IP: Is Russian Gene Anthrax a Weapon?

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

Date: Sat, 14 Feb 1998 11:00:39 -0500
To: TERRORISM@mediccom.org
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>


   The New York Times, February 14, 1998, p. A4.


   Gene-Engineered Anthrax: Is It a Weapon?


      A new Russian germ may be able to defeat U.S. troops'
      vaccine.


   By William J. Broad


   In an apparent first, Russian scientists have genetically
   engineered a new form of anthrax that may be able to defeat
   the vaccine that American troops will soon get to protect
   them against such biological agents, American scientists
   said yesterday in interviews.


   Since the advent of genetic engineering in the late 1970's
   and early 1980's, biological warfare experts have worried
   about the technique's possible use in making deadlier germs
   that could turn warfare into a more pernicious art.


   But until now, no one has admitted taking the step of
   engineering a new pathogen that could be a potential
   military weapon.


   Col. Gerald Parker, commander of the Army Medical Research
   Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., said
   in an interview that experts "need to evaluate it" to learn
   whether the advance is theoretical or practical, and
   whether it could sidestep the American anthrax vaccine.


   "It's one thing to do this in the lab," he said. "But it's
   a whole different thing to produce it in large quantities
   to be used as a weapon. That would be very difficult."


   Officials at the institute said the Defense Department was
   working through diplomatic and other channels to get the
   Russians to share the new organism with American experts.


   "This is the first indication we're aware of in which genes
   are being put into a fully virulent strain," said Col.
   Arthur Friedlander, chief of the bacteriology division at
   the institute.


   The Russian scientists, based in Obolensk, near Moscow,
   work at the State Research Center for Applied Microbiology.
   They published their research on the anthrax organism in
   the December issue of Vaccine, a British scientific
   journal.


   The new germ reportedly contains two non-anthrax genes that
   may alter the way in which it causes disease. Anthrax
   normally afflicts animals like cattle and sheep, but it can
   cause severe illness and death in humans who inhale large
   doses, making the anthrax bacillus a weapon of potentially
   horrifying dimensions. But it is very hard technically to
   develop biological arms that kill on a large scale, and do
   so without also hurting the aggressor.


   American experts say a benign explanation for the research
   is that the Russians are trying to improve their own
   anthrax vaccine, which uses live germs. But the experts add
   that the strides can aid offense as well as defense, as is
   the case with most advances in the science of germ
   protection.


   "They genetically engineered a strain that's resistant to
   their own vaccine, and one has to question why that was


   done," said Colonel Friedlander. "That's the disturbing
   feature here."


   Russia is a signatory to the 1972 Biological Weapons
   Convention, banning the development, production and
   stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons. But in 1992,
   President Boris N. Yeltsin admitted that a deadly accident
   at Sverdlovsk in 1979, in which anthrax spores were
   released into the air, had been caused by "our military
   developments."


   For years, scientists have debated how significant the
   opening of the gene-warfare door would be, with some saying
   it foreshadows a new age of terror and others playing it
   down. The skeptics say raw nature has already produced so
   many germs that haunt humans in horrifying ways that
   warriors have no reason to create new ones.


   "Gene Wars" (Beech Tree Books, Morrow, 1988), by Charles
   Piller and Dr. Keith R. Yamamoto, a molecular biologist,
   argued the opposite, saying the field threatened to usher
   in a new kind of martial insanity.


   The report of a genetic enhancement to anthrax comes on the
   heels of scientific evidence published this month that
   Russian germ warfare experts in the 1970's created a blend
   of at least four natural strains of anthrax bacilli, as if
   the mix was devised to overwhelm a vaccine.


   The lead Russian researcher in the Vaccine report, Dr. A.
   P. Pomerantsev, shared preliminary information about his
   team's work last fall when he was in the United States
   collaborating with American scientists on a different
   project.


   "The evidence that they presented suggested that it could
   be resistant to our vaccine," Colonel Friedlander said. "We
   need to get hold of this strain to test it against our
   vaccine. We need to understand how this new organism causes
   disease, and we need to test it in animals other than
   hamsters that the Russians used."


   Yesterday a Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the
   Vaccine report, but it seems likely that, if possible, the
   new organism will be studied intensely to see if it can
   defeat the American vaccine.


   That vaccine was given to about 150,000 troops during the
   Persian Gulf war in 1991. This summer, the Defense
   Department plans to begin a campaign of administering it
   that eventually is to reach all 2.4 million American
   military personnel.


   [End]




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