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The Bioterror Bible
Know what Army lab knows about deadly germ agents

By Paul Sperry
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON – Have you seen the government's new tips for protecting yourself from biological and chemical attack?

Some counterterrorism experts say they're so general they're virtually useless.

And you can put away the duct tape and plastic sheeting the Homeland Security Department initially recommended to shut out deadly agents.

They won't likely protect you from a biological attack – not unless you plan to seal your doors and windows right now and live like a hermit.

Symptoms from most agents take several days to show up, and even longer for officials to recognize a pattern and alert you to an attack. By then it would be too late to seal your doors and windows. You would already have been exposed.

What you need, experts say, is not duct tape or annoyingly obvious safety tips from Homeland Security Department officials, such as "practice good hygiene and cleanliness to avoid spreading germs, and seek medical advice" in the event of a bioterror attack. That illuminating tip is on the department's new website.

No, what you need is raw knowledge. Specific information about bioagents so you can make smart decisions in case your community is exposed to them in a terrorist attack. Answers to questions such as these: Which agents are easiest to weaponize and infect large populations – and therefore most likely to be used by terrorists? How large a dose does it take to infect you? How long before symptoms appear, and what do they look like? How fatal are they? What's the most effective medical treatment?

To that end, WorldNetDaily has decided to publish highlights of voluminous biodefense training materials it has obtained from the U.S. Army.

The training course, called "Biological Sampling and Detection," is being taught to National Guard units by scientists at the Dugway Proving Ground, a top Pentagon bioweapons research lab in Utah.

Instructors include Drs. Daniel Martin and Zara Llewellyn, as well as Jeff Montague, (none of whom provided WND with the materials) of the Lothar Salomon Life Sciences Test Facility, the only Defense Department lab certified to test developmental equipment with aerosolized Biosafety Level 3 agents such as anthrax. BL-3 is the term used to describe facilities in which work is performed using indigenous or exotic agents with a potential for respiratory transmission, and which may cause serious and potentially lethal infection, but for which a vaccine or treatment exists (unlike BL-4 agents such as the hanta virus).

What follows is a condensed version of Llewellyn's overview of Category A bioagents in one of her recent presentations to civil support teams rotating through Dugway since the Sept. 11 attacks. Category A agents pose a national security risk because they can be easily disseminated or transmitted from person to person, and can result in high mortality rates and have the potential for major public health impact. Also, they might cause public panic and social disruption, and require special action for public health preparedness.

Anthrax: Bacillus anthracis, a rod-shaped spore-forming bacterium.

Biological warfare applications:

• Easy to cultivate, large quantities
• Common laboratory equipment
• Highly stable in environment for storage
• Concentrated spores in wet or dry forms
• Delivered by explosives, aerosol sprayers, aircraft, cruise missile (and, of course, even mailed envelopes)
• Spores hardy and virulent (antiphagocytic capsule protects it from body's germ-eating phagocytes)

1. Cutaneous anthrax:

• Infection of skin through open wound, abrasion
• 95 percent of anthrax cases worldwide
• Symptoms: black necrotic lesions (eschar)
• No person-to-person transmission

Cutaneous anthrax

Case fatality rate:

• No antibiotics (septicemia): 20 percent
• Antibiotics: 1 percent

2. Intestinal anthrax:

• Ingestion of infected food or water
• Symptoms: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea
• Case fatality: 25 percent-60 percent
• Antibiotic treatment is undefined

3. Inhalation anthrax

• Also known as Wool-sorter's disease
• Inhalation of spores
• Incubation period: 1 to 6 days (dose dependent)
• ID50 (the dose which will cause infection in 50 percent of people): 8 to 10,000 spores inhaled per person
• Flu-like symptoms: fever, malaise, fatigue, cough, chest pain (mediastinal widening and pleural effusion)
• Shock and death within 24 to 36 hours

Antibiotic treatment before symptoms appear:

• Ciprofloxin
• Doxycycline
• Tetracycline
• Erythromycin

Case fatality rate:

• No antibiotics: 97 percent
• Antibiotics: 75 percent

Identifying anthrax under microscope:

• Gram stain: segmented rods (pure culture)
• Agar media (in petri dish): "comet tail" growth pattern

Plague: Yersinia pestis, a rod-shaped bacterium.

