EQUINOX - BIOTERROR 15.12.

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OPENING shots of soldiers masks through smoke in gas Soldiers have always associated germ warfare with terror. Germ weapons have hardly ever been used because they kill indiscrimately. But now scientific advance is changing the landscape. patient being treated For the first time there is the potential to produce a biological weapon targetted to wipe out an enemy without any risk to the attacker. A weapon that if used would transform the nature of warfare. TITLE Cystic fibrosis girl THE NEW TERROR Alex Preston is 5 years old. Cystic fibrosis means her life hangs in the balance. She needs constant attention because fluid builds up in her lungs. But there is hope that breakthroughs in medicine, made possible through advances in genetics, could lead to a cure. But this same technology can also be used for the most malevolent of purposes. VIVIENNE NATHANSON British Medical Association "The technology that will develop useful new vaccines,

new drugs in a medical sense, is going to be very closely associated with the technology which could put that same knowledge to malign use, to producing weapons. And therefore the need to put in place a system of control which will pick up the abuse of this knowledge is absolutely essential." DNA sequences /lab shots The British Medical Association is so concerned that they set up a special group to examine how our knowledge about the human genome - the codes of DNA that determine who we are can be used. Their investigation has concluded that in as little as five years time this information could be used to create viruses or bacteria targetted to kill people with a particular genetic make up. It could create an ethnic weapon. VIVIENNE NATHANSON British Medical Association "The history of conflict, both of war and indeed of terrorism in this century, has increasingly been one of ethnic and racial conflict. Within Europe, we have the former Yugoslavia, with an ethnic element to that conflict; and in a terrorist sense, we see many terrorists, perhaps some of the white supremacist groups who might want to eradicate a black population, and again an ethnic weapon would be seen as particularly desirable by those people." A biological weapon

USAMRID

germ

warfare

research /lab shots

targetted to a particular population is frightening not only because of the people it would kill, but because of the people it would not kill. So far this century the use of biological weapons has been limited by the risk that the attackers will infect themselves - the problem of delivery. But a genetically targetted weapon would be safe - so long as you were not a member of the targetted group. Such weapons have not yet been manufactured, but already there have been developments that make biological weapons a greater threat than at any time in their history.

Archive attack.

Tokyo

Aum

Shinrykyo

CAPTIONS: Tokyo March 20th 1995 12 people died and 5000 were injured when a nerve gas seeped out from packages left on the subway by a Japanese religious cult, the Aum Shinrykyo. This turned out to be a chemical attack, but the group had planned several biological attacks. Ebola outbreak in Zaire Archive footage of the Ebola outbreak in Zaire. Hospital staff wrap up dead people as Three years earlier cult members had travelled to Zaire in Africa during an outbreak of Ebola fever. There is no known cure for

patients prays.

watch

&

Doctor

Ebola. 90% of victims haemorrhage to death. It's believed they were investigating using the virus to create a biological weapon. Here for the first time was evidence that a terrorist group had set out to make such a weapon and had serious intentions to kill on a mass scale.

RICHARD FALKENRATH (new piece)

"It's absolutely clear that the latent capacity to produce and use biological weapons is increasing. It's also evident that terrorist groups are becoming more inclined to commit indiscriminate acts of mass violence than they have in the past. And one of the things that I worry about personally is the convergence of those two trends." In the last 12 months, has emerged evidence that almost anyone can get their hands on the necessary bugs. LARRY HARRIS (Sync on phone): "Yes, I'd like to place an order here. 20068-562. That'll be your Yersinia pestis, Bombay strain." A former member of a white racist group, Larry Harris, demonstrated how easily an extremist could obtain deadly germs. Posing as a medical researcher, he contacted a lab. LARRY HARRIS (V/O): "I ordered three vials of bubonic plague, and basically I get a catalogue off the

larry turns phone book pages

LARRY HARRIS

BCU of Larry Harris & Hand on phone book.

