Biological Warfare: Agents, Effects, Threats, and Climate Change

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of biological warfare, beginning with a historical perspective on the use of biological agents and the evolution of bioweapons. It details the characteristics of biological weapons, including their virulence, infectivity, and modes of transmission. The essay then examines the effects of biological warfare, including genetic mutations, disease susceptibility, and the long-term impact on the environment and future generations. It categorizes bioweapon threats, focusing on Category A agents like anthrax and their potential impact, as well as Category B and C agents. Finally, the essay investigates the impact of microbes, specifically anthrax, on climate change, highlighting how warming temperatures and water stress can increase the suitability and risk of anthrax in northern latitudes. The analysis emphasizes the need to understand these complex interactions for effective public health preparedness and response.

Introduction
Because of the increased threat of terrorism, the risk posed by various
microorganisms as biological weapons needs to be evaluated and the historical
development and use of biological agents better understood. Biological warfare agents
may be more potent than conventional and chemical weapons. During the past
century, the progress made in biotechnology and biochemistry has simplified the
development and production of such weapons. In addition, genetic engineering holds
perhaps the most dangerous potential. Ease of production and the broad availability of
biological agents and technical know how have led to a further spread of biological
weapons and an increased desire among developing countries to have them. This
article explains the concepts of biological warfare and its states of development, its
utilization.
An Overview - Biological agents
Biological agents to cause destruction have been used since 6th century BC, wherein
it was the poisoning of wells and water supplies that was most common. The very first
deliberate act of spreading disease occurred in 1346 at the Siege of Caffa (Feodosia,
Ukraine), when a Tartar army disposed its plague-ridden dead over the walls of the
besieged city (Wheelis, 2002). Later, in 1763, during the French and Indian war, an
English general intentionally distributed blankets contaminated with small pox scabs
to the Native Americans loyal to the French. which caused a huge epidemic to kill the
tribal people. The Germans also has their own bioweapon pro-gram for WWI, in
which they purposely infected horses and other transport animals with disease causing
microbes of anthrax and glanders (Frischknecht, 2003). After WWI, the Geneva
Protocol was signed banning biological weapons, which all coun-tries in attendance
signed except Japan.
Infectious diseases were recognized for their potential impact on people and armies as
early as 600 bc. The crude use of filth and cadavers, animal carcasses, and contagion
had devastating effects and weakened the enemy. Polluting wells and other sources of
water of the opposing army was a common strategy that continued to be used through

the many European wars, during the American Civil War, and even into the 20th
century.
Characteristic of bio weapon
Biological weapons are microorganisms like virus, bacteria, fungi, or other toxins that
are produced and released deliberately to cause disease and death in humans, animals
or plants. Biological agents, like anthrax, botulinum toxin and plague can pose a
difficult public health challenge causing large numbers of deaths in a short amount of
time while being difficult to contain. Bioterrorism attacks could also result in an
epidemic, for example if Ebola or Lassa viruses were used as the biological agents.
Biological weapons is a subset of a larger class of weapons referred to as weapons of
mass destruction, which also includes chemical, nuclear and radiological weapons.
The use of biological agents is a serious problem, and the risk of using these agents in
a bioterrorist attack is increasing.
Characteristics of biological weapons
Major classes of living organisms that infect living hosts may depend upon the
interactions between the host and the biological agent. These interactions may depend
upon the individual, e.g., immune response, and nutritional and health status, and the
environmental conditions to which the host is exposed, such as sanitation, water
quality, etc. (Rauw, 2012).
Virulence: The relative disease causing ability of a microorganism, which may differ
from species to species.
Infectivity: The ability of the agent to enter, survive, and multiply inside the host, and
what rate of infection it causes.
Incubation period: The time span between first exposure of infective agent and the
first appearance of symptoms in the host body.

