Biological Weapons

The threat of biological terrorism is growing, according to a congressionally ordered study that calls for aggressive defenses on par with those used to prevent nuclear terrorism. Due for release this week, a draft of the study warns that bioterrorists might one day make synthetic versions of killers such as Ebola, or germs genetically modified to resist vaccines and antibiotics. The bipartisan report says that the Bush administration has devoted insufficient resources to the threat and that U.

In the fall of 1992, Kanatjan Alibekov defected from Russia to the United States, bringing detailed, and chilling, descriptions of his role in making biological weapons for the former Soviet Union. As a doctor of microbiology, a physician and a colonel in the Red Army, he helped lead the Soviet effort. He told U.S. intelligence agencies that the Soviets had devoted at least 30,000 scientists, working at dozens of sites, to develop bioweapons, despite a 1972 international ban on such work.

The researcher at Texas A&M University had never been trained to handle Brucella, a bacterium included on the government's select list of potential bioweapon microbes. Her work was in a different type of bacteria, but when asked to help clean a chamber that had been used to create an aerosol version of Brucella, she leaned inside and wiped it down. The bacteria entered her body through her eyes, investigators later surmised.

Rapid growth in the number of biodefense laboratories researching deadly pathogens has overwhelmed the government's ability to adequately monitor the program, federal investigators told Congress on Thursday. Officials said the expansion of the program over the last few years, coupled with a lack of training of lab workers and poor reporting of lab accidents, posed a potential threat to national security and public health.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the subsequent anthrax mailings, top U.S. science advisors said the country "urgently needed" a new, improved anthrax vaccine. The existing vaccine often caused swollen arms and muscle and joint pain. Inoculation required six injections over 18 months, followed by yearly booster shots. The estimated shelf life was just three years.

Los Angeles County is taking many of the right steps to prepare for a potential bioterrorist attack but needs to do a better job justifying how it spends grant money, federal officials have found. Reviewers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention visited the county's terrorism readiness program in May, two months after The Times reported that the health department spent at least $2 million in federal grant funds for items that were of questionable relevance.

Re "Suspect stood to gain from anthrax panic," Aug. 2 From 1992 to 1994, I worked with Bruce Ivins at Ft. Detrick, Md., where he helped me develop anthrax vaccines during my postdoctoral research. Ivins is accused of performing the 2001 anthrax attacks so he could profit from a vaccine he patented. This accusation is preposterous. The government routinely patents work that might eventually be marketable, and these products almost never become developed or sold. Even if one of his vaccines had been mass-produced, the primary beneficiaries would have been the producer and the government, not Bruce.

At 9:03 a.m., a TV broadcast reported an outbreak of smallpox in four European countries, and a terrorist group tied to Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for spreading one of history's most dreaded diseases. By midafternoon, as the president of the United States and leaders of major Western nations struggled to contain a cascade of horrors, authorities confirmed 3,320 smallpox cases across the globe.

Prewar claims by the United States that Iraq was producing biological weapons were based almost entirely on accounts from a defector who was described as "crazy" by his intelligence handlers and a "congenital liar" by his friends. The defector, code-named "Curveball," spoke with alarming specificity about Iraq's alleged biological weapons programs and fleet of mobile labs.