BIOTERRORISM: UK paper

In the last 10 years, policymakers have become
increasingly concerned over the threat of terrorist attack
using biological weapons (BW). Recent anthrax attacks
in the US have intensified those concerns. This briefing
note outlines the nature of the various BW and their
effectiveness, assesses which agents are most likely to
be available and looks at UK plans to manage the
consequences of BW attacks.
Background
Even before the recent anthrax attacks in the US, the
Royal Society had identified reasons for increasing
concern over possible terrorist use of BW:
• The possibility that genetic modification could be used
to produce new biological threats. While all sorts of
‘designer’ weapons have been proposed, simply
engineering a bacterium to be antibiotic resistant could
significantly increase its effectiveness as a BW.
• BW are relatively easy and cheap to make. In
addition, only very small quantities are needed to
cause enormous disruption. Such factors may make
BW particularly attractive to terrorists.
BW agents
Any organism that causes human disease can potentially
be developed into a BW; living microbes and natural
toxins of particular concern are outlined in the box
opposite. These include agents that can be spread as
fine airborne particles (aerosols) such as the bacterium
that causes anthrax, as well as other microbes that can
be used to contaminate food or water (e.g. the bacteria
that cause cholera and typhoid fever).
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/pn166.pdf