LARRY HARRIS

shelf, reach through, call them up, give them a card charge number, and they send it to me, plain and simple. As far as a person getting into the biological business, youd need nothing more than a very small laboratory. If you look at the size of this room, its probably 10 by 12. This room has got plenty of empty space in here, and I have everything here necessary. But I could easily work with plague, anthrax, cholera, typhoid, brucellosis, tularaemia. It's very easy to obtain." Exterior of Harris home, Harris with Doberman dogs, Archive: Police exit Harris home, Harris arrested, Policeman with bottle of infectuous substances, white militant group wide. Harris' only mistake was to chase up one of his orders too eagerly. The police were called in by the supplier of microorganisms, the American Type and Culture Collection. At his trial Harris claimed he was making vaccines for his family and their own protection. He isn't shy of enthusing about germ weapons. LARRY HARRIS "Biologicals level the playing field. Before, you had governments with massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons, with aircraft carriers, with all types of machine-guns and stuff of this nature. The private populace did not have these. But now, when you get... theyve become so oppressed, the private populace is going to go with a weapon that will give them the level of the playing field, and understand [that] trying to use a tank

agin a bottle of germs is stupid. Aircraft carriers become obsolete, submarines become obsolete. Youre dealing purely with a weapon of extreme power". test tubes in Larry's lab Making a biological weapon is however not quite as easy as Harris makes out. Compared to making plutonium, growing bacteria is cheap and easy. But that's a long way from having a useable weapon. PAUL TAYLOR Director of Research Biological Chemical Defense, Porton Down "The first stage is relatively simple, any microbiologist with access to fairly rudimentary equipment could manufacture biological warfare agents. But that's not the end of the story, just having the stuff in a liquid form is not the end of the story you need to get it into a form whereby it can get inside the lungs, it can be inhaled and it can then cause the damage and that's the tricky part. The first problem is that the bugs are living organisms which can die in strong sunlight or cold temperatures. They must be kept alive until they are needed. Secondly, the bacteria have to be an exact particle size, to stay airborne and pass through the mucus membranes in human lungs. But the biggest problem that unlike explosives is or

Bacteria multiply

lab shots institute diseases

US army medical of infectious

graphics particles the lungs

entering

CAPTION:Amateur video

chemicals, its hard control when and who germs attack.

to the

Extremist groups suggest that simple face masks can protect you from contamination. US army medical institute of infectious diseases In biological research institutes, people don't leave their chances to the sort of equipment you could buy in a shop. Mass producing organisms like bubonic plague poses obvious risks. "It's clear any terrorist that considers producing and using a biological weapon is going to put themselves at some considerable personal risk, and we believe that weighs fairly heavily in their calculations. These are very dangerous organisms. Inspo..exposure and infection is often invisible, it's tasteless, odourless; you can't detect it, and you won't know for some time whether you've got it." But it's not impossible that someone could succeed, despite the risks and technical difficulties. And if they did, the consequences could be devastating. The scenario the authorities fear most is a small group of terrorists who set out on the Hudson river with a plan to attack New York City. They have obtained a small canister of bacteria that could potentially kill half a

RICHARD FALKENRATH Harvard University, adviser on weapons destruction

US of

govt mass

Boat hudson river

Hudson river sequence

million people. They have have waited for the right weather conditions. A gentle westerly breeze. They release the germs into the air, using a converted paint sprayer, and the lethal cloud drifts towards the densely populated city. Night time scenes of a city in chaos. People fall ill in the street. Ambulances and police cars rush past, sirens wail. A man carries a sick child in his arms. People are running everywhere At first it would seem like a sudden mass outbreak of flu or pneumonia. By the time the emergency services realized that it was a lethal epidemic, many victims would already be beyond treatment. Hospitals might not have enough antibiotics or vaccines to deal with the numbers falling ill. There would be chaos as the spread. RICHARD FALKENRATH "My personal opinion is that a major act of biological terrorism is far from inevitable; it's in fact quite unlikely. But given the severity of the consequences, I think it's likely enough to take it very seriously at the level of our governments, to be doing much to prepare. The second point is that I believe that likelihood is growing, and that should give us pause and reason for concern." Wide of Firemen preparing Following the Aum Shinrykyo panic and infection

area, Mid shots & talking to suited up bio-men.

