Plague
(not to be confused with my own nonfiction book of the same name) mixed
fact and fiction in ways that obscured the lines between fantasy and
legitimate worry. In an April 26, 1998 story, the New York Times's Judith
Miller and William J. Broad claimed that a popular bioterrorism novel, The
Cobra Event, heightened President Clinton's sense of alarm about germ weapons.
 
 With funding for combating bioterrorism soaring to $1.4 billion this year,
even bioscientists who think the threat is exaggerated are reluctant to
contradict officials who say it is "only a matter of time" before one of
the many anthrax alarms turns out to be real. [For more on fact v. fiction
on the bioterrorism front, turn to "An Unlikely Threat," page 46.]
 
 Certainly at some level the threat is real enough and should not be
ignored. But before panicking, it might be wise to recall that, during the
last 100 years, the sum total of deaths in the United States known to have
been caused by bioterrorism is zero.

2) 
http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1999/ja99/ja99tucker.html

Jonathan B. Tucker & Amy Sands

An unlikely threat

Question: Over the past 100 years, how many people have died in chemical or
biological
terrorist attacks in the United States?

Answer: One.

In a January speech to the National Academy of Sciences, President Clinton
warned that "the enemies of peace realize they cannot defeat us with
traditional military means" and are therefore working on "new forms of
assault," including chemical and biological weapons (CBW). Responding to
this still largely hypothetical threat, the Clinton administration's
proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2000 calls for nearly $1.4 billion
to protect U.S. citizens against terrorist chemical or biological attacks.
That amount would more than double fiscal 1999 spending.

[...] abridged

Although some planning for worst-case scenarios is justified, the types of
chemical and biological terrorism against which federal, state, and local
planning should be primarily directed are small- to medium-scale attacks.

Such a threat assessment is not the stuff of newspaper headlines, but the
historical record surely justifies it.

Jonathan B. Tucker directs the CBW Nonproliferation Project at the Center
for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International
Studies in Monterey, California. Amy Sands is associate director of the
center and director of its Monitoring Proliferation Threats Project.







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