An Offensive Against Bioterrorism
October 4, 2001 Page: A18 Section: Letters
Our nation's current vulnerability to bioterrorism has implications beyond
simply accelerating public health measures at home. No impregnable, purely
vaccine- and drug-based bioterrorist shield is possible any more than
an impregnable star wars missile defense.
Just as the latter needs to be supplemented with diplomatic and military
measures designed to prevent or if necessary to overthrow dictatorships
manufacturing nuclear devices for terrorist export, so we need to prioritize
our diplomatic and military efforts to stop or, if necessary, to eliminate
those regimes intent on manufacturing bioterrorist weapons of mass destruction
for terrorist use.
Most urgently this means conducting the public debate as to whether to
target Saddam Hussein's Baath party regime in Iraq in terms which do
not follow the cold war liberal (hands off) versus conservative (intervene)
divide. For this debate to result in a rational policy decision valid
intelligence is needed as to his current and projected bioterrorist weapon
capability. We also must avoid being blinded by wishful thinking or modeling
the current conflict based upon our most recent one, the long Cold War
with the Soviet Union where we can be seen as having won "by waiting
them out" under the umbrella of mutually assured destruction. In
the current instance, time may not be on our side. MAD doesn't work with
either religious (the Taliban) or secular (Hussein's Baath party) cults.
The argument that we will only be targets of bioterrorism by way of retaliation
has never held true as far as Hussein's modus operandi. He, as the Nazi
cult in its genocidal program against the Jews during the Shoah, has
committed mass murder whenever he can get away with it.
While delay in offensive action may be helpful in boosting our domestic
bioterrorism defense and response capabilities, if the history of weapons
development is any guide, it is even more likely to work to the advantage
of bioterrorist-cultivating regimes by allowing more time for the manufacture
and dispersal of ever more potent bioterrorist weapons.
Harold J. Bursztajn, MD
Associate clinical professor of psychiatry
Harvard Medical School
Cambridge