Bioterrorism in America

In 2001, several cases of anthrax infection were found, resulting from contaminated powders sent to journalists and politicians. This episode had the effect of a bomb exploding on the European and American continents and unleashed hundreds of phantom powders, several of which I had the opportunity to analyze. Due to false evidence, the majority of these resulted in thousands of hours of work stoppage, excessive sentences and an astonishing cost to a society already on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Based on this episode, the United States launched a self-imposed plan to research the security of possible bioterrorism agents. It was unnecessary and outrageously expensive, but the Americans gradually imposed the same rules on all their partners. This made no sense, because the microbes that are considered bioterrorism agents hardly have the capacity to create a death rate comparable to that of a simple bottle of butane.

The bacteria that I worked on, including typhus and plague specimens, are largely incapable of causing significant damage. The only problems are the toxins (that are never just chemical poisons) and the risk of smallpox. This led us to look at things more closely because, in reality, there are only two countries that have developed bioterrorism agents, or have tried: Russia and the United States. They are also the only two that continue to keep strains of smallpox, which represent a great danger to humanity.

In 2001, the CIA released gray information to the world to inform us that Saddam Hussein most likely possessed strains of smallpox. This was completely false, but provided justification for the war. We in France were victims of this false information — which my report on bioterrorism unfortunately reflected.

In practice, and what appears clear, is that according to a long article this week in the journal Science, there have only been two incidents of microbe bioterrorism since World War II. The first was in Russia in a military laboratory, where a cloud of anthrax exploded, killing a Russian community. The second was in 2001 when the perpetrator was an employee of the American military, which has recently revealed that he [army scientist Bruce Ivins] had an extensive psychiatric history and was authorized to transform bacteria into weapons to use against enemies. He subsequently used several of the strains before killing himself.

In practice, the history of bioterrorism is a history of the American military’s incompetence and of the American government’s excess in responding to something that could otherwise have taught it modesty in weapons management.

The consequences for us are that — under the excessive pressure of a country that has forced us to submit to the results of its carelessness — our working conditions and the cost of studying microbes that are agents of disease (and not agents of bioterrorism) have become extremely high.

Didier Raoult, Professor, Faculty of Medicine (Marseille)