The ability to produce and deliver deadly pathogens for use in an a large attack against civilian populations by international terrorist groups and other non-state actors exists now, says a report card released this week by the Bipartisan WMD Terrorism Research Center.
The report card is focused on a strategic assessment of the United States’ abilities to respond to a biological event, from detecting an attack or disease outbreak to distributing medical countermeasures and conducting environmental cleanup. But the Bio-Response Report Card begins with an assessment of biological threats in the 21st Century and says that “technically competent groups” could obtain deadly pathogens that are available naturally and create bio-weapons that could be delivered with existing technology that is available globally in the medical and pharmaceutical industries.
“In summary, modern biotechnology provides small groups the capabilities for a game-changing bio-attack previously reserved to nation-states,” says the report card. “Even more troubling, rapid advances in biotechnology, such as synthetic biology, will allow small teams of individuals to produce increasingly powerful bioweapons in the future.”
The co-chairs of the WMD Center are former U.S. senators Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Jim Talent (R-Mo.), who also co-chaired the congressionally-mandated Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, which reported in late 2008 that the likeliest WMD threat facing the nation is biological (Defense Daily, Dec. 4, 2008).
The report card says that while traditional deterrence methods may not be effective against non-state actors in carrying out a biological attack, “a strong bio-response capability may provide a deterrent effect.”
The report card lists six categories of biological outbreaks and attacks facing the country in terms of scale, from small scale non-contagious and contagious to large-scale drug resistant and global crisis contagious. In the middle, which is where the report suggests that future preparedness programs be focused, are large-scale non-contagious and large-scale contagious outbreaks and attacks.
The report card lists eight bio-response capabilities that it grades against each of the outbreak and attack categories, and says whether the capabilities are improving, remaining level or declining.
In the two attack categories the report is most concerned with, large-scale non-contagious and contagious, most of the nation’s response capabilities get a “D,” including detection and diagnosis, medical countermeasure availability, medical countermeasure development and approvals, and medical countermeasure distribution, the report card shows. The medical management capability also gets a “D.” Attack attribution and environmental cleanup get failing grades and only communication gets a “C.”
The report card suggests that the best return on investment for the country would be to focus on improving the Ds to Cs.
The finding that the United States is not prepared to respond to a global outbreak of a deadly pathogen or large-scale outbreak against a drug resistant virus isn’t a surprise, the WMD Center says. And it’s not worth putting these threats at the top of the priority list, it says.
“If Congress and the Administration focused primarily on addressing these most extreme, less common scenarios, it could easily expend the most available biodefense resources without a measurable return on investment,” the report says.