incident, and the Larry Harris case, just over 2 years ago the US set up a new and much publicized programme to prepare American cities for both biological and chemical attacks. Under the coordination of the army, its today the turn of Boston's emergency services to act out how to reduce panic and how to protect themselves from contaminated casualties. The commanders who coordinate the programme are keen to promote its value.

Fast cut action sequence in close ups of the emergency services of Boston dealing with casualties in a Domestic Preparedness exercise.

GENERAL DOESBURG US Army Chemical and Biological Defence Command

GEN. DOESBURG "Being aware is a primary piece of being ready... and if we can make the cities aware and those critical first responders aware, we can make a bad situation not as bad." But can they? In another part of the US programme civilian observers are shown how the army would set about defusing a potential biological bomb. It all looks very hi tech with a shrapnel proof foam filled tent to kill any bugs that had been let loose by the explosion. But the problem with a terrorist biological attack is that you wouldn't know it was coming, so there would be little chance of being able to defuse the weapon.

Boston

Boston preparedness training

Back in Boston although the training looks impressive it isn't solving the key issue of how their health service would cope with a sudden city wide epidemic of an exotic killer disease. In Britain the approach seems to be to leave it all to the intelligence services. PAUL TAYLOR Porton Down "The UK's response to terrorism as a whole is very much intelligence led and that means that the UK is looking at the people that might wish to do us harm, it's assessing their capabilities and it's trying wherever possible to prevent them from enhancing those capabilities." hospital But should this approach fail to spot a terrorist attack, the health service here are poorly prepared to deal with the victims. "I certainly have no experience of a wide scale epidemic. Most doctors in the UK would only have experience of diseases like plague in books, textbooks or the bible." The only comfort is that making biological weapons is so risky and so difficult that it would be beyond the capability of many terrorists. But that's not the case with the increasing threat that biological weapons will be used on the battlefield. END OF PART ONE

Southampton ambulance

Consultant Emergency

Accident

and

Boston

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PART TWO Gulf war In warfare, the risks involved in making biological weapons - a risk which so far has contained the terrorist threat can be largely overcome. And in the aftermath of the Gulf War, it has emerged that the potential impact of biological weapons could be greater than ever before. Gulf war US public information film CAPTIONED "What you should know about biological warfare" MAN (Archive): There is a new poison one ounce can kill all the people in the United States. WOMAN (Archive): Germ warfare can wipe out an entire city. MAN (Archive): Enemy agents could contaminate the city water supply. Dramatic reconstruction of tests carried out by the FBI in the 1950s and 1960s. Two FBI men seen spraying a substance from a city rooftop As the Cold War intensified in the 1950's, fear grew in the United States that the Soviet Union might be developing bio weapons. The Pentagon ordered secret experiments to discover the consequences of an attack by by Soviet undercover agents. FBI agents in train station In several major cities But the fear of germ warfare is not new.

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with a suitcase filled with biological powder, they switch on a fan and the powder is dispersed from the case 2 FBI agents walk away from camera with anthrax case.

across the USA FBI men dispersed clouds of bacteria to test how far they would travel. Concern about biological warfare was so great that Britain was also prepared to experiment on its own citizens. TERRY TAYLOR : "there were many trials carried out both in the UK and the United States, and a certain amount of cooperation on seeing the effects of biological agents dliv..delivered by a number of different means, be it unorthodox means you know, sabotage-type means, from unconventional... maybe an aerosol generator in the back of a truck, or... or on a boat off-shore, or on a light aircraft, for example, a private light aircraft. So a lot of trials were carried out, but these were for defensive purposes, because it was felt this..this was the most important way of trying to deal with this particular threat" Meanwhile the hunt was also on to develop their own reliable, effective weapons. One bacteria - anthrax seemed to be promising for weaponization. Anthrax is a tough organism. It survives extreme climate conditions and can lie dormant for 40 years.