Lethality: The death causing ability of an organism. It varies from organism to
organism and the virulence factor present in them.
Mode of transmission: How an organism can be transferred in the environment: by
vector or without vector.
What are the effects of Bio warfare?
After defining the biological weapons and mention some of it’s example. Knowing
the damage that occurs because of biological weapons and their impact on the
environment and living organisms around us and to humans is very important. There
are many negative effects of BWs on our life for example.
It can change the disease that meant only to kill and injure humans as genetic strands
of DNA can mutate it might changes into another thing that could effect and kill other
living species like animals and plants. This means that BWs has a long and lasting
effect on us, much longer than the length of the conflict. From that it turns out that the
next generations will be in big threat. The genetic mutation can manifest itself in
many different forms. New born babies will go through prematurity because of the
genetic mutation; also the number new born babies with birth defects will increase. It
is also known that a people will be susceptible to many different forms of diseases
which will weaken their immune system.
In addition to that there is another disadvantage, some of biological agents last for
really long time, for example anthrax can live up to 50 years in soil.
When detonating a biological weapon it won’t has one specific target but it can and
does affect people, animals and plants within its impact radius which is hard to
control. This means that it has an ability to kill many innocent civilians including
elders and children. As an example biological weapon was used in the French and
Indian War in the year of 1651, the English offered blankets to Native Americans that
were infected with Smallpox which caused death to many Native Americans.

What are Bioweapon , and what are their threats?
Bioweapon threats could include the deliberate release by attackers of an agent that
causes one or more of a variety of different diseases and there are many different
types of viruses and they are organized into groups called families. The members of a
virus family share genetic material in appendix 1 . Public health authorities have
developed a system to prioritize biological agents according to their risk to national
security. Category A agents are the highest priority, and these are disease agents that
pose a risk to national security because they can be transmitted from person to person
and/or result in high mortality, and/or have high potential to cause social disruption.
These are anthrax, botulism (via botulinum toxin, which is not passable from person
to person), plague, smallpox, tularemia, and a collection of viruses that cause
hemorrhagic fevers, such as Ebola, Marburg, Lassa, and Machupo. These disease
agents exist in nature (except for smallpox, which has been eradicated in the wild),
but they could be manipulated to make them more dangerous.
Category B agents are moderately easy to disseminate and result in low mortality.
These include brucellosis, glanders, Q fever, ricin toxin, typhus fever, and other
agents. Category C agents include emerging disease agents that could be engineered
for mass dissemination in the future, such as Nipah virus.
Category A agent threats:
Anthrax: Bacillus anthracis, the bacteria that causes anthrax, would be one of the
biological agents most likely to be used. Biological agents are germs that can sicken
or kill people, livestock, or crops. If anthrax spores were released into the air, people
could breathe them in and get sick with anthrax. Inhalation anthrax is the most serious
form and can kill quickly if not treated immediately. If the attack were not detected by
one of the monitoring systems in place in the United States, it might go unnoticed
until doctors begin to see unusual patterns of illness among sick people showing up at
emergency rooms.
Anthrax has been used as a weapon around the world for nearly a century. In 2001,
powdered anthrax spores were deliberately put into letters that were mailed through

the U.S. postal system. Twenty-two people, including 12 mail handlers, got anthrax,
and five of these 22 people died.
Tularensis: the organism that causes tularemia, is one of the most infectious
pathogenic bacteria known, requiring inoculation with or inhalation of as few as 10
organisms to cause disease. It is considered to be a dangerous potential biological
weapon because of its extreme infectivity, ease of dissemination and substantial
capacity to cause illness and death.
Aerosol dissemination of F. tularensis in a populated area would be expected to result
in the abrupt onset of large numbers of cases of acute, non-specific, febrile illness
beginning 3 to 5 days later (incubation range, 1-14 days), with pleuropneumonitis
developing in a significant proportion of cases over the ensuing days and weeks.
Without antibiotic treatment, the clinical course could progress to respiratory failure,
shock and death.
Category B agents threats includes:
Brucella: Brucella has traditionally been considered a biological weapon. It was the
subject of extensive offensive research in the past, and still belongs to category B
pathogens on most lists. Its propensity for airborne transmission and induction of
chronic debilitating disease requiring combined antibiotic regimens for treatment, its
abundance around the world and its vague clinical characteristics defying rapid
clinical diagnosis are some of the characteristics that apply to the pathogen's weapons
potential. Yet minimal mortality, availability of treatment options, protracted
inoculation period and the emergence of new, more virulent potential weapons means
that its inclusion among agents of bioterrorism is nowadays mainly of historical
significance. Nevertheless, in the interest of literacy and of avoiding panic, physicians
and the public both should be aware of the most common zoonosis worldwide.
Category C threats include:
Nipah virus, a newly emerging deadly paramyxovirus isolated during a large outbreak
of viral encephalitis in Malaysia, has many of the physical attributes to serve as a
potential agent of bioterrorism. The outbreak caused widespread panic and fear

