Surge in U.S. Bio-Warfare Development

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The U.S. Bio-Warfare Building Boom

 

By Marylia Kelley, Ann Seitz and Inga Olson

From Tri-Valley CAREs' December 2002 newsletter, Citizen's Watch

 

In recent months, more than a dozen new or expanded bio-warfare facilities have been proposed in nine U.S. states, including at Livermore Lab and U.C. Davis in California.

 

Multiple federal agencies have been bitten by the bio-facility building bug, including the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Dept. of Energy (DOE), the agency that designs and produces nuclear weapons.

 

The reason? Most likely it's the $6 billion for biodefense that Congress hastily appropriated after last fall's anthrax mailings. That money, if ill-used in a multi-agency bio-lab construction frenzy, may serve to undermine rather than enhance our collective security.

 

A new, national non-profit coalition - including Tri-Valley CAREs - has emerged to urge Congress and the public to reassess U.S. bio-warfare spending.

 

The coalition is not opposed to all biodefense work, but is concerned that too much funding and too little planning will produce a dangerous proliferation of bio-warfare agents and the knowledge to use them.

 

The coalition recently issued a statement warning that the current situation "poses dangers to local communities, to arms control and to U.S. national security." Coalition groups called on the government to freeze new bio-lab construction and to reorient U.S. biodefense spending toward "unclassified, public research to bolster local public health capabilities."

 

Two of the new bio-warfare facilities are slated to be run by the DOE and housed within the nation's two principal nuclear weapons design laboratories - here at Livermore and at the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico. The nuclear labs are seeking authority to experiment with some of the most hazardous biological agents on earth, including anthrax, botulism and bubonic plague. Additionally, the two weapons labs are planning to genetically modify bio-warfare agents.

 

The planning document for Livermore Lab's bio-facility, for example, says it will "produce small amounts of biological material (enzymes, DNA, ribonucleic acid [RNA], etc.) using infections agents and genetically modified agents..." The bio-facility's inventory may total up to ten liters of various cultured microorganisms at a time.

 

Livermore Lab already houses a bioreactor (fermenter) that could be modified in the future to produce agents on a large scale, if the policy were to change. Moreover, Livermore plans to aerosolize some bio-agents and "challenge" small animals with them. National coalition members expressed alarm at the proposed commingling of new bio-warfare agent capabilities with nuclear weapons activities. The initial steps for developing a military capability, (i.e., a bio-weapon) are the same as for developing a defensive capability (e.g., a bio-agent vaccine or detector), according to experts. The U.S. weapons labs are not open for international inspections, noted the coalition. Nor are they planning to be. At a minimum, this will cause other countries to question U.S. intentions. Conceivably, it could cripple international efforts to

construct an effective nonproliferation regime for biological weapons.

 

The Bush administration has already single-handedly quashed negotiations on verification and enforcement measures needed to detect and prevent violations to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. The coalition believes that strengthening, not gutting, this international treaty will increase U.S. security.

 

Our security can also be enhanced by developing a comprehensive, primary prevention approach toward all forms of infectious disease, say coalition members. This means "providing adequate resources to combat AIDS, antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis, as well as the rise in diseases such as malaria predicted to increase from global climate change," explained Dr. Robert Gould, President of the SF Bay Area Physicians for Social Responsibility and a coalition member.

 

The coalition is currently working on biodefense lab and program expansions proposed at Livermore Lab and U.C. Davis in CA, Los Alamos Lab in NM, Utah State Univ. and Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, Rocky Mountain Laboratory in MT, and the Univ. of Texas in Galveston. Other new and upgraded

bio-facilities are proposed in San Antonio and Lubbock, TX, Manhattan, KS, Albuquerque, NM, Honolulu, HI, and Plum Island, NY. More are believed to be on the drawing board.

 

In addition to Tri-Valley CAREs and SF Bay Area PSR, coalition member groups include the Citizens Education Project, UT, Coalition for a Safe Lab, MT, Los Alamos Study Group, NM, Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, The Sunshine Project, TX, and Western States Legal Foundation, CA.

 

For a copy of the national statement, please call our office. For more information, or to get involved, join us on January 9. (Please see the enclosed flier or our Citizen's Alerts section for details.)

 

 

Marylia Kelley

Executive Director

Tri-Valley CAREs

(Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)

2582 Old First Street

Livermore, CA USA 94551

 

<http://www.trivalleycares.org> - is our web site address. Please visit us

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