ArmsControlWonk.com

Jack McGeorge, left, in one of his rubber suits examines an Iraqi 122 mm rocket potentially filled with sarin

One of the great unsung heroes of the UN weapons inspections in Iraq passed away during cardiac surgery on 18 August 2009.

We were fortunate to work with Harvey “Jack” McGeorge at the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) from 2002 to 2003, where he led many Multidisciplinary inspections in Iraq. Jack was an internationally recognized expert on chemical and biological warfare in general and munitions in particular whose career included the U.S. Marine Corps and Army Special Forces as well as the U.S. Secret Service. Having come up “through the ranks,” he was awarded a honorary Doctorate by the Russian State Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology (GosNIIOKhT) for his work in the field of chemical and biological terrorism.

For those of us who knew Jack, he was a wonderful friend and colleague who was generous with his time and knowledge. It seems like everything we know about munitions, and there is a great deal to know, we learned from Jack; usually over coffee in the basement of the UN Headquarters. Few things made him as happy as thinking about spinning iron balls spewing boiling mustard gas. At the same time, he was dedicated to eradicating these terrible weapons, which just shows that you have to know the devil to get rid of him. This is not the time or place to write the complete history of the weapons inspection process in Iraq, but when it is written, Jack will be seen to have played important roles from debunking aluminum tubes to confirming anthrax filled gravity bombs.
Mike Elleman
Geoff Forden

Just a reminder that New America and Global Green USA are hosting a talk and a wine reception for Piers Millet here at the New America Foundation:

Strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention
Discussion and Wine Reception

Unlike the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) has no mechanism to ensure compliance and verification.

Given the dramatic advances in the life sciences over the past decade, the international community urgently needs to discuss strengthening the BWC.

Join the New America Foundation and Global Green USA as Piers Millett, one of the three experts from the BWC Implementation Support Unit in Geneva, and Paul Walker, president of Global Green USA, discuss how best to combat bioterrorism and the spread of bioweapons
.
Start: 07/08/2009 – 3:30pm
End: 07/08/2009 – 6:00pm
New America Foundation
1899 L Street NW Suite 400
Washington, 20036
United States
See map: Google Maps

RSVP

Participants
Featured Speakers
Dr. Piers Millett
Political Affairs Officer
Biological Weapons Convention Implementation Support Unit

Dr. Paul Walker
Director, Security and Sustainability
Global Green USA

Moderator
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis
Director, Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative
New America Foundation
Publisher, ArmsControlWonk.com

Please come and join us. RSVP here.

The first time I met Piers Millett, we were having a drink at Mr. Pickwick Pub in Geneva.

Now, Piers — one of only three members of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Implementation Support Unit in Geneva — is in town.

Long-time readers know one of my hobby horses is the fact that the policy community obsesses about phantom BW programs at the expense of international cooperation to fight the spread of virulent influenza. Someday, a lot of people are going to suffer for this particular sin.

Anyway, along with my friend Paul Walker at Global Green USA, I am hosting a talk and a wine reception for Piers here at the New America Foundation:

Strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention
Discussion and Wine Reception

Unlike the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) has no mechanism to ensure compliance and verification.

Given the dramatic advances in the life sciences over the past decade, the international community urgently needs to discuss strengthening the BWC.

Join the New America Foundation and Global Green USA as Piers Millett, one of the three experts from the BWC Implementation Support Unit in Geneva, and Paul Walker, president of Global Green USA, discuss how best to combat bioterrorism and the spread of bioweapons
.
Start: 07/08/2009 – 3:30pm
End: 07/08/2009 – 6:00pm
New America Foundation
1899 L Street NW Suite 400
Washington, 20036
United States
See map: Google Maps

RSVP

Participants
Featured Speakers
Dr. Piers Millett
Political Affairs Officer
Biological Weapons Convention Implementation Support Unit

Dr. Paul Walker
Director, Security and Sustainability
Global Green USA

Moderator
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis
Director, Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative
New America Foundation
Publisher, ArmsControlWonk.com

Please come and join us. RSVP here.

click on the image for a larger version

The Mother of All Influenza Viruses. This graph indicates that all the H1N1 viruses that circulated since 1918 were mutations of the Spanish Flu. (From Taubenberger and Reid, Influenza, ed. C. W. Potter, p. 118.)

