Fighting Bio-Terrorism

"Bad Medicine for Biological Terror" by Andrew J. Bacevich, in Orbis (Spring 2000), Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1528 Walnut St., Ste. 610, Philadelphia, Pa. 19102–3684.

Fearing a biological Pearl Harbor, the Clinton administration has embarked upon a Clinton administration has embarked upon a crash program that includes vaccinating more than two million soldiers, sailors, and pilots against anthrax. But the effort is running into highly publicized resistance—and rightly so, says Bacevich, director of Boston University’s Center for International Relations. He contends that the effort is as misguided as the government’s bomb-shelter mania of the 1950s and  early ’60s. More than 300 protesters-in-uniform—insisting that the vaccine is unsafe and its longterm effects on health unknown—have refused the mandatory inoculations or left the military to avoid them. Many of the "refuseniks" are experienced pilots, field-grade officers, and combat veterans.

Though it pooh-poohs their complaints, says Bacevich, the Pentagon "has entrusted the manufacture of anthrax vaccine to a single firm of dubious reputation" (BioPort Corporation, of Lansing, Michigan), and Pentagon officials, including qualified medical professionals, privately acknowledge that the efficacy of the vaccine is open to question. It was developed in the 1950s not to protect against inhalation of anthrax spores but rather to safeguard tannery workers who risked contamination through the skin from handling the hides of anthrax-infected animals. "Some of the same Pentagon officials who today insist upon the safety of the anthrax vaccine," Bacevich observes, "have themselves [in the recent past] suggested a link between the vaccine and Gulf War illness."

Even if the vaccine does work against anthrax, Bacevich says, terrorists could select from a large array of other potent pathogens, including smallpox, botulism, bubonic plague, and the Ebola virus. "Indeed, U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Iraq and North Korea are already developing the capability" to use smallpox as a weapon. And why, he asks, would terrorists target U.S. military bases rather than any of the much "softer" and readily available alternatives, such as the New York subway system?

In any event, the "biological Maginot Line" defense is bad strategy, Bacevich avers. The Clinton administration should instead issue a clear threat "to retaliate massively" in response to any biological (or chemical or nuclear) attack by terrorists, not only against the terrorist organizations themselves but against any regime that gives them direct or indirect support.

A "sense of proportion" is needed, Bacevich contends. "Fixating on the problem of fending off a biological calamity—a danger that has existed virtually unnoticed for decades— enables policymakers to avert their eyes" from larger questions, he says, such as the feasibility and costs of fulfilling the administration’s ambitious goal of making the world "peaceful, democratic, and respectful of human rights and free enterprise."