Biowarfare applications:

• Easy to cultivate
• Common laboratory equipment
• Environmentally stable
• Concentration of live cells
• Wet or dry forms
• Delivered by explosives, aerosol sprayer, aircraft or cruise missile

Bubonic plague

1. Bubonic plague

• "Black death" has killed millions through flea bites
• Incubation period: 2 to 6 days.
• Symptoms: infected, swollen lymph nodes (buboes) and necrosis of surrounding tissue
• No human-to-human transmission
• Antibiotic treatment: Tetracyclines and sulfonamides
• Vaccines limited to persons at high risk of exposure

2. Septicemic plague

• Bubonic form can become septicemic (bacterial growth in blood)
• Symptoms: blood-clotting, organ failure, shock, gangrene and internal bleeding which may blacken the skin
• Antibiotic treatment
• Highly fatal

Ulcerated flea bite caused by plague bacteria

3. Pneumonic plague

• Person-to-person transmission
• ID50 (dose which will cause infection in at least half of people): 100 bacteria per person
• Symptoms: fever, chills, headache, cough with bloody sputum; respiratory failure, circulatory collapse and death within 48 hours of symptoms

Antibiotic treatment (within 24 hours of symptoms):

• Streptomycin
• Tetracycline
• Gentamicin

Fatality: 100 percent (if not treated)

Plague bacteria under microscope: "safety pin" appearance

Tularemia: Francisella tularensis, a rod-shaped bacterium.

Biowarfare applications:

• Difficult to cultivate
• Stable in environment (remains in soil and water for weeks)
• Concentrated live cells
• Wet or dry forms
• Delivered by explosives, aerosol sprayer, aircraft or cruise missile
• ID50: 10 to 50 bacteria per person
• Incubation period: 2 to 10 days
• No person-to-person transmission
• Difficult to diagnose

Symptoms:

• Ulceroglandular: fever, chills, itching of skin, skin ulcer, enlargement of lymph nodes
• Oculoglandular: infection of eyes
• Pulmonary: nonproductive cough, dyspnea, chest pain, pulmonary infiltrates, fever, chills
• Typhoidal: fever, chills, diarrhea, fatigue, splenomegaly, bacterial growth in blood
• Antibiotic treatment: streptomycin, gentamicin
• No vaccine
• Fatality: rare except in typhoidal cases

Tularemia bacteria under microscope: mixed culture

Botulism: Clostridium botulinum, a spore-forming bacterium that produces powerful toxin.

Biowarfare applications:

• Up to 100,000 times more toxic than nerve agents VX and Sarin.
• Up to 1,000 times more toxic than ricin and saxitoxin
• LD50 (lethal dose): 0.001 mg/kg
• (Allegedly one of the staples of Iraq's arsenal, as of at least October 1990)
• Delivered by aerosol
• Incubation period: hours to days
• Symptoms: vision and speech difficulties, generalized weakness, descending paralysis, respiratory failure and death
• Treatment: antitoxin before symptoms manifest (even then, recovery is long)
• Fatality: high
• No human-to-human transmission

Small pox: Variola major, a virus of the poxviridae family.

Biowarfare aspects:

• Infectious dose is low
• Grows well in tissue culture
• Concentration of viral particles
• Wet or dry form
• Delivered by aerosol
• Infection by inhalation or direct contact
• Human-to-human transmission (highly contagious; infection can come from lesions of patient, clothing of patient and even air surrounding patient)

Face lesions on boy with smallpox

• ID50: 10 to 100 viral particles per person
• Incubation period: 7 to 10 days
• Symptoms: fever, malaise, headache, vomiting, rash (within 2 to 3 days), pustular lesions that scab over
• Treatment: quarantine, vaccine
• Case fatality rate: 30 percent (hemorrhagic small pox – blood-filled pustules – is highly lethal)

Small pox virus image: roundish, life-raft appearance

Marburg, Junin, Lassa, Ebola: viruses that cause deadly hemorrhagic fevers.

Ebola virus

Biowarfare aspects:

• Part of former Soviet arsenal
• Very low infectious dose
• Highly lethal
• Dry viral particles
• Delivered by aerosol

• ID50: 1 to 10 viral particles per person
• Incubation period: 4 to 21 days (dose and agent dependent)
• Symptoms: high fever, malaise, headache, internal bleeding (intestinal tract), hemorrhaging from orifices (gums, eyes, nose, skin), death within 7 to 14 days
• Treatment: Ribavirin for Lassa, quarantine
• Case fatality: 30 percent to 95 percent

  Ebola, Marburg virus image: worm-like

  Marburg virus

  Category B agents, which have both lower morbidity and mortality rates than Category A agents and are less likely to be weaponized, include:

  • Cholera
  • Ricin
  • Q fever
  • Brucellosis
  • Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis
  • Histoplasmosis
  • Valley fever
  • Staph enterotoxin B

  Lassa virus

  Other potential bioterror agents identified in the Dugway training seminar include:

  • Salmonella
  • Ecoli 0157:H7
  • Shigella
  • Glanders
  • Melioidosis
  • Psittacosis
  • Typhus fever
  • Nipah virus
  • Hanta virus

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