BioTerrorSurvival.com

Emergency workers recently conducted a tabletop training exercise in Boston aimed at preparing them for a potential terrorist strike involving a radiological “dirty bomb,” the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration announced on Thursday.

The semiautonomous Energy Department office and the FBI organized the program at Children’s Hospital Boston as part of the federal agencies’ “Silent Thunder” series of drills, which focuses on responses by multiple levels of government to the detonation of conventional explosives that disperse radioactive material in a heavily trafficked area.

Among the aims of the program are preparing local, state and federal authorities to assess the potential for such an act, respond in the immediate aftermath of a dirty bomb explosion, and deal with the longer-term aftermath of the event, according to an NNSA press release.

“These exercises are critical to improving cooperation among federal, state and local officials, and we welcome the opportunity to work with organizations like Children’s Hospital Boston to ensure effective planning, communication and response coordination,” Deputy Energy Undersecretary Steven Aoki said in provided comments. “NNSA’s investments in nuclear security provide the unique technical knowledge and capabilities that help protect our country against terrorist attacks.”

Simulations in the Silent Thunder series include the attempted acquisition of radiological material by extremists who insert themselves into a scientific site. “Participating officials work cooperatively to assess and respond to critical facility alarms and then manage the created crisis as if it was actually happening,” the release says. “The goal of these exercises is to provide firsthand crisis management experience and to improve both alarm response and emergency response methods.”

The NNSA release says only that the “Longwood Thunder” event in Boston involved a mock situation focused on radioactive substances (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration release, Oct. 27).

Five U.S. urban centers have been awarded federal funding to implement plans to have U.S. Postal Service workers disperse medical countermeasures to area residents in the event of an anthrax attack, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy reported on Wednesday.

The Boston Public Health Commission, the Philadelphia Public Health Department, the San Diego Health and Human Services Agency and the Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government in Kentucky have each received $50,000 from the Health and Human Services Department to carry out preparations and response drills.

The Minnesota Health Department has been allocated $200,000 in HHS funding to carry out a large-scale anthrax response drill in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The Twin Cities in 2011 wrapped up a years-long effort to conduct National Postal Model preparations and drills. Roughly 400 Postal Service volunteers took part in the effort, which received $500,000 in federal funding.

The National Postal Model calls for participating USPS employees to collect antibiotics at a preset point and, with an accompanying police detail, dispense them to residences in particular zip codes. This mode of delivery enhances current response plans, which require civilians to travel to a particular distribution location to obtain their first antibiotic doses.

Postal service workers are being enlisted in the five population centers to ensure that antibiotics are delivered to potential victims of an anthrax attack within two days of exposure.

“The fatality rate for people whose lungs are infected with anthrax is extremely high if they do not receive antibiotic treatment, which means the quicker health professionals can get antibiotics into people’s hands, the quicker we can protect health and save lives,” HHS Assistant Secretary Nicole Lurie said in released remarks. “The postal model offers an additional tool for local health departments to begin treating people potentially exposed to anthrax.”

Successful response strategies and drills developed by the five cities could be employed by other local governments throughout the United States (Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy release, Aug. 3).

WASHINGTON — The sarin nerve agent strikes carried out by a Japanese cult in the 1990s suggest that chemical weapons are a more viable and accessible option than biological materials for terrorists seeking to use a weapon of mass destruction, according to a new study.

(Jul. 29) – Masked Japanese Self-Defense Forces personnel clean Tokyo subway cars on March 20, 1995, following the Aum Shinrikyo cult’s release of deadly sarin nerve agent on the transit system. The organization’s two sarin gas strikes in Japan suggest lethal chemicals might be more easily employed than disease agents in a terrorist attack, warns a report issued yesterday (Getty Images).

“You need to have a hands-on feel for growing bacteria in a lab,” former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig said on Thursday at the rollout of a Center for a New American Security report on the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult.

With chemical weapons, “if you’re appropriately trained, you follow the recipe. [The agents are] familiar to you,” added Danzig, who prepared the report with a team of researchers.

He noted that Seiichi Endo, the group’s lead biological expert, was a virologist, not a bacteriologist, and not well-versed at making virulent strains of pathogens.

The cult, which was originally founded as a yoga school, also succeeded in creating a chemical agent because the equipment and materials necessary to ensure its purity were readily accessible on the open market and therefore made it easier to produce, the new report concludes.

The group eventually manufactured lethal sarin gas. It released the nerve agent in the city of Matsumoto in 1994 and in the Tokyo subway system in 1995. The two incidents killed 20 people and caused thousands more to become ill.

Aum benefited, in part, from the persistence of its intention to acquire a weapon of mass destruction, despite a series of errors while trying to develop biological agents such as anthrax and botulinum toxin, according to Danzig, whose team interviewed former cult members in preparing the report.

