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To help students, understand what is at stake in current issues raised by the new weapons science has given to modern terrorists, we will focus on the recent anthrax scare that authorities have attributed to terrorists, though the perpetrators have not been caught.
The human and economic costs of the anthrax attacks, the nation's first major act of bioterrorism, still haunt Americans all over the country today. A small amount of powder in five letters killed five people in Washington, Florida and New York, and sickened 17. The U.S. postal system was full of terror in several cities. Congressional offices were evacuated. As the Washington Post editorialized, "the cost of responding to the attacks on the U.S. Postal Service alone reached an estimated $1 billion, and that's not counting the additional costs of protecting its employees, customers and the mail system from future exposure to biohazardous material, according to a 2003 Postal Service report. The cost of cleaning up the Hart Senate Office Building and other offices on Capitol Hill ran into tens of millions of dollars. Testing and capital investments by government and nongovernmental entities in response to the attacks have required spending millions more. What's worse, the threat of attack by weaponries biological agent remains as real as it was the day those contaminated letters arrived at the offices of a tabloid newspaper in Florida, on Capitol Hill, and in postal facilities and media outlets in and around New York." (Washington Post, 2005; cf. Rainwater, 2001).
To help students understand the security threats posed by anthrax and other such biological weapons and to learn how science can both produce and combat such threats, students will learn the following basic scientific facts about anthrax, drawn primarily from the Center for Disease Control's webpage, "Anthrax: What You Need to Know" (http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/anthrax/needtoknow.asp).
Anthrax: Varieties and Dangers
There are three different types of anthrax: pulmonary, cutaneous, and gastrointestinal. The following is a description of the way each type of anthrax is transmitted and the symptoms.
Pulmonary or inhalational anthrax
Transmission.
Humans can become infected through inhalation of B. anthracis spores. As a bioterrorism agent, anthrax could be delivered as an aerosol. However, without some sort of delivery system, the spores are not passed through the air from an infected person to other persons or from animals to persons.
Symptoms
Early signs of inhalational anthrax are flu-like symptoms that could include a fever, cough, headache, vomiting, chills, weakness, abdominal pain, and chest pain. These symptoms would be difficult to diagnose as anthrax without a high degree of suspicion. A brief interim improvement could occur, followed by the abrupt onset of respiratory failure and other conditions. Symptoms generally occur rapidly after exposure, but can take up to 60 days depending on exposure route and dose.
Cutaneous anthrax
Transmission Cutaneous anthrax is the most common naturally occurring form. Humans can contract it by handling the hides or wool of infected animals or other materials containing spores, which can allow the spores to enter through cuts or scrapes. Cutaneous anthrax can be transmitted from person to person through direct contact with secretions from skin lesions caused by this form of anthrax.
Symptoms
Cutaneous anthrax is generally easier to recognize, simpler to treat, and associated with a much lower mortality than the inhalational form. It is most commonly seen on the head, forearms or hands and occurs locally after direct contact with spores or bacilli. Symptoms include localized itching followed by a small, solid bump resembling an insect bite. Within one to two days, the bump develops into a fluid-filled vesicle, which ruptures to form a painless ulcer, usually 1-3 cm in diameter. Within two to six days, the ulcer develops into a depressed black scab. These symptoms will generally begin to develop between one and seven days following cutaneous exposure.
Gastrointestinal anthrax
Transmission
Humans can also become infected with anthrax by eating insufficiently cooked meat from infected animals or ingesting other food that contains spores.
Symptoms
Symptoms of gastrointestinal anthrax include nausea, loss of appetite, vomiting, and fever, followed by abdominal pain, vomiting of blood, and severe diarrhea. These symptoms will generally develop between one and seven days following ingestion of contaminated food.