TERRY TAYLOR United Nations Special Commission 1992 - 1995

archive US institute

army

research

Anthrax bacteria

Anthrax victim

It causes blood poisoning and septic swellings. It can't

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be passed from one person to another but without rapid antibiotic treatment it kills 95 % of victims. archive of British anthrax tests on Island of Gruniard The British used sheep to test anthrax on an island of the coast of Scotland. They invented bombs and spray delivery systems which could disperse it in the air. The experiments showed that just a few grams could cause many casualties. But anthrax and other germ weapons proved unreliable. One change in the wind direction meant your own troops were infected. Or that the attack failed altogether. archive 2 military map men marking The inability to create reliable weapons led the West to give up their stockpiles and sign a treaty with the Soviet Union in 1972 banning further research. "The key reason that the United States and Great Britain gave up their biological warfare capabilities is that they didn't think they were very useful. The military commanders didn't really see a contingency in which they'd ever want to use these things. They were hard to predict, hard to control and the adversary could retaliate with nuclear weapons." The threat of biological warfare seemed to have gone away.

archive signing of treaty banning biological research

RICHARD FALKENRATH

close up lab shots

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But it was an illusion. During the 1980s intelligence reports suggested that the Russians had not really given up their programme. Then, in the late eighties, Iraq was reported to be acquiring bugs and microbiologists. gulf war archive These reports were taken sufficiently seriously that when British and American soldiers were sent to fight the Iraqis in 1991, for the first time ever they were vaccinated against germ agents. Then the following year Dr Ken Alibek, a key microbiologist from Russia defected. The fears of Western governments were confirmed - it turned out that during the Soviet era Russia had secretly built up a vast arsenal of biological weapons. KEN ALIBEK "According to the Soviet Union's philosophy, concept, just to develop such weapons. any possible agent, biological agent that could be valuable for testing and applying in future biological weapons, would be tested, would be developed and would be turned into weapons." Alibek worked at Stepnagorsk plant in desolate region Kazakhstahn. the the of

Rostrum stills of Ken Alibek in Russia

KEN ALIBEK Deputy Chief, USSR bio weapons programme 1985 -1992

Archive Rusting remains Stepnagorsk plant

of

At this and other sites the Russians worked on all aspects of biological weapons. They tested new and

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more deadly disease agents and developed sophisticated ways of delivering the agents at long range. TERRY TAYLOR "The russians were working away on all this and had a range of agents that could be put on mainly missiles. and if you look at the time when they accelerated their development, it was in the early Eighties, when they really pushed in, and I think the scale of their programme I think they had 25,000 scientists working on it at some stage, and millions of dollars worth of money being poured into it. This was in the early Eighties, at the time of the Star Wars time. And it's clear from evidence that..that we now know, that this was a technology where they thought, "We have the edge. We must develop this. This'll be a big surprise." Of course, they were absolutely right."

Moscow street scenes, The Russian programme created an army of scientists with knowledge of the very latest technology in germ weapons. With the collapse of the Soviet regime most of the programme has been dismantled leaving them without jobs. ALIBEK KEN ALIBEK "My colleagues a lot of them now are unemployed. They've got nothing in many cases just to feed their families, their children. Some of them sell flowers in streets, very good, perfect scientists. Many of them are very angry

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now because of situation in Russia. Now if, for example, they received a proposal to do something for Iraq, for Iran, I cannot exclude they would do this." Cam along dusty road in Iraq past big picture of Sadam. There are plenty of countries who might offer them work The US defense department suspect sixteen of having bio warfare programmes including Syria, North Korea, Libya and China along with Iran and Iraq. COL HENSCHAL "There's been a proliferation of technology from countries that had offensive programmes, and that concerns us the most, in that the knowledge about how to deliver the agents, which is the most critical part, may now be available to adversaries of the United States." It was clear to the allies that if the Iraqis had got biological weapons the temptation to use them could be great, when facing the full weight of the USA's conventional forces.

