The Rising Death Toll From State-Sponsored Bioterror

I remembered the moment as if it occurred yesterday.  An active jolt of recall was triggered by a revelation less than twelve hours before, which went almost unnoticed by most understandably inundated by a busy news cycle replete with salacious stories of executive misconduct. In a “previous life,” I sat across a table from an individual, a terrorist, who had masterminded and led an offensive biological warfare program for the Soviet Union.  By the time of this eventful encounter, the West had defeated the Soviet Union (we assumed) and its evil infrastructure supported by notorious entitities such as the KGB, the GRU (military intelligence) and the lesser known organization this individual worked for: Biopreparat

The individual across the table was a defector, a leader of Biopreparat.  He revealed that during his state-supported tenure, he had intentionally and maliciously developed a rich portfolio of bioterrorist weapons; agents meant to indiscriminately kill soldiers and civilians, humans and animals. 

These stories of natural and unnatural weapons of mass destruction were conveyed without emotion or any hint of regret.

Bioterrorism is particularly disconcerting to the intelligence community and public health authorities because the incubation time required for a pathogen to manifest symptoms means an epidemic can be firmly entrenched and metastasizing through the population before those attacked become aware of the incursion.

The means of intended destruction, as detailed by the Soviet/Russian defector, included weaponized versions of Ebola, Marburg, anthrax and most worrying (from my perspective), influenza. Ebola has a certain cache, made famous by Richard Preston in The Hot Zone, who sensationalized the virus by elaborating dramatic (and relatively non-representative) tales of “bleeding out.”  

However, influenza triggers the greatest terror in those in the know.  The hubbub of political news has virtually drowned out the fact 2018 is the centennial of one of the worst pandemics in modern human history: Spanish influenza.  This disease decimated communities and entire nations throughout the world a mere ten decades ago.  

Like the most absurd scene of a Monty Python movie, horse-drawn carts were driven down the streets of major American cities in 1918, with drivers broadcasting an entreaty to “bring out the dead.”  The number of lives taken by this virus was so large, and on a global basis, that its numbers can barely be estimated.  Our best guesses suggest roughly one in three people on the planet were infected and at least one in ten of those infected perished; perhaps far more. 

What the Soviets, and then continued by the Russians, had established in Biopreparatwas a myriad products meant to replicate these results and, whenever possible, to render such diseases even more deadly.  They succeeded by deploying natural selection techniques and, when nature was not deemed sufficiently deadly, using bioengineering techniques to amplify the carnage.

Amongst the pathogens that the Soviets/Russians have reportedly developed and improved were multiple versions of the 1918 version of the Spanish flu, including forms meant to be far more deadly and transmissible than even the notorious serial killer itself. 

A reasonable person might ask, “Why would the Russians do such a thing when the potential for ‘blowback’ and infecting one’s own population is inevitable.”  The answer is unknowable except this enemy is not always rationale, comparable to fictional villains from an Ian Fleming or Steven King novel. Yet at the same time, they are utterly rationale and merely continuing a strategy successfully used by Russian tyrants for centuries.

The revelation yesterday with the ability to transport me back to that long-distant meeting with Soviet/Russian terrorist was a report the Russians have already developed and actively deployed worldwide a new form of bioterror. 

A British reporter for The Guardianrevealed Russian trolls have been propagating fallacious and widely-disproven stories of supposed harm caused by vaccines.  This revelation struck me personally as my own work has evolved to include analyses of vaccines and the parallel rise of a surprisingly well-organized, anti-vaccine movement. These stories have been compiled in my newest book, Between Hope and Fear, which has been targeted by anti-vaccine trolls.  

This book addresses the uncomfortable truth the anti-vaccine movement is well-entrenched and impervious to rational thought. More importantly, this renegade crusade is extraordinarily dangerous, endangering not only the lives of unimmunized children but including other susceptible populations by broaching of a phenomenon widely known as herd immunity.

The anti-vaccine trolling is not unique to my book as other recent compositions of pro-vaccine works from Peter Hotez and Paul Offit have similarly been targeted by anti-vax trolls. These attacks often come in clusters, suggesting a well-developed organization.  It is now imaginable to believe such attacks could be the direct or indirect result of Russian trolls.

Again, a rational person might ask why the Russians would invite an anti-vaccine movement with inevitable blowback.  Such thinking is na?ve as our enemies are merely continuing a long-standing Soviet/Russian strategy of wars of attrition to maximize damage to enemies (liberal democracies), without care for the damage inflicted upon their own population. Propagating an anti-vaccine movement is but one example of a well-honed approach to sow doubt in the mind of American and European citizens about their governments and policies. 

Worse still, the Soviets/Russians are winning. Italy recently installed a government advocating the repeal of mandatory childhood vaccines and the Americans similarly elected an active and vehement anti-vaxxer as the forty-fifth President of the United States. 

The death toll of this successful campaign is growing.  Perhaps coincidentally, the Ukraine, an enemy of the Russian state, is suffering from its worst outbreak of measles and has a disproportionately low rate of vaccination. Europe more broadly is experiencing a dramatic increase in childhood maladies with measles representing the proverbial canary in the coal mine.  And the same rise in measles and other childhood diseases is occurring now in America.

The West in general, and America in particular, is the home to a vocal and organized anti-vaccine movement, which is knowingly or otherwise backed by the Russians.  Analogous to a physical bio-attack, where the disease has already spread prior to knowledge of the cause, the cyber attack involving the anti-vaccine movement has deep roots and powerful advocates.  This attack will require years, perhaps decades, to repel.

The United States and Europe are victims of a new form of bioterrorism and it will require extraordinary efforts to prevent the disease from spreading further.