Nothing says dual-use like biology. And, seemingly, nothing worries some policymakers more than the spread (or discovery) of biological knowledge. Of course, the reasons for this are obvious if you are more worried about the misuse of knowledge than the benefits that knowledge can give to humanity. The suspects in the 2001 anthrax attacks, and their association with Fort Detrick, add a certain punch to this belief. On the other hand, making bio-agents is often the first step in making a vaccine or other beneficial medicine. I remember seeing large bags being filled with tetanus toxin produced in a developing country and then “denatured” to produce shots that obviously save a lot of lives. On the other hand, the larger fermentors used for its production could easily be used to produce botulinum toxin or other anaerobic bacteria suitable for weaponization.

We see the same tensions playing out in the nuclear field with a sizeable chunk of policymakers (most seemingly from developed countries) and across a wide range of the political spectrum saying that nationally owned enrichment centers pose a significant danger to proliferation. At the same time, important statesmen for developing countries have stated: “The assumption should not be that some nuclear technologies are safe in some hands but not others.” This debate will not be easily settled and is well worth discussing. ( I come down in favor of limiting and eventually ending nationally owned enrichment facilities, through out the world and including in the United States, in favor of multinationally owned ventures . However, the deals must be made so economically favorable, by using economically efficient centrifuges, as to induce countries to join voluntarily.)

I was struck once again by this balancing act between acquiring knowledge and banning certain types of research when it was recently announced that the H1N1 virus (aka swine flu) in the current outbreak did not have the “genetic markers” associated with really virulent 1918 “Spanish Flu.” That flu virus’s genetic code was sequenced in 1997. The dangers associated with such procedures were discussed almost immediately by a number of authors. I recommend this article in Nature for a considered discussion of how to weight the pros and cons of reconstructing the 1918 Spanish Flu virus. Of course, that was written before the current pandemic-scare. I find the fact that the genetic markers (so far, I have not been able to find out which markers they are talking about) of this current flu are different from the 1918 variety very reassuring. It should also have a significant impact on what choices public health officials make. None of that would be possible without the sequencing of the virus.

click on the image for a larger version

R is the number of secondary cases caused by each infected person; thus R=1.1 means for each ten people sick, one more person will come down with the disease they will transmit it to 11 other people; R=3 means that each infected person transmits it to three others.

To say that the required response to a pandemic depends on its virulence is, of course, like saying rain depends on clouds. However, there have been a number of interesting simulations that do show which measures are effective and which are not at various levels of virulence. I’m using just one group of papers by one set of authors ( Roberts, Baker, Jennings, Sertsou, and Wilson ) to examine this issue so it’s likely that there are other results that might lead to different conclusions. (These papers are also for isolated communities, like New Zealand, that have only a single introduction of the disease so large countries with multiple entry points might respond differently.) Nevertheless, it is interesting to see which measures are effective and which are not.

For a relatively non-virulent strains (i.e. does not rabidly infect others), relatively benign measures would work. Unfortunately, relatively non-virulent strains last longer: the model I’m talking about predicts that if R=1.1, it would take 600 days for the epidemic to run its course if no preventative steps are taken. A very virulent strain, where each sick person infects three others, would burn through the population in 80 days. Closing schools, one of the first thing any parent thinks about, could have a significant social impact if the disease ran that long of a course. On the other hand, it is very effective to simply treat sick people and the people who live in the same house with antiviral meds such as tamiflu. It would also seem that only in the most virulent outbreaks do we need to even quarantine those people in their homes. Which is probably good since that doesn’t seem to have a very high compliance rate (it was assumed in the study that 70% of the people complied with it). Try quarantining some of those folks who refuse to pay their taxes because they don’t believe the constitution gives the government that right!

It really seems that antiviral meds, if effective, are the big difference between now and 1918. However, we don’t need to stockpile enough doses for everyone in the nation, only those sick and those living with them. Mexico City has, both by decree (closing schools and churches) and common consent (avoiding museums etc.), implemented very wide ranging quarantine measures. But do they have antiviral meds? If not, the United States should, out of its own interest, start sharing those meds with Mexico. It would seem that they wouldn’t need very much.

Of course, there are questions about how effective antiviral meds are with a report in the Los Angles Times that Tamiflu is not as effective against N1H1 strains as some older meds. This is another important issue to be settled as soon as possible. (Please note I am NOT suggesting shipping Tamiflu to Mexico as a way of testing its effectiveness. Effective antiviral meds to Mexico is an important public health initiative and not a laboratory study.) If antiviral meds are NOT effective, then public health measures are going to have to have significant social impact for extended periods of time if the virus is more virulent than the R=1.1 case shown here.

red=confirmed swine flu infections as of 26 April 2009
orange=suspected infections

To put this into SAT format: Public health surveillance is to pandemics (and bio-weapons) as ballistic early warning radars are to nuclear war. In addition to sharing an early warning role, there are also a number of important policy issues they have in common with nuclear war warning systems: How do you know its real? What constitutes the trip wire for full scale response? What is the proper level of response?