Col Henschal Chief of Diagnostics US Army Research Institute of Infectious

Gulf war archive

GENERAL DOESBURG US army Biological Chemical Defense Command

and

"Biological warfare agents are strategic in nature. They can kill hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands depending on how they are employed. You can't see them, you can't feel them, you can't touch them. There's terror associated with just the threat of use of biological warfare agents. So from that perspective they become a weapon that is very

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very lucrative to those folks who may be facing a force that is superior both in fire power and capability." UN inspectors Iraq arriving in At the end of the Gulf War, with revelations about Russia and continued suspicions about Iraq it was essential for the allies to find out whether the Iraqis did actually possess biological weapons. With the backing of the United Nations, inspections began. UN footage row between inspectors and Iraqis MAN: "Do not touch my inspector. " MAN: "I don't touch him." MAN: "You're touching me. If you touch me once more, I'll just talk to Mr..."

TERRY TAYLOR Caption: member inspection team

of

UN

TERRY TAYLOR: "They wouldn't admit to a programme, and they even showed a group of journalists around their main production plant in early 1995, in March 1995 And a key person in the programme was showing these journalists around, saying, "These are perfectly innocent places."" Just 4 months later, after a high ranking defector spilled the beans, the Iraqis had to admit that these apparently harmless pesticide plants were actually producing anthrax and other agents.

Al Hakam bio weapons plant:

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Some of the factories have now been destroyed. But we still don't know the full extent of the Iraqi programme. PAUL TAYLOR "Well until the Gulf War and in patches really since, Iraq was quite a highly industrialised nation, it had some fairly advanced technology in a number of areas and they directed that technology into several weapons and mass destruction programmes, they attempted to produce quite sophisticated ballistic missiles, they attempted to produce chemical warfare agents and they succeeded and they attempted to produce biological warfare agents and they also succeeded. They had also made the next step and put these into means of delivery and had begun to fill weapons and actually made them ready for use. So they were and they still are because we haven't got to the bottom of their programme a nation of very great concern." The Iraqi anthrax missiles were designed to detonate on impact. This might have destroyed most of the organisms. It's not yet clear whether the Iraqis had managed to solve the technical challenges of delivery. "If Saddam had fired one of his anthrax-equipped scud missiles, we really don't know what the effects would be. What we do know is, that's not a terribly sophisticated design, and

Scud missiles

RICHARD FALKENRATH

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certainly not something that the US military regard as an efficient delivery system. But even if it didn't kill very many people, which is a possibility, the political effect that it would have on the target and the panic it would have caused in the population, I think would have been very significant indeed.

aerial shot of USS Mitscher in the Mediteranean

With the revelations about Russia and Iraq a race against time has begun. As more and more countries get access to the technology US and British forces must try and work out how to defend themselves against bio weapons attack. down in the depths of the ship, sailors close a system of hatches In the last 4 years US destroyers like the SS Mitscher have been built with special defenses. Sailor looking through infrared telescope On the control deck, an alarm sounds and sailors put on their gas masks. Under attack from biological or chemical weapons, the ship can be sealed. Once the hatches are closed negative pressure keeps out contaminated air. Sea water can be pumped at high pressure over the ship to repel any germs or toxins.

exterior shots of the ship showing the force of the sea water jets

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Sailors in biohazard suits prepare to go up on deck USS Mitscher But for all this to work they would need to know that they were being attacked. vehicles So, the US have been trying to develop detection systems. A few months ago British Troops took part in a thousand man biological warfare exercise in Alabama. For the first time they were shown how to use the American system, the Biological Integrated Detection System.