because of its high mortality and the inability to control the disease initially. There
were considerable social disruptions and tremendous economic loss to an important
pig-rearing industry. This highly virulent virus, believed to be introduced into pig
farms by fruit bats, spread easily among pigs and was transmitted to humans who
came into close contact with infected animals. From pigs, the virus was also
transmitted to other animals such as dogs, cats, and horses. The Nipah virus has the
potential to be considered an agent of bioterrorism.
What impact do microbes have on climate change ?
Example, we take category A anthrax, This investigation is the first to describe
anthrax suitability across the temperate, boreal, and arctic North of both the eastern
and western hemispheres. We found that climate and the distribution of domestic
livestock and wild ungulate species richness were important predictors of suitability.
Warming annual temperature anomalies were associated with increasing suitability, as
was a water-soil balance that favored mild to moderate water stress. This is the first
study to show an increase in anthrax risk across the northern latitudes associated with
a warming climate, an association that was highly influential to predicted suitability.
Moreover, anthrax suitability is predicted to expand and increase within a relatively
short period of time (~30 years) with continued warming. The effects of livestock
densities and soil composition notwithstanding, these results highlight the potential
effects of rising temperatures and moderate water stress on anthrax risk in northern
latitudes.
While this is the first study to explore anthrax suitability across extensive northern
latitudes, our results identified a risk profile that was generally in geographical
agreement with other regional suitability studies. Anthrax suitability identified by the
current study corroborated the findings of two previous studies in the United States
and Kazakhstan, although the suitability predicted for Texas in the current study was
not as strong as that predicted in the previous United States model. Both of these
earlier studies also included measures of climate in their models, however only the
latter incorporated measures of climate change. A third study of anthrax risk in China
was less convergent with our current findings. The two studies did agree on predicted
risk with respect to the northeastern and northwestern regions of China, however they

diverged on the predicted risk for central China. These differences are not surprising
given that the previous study used surveillance data aggregated at the county and
province level and also generalized several disparate measures of climate.
In the current study, areas where recent annual temperatures (2005 to 2016) exhibited
warming divergence from past annual temperatures (1950 to 1980) were more
suitable to anthrax outbreaks than those with no change or cooling divergence. These
areas of anomalous warming were most pronounced in the higher latitudes. There are
several mechanisms by which warming may influence suitability across
intercontinental scales of varying ecosystem structure. First, warming trends in the
Arctic have been associated with substantial permafrost melt, which may operate
directly in the infection cycle by thawing wild or domestic ruminant carcasses, or
their previously frozen tissues or body fluids, and subsequently releasing spores into
the soil. When grazing livestock or wildlife subsequently ingest these spores, the
spores can germinate and thus continue the infection cycle. This phenomenon has
been documented at the animal burial sites of previous epizootics. The warming
Arctic, with its attendant changes in the presence of ice and water in the landscape,
has also been shown to significantly modify the migration routes of indigenous
pastoralist communities65, as well the migratory patterns of wild ungulate species
such as caribou. This may also lead to novel environmental exposures as previous
barriers disappear and emerging bottlenecks or range expansions appear.
How can we do prevent or counter the virus?
Vaccine Response to Bioweapon Threats
In a wide-scale emergency in which a vaccine is available or potentially available, a
large supply of vaccine would be necessary and would be needed quickly. Currently,
the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) has enough smallpox vaccine to vaccinate
every person in the country in the event of a bioweapon attack. The stockpile also
holds millions of doses of anthrax vaccine, other vaccines, antiviral medications, and
other medical supplies. Quick deployment of a vaccine is essential to its success in
preventing disease: for some diseases, vaccinating after exposure may have no effect
on preventing disease, and for others, vaccination must occur very quickly after

