Smallpox as a Weapon

Smallpox Bioweapon Realities

In the United States, several tabletop exercises have begun to explore the realities of dealing with bioweapons in today’s society. (22:V12:44-46)

The multi-faceted TOPOFF exercise, involved the simulation of 3 different types of events, a chemical, radiological and bioweapon attack in three cities. The exercise was specifically done to engage top US officials and agencies in the process of emergency response and decision-making at a local, state, and national functional level.

Another exercise called Dark Winter involved high-level state and federal officials and simulated a smallpox attack over a 13 day period. This exercise was meant to address higher level policy decision making and control measure implementation on a national scale.

Valuable lessons were learned in these exercises. It was determined that quarantine implementation and enforcement must happen locally. Each local government must be prepared to institute this measure and must understand its own powers to enforce quarantine. It’s the local area that knows its citizens and structure better than any other entity. Despite the local nature of this measure, other levels of government must also be involved. To avoid confusion, these various levels of government need to understand their authorities, powers, and responsibilities, and need to be able to coordinate rapidly in the event the quarantine needs to be implemented or expanded. Some communication materials and strategies must be developed before an event takes place. Having all levels of government agree on the intervention strategy, messages, and speaking with the same authority on the powers involved is key to maintaining trust in the quarantine and maintaining compliance.

In 1993, the former deputy director of the Soviet Union’s civilian bioweapons program, Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov (now Ken Alibek), reported that his government had produced large quantities of variola virus for use as a biologic weapon. (19:14) This work was done secretly for a number of years and went against the WHO’s edict that neither of the two Collaborating Centres (CDC in Atlanta and Institute for Viral Preparations in Moscow) were officially allowed to do experiments with smallpox DNA. 

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