Foreign Policy

A Plague Upon All Houses

by John D. Steinbruner

The latest stand-off with Iraq has given Americans a crash course on the threat of biological weapons. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, holding up a bag of sugar on national television, dramatized how five pounds of anthrax could in principle kill hundreds of thousands of people. The widespread perception that suspected weapons facilities can simply be wiped out by coordinated airstrikes has been offset by the sobering reality that such facilities, or the deadly pathogens that they produce, can be hidden almost anywhere.

Even if United Nations inspectors in Iraq were to complete their task tomorrow, the larger problem of the global proliferation of biological weapons would remain unresolved. At least 17 countries are suspected of conducting biological weapons research, including several that are especially hostile to the United States. Although efforts are under way to strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972, developing specific enforcement provisions similar to those in agreements limiting nuclear and chemical weapons is not an adequate answer to the overall problem. Neither, for that matter, is the logic of deterrence--the strategy of overwhelming response favored by many opponents and critics of international arms control regimes. A demonstrable violation of the BWC or an incident of actual use would be late in the sequence of dangerous development. There is no guarantee the perpetrator could be identified and at any rate even the worst punishment duly meted out would give little comfort to the victims. As in the battle with any disease, the key to success is systematic prevention.

Prevention is essential because of the unique dangers of biological agents. Unlike the other so-called weapons of mass destruction, they are alive, they reproduce, and they engage in adaptive behavior. Of the thousands of pathogens that prey upon human beings, a few are now known to have the potential for causing truly massive devastation, with mortality levels conceivably exceeding what even nuclear weapons could produce. As we enter the twenty-first century, changing conditions have enhanced the potential for widespread contagion -- including the rapid growth rate of the total world population, the unprecedented freedom of movement across international borders, and scientific advances that expand the capability for the deliberate manipulation of pathogens. Pathogens consciously designed for destructive use--ones that would be highly lethal to infected individuals and could efficiently spread from one victim to another--would be capable of initiating an intensifying cascade of disease that might ultimately threaten the entire world population.

Since access to scientific information and to the pathogens themselves cannot be denied to anyone who seriously pursues it, systematic prevention must be based on the categorical prohibition of malicious use of pathogens embodied in the BWC and on strong rules of disclosure to enforce that prohibition. These rules would have two goals: first, to make violations more difficult to conceal but, second, and beyond that, to set affirmative standards for responsible handling of the most dangerous pathogens.

The basic outline of a disclosure arrangement was recently established within the United States. This April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acting under the authority of antiterrorism legislation, issued regulations specifying 24 infectious agents and 12 toxins that pose an unusually great threat to human health and requiring that all individuals and organizations dealing with any of these agents or toxins be registered with the federal government. If that initiative were fully developed and extended to all the parties of the BWC, they would jointly designate pathogens of major concern, require that all individuals and research institutions who handle them be registered, that all strain variations be recorded, and that the basic purposes and results of all relevant research efforts be revealed to designated monitors. There would be protocols for systematic environmental surveillance and joint international reaction to any outbreak of disease involving the designated pathogens. A responsible international entity, ultimately associated with the World Health Organization, could be created to manage the administrative requirements of these provisions.

Most of the individuals involved in the control of infectious disease--the scientists, the doctors, the public health officials, and the commercial entrepreneurs--would probably agree that the flow of information regarding biological research needs to be better organized in some sense, but the idea of systematic disclosure rules applied to a set of highly dangerous pathogens is bound to be controversial. No one would welcome the formal obligations involved and everyone would be worried about inappropriate intrusiveness. Intense and lengthy discussions would be required to establish limitations and protections robust enough to make disclosure rules acceptable. Nonetheless, the reasons do appear to be strong enough to make it happen eventually. The stakes are very high indeed, and there is no plausible alternative.

John D. Steinbruner is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.