As we watch the start of this disease cycle, and wait for hard epidemiological numbers to crystallize, I want to explore the various policy choices that are available and the types of information that go into them. We should, however, keep two important historical examples in mind; the first shows the dangers of reacting too quickly while the second, the dangers of reacting too late or not at all.

In January 1976, a respiratory disease later determined to be swine flu passed person-to-person broke out at Fort Dix with one solider dying the day after first reporting symptoms. By the beginning of April, the CDC had decided to start a nation wide vaccination program with President Ford urging every American to get a shot. (Stockpiling vaccines was not considered because the dangers of vaccinations were not fully realized. It was considered better to “store the vaccine in people than in warehouses.”) Ten months after the first case was reported, 45 million people had been immunized. This short time line caused considerable logistical difficulties with one manufacturer using the wrong virus to derive their stock of vaccines. By the time the immunization program was shut down, after an increase in the number of deaths associated with the vaccine from Guillain-Barre syndrome reaching around 25 and only a handful of additional cases suspected, the program cost around $700 million in 2009 dollars. (Its hard for me to imagine a crash vaccine production program costing less or working more smoothly if we were faced with a need now.)

The other cautionary tail involves the outbreak of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in China in January 2003. At that time, eight health care workers and relatives of patients in a hospital in Guangdong Province came down with what they termed “atypical pneumonia.” (When SARS spread, first to Vietnam and later other countries, health care workers were particularly susceptible.) Provincial officials eventually traced the outbreak back to a single family in the province in November 2002. National authorities in Beijing handled this outbreak in what was then it traditional response to epidemics: they silently tried to control it “without upsetting social stability.” (Ruotao Wang, “China’s Response to SARS”, Temple Law Review, 2004, 77 p. 149 ) The world did not learn about SARS until March 2003 when Dr. Carlo Urbani , a doctor working in Vietnam and who soon died of the disease, reported it to the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO set up a secure internet site for doctors and researchers to communicate and exchange chest X-rays in the (unfulfilled) hope of finding a diagnostic tool. SARS spread to over 30 countries in a few weeks. In June 2003, WHO held a conference on SARS with nearly 1400 attendees. Meanwhile, infected patients were quarantined and while no specific cure was found, this was enough to break the back of the epidemic.

Quarantine is obviously an effect public health care measure. But will it be sufficient in the future? In my next post, I hope to examine various models for reacting to pandemics.

With the discovery of a new and deadly flu virus in Mexico that might become a worldwide pandemic, I wanted to familiarize myself with the terminology used and bandied about so much in the media. This is the flu naming conventions such as H1N1 or H5N1 strains we are starting to hear so much about. (By the way, this qualifies for armscontrolwonk.com because the public health response to a pandemic is the same whether or not it is caused by human action.)

So here is a quick tutorial on Flu Terminology that I’ve learned:

Flu viruses are categorized by two surface molecules: the neuraminidase (from which the N comes from) and the haemagglutinin molecules (where we get the H). Neuraminidase and haemagglutinin are characterized by the response of antibodies to them. For human influenza viruses the convention is:

—all those in circulation before 1957 are termed H1N1 viruses

—those arising between 1957 and 1968 are known as H2N2

—those present since 1968 (and not previously named) are known as H3N2 (my reference material dates from 2002 so perhaps more have arisen.)

Other strains, such as H5N1, are not originally human viruses though the big danger is that they will jump from birds, swine, or horses to humans.

Neuraminidase has been described as a “mushroom” shaped molecule but with a square head attached to a long thin stalk. It is associated with the release of viruses produced in a host cell. In fact, neuraminidase specific antibodies will prevent their release but will not prevent the original infection of the cell. There are five separate sites on the neuraminidase molecule that antibodies bind to. A single amino acid change at any of these sites makes the virus invisible to the antibodies that had previously attached quite well.

Hemagglutinin is a triangular rod-shaped molecule and is associated with the virus’ binding sites in the host organism. For instance, human and swine haemagglutinin prefer one type of receptor molecules and bird flu viruses prefer a different one.

Interestingly, if a cell is infected with two different flu viruses (such as H1N1 and H2N2) then the virus genetic material can be rearranged in the cell so that the released viruses include mixes like H1N2 and H2N1 surface molecules.

Most of this information comes from the various papers in “Influenza” edited by C.W. Potter. If I’ve made any mistakes, I’m sure biologically oriented wonk-readers will let me know and correct the errors in the comments.

[Geoff takes pains to justify his post about pandemic influenza, but this is a topic we have discussed before. Pandemic influenza is the sort of non-deliberate threat threat that requires “cooperation between potential enemies”, a solution set that encompasses the canonical definition of arms control — Jeffrey]

Spelled out in Anthrax spores

Disease is a funny thing. The general tendency of the public is to blame the ill person. Nothing illustrates this better than the way societies treat people who have acquired AIDS/HIV. However, the public health officials in the Philippines are doing a good job of expanding that “policy” of victimizing the victims with their quarantining 12 postal workers who handled a package filled with a suspicious powder. Let me say this so that people understand: you cannot catch anthrax from someone who is sick with anthrax, even respratory anthrax. Decontaminate them, give them antibiotics, but do not quarantine them. I hope emergency personnel will learn this lesson for the future otherwise our first responders are going to be in a real bind if a terrorist attack ever actually occurs again.

ps I have been traveling all weekend to get here to Italy so there was a delay in some of the moderation of posts recently.

The Second CWC Review Conference (2008) has a nice website and some excellent live blogging by Cheryl Voss and Daniel Feakes.

Somehow, though, they both missed (I stand corrected). Cheryl Vos noticed an extraordinary statement by the Dutch Foreign Minister regarding his hopes and dreams for the OPCW:

One of the world’s best ice hockey players, the Canadian Wayne Gretzky, once said that a good hockey player plays where the puck is; but a great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. The ambition of this review conference should be to turn the OPCW from a good player into a great player. Understanding the future and preparing for it are key. I wish you a most productive conference.

All of this raises the natural question, of course, do the Dutch play ice hockey?

The answer, as the picture above suggests, turns out to be “yes” — though not very well. That’s a Dutch goalie, letting a pick slip by, in a 3-1 loss to mighty Kazakhstan.

Wonders never cease.

I really love WMD Insights.

I’ve been meaning to link to a recent article by Markus Binder tracking how the IC has toned down its assessment of Iran’s CW capabilities:

In the Sec. 721 report covering the first half of 2003, released in November 2003, we see the beginnings of a process of declining certainty associated with descriptions of Iranian CW activity and capabilities. The report states that Iran “likely has already stockpiled blister, blood, choking, and probably nerve agents” retreating slightly from the previous bald assertion that Iran “has” a CW stockpile. [17] A further reduction is seen in the Sec. 721 report for the second half of 2003, released in November 2004. This report confines itself to stating that “Iran may have already stockpiled blister, blood, choking, and possibly nerve agents.” [18]

Finally, in the most recent Sec. 721 report, publicly released in May 2006, but covering activities in 2004, all reference to stockpiles and delivery systems was removed. All that remained was the statement that Iran “continued to seek production technology, training, and expertise from foreign entities that could further Tehran’s efforts to achieve an indigenous capability to produce nerve agents.” [19] Although Sec. 721 reports are supposed to be released annually, the DNI has not publicly released an update since May 2006, and it is therefore not possible to determine whether or not DNI has maintained or modified its 2004 position. The changes in the CIA’s public reports alone are insufficient to reach a conclusion about the wider U.S. intelligence community’s contemporary assessment of Iran’s CW program or its capabilities. Fortunately, although there have been no further releases from the CIA, we do have access to the assessments of at least two other U.S. government agencies for the period 2004 to 2007.

We now have two more 721 reports from 2005 and 2006. Although both demonstrate the declining trend identified by Binder, the 2006 report contains the judgment that Iran “maintains a small, covert CW stockpile.”

Now, the old estimate was that Iran had “several thousand tons” of CW weapons. So, I started to wonder, what makes a chemical weapons stockpile large? After all, as Secretary Powell observed, “Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly 5 times the size of Manhattan.”

Oh, sorry for bringing that up. I feel all weird and awkward now.

As it turns out, “large” is a pretty elastic term that has been used to describe Libya (23 metric tons), pre-1991 Iraq (690 metric tons) and Russia (40,000 metric tons).

What’s the over/under on the size of the Iranian CW stockpile? 1 ton? 10? 1/10th?