ASA Newsbreak Service
ASA NewsBreak #124, Saddam's Revenge
Date sent by e-mail: 23 July 2000
Date posted on ASA website: 11 August 2000
ASA Subscribers,
The following current information from Senator Schumer, the GAO, ProMed and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies has been edited by ASA - for sizing and emphasis. The analogy to Saddam's involvement is somewhat tongue-in-cheek but it does point out the sheer folly in dealing with known dictators.
New York. A
congressional audit requested by Senator Charles Schumer (DNY) to
analyze the government's response to last year's outbreak of the
West Nile virus details glaring holes and widespread confusion
which could prove harmful in a coordinated bioterrorist
attack...
"Last year's West Nile virus outbreak was the closest
example of a dry run for a bio-terrorist attack that we could
possibly face. While the congressional audit credited New York
City for being the most prepared city in the country, it also
showed that there are glaring holes in our defenses that would be
easily overwhelmed in a bio-terrorist attack," said Schumer
who requested the General Accounting Office audit.
Among the GAO's key findings:
* Personnel in the 18 different state, local and federal agencies
involved in the detection and treatment of the West Nile Virus
reported widespread confusion over where to get information and
who was in charge.
* No federal lab exists to test viral strains in animals which
may carry or be used to spread a viral agent.
* Local hospitals and labs which would be the first line of
defense for a bioterrorist attack would be quickly overwhelmed by
a successful assault.
* Doctors and hospital personnel are unlikely to recognize a
bioterrorist attack and have difficulty distinguishing between a
naturally occurring vires and a terrorist event.
"Even though this was a relatively small outbreak, it
consumed the time of dozens if not hundreds of officials from
local, state, and federal public health and other agencies and
organizations, and greatly strained available resources,"
according to the General Accounting Office adding that
"laboratory capacity for performing the tests needed to
identify the West Nile virus and to diagnose which people had the
vires was consumed quickly by this relatively small
outbreak."
And from ProMed "The virus, which killed
seven people in the New York area last year, has been discovered
this year (2000) in more than two dozen birds and in mosquitoes.
...
The West Nile virus, transmitted by mosquitoes, is commonly found
in Africa, Eastern Europe, West Asia and the Middle East. Its
appearance in the New York area (1999) was its first in the
Western Hemisphere, and it prompted a massive campaign of aerial
and ground spraying to kill mosquitoes.
At a conference in Atlanta on Wednesday (19 July 2000),
scientists warned that West Nile could be the first of a new
generation of deadly outbreaks caused by increased world
travel.They said only intense cooperation among public health
officials, hospitals, veterinarians and the media kept West Nile
from being exponentially worse [?]. And they said they feared
other American cities would be ill-equipped to handle such an
epidemic.
And from the excellent summary on Iraq's Biological
Weapons Program by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies,
Monterey Institute of International Studies - quoting Valerie
Kuklenski's, "Western Firms Supplied Iraq with Chemical
Weapons," UPI, October 2, 1990. (this is found in the
section titled "Foreign Suppliers to Iraq's Biological
Weapons Program Obtain Microbial Seed Stock for Standard or Novel
Agent"
Salman Pak (location):
* In 1985, the CDC (Center for Disease Control - Atlanta) sent
three shipments of West Nile Fever virus to Iraq for use in
medical research.