Bioterrorist Weapons and Civil Liberties
Background information
The anthrax scare has raised many safety issues that are pertinent to other hazards. But effort to safeguard against those hazards, can pose threats to civil liberties. The Radiant Justice Implementation Group is a Michigan organization that has sought to address issues of combating terrorist threats without unduly restricting personal freedoms. They seek to define a constructive middle ground, as in the following statement, which addresses government anti-terrorist steps such as the USA Patriot Act and the President's executive order authorizing military trials for suspected terrorists:
"A number of organizations have called for no restrictions on civil liberties, or for complete repeal of the anti-terrorism bill. We believe this is a mistake. Certain restrictions on civil liberties are appropriate in order to protect us from real dangers. One that comes to mind immediately is increased monitoring of mail as long as there is any credible threat that it may contain anthrax spores or some other deadly substance. Such monitoring may reasonably mean delay and perhaps opening of mail in some circumstances and invasion of privacy. Another is more careful checking of airline passengers and their luggage. This may also mean greater delays as well as some invasion of privacy.
However, many of the restrictions enacted go clearly too far. They deny basic rights to those suspected or accused by allowing detention without basic safeguards. They authorize military courts instead of civil courts at a time when that is wholly unnecessary. They shift powers to the FBI, CIA, and other law enforcement and related agencies. Of course, these powers have a legacy of abusing powers in the past for this very reason they have been restricted in the past" (http://htdconnect.com/~ige/rj/terror7.html).
In a thoughtful discussion that first reviews the history of infringements on civil liberties during American wars, Paul Rosenzweig, a lawyer and scholar at the Heritage Foundation, has laid out how he believes these tensions between protecting national security and preserving civil liberties should be dealt with (Rosenzweig, 2003):
"Of course, just because the Congress and the President have a constitutional obligation to act forcefully to safeguard Americans against attacks by foreign powers does not mean that every means by which they might attempt to act is necessarily prudent or within their power. Core American principles require that any new counter-terrorism technology deployed domestically) should be developed only within the following bounds:
- No fundamental liberty guaranteed by the Constitution can be breached or infringed upon.
- Any increased intrusion on American privacy interests must be justified through an understanding of the particular nature, significance, and severity of the threat being addressed by the program. The less significant the threat, the less justified the intrusion.
- Any new intrusion must be justified by a demonstration of its effectiveness in diminishing the threat. If the new system works poorly by, for example, creating a large number of false positives, it is suspect. Conversely, if there is a close "fit" between the technology and the threat (that is, for example, if it is accurate and useful in predicting or thwarting terror), the technology should be more willingly embraced.
- The full extent and nature of the intrusion worked by the system must be understood and appropriately limited. Not all intrusions are justified simply because they are effective. Strip searches at airports would prevent people from boarding planes with weapons, but at too high a cost.
- Whatever the justification for the intrusion, if there are less intrusive means of achieving the same end at a reasonably comparable cost, the less intrusive means ought to be preferred. There is no reason to erode Americans' privacy when equivalent results can be achieved without doing so.
- Any new system developed and implemented must be designed to be tolerable in the long term. The war against terror, uniquely, is one with no immediately foreseeable end. Thus, excessive intrusions may not be justified as emergency measures that will lapse upon the termination of hostilities. Policymakers must be restrained in their actions; Americans might have to live with their consequences for a long time."
Rosenzweig also argues that from these general principles, other more concrete conclusions regarding the development and construction of any new technology can be derived:
- No new system should alter or contravene existing legal restrictions on the government's ability to access data about private individuals. Any new system should mirror and implement existing legal limitations on domestic or foreign activity, depending upon its sphere of operation.
- Similarly, no new system should alter or contravene existing operational system limitations. Development of new technology is not a basis for authorizing new government powers or new government capabilities. Any such expansion should be independently justified.
- No new system that materially affects citizens' privacy should be developed without specific authorization by the American people's representatives in Congress and without provisions for their oversight of the operation of the system.
- Any new system should be, to the maximum extent practical, tamper-proof. To the extent the prevention of abuse is impossible, any new system should have built-in safeguards to ensure that abuse is both evident and traceable.
- Similarly, any new system should, to the maximum extent practical, be developed in a manner that incorporates technological improvements in the protection of American civil liberties.
- Finally, no new system should be implemented without the full panoply of protections against its abuse. As James Madison told the Virginia ratifying convention, "There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
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