Biological agents with a potential for misuse

Question 1

What was the Geneva protocol?

Answer 1

This was signed in 1925 after the first world war. Those who signed up were agreeing not to use asphyxiating r poisonous gases as biological agents as weapons.

Question 2

what was the main issue with the Geneva protocol??

Answer 2

The issue with this was that the treaty did not say anything about members not being allows to produce or store biological agents.

Question 3

What was the biological weapons convention?

Answer 3

this was signed in 1972 countries in this were agreeing that they would not develop, produce or stockpile any biological agent weapons and would destroy and of these that they already had.

Question 4

Give an example of use of a biological agent from a member country of the geneva protocol and the biological weapons convention?

Answer 4

in 1935 italy used mustard gas in abyssinia and there were little repercussions from this other than the execution of two pilots who were part of the deployment team of these gases

Question 5

What is NATO handbook

Answer 5

This organisation NATO has made a list of which biological agents could potentially be used as weapons. Member countries of NATO agree not to use or stock biological weapons are so they are particularly vulnerable to attack.

Question 6

what is NATO?

Answer 6

the north Atlantic treaty organisation made up many countries with UK,USA,FR the leaders with the power to VETO (because they have nuclear weapons)

Question 7

Why are the advantages of the use of biological agents in warfare?

Answer 7

they are cheap
easy to make 
plausible deniability 
effective - just as 
social, enconomic destruction 
huge health service burden 
easy to produce 
can be delivered simply

Question 8

what are the main ways that biological agents can be spread

Answer 8

ingestion
aerosol
percutaneous
secondary spread from infected people

Question 9

which four biological agents are the most likely to be used?

Answer 9

small pox
plague
anthrax
botulinum

Question 10

What are the three ways you can get anthrax?

Answer 10

cutaneous infection inhalation anthrax, and GI anthrax.

Question 11

What are three examples in history in the use of Anthrax?

Answer 11

gruinard and Sverdlorsk and the american anthrax attacks

Question 12

how can you treat a small pox infection

Answer 12

there are no treatments for smallpox

Question 13

what is sledgehammer small pox?

Answer 13

incontrollable bleeding from skin lesions, and the mouth nose.

Question 14

what did WHO declare in 1980?

Answer 14

that small pox had been eradicated due to extensive vaccination (except two lab stocks)

Question 15

what are the disadvantages of using small pox as a biological weapon?

Answer 15

of what is released 90% would die in 24 hours

Question 16

what are the advantages of using small pox as a weapon?

Answer 16

secondary infection rate is high with one person infecting on average 10 people and the small pox that survives dispersal will survive for around a week.

Question 17

when was the last natural small pox case and where?

Answer 17

somalia 1977

Question 18

when was the last human case of small pox?

Answer 18

1978 university of birmingham medical school - janet parker died

Question 19

When does Clostridium botulinum produce botulinum?

Answer 19

in aerobic conditions like in the gut

Question 20

what can be done to kill the toxin?

Answer 20

Heat, often cases happen when food isn’t heated enough to kill the spores

Question 21

how does botulinum cause death?

Answer 21

1: the toxin disseminates into the blood stream
2: the toxin is endocytosed by the retrieval of the synaptic vesicle
3: the acidification of the vesicle causes the toxin to form a pore in the vesicle.
4: a disulfide bond is borken and the light chain is released into the cytosol
5: the light chain prevents fusion and synaptic vesicle release this leads to paralysis and death

Question 22

how much botulinum toxin would you need to kill 1M people?

Answer 22

1 gram

Question 23

what is the difficulty with trying to make botulinum into a weapon?

Answer 23

its hard to aerosolise, and hard to concentrate

Question 24

which country made 19000 litres of botulinum?

Answer 24

iraq, still not all accounted for

Question 25

what is the aum shirrikyo cult do?

Answer 25

released botulinum into the tokyo underground but the aerosolisation failed.

Question 26

where can you get clostridium botulinum?

Answer 26

the soil