Convoy of BIDS moving off at dusk

Army convoy preceded by infantry in gas masks, appear through the smoke.

BIDS units being set up and camoflauged Natural commander sound British "anthrax, botulinum delivery means are bombs and scud" toxin, aerial

BIDS is a mobile laboratory. The idea is to set it up behind front lines where it can check continuously to see if there is anything suspicious in the atmosphere. Inside the BIDS vehicle natural sound soldiers in lab "outside temperature is 15 degrees wind direction is...liquid sampler is running its doing alright" Inside the cramped interior air is sucked in and analysed to see if it contains living organisms. If so, they are tested with antibodies to see which viruses or bacteria are involved. exteriors near BIDS Currently though, it takes

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BIDS an average of 30 minutes to identify a biological agent. A long wait during which troops are left dangerously vulnerable. Soldiers in battlefield wearing protective suits GENERAL DOESBURG: "If in fact you have to wait on the current detection systems, they take anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes, which means that cloud has travelled in that 15-45 minutes over a portion of our soldiers and they've been exposed. "One of the things I worry about, is that we have units exposed and that commander has to wait for that agent identification; meanwhile, does he have to worry about setting up decontamination on the battlefield? There are all kinds of issues there, and all the time, while he's trying to make those decisions, that unit maybe can't do its combat mission, and the... and our adversaries on the battlefield are going to take advantage of that."

COLONEL HENSCHAL

helicopter taking off

BIDS may be a step towards defense from bio weapons attack but it can't stop troops being exposed. Early warning is needed. GEN. DOESBURG: "We need to have long-range systems in the military because the sooner we know, the sooner we can put our war fighters into protective posture.... "The long-range biological

GENERAL DOESBURG

Army

exercise

with

LIDAR

21

equipment

stand-off detection system is extremely critical to us, because it gives us the capability to look out at long distances and to identify that a man-made cloud is present." The US Army's long range system can rapidly detect unusual clouds but it cannot tell what a cloud is made of - it could equally be anthrax but it pollen or other organic material. soldier The fact is that currently the new systems are not going to provide an adequate warning of an attack. Significant casualties would be unavoidable and medical teams sent to treat the victims would face the challenge of trying to isolate these diseased and perhaps contagious soldiers no easy task. If there were many thousands of casualties it would be impossible. Biological weapons on the battlefield are a frightening possibility but there remains a constraint to their use. Until now, the problem of delivering germ weapons without risking infecting your own troops has never been solved. But in the decade to come, all this is likely to change. Science could be about to solve the problem of delivery once and for all and create a new generation of germ weapons programmed to identify exactly which people they are meant to attack.

Soldier on stretcher

medevac team into plane

lift

Treating soldier protection suits

in

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END OF PART TWO. PART THREE USAMRID At the US Army's infectious disease research centre scientists are continuously developing vaccines to protect against biological weapons. So far the range of diseases they needed to be concerned about has been limited. But genetic radically situation. VIVIENNE NATHANSON British Medical Association engineering altered has the

"if you're looking at biological agents as a weapon, they have many shortcomings. They may be difficult to absorb; they may only survive in..in perfect weather conditions: they may, for example, be destroyed by cold or dryness in the atmosphere. So genetic engineering can be used to make that biological agent, that virus or that bacteria more resistant, more likely to infect people" Genetic engineering can improve existing agents. And it can also create completely new diseases. Inside a virus or bacteria its DNA sequences determine how it behaves. You can now introduce new genes into the DNA and change the nature of the original organism. By mixing and matching genes, it's becoming possible to