exposure for prophylaxis to work. In the case of smallpox, PEP is most likely to be
effective when given within four days of exposure to the virus. Plans provide for
smallpox vaccine to be shipped starting on the first day of an attack, and it would
continue to be shipped from the stockpile to the rest of the country as needed in the
five to six days following the attack.
Biosecurity experts have suggested that the use of agents for passive immunization
could play a role in response to certain bioweapon attacks. (Passive immunization is
the introduction of antibodies taken from immune donors into nonimmune
individuals. The “borrowed” antibodies offer short-lived protection from certain
diseases. See our article on Passive Immunization for more information.) The
advantage of using antibodies rather than vaccines to respond to a bioterror event is
that antibodies provide immediate protection, whereas a protective response generated
by a vaccine is not immediate and, in some cases, may depend on a booster dose
given later.
Candidates for this potential application of passive immunization include botulinum
toxin, tularemia, anthrax, and plague. For most of these targets, only animal studies
have been conducted, and so the use of passive immunization in potential bioweapon
events is still in experimental stages.
International efforts to stop BWs:
In 1972 many countries signed the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, which
banned the “development, production and stockpiling of microbes or their poisonous
products except in amounts necessary for protective and peaceful research”. By 1996,
137 countries had signed the treaty; however it is believed that since after the
convention many countries had developed BW programs.
The Biological Weapons Convention:
Article I: Never under any circumstances to acquire or retain biological weapons.
Article II: To destroy or divert to peaceful purposes biological weapons and
associated resources prior to joining.

Article III: Not to transfer, or in any way assist, encourage or induce anyone else to
acquire or retain biological weapons.
How can biological weapons be defended against?
Biological defense may be divided into the following categories: prevention,
protection, detection, treatment, and decontamination.
Prevention may take several forms. In the case of biological warfare, international
disarmament and inspection regimes may deter production and dissemination of
biological warfare agents. Intelligence assets may indicate potential threats and allow
for preventative action to be undertaken.
Protection against biological warfare agents is limited. Protective suits, clothing, gas
masks and filters may provide limited protection for short periods of time. However,
the persistence of biological agents such as anthrax makes such protections mainly
useful for military personnel and first responders. Anthrax can remain active and
potentially lethal for at least 40 years. It should be noted that anthrax is an exception,
as most other agents do not live that long. In addition, vaccination is a form of
protection, which may provide substantial protection against naturally occurring
agents, although vaccines often provide limited or no protection against genetically
engineered variants designed to defeat such vaccines.
Detection. During the Gulf War, US and allied forces suffered from a lack of reliable
biological agent detection systems. Subsequently, a number of detection systems have
been developed. Often it takes from a few hours to a few days to detect exposure to a
biological weapon. However, advances in biotechnology will help develop improved
and quicker detectors. Current detectors include: SMART (Sensitive Membrane
Antigen Rapid Test) JBPDS (Joint Biological Point Detection System) BIDS
(Biological Integrated Detection System) IBAD (Interim Biological Agent Detector).
Treatment options after infection depend on whether or not the infectious agent is
identified. If not identified, massive doses of antibiotics may be given in hopes that
something may work. Treatment of victims of biological warfare largely depends on
the establishment and maintenance of a good healthcare system.

Decontamination. Unlike chemical weapons, which disperse over time, biological
agents may grow and multiply over time. Anthrax can remain active in the soil for at
least 40 years and is highly resistant to eradication. However, the anthrax
contaminated Gruinard Island in the UK was decontaminated, suggesting that
decontamination is possible, using chemicals, heat, or UV rays.
Conclusion
Through its contribution both to preventing the release of biological or chemical
agents for hostile purposes and to mitigating the consequences should such release
nevertheless occur, the legal regime just described stands alongside the measures of
protective preparation described above. A complementarity is evident. Civilian
populations are vulnerable to deliberate releases of biological and chemical agents to
such a degree that this complementarity needs to be strengthened. Clearly, prevention
and protection can be no substitute for one another but can, instead, be mutually
reinforcing. The conclusion must be, then, that an emphasis on the one should not
become a detraction from the other, for a danger is bound to exist that confidence in
protective preparation may seem to diminish the value of preventive preparation.