THE DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN ON "BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS OF MASS
DESTRUCTION"
by Gary Novak
The investigative underworld of the government has been waging
a disinformation campaign for several years. For example, a news weekly
listed each of the supposed terrorist weapons and the cost of producing
them. For ten or twenty thousand dollars, terrorists could supposedly kill
hundreds of thousands of persons with botulism toxin, anthrax, nerve gas,
etc. "Sixty Minutes" said the weapons could be produced in someone's
back yard in a five gallon bucket. They said anthrax spores released from
a boat on the Hudson River could kill four hundred thousand persons in New
York City. Here's the truth of the matter.
Botulism will never be a terrorist or military weapon of any type. There
is no scientist alive who can purify botulism toxin in significant quantities.
The limits are biological. Even if separation procedures existed, and they
don't, the toxin would have to be very dilute in water to maintain stability.
The natural function of botulism is to kill fish and birds in stagnant lakes.
When dead creatures wash onto the shoreline of lakes, botulism bacteria
break down the protein converting some of it into botulism toxin which washes
into the lake killing more fish and birds.
Botulism toxin is a chain of amino acids, which is the equivalent of a small
protein. It targets the nerve system blocking neurotransmitter function
resulting in paralysis and death.
When botulism bacteria (Clostridium botulinum) feeds on protein, it must
break it down into short chains of amino acids for absorption as nutrients.
Enzymes must be used to break down the protein. Bacteria cannot excrete
enzymes from whole cells; the cells must break apart to release them.
So the net effect is that very short chains of amino acid and monomers are
absorbed as nutrients, and then some are reassembled into longer chains
and released as toxin. What keeps the enzymes from destroying the toxin?
Nothing does. The waves on the shoreline must wash the toxin into the lake
before the enzymes destroy it.
Notice that there are no waves or shoreline in a five gallon bucket. You
might think that modern technology could produce a substitute, such as a
filter pad. It can't. Separating protein fragments is next to impossible,
even when there are no enzymes with them breaking them down. Analytically,
it is done by placing a voltage on a gel, which separates picogram quantities
into bands at a cost of thousands of dollars. It cannot be done in the presence
of enzymes which destroy the analysate.
Therefore, propagandists sometimes pretend that whole cells might be used
for botulism weaponry. First, whole cells aren't anything like a toxin.
The quantities change from nanograms to kilograms. How are massive quantities
of cells going to be gotten into anyone? Airborne spores? The toxin is not
in the spores. Slop in drinking water? Pumping a truckload of slop into
a water tank is not how terrorists do things.
Botulism bacteria produce toxin only under certain nutrient conditions which
require amino acids being absorbed as nutrients. Spores are not produced
under those conditions; they require a depletion of nutrients. Therefore,
the spores do not have toxin in them. If rapidly growing cells were used
for toxin, they would be unstable, and the toxin would be rapidly broken
down. So whole cells are not a real method of producing botulism toxin.
The claims are nothing but disinformation for a public which is supposed
to imagine the results.
Anthrax is also nothing but propaganda. It will never be used successfully
as a terrorist weapon, and probably never as a military weapon. Anthrax
is a livestock pathogen. There are anthrax spores in the ground in rural
areas, because they survive for about twenty years. They have no effect
upon humans, because a few anthrax spores cannot create an infection.
Anthrax is what's called a "gram positive" bacterium. This means
it has the type of cell walls which are good and nutritious, unlike the
cell walls of "gram negative" bacteria, which attack tissue. Therefore,
anthrax can only attack tissue by producing a special toxin which it excretes.
One cell or spore does not produce enough toxin to shake a stick at. Studies
have apparently determined that, typically, ten thousand anthrax spores
must be inhaled to start an infection. That number might be someone's guess,
but it is in line with the biology of the disease.
Anthrax must attack the lungs, because it must stay lodged in one location
in vulnerable tissue. Livestock eat from the ground, so they have their
faces in the ground where the spores are, and they can inhale ten thousand
spores. How does anyone get ten thousand spores into the lungs of humans?
The first requirement would be to aerosolize the spores. The spores would
have to be converted to a dry powder, because a liquid would create globs
which would fall to the ground rather than staying suspended in the air.
To create a powder, the spores would first have to be washed several times
in a large centrifuge. Then a drying apparatus would have to be used; and
it would require spraying a mist into a vacuum, which is how powders are
created from liquids. Otherwise, everything globs up into hard rocks.
How do workers clean the equipment without getting spores everywhere? A
likely procedure would be to enclose the equipment in a pressure chamber
and steam sterilize it for several days. Such an operation costs hundreds
of millions of dollars, considering related facilities and development.
Only countries do that, not radical groups, and not in five gallon buckets.
Even free spores would fall to the ground rapidly in the absence of wind.
For example, lead from auto exhaust mostly falls near a highway, and it
is in much smaller particles than bacterial spores. In the presence of wind,
spores would be carried away rapidly and would not stay in one place long
enough for anyone to get more than a few spores inhaled.
For these reasons, anthrax would be difficult to use; and it could hardly
kill more than a few hundred persons under the most ideal conditions, not
the hundreds of thousands which are claimed. On top of that, antibiotics
are effective for it during the early stage of the illness.
Saddam Hussein is said to have produced anthrax. If so, the reason is because
it is stable and does not require research, not because it is effective
when used.
--Gary Novak is an independent mushroom researcher who studied microbiology
for three years in graduate school at two universities: University of Arizona
and University of California at Davis. See complete article at website:
http://physlab.web2010.com/bio/dis.htm
Spring 1998-- N.C.Xpress
-- Archives -- Electrons
to the Editor