GRAPHIC

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create whatever designer weapon you like. RICHARD FALKENRATH "In my judgment, the revolution in the biosciences that we've seen since the Seventies, is every bit as profound as the nuclear revolution of 70 years ago, and could have quite devastating impacts on the future biowarfare and bioterrorism threat." Relatively simple modifications could radically alter the way an organism behaves for example a disease that currently affects animals could be adapted to be lethal to humans. "I give you the example of monkey-pox virus. You may be aware, for example, that there has been this programme to..to eradicate globally the smallpox virus. Its been a tremendously effective programme, and were very soon approaching the point where there may even be destruction of the final cultures, the final reference stocks of this virus, But there is a new agent thats related to smallpox its... it is monkey-pox, and monkey-pox shares many of the same genetic characteristics as smallpox: 95% of its nucleic acid sequence is shared with the smallpox virus, But there is this danger that an adversary of the United States might take that virus and use it in the context of..of a biological weapon."

Scientsts examining monkey in lab

COLONEL HENSCHAL

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hands in protective suit take flask from out of cooler and put onto centrifuge

The greatest concern about the spread of Russian expertise is that the scientists are skilled in genetic techniques. In the eighties they developed a new generation of untreatable diseases -antibioticresistant strains or strains that can overcome the immune system. "when we start discussing the possibility just to develop genetically altered biological weapons, what is amazing is genetically altered antiobiotic-resistant plague, was developed, genetically altered antibioticresistant tularaemia was developed, genetically altered antibiotic-resistant anthrax was developed, genetically altered drug-resistant glanders was developed, genetically altered immuneovercoming anthrax was developed." The development of a library of designer diseases is worrying, but they still have the basic disadvantage of all germ weapons - the risk of infecting the wrong people. But genetic engineering has enabled a second and more significant change. It's now possible that this fundamental problem of biological warfare could be solved - with the development of viruses and bacteria which attack only certain people while leaving others unharmed.

ALIBEK

PCR genetic test pipetting in die

gel,

turn on ultraviolet light

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TERRY TAYLOR United Nation Special Commission 1992-1995

TERRY TAYLOR: "One hears talk about the development of a kind of ethnic weapon, a weapon that can be targeted to be effective against a particular race or group, or group of people, not necessarily of the same race but living in a particular place." In the mid eighties the South African government sought out an ethnically targetted weapon. Testimony given to the Truth and Reconcialiation Commission investigating the crimes of the apartheid regime revealed the extent of these plans. DEFENDENT "a bacteria...decided develop this weapon." to

South Africa archive

Soweto streets

Truth and Reconcialiation committee archive South African Women scenes from townships and

At the time the technology sought by the regime was not available. But with recent advances in genetics, an ethnically targetted weapon is now a possiblity. At the FBI crime labs in New York forensic science is uncovering the kind of genetic information that could be used to target population groups. Identifying individual people from samples of hair or blood has become possible by looking at human DNA.

FBI lab, knife

woman

analysing

FBI labs - woman entering genetic information into FBI database

The national FBI database contains over 100,000 samples. They use them to analyse particular sequences in the DNA called junk DNA. Variations in these sequences

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now allow the FBI to distinguish one person from another. JENNIFER SMITH Unit chief DNA Analysis Unit FBI JENNIFER SMITH "The differences that we look for Sometimes these areas of DNA, because they didn't have a known function, are called "junk DNA" but I like to think of the expression "One man's trash is another man's treasure", and for the forensic scientist these regions, because they vary, are sources of vast information for us to use in forensics." The forensic work has had an unexpected side effect. The FBI databases uncovered distinctive genetic markers to identify African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Causcasians and Amerindians. Any ethnic group might be identifiable. For two major scientific projects are now uncovering more and more information about our genes and how they make us different. "The Human Genome Project is a worldwide collaboration of scientists who are aiming to map where the... what the different genes are within the human chromosomes, what they actually do, what they code for, what they produce as an effect within the body of each of us as individuals, The Human Genetic Diversity Project is trying to collect information on the similarities and differences

