Biohazard

In America, the loudest protests have come from commercial biotechnology companies, who argue that open-ended inspections of their labs and production facilities will leave them vulnerable to industrial espionage. Biotechnology is a multi-million-dollar industry. Between 1989 and 1996 the number of firms in the United States developing new-generation drugs soared from 45 to 113. Today's medical, industrial, and agricultural research often involves work with the same pathogens used in the development of weapons.

Some of these objections have been answered by a proposal for "managed access," which would allow the host country to negotiate the manner in which commercially sensitive labs are visited. Notified in advance of an inspection, facility managers would be allowed to partially reconfigure computers and production equipment with proprietary information. New techniques are also being developed to disrupt secret DNA sequences while allowing inspectors to detect the presence of suspicious microorganisms. Sophisticated chip-based biosensors capable of "nonintrusive" gene probes are also now on the market, but all of these have shortcomings. Nothing prevents a state from concealing a weapons program under the guise of protecting commercial secrets.

Arms treaties are important. They set standards of international behavior regarding the acquisition and use of weapons of mass destruction. But they are almost invariably ignored when countries believe their national security is at stake.

The American plan to stockpile and develop vaccines against known agents is the most comprehensive of its kind in the world. Yet as parts of that plan have been implemented, its limitations have become clear. Mandatory immunization of troops has been official Pentagon policy since 1993. All 2.3 million American soldiers have begun to receive shots against anthrax, currently regarded as the principal threat because of its documented presence in Saddam Hussein's arsenal. But no vaccines are contemplated against other agents believed to be in that arsenal, such as afla-toxin, botulinum, and smallpox. The extra cost would be enormous (the six-year anthrax vaccine program alone will cost the military an estimated $130 million) and vaccines are not without side effects. Injecting soldiers against dozens of diseases would not protect them from the agents we don't know about, or from those for which there are no known vaccines.

Vaccines work by inducing the creation of antibodies that fight specific diseases. Some are given orally, but most are injected into the muscle to insure maximum efficacy. Vaccines made of live but weakened microorganisms are generally more effective than those made of nonliving cellular or subcellular components. Both types are usually benign, but in rare cases they can trigger significant changes in the blood and endocrine systems. Some have been known to affect the functioning of the heart, lungs, kidneys, and other organs. It is not medically advisable to combine too many different courses of vaccination.

There are currently no known vaccines for brucellosis, glanders, and melioidosis or for many viral diseases, such as Ebola and Marburg. The plague vaccine was found to be ineffective against aerosol dissemination in animal studies. The tularemia vaccine is difficult to culture and potentially dangerous. Of the four possible strains available for viral encephalitis, the first and most potent (a live vaccine) produces adverse reactions in 20 percent of all cases and is ineffective in 20 percent. The second is of restricted effectiveness (it only works against three subtypes of the disease), and the third and fourth are poorly immunogenic and require multiple immunizations. The smallpox vaccine, only available in the United States to lab workers and military personnel, can be administered either before or after infection. It requires periodic boosters and wears out after ten years, though revaccination is required after three years in case of infection. Skin testing is recommended for Q fever and botulinum toxin. The anthrax vaccine used in the United States has to be administered six times before it becomes effective (three times in two-week intervals and three times in six-month intervals) with annual boosters thereafter. Anthrax vaccines produced in other countries require different courses of inoculation. American experts maintain that annual boosters are safe — the live vaccine we used in Russia was associated with some risks — but scientists generally agree that excessive vaccination can create complications in the immune system, leading in rare cases to the formation of tumors.