Biological warfare Smallpox

Biological warfare agents present a greatly increased threat because the original viruses or bacteria can multiply and infect additional people. Considerable concern has been expressed over the possibility that a terrorist group might obtain a sample of the smallpox virus. Until recently, it was believed that smallpox had... 

Two vaccines are approved for use against biological warfare (BW) agents—smallpox and anthrax—but both have limited availability. 

McClain, D.J., 1997. Smallpox. In Medical aspects of chemical and biological warfare, textbook of military medicine. Office of The Surgeon General Department of the Army, United States of America, Chapter 27, 17 pp. 

An early example of biological warfare is also alleged to have occurred when Sir Jeffrey Amherst, who was commander of the English forces in North America, ordered that smallpox-contaminated blankets be distributed to the local native people. The effects on a population that had never been exposed to this virus were devastating. 

Mankind has practised primitive forms of biological warfare for thousands of years the poisoning of enemy wells with the bodies of dead soldiers and animals in order to spread disease is a practice as old as war itself. In the fourteenth century the Crimean town of Kaffa was captured when the beseiging Tartar army catapulted the bodies of plague victims into the city the Russians are said to have used similar techniques against the Swedes in the eighteenth century. The British used blankets infected with smallpox in an attempt to wipe out whole tribes of North American Indians. 

Because of the declining potency of the existing smallpox vaccines and continued concerns about the prospect of the use of variola virus in biological warfare, a new vaccinia vaccine is in clinical testing by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Fort Detrick, Frederick, Maryland. This vaccine was derived from a NYCBOH strain of vaccinia and then produced in human diploid lung fibroblast cell cultures. Unlike calf-lymph vaccines, this cell culture-derived vaccinia vaccine contains no adventitious agents. 

Capps L, Vermund SH, Johnsen C. Smallpox and biological warfare The case for abandoning vaccination of military personnel. Am J Public Health. 1986 76(10) 1229-1231. 

Today, smallpox virus is known to exist for certain in two places in stores maintained by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia and at Vector, a biological research laboratory in Novosibirsk, Russia. The original WHO plan called for both the United States and Russia to destroy these stocks of virus, but the plan, from its inception, was controversial. Fears that other nations may have secret stockpiles of the disease prompted WHO to postpone this action, until at least 2002, since samples of smallpox might be needed for research in the event of an attack or outbreak. Given the current concern with biological warfare, and in particular with the... 

Henry Bouquet and General Jeffrey Amherst, undertook to spread smallpox among their Indian foes in the hope of achieving the Total Extirpation of those Indian Nations. British traders were enlisted in a scheme to give the Indians blankets and clothing taken from a hospital that treated smallpox victims. Though this plot appears to have had only limited effect, it is a milestone in the history of biological warfare. 

Linnea Capps, Sten H. Vermund, and Christine Johnsen, Smallpox and Biological Warfare The Case for Abandoning Vaccination of Military Personnel, Mmeriea Journal of Public Health 76, no. 10, October 1986, p. 1230. 

David J. McClain, Smallpox, in Frederick R. Sidell, Ernest T. Takafuji, and David R. Franz, eds.. Textbook of Military Medicine, Part I Warfare, Weaponry, and the Casualty Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare (Washington, DC Borden Institute, Walter Reed Army Medical Center 1997) p. 548. 

Biological warfare agents use living organisms such as bacteria (e.g.. Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax) or viruses (e.g., Variolae, the virus that causes smallpox). 

The World Health Organization (WHO) certifies that smallpox has been eradicated. 3 April At least 64 people die from anthrax in Sverdlovsk, Russia. Following the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the outbreak is shown to have been the result of an accidental release from a biological warfare (BW) production facility. 22 September The Vela Incident occurs, in which satellite Vela 6911 detects a double flash of the type known to occur during a nuclear explosion. 

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