A familiar name among AP Bio students, smallpox was once known as the world’s most deadly disease, but after a 12-year eradication effort, the virus was eradicated in 1979, and now only exists in laboratories. While it was active, however, the disease could spread like wildfire, through sneezes, coughs, contaminated bedding and clothing, open wounds, or occasionally skin-to-skin contact. The symptoms manifest after a short period, presenting as a high fever, body aches, and vomiting, before escalating into red spots and a rash with pustules filled with the virus. Many people died from the disease--more 300 million in the 20th century alone.
The Smallpox Virus--Variola |
However, the location of one of the laboratories has come to be a reason for concern among scientific communities. Until recently, biological weapons were seen as unlikely agents of destruction, mostly because countries previously believed there was a moral line that would be crossed by using them. But it has become known that Russia has continued development of its bioweapons program, even after signing an agreement to put an end to it. It has been speculated that they have been able to create certain weapons infected with smallpox and other viruses, with the intent of causing harm internationally. Some of these weapons are on the scale of ballistic missiles, which can travel between continents. A delivery of smallpox to the United States would be a national emergency as people have not been vaccinated since its eradication, and any form of mutation could have taken place in the virus. As many as 10 other countries are also seeking ways to develop biological weapons.
But why biological weaponry? Well, these unconventional weapons can be built in mundane situations and operate very discreetly (in aerosol spray form, among others). The workshop can be disinfected and people would only become ill a few weeks after an attack, but the pathogens can kill large amounts of people within a small amount of time and the weapons can cause widespread hysteria even faster than the death toll can rise.
What this means for us, however, is unclear. Scientists are preparing to deal with possible threats of endemic, learning from the history of outbreaks such as the ancient Egyptian smallpox outbreak, the European plague, and