In one instance, a member of the sect fell into a vat of botulinum toxin and nearly drowned. The follower was rescued and showed no signs of the disease, he said.

“It’s striking that they kept coming back to this,” Danzig told audience.

In addition, the group failed to develop an effective dissemination method for its biological experiments. A pump first used to spread anthrax “spouted like a whale,” according to one cult member’s account detailed in the study.

When the self-produced disseminators and aerosols did work, poorly predicted wind patterns caused members to miss their targets, the report states. The cult used three trucks in failed efforts to spray botulinum toxin at two U.S. naval bases in Japan, Narita airport, the Japanese Diet, the Imperial Palace and the headquarters of a rival religious group.

The ability to produce large quantities of pathogens also proved difficult due to problems with contamination. The group seemingly did not establish or maintain sterile conditions for its botulinum fermenters, allowing other bacteria to get into the units and curb growth.

The new report also highlights the cult’s hierarchical structure, which saw many of its top leaders actively involved in the daily operations of the nascent WMD programs, including driving trucks that contained equipment and other materials.

However, that insular approach proved a “double-edge” sword as those same leaders often embellished the progress of their pet projects to ingratiate themselves with cult chief Shoko Asahara.

The report states that while Japanese law enforcement’s pursuit of the cult was “remarkably lax,” periodic actions proved highly disruptive to the group’s WMD efforts and caused them to shelve the programs several times.

“Paranoia is an important disruptive factor to be considered in these programs,” Danzig said.

Asahara and a number of his followers have been sentenced to death for the sarin attacks and other acts. Aum has been reformed under a new name and has sworn off violence.

Danzig applied Aum Shinrikyo’s actions to the WMD threat posed by other cults, saying the world is playing a game a game of Russian roulette. Cults follow “notions that are bizarre, concepts that are sterile and then one of those chambers turns out to be loaded.”

July 22, 2011

The U.S. Army is set to re-evaluate how the nation’s present capacity to test experimental treatments for potential bioterror agents compares to demand, potentially resulting in curbs on plans for a 492,000-square-foot biodefense facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, the Frederick News-Post reported on Thursday .

The planned Medical Countermeasures Test and Evaluation Facility would be a component of the National Interagency Biodefense Campus at Fort Detrick. It is intended upon beginning operations in 2018 to expedite testing of treatments for diseases such as anthrax, plague and Ebola.

The Army moved to conduct the review upon learning there were only roughly 20 Food and Drug Administration applications for animal testing of such countermeasures in 2011, roughly 10 fewer than anticipated by assessments conducted in 2007 and 2009, said George Ludwig, deputy principal assistant at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.

“Let’s make sure we’re not building a facility that’s larger than we need,” Ludwig said.

The Army command is scheduled to prepare its initial findings by August or September and to issue a final advisory statement in October, the official said. Such a statement might call for a smaller building or the dedication of fewer assets at the site.

The review would consider the specific disease organisms slated to be assessed at the facility. Trials would definitely involve the Ebola and Marburg viruses or other hemorrhagic fever agents, and possibly also anthrax, plague and tularemia, Ludwig said.

Such data would inform a forthcoming risk estimate the Army is preparing for the site in conjunction with the National Academy of Sciences. The Medical Research and Materiel Command is expected at a gathering with the National Academy of Sciences on Monday to detail procedures for formulating the estimate, including methods for choosing what situations, diseases and contamination pathways would be considered (Megan Eckstein, Frederick News-Post, July 21).

Legislation on Tuesday was filed in the House of Representatives that would reauthorize key federal biodefense programs including the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and Project Bioshield.

The bill, introduced by Representative Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), would extend the mandate of the 2006 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which established the BARDA program under the umbrella of the Health and Human Services Department. The BARDA effort aims to move experimental medical countermeasures for biological weapons and other weapons of mass destruction past the initial research phase all the way to completion.

H.R. 2405 would also renew Project BioShield’s Special Reserve Fund, which funds the purchase of medical treatments and vaccines for the Strategic National Stockpile.

Similar legislation has also been introduced in the Senate.

“As we approach the 10th anniversary of September 11 and the anthrax attacks that followed, it is timely and necessary to reauthorize the federal government’s role in protecting the country from attack,” said Rogers, who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in written comments. “Pandemics and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons pose serious threats, and we need to work aggressively to prevent their use in another attack against the United States.”

Rogers’s bill would additionally renew key public health readiness initiatives, bolster the Food and Drug Administration’s power in assessing new medical treatments and give new powers to the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response (U.S. Representative Mike Rogers release, June 28).

thehill

The United States is unprepared for an attack involving weapons of mass destruction, according to a report by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. 

The report, and the commission’s prediction that it is “more likely than not” that a WMD will be used by terrorists by the end of 2013, were the principal topics at Thursday’s joint subcommittee hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee on the Weapons of Mass Destruction Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2011.