Bioterrorism in America

Fortunately there are positive steps taking place in America in preparation for a potential biological attack. States are preparing for bio-chemical weapons attacks and the United States has a stockpile of 209 million doses of the smallpox vaccine (Cooper 202). The U.S. has also been taking preventative measures in certain events. During the Olympic games in Atlanta, a disease surveillance system was set up to keep an eye out for potential agents released into the crowd (82). Also, congress is considering an “Emergency Alert System” that links communication mediums such as computers and cell phones to alert important figures that play a role in controlling outbreaks (Prah 998). The Washington, D.C. area is already thought to have an extensive network of sensors that in theory, should warn of a biological attack before it turns into a serious issue (Ignatius 2).

In addition to that, The Washington Post revealed President Bush’s dispatch of a “Shadow Government” of about 100 senior servants to live and work in two underground bunkers in undisclosed locations on the east coast. This auxiliary government is protected from the threat of a bio-chemical attack and would keep governmental control during a crisis (Cooper 197).

The U.S has also been playing out disaster scenarios to gauge the performance of emergency personnel and the integration of different agencies. “The drill is designed to test the relationships that have been built among agencies, so we’re not exchanging business cards in the middle of a disaster,” says Davis Paulison (Rose 1). Medical historians say that no population-based emergency in the past century produced more than 100 treatable casualties in a U.S. hospital. Still, Virginia hosted a major exercise in 2004 that hypothesized 40,000 casualties from a plague release at a Nascar auto race in Richmond (Hsu 2).

Fortunately, there are a considerable amount of technical hurdles in harnessing the full power of biological weapons (Cooper 198). While they may be relatively easy to obtain, getting them into a state that can cause serious damage is a daunting task for almost any organization. In general, it’s harder to get potential weapon pathogens (81). Amy Smith says:

A lot of people are overreacting. While we need to be aware of these threats, we also need to be cognizant of the challenges [terrorists face] in overcoming the technical hurdles. Fear is not conducive to good policy-making and good programs. (197)

New technologies are paving the path to advanced warning of biological agents on domestic soil. Medical surveillance systems look at the health and disease status of a population. They detect and analyze diseases of symptom clusters to see if they are occurring more often than would normally be expected (Busko 2).

It’s been recognized that medical surveillance is the single most important component of bio-detection architecture (Ignatius 2). You also need good public health systems, good emergency services, a permanent surveillance system, and discussions with the academic community (Leeder 3). Thanks to some of these new technologies, it now takes hours instead of days to mobilize for such crises and scares (Hsu 2).