Posted on 01/27/2005 1:28:57 PM PST by anymouse
DAVOS, Switzerland - The world needs an effort similar to that behind the creation of the atomic bomb to tackle the multi-faceted threat of biowarfare, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Thursday.
"We need to do something that even dwarfs the Manhattan project," Frist told the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Manhattan project was the codename for the United States's World War II effort to devise an atomic weapon.
"The greatest existential threat we have in the world today is biological. Why? Because unlike any other threat it has the power of panic and paralysis to be global."
He predicted that the world would experience another bioweapon attack within the next decade, following the limited casualties seen when anthrax was sent through the U.S. mail system in 2001.
Next time, the death rate could be a much, much higher, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor John Deutch.
An attack using the smallpox virus is overwhelmingly the largest risk, he believes.
The disease was officially eradicated three decades ago but Deutch said it was possible former Soviet stocks were still at large or even that small quantities could be extracted from graves.
"Every country has a vulnerability here," he said.
VACCINE
In a bid to protect citizens, the U.S. government has ordered millions of doses of smallpox vaccine as part of a wide-ranging security drive in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Other governments are also following suit in stocking up on smallpox shots. But experts warned that other avenues were open to would-be terrorists, with diseases such as plague and Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus options for weaponisation.
More worryingly still, sophisticated groups might in the future use genetic engineering to produce hybrid microbes against which there are no defenses.
Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute, said such developments raised the question of whether there should be restrictions on publication of some scientific research in biology.
Physicists are already limited from sharing information on atomic weapons technology.
Collins said openness was the best strategy but he suggested there could be specific information about protocols used to create dangerous super-bugs that might, in future, be classified.
What the heck is wrong with Sen. Frist? The guy is turning into a liberal.
Next time, the death rate could be a much, much higher, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor John Deutch.
This is the same John Deutch, Clinton's Sec. of Defense, who kept classified info. on his unsecured laptop at home unsecured and let it get stolen. Prior to that he was Clinton's head of DARPA and helped kill funding on several key technology projects that would have enabled an economicly viable, reliable, space-based balistic missile defense system to have been in place 10 years ago.
It is insulting for this guy to be lecturing anyone on national defense. I feel for his students having to suffer this fool to get a grade. MIT has sure slipped in quality lately.
x42 Downside Legacy alumni alert.
Bio-weapons are a real threat. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and this could be Deutch's time. How's about we try something simpler, like getting control of our borders first? If you can't get a bio-weapon in, then our risks are reduced.
We simply need to kill more of the bad guys world wide.
Building one deadly device is several orders of magnitude easier than protecting against infinitely various future threats.
Take a pill, Senator. Drain the swamps. Steady as she goes. Gotta be prudent.
Speeches about defense should be made to the American people, not to anti American UN cleptocrats. Down with globalist mushy headedness! Down with the underminers of nationality!
The speech was made to the World Economic Forum, not the UN, there is a big difference.
I don't know when building advanced weapons was a liberal cause. At any rate, Frist's rationale is silly. Best thing to do first of all is to get rid of all the existing stocks. Russia is way behind in eliminating its WMD stockpiles. The Cooperative Threat Reduction program needs to have far more political and financial support than it does now. Stop these weapons at their source. The next thing is to adequately prepare our first responders to be able to quickly identify, contain, and treat biological agents and toxins. Building a weapon to destroy biological agents is pointless at this point because most of the existing agents are already slated for destruction. For the rest, we need bette4r intelligence to find out where they are.
I beg to differ with the adjective "big."
Thanks for the ping!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.