Close up slides

of

DNA

strands

graphic groups

of

different

ethnic

moving model of double helix

VIVIENNE NATHANSON

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in different ethnic groups, They are therefore producing information about the different spread of normal genes in different populations." Hospital shots in Gaza, palestinians being treated Scientists collaborating in the genetic diversity project have already identified a genetic marker present in the DNA of Palestinians but rarely in the DNA of Israelis. One individual genetic marker wouldn't accurately identify an ethnic group - but a combination could. "Well, if you add together a number of different markers for different populations, you can start to become relatively specific. So, for example, the way in which we handle milk lactose is different between the Asian and European populations, If you then add in blood groups, ABO blood groups very different distributions. If you also add in height, skin colour and so on, you start to be able to become specific to your target population." Once all these genetic markers have been identified a virus could be designed to look for them on entering the body. It would scan the DNA of cells looking for the markers - if it finds them it inserts itself into the host DNA and starts the process of infection. In this way the virus would be targetted to attack only people who had

model double helix

VIVIENNE NATHANSON

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the right genetic markers. track Texas across patients in Similar targetting techniqes are already being developed. These first steps towards a genetically targetted weapon come from work with a very different aim - the search for a cure for cancer. In Texas doctors have developed a way of targetting a poison to attack cancer cells. They're adapting a toxin that in the past has been used as a biological weapons agent. DR VITTETA "Ricin is a natural toxin produced by the castor bean plant, which you can see here behind me. It's an ornamental plant used in many people's homes for decoration, and it has been used for many, many years in espionage its been used in all sorts of criminal activities where people wish to eliminate somebody. The reason it's so effective is that it takes less than you can see in the palm of your hand to kill an invididual. Ricin could potentially help all cancer patients it could potentially help all patients where you know what the target cell for the disease is. Dr Vitetta has managed to target the Ricin poison to attack only the cancerous cells in the body, leaving healthy ones untouched. It does this by recognizing genetic markers. The Ricin is attached to an antibody which looks for

Ricin preperation DR VITTETTA

close ups ricin flask and lab machines

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receptors on the cell surface. Because of a genetic mutation cancer cells have different receptors from normal ones - the antibody recognizes them and attaches. Only then is the Ricin activated to kill the cell. There is a strong parallel with an ethnic weapon as some genetic differences between ethnic groups also show up as differences in cell receptors.

Track across ward in Texas

Successful genetic targetting is one of the golden prizes of medicine today - millions of dollars are being invested in it in the hope of finding an answer to some of our biggest killer diseases. But targetting is the very technology that would be needed to identify and kill specific groups of people. "The work that's been done in the pharmaceutical companies in particular, looking for genetically targeted and genetically specific drugs, pharmaceutical agents to treat diseases, is of course the closest example of actually using and targeting that genetic knowledge into specific human beings." The BMA believe that in the next ten years a lethal germ might be created that could select its victims by genetic characteristics one of which is ethnicity. A biological agent that could successfully wipe out entire groups in society.

VIVIENNE NATHANSON

School playground, racially mixed group of children being photographed, at each camera click one ethnic group disappears

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An organism that could target specific people would mark the coming of age of biological weapons. For the first time there would be no risk of infection to the agressor. More useful than a nuclear bomb it would leave land, buildings, and your own troops untouched. As the proliferation of nuclear technology has shown, once the knowledge is available it is almost impossible to contain. VIVIENNE NATHANSON "genetic targeting is possible, probably within the next five to ten years; that the manufacture of relatively specific biological weapons which are lethal in small volumes will be possible within that time period; and that we have therefore a very short opportunity, timescale, to put in place proper control mechanisms to make sure these weapons are never developed."

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Iran in particular is reported to be actively recruiting scientists formerly with the Russian programme - although they claim its only for peaceful purposes. Continued concern about the Iraqi weapons has led to military strikes by Britain and the United States to try and destroy production sites.

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