http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7321/1135
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Reviews
Book
Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War
Simon and Schuster, $27, pp 382 
ISBN 0 684 87158 0
Rating: 
Two women leaders of the cult who fled to Germany were extradited back to
the United States in 1986, tried, and convicted of attempted
murder by causing the salmonella outbreak. Both were released after
serving four years in a federal prison, but fled again to Europe
before state charges could be brought against them.
The Baghwan Shree's attack kicks off this well researched and comprehensive
book on biowarfare. The book is the result of a three year
investigation by Judith Miller, a contributor to the New York
Times since 1977, Stephen Engelberg, a reporter on national
security for over a decade and now investigations editor for the New
York Times, and William Broad, a science writer for the New
York Times since 1983. As they say, the book points to "germs
as the weapon of the 21st century."
Germs continues with a history of the US germ development programme
at Fort Detrick in Maryland, and the work of Nobel prize winner
Joshua Lederberg, the founder of microbial genetics and gene
transplantation, which led to the "weaponising" of existing strains
of bacteria. Engineered resistance to antibiotics created "superbugs."
Both the United States and the former Soviet Union now entered a deadly new
biowarfare competition. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention
of 1972, signed by the United States, Soviet Union, and more
than 100 other nations, did not stop the Soviet Union from
cheating on a massive scale. The accident at a military compound in
Sverdlovsk in 1979, when a cloud of anthrax was released causing
from 68 to 105 deaths, gave the show away. Final proof was
confirmed when one Soviet scientist, Vladimir Pasechnik, defected to
Britain in 1989, and another, Ken Alibek, to the United States in
1992.
Chapters on Saddam Hussein's biowarfare programme, the Aum Shinrikyo cult's
unsuccessful dozen or more attempts to attack using anthrax and botulinum
toxin from 1990 to 1995, and the enormous Soviet
biowarfare establishment Biopreparat make compelling reading.
President Bill Clinton was greatly impressed by The Cobra Event, a
novel by Richard Preston. It is the story of a mad scientist's determination
to thin the world's population by infecting New York City with a
designer pathogen. At a closed meeting of officials from the United
States, Canada, Britain, and Japan, convened by the Clinton
Administration in 1995, retired microbiologist William Patrick,
with years of experience at Fort Detrick, described how easily a
terrorist could make a lethal culture of Francisella tularensis
in a garage, and disperse it. He ended, "My conclusion today is
not if terrorists will use a biological weapon but when and where."
The authors of Germs write that American intelligence officials
briefly considered the possibility that the West Nile virus, reported
in various parts of the United States in the past couple of years,
had been unleashed against America as part of a biological attack.
After finishing the book, one wonders whether this is science fiction or
whether it is for real. The authors answer that question: "We
conclude that the threat of germ weapons is real and rising, driven by
scientific discoveries and political upheavals around the world."
In light of the recent anthrax attacks in Florida, New York, and Washington,
I must agree. I would add only that this book is definitely not
bedtime reading.
Fred Charatan
Florida, USA
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