Biological Weapons Said More
Devastating Than Nukes
August 15, 1999
SYDNEY (AFP) - Effective germ-laden weapons have been
developed and have the potential to cause far greater devastation than
nuclear arms, an international bio-terrorism symposium was told
Sunday.
Ken Alibek, a former Soviet bio-weapons scientist who
defected to the West seven years ago, told the symposium at the world
congresses on virology and bacteriology that the Soviet Union had
successfully developed warheads filled with anthrax, smallpox, plague
and the Ebola virus.
The experiments went on into the early 1990s despite the
Soviet Union signing the international treaty banning toxin weapons in
1972, along with 140 other nations.
Alibek said that unlike the United States, whose
biological weapons program ended in 1969, the Soviets had no
compunction about developing weapons using bacteria or viruses for
which there was no treatment or preventive vaccines.
In fact, the weapons considered to have the most
potential were those using biological agents for which there was no
treatment -- such as Ebola, the related Marburg virus, and smallpox.
In addition, they developed weapons based on germs which
had been genetically engineered to be resistant to antibiotics and
vaccines, he said.
"I'm 100 percent sure that some biological weapons have
greater killing capability than nuclear weapons," he told the
symposium.
Alibek, who is now chief scientist at a US company
researching biological weapons protection, said he had worked out how
much biological material was required to devastate a population.
He estimated three kilograms (6.6 pounds) of anthrax
sprayed over one square kilometre would be enough to kill 50 percent
of people in its path.
For Marburg, the formula was just one kilogram per
square kilometre.
Former US presidential adviser Donald Henderson said the
biological weapons threats in order of concern were smallpox, anthrax,
plague, botulin toxin, haemorrhagic fever viruses and tularaemia.
Chris Davis, a former British defence intelligence and
disarmament adviser, pointed out thousands of scientists dispersed
with the break-up of the Soviet Union, taking their skills and
possibly biological material with them.
The Soviet enterprise employed more than 60,000 people
in 200 laboratories, producing multi-tonne volumes of deadly germs, he
said.
In 1995, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo created chaos
on the Tokyo subway when it released the nerve gas sarin, killing 12
and injuring at least 3,000 people.
Western governments are devoting billions of dollars to
bio-terrorism preparedness, the symposium heard.