Biological Warfare -- Past and

Biological Warfare -- Past and Present Threats SSG Omarley Ritter SGL -- SFC Wilfredo Montalvo Biological Warfare -- Past and Present Threats What are BioAgents? The Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center lists the following diseases caused by "Category A" biological agents; they are Category A since they "pose particularly serious threats as bioweapons" (www.upmc-biosecurity.org): Anthrax, botulism, plague, smallpox, tularemia, and viral hemorrhagic fevers.

Category A biological agents are "easily disseminated" and spread person-to-person quickly; they are "highly lethal" and cause "panic" and "social disruption" -- and clearly they pose a "serious threat" to public health (UPMC). According to the Center for Biosecurity, Category B. agents include "Brucellois, Epsilon toxin of Clostridium perfringens; Food safety threats (salmonella); Glanders (Burkholderia mallei); Melioidosis (Burkholderia pseydomallei); Psittacosis (Chlamydia psittaci); Q. fever (Cosiella burnetii); Staphylococcal enterotoxin; Typhus Fever (Rickettsia prowazekii); Viral encephalitis (Venezuelan dquine encephalitis); and water safety threats (Vibrio cholerae). These Category B.

biological agents have a "moderate morbidity" and are less lethal than Category A agents (www.upmc-biosecurity.org). What is a Biological Threat? The federal government explains that a biological attack is the "deliberate release of germs or other biological substances" that can cause sickness in humans (www.ready.gov). The agents can enter through the nose, or perhaps through a cut on one's skin; an agent can also be eaten to make the person ill.

The History of Biological Warfare and Weapons: Professor Mark Wheelis with the Microbiology Department at the University of California Davis has put together a document called "A Short History of Biological Warfare and Weapons" in which he outlines the known uses of biological weapons in the past. The first known use of biological "weapons" occurred in the 14th and 15th centuries in Northern France; soldiers used dead horses and other animals to spread disease among their enemies (Wheelis).

In Caffa in the Crimea in 1346 there is a record of soldiers attacking their enemies with "human plague cadavers" and according to Wheelis, "a large number of defenders came down with plague." Those who contracted the plague proceeded to "transmit the disease around the Mediterranean basin" which in fact was the origin of the spread of the Black Death (Wheelis). Native Americans in the 18th century contracted smallpox thanks to the U.S.

soldiers in Fort Pitt giving them "some blankets and handkerchiefs" that were taken from patents in the infirmary with smallpox (Wheelis). It was a deliberate "attack" and wiped out many Indians. Also, during the American Revolutionary War, England were known to have inoculated smallpox on civilians with the intention of spreading it to the Continental Army. In World War I (1915 through 1918) the Germans waged "an ambitious campaign of covert biological attack" by injecting horses and mules being sent to the Allies with glanders and anthrax (Wheelis).

The Japanese used BW (8, 9, 10) in China during WWII; Wheelis writes that the Japanese "poisoned wells with microbial cultures, sprayed the ground with cultures" and left contaminated food for the Chinese army to eat and become ill. The Soviets are accused of having used biological weapons (tularemia) against Germany in 1942, and the Americans are accused (Wheelis) of dropping insects and fomites on North Korean villages from airplanes that were contaminated with biological agents. The U.S. is also accused of using biological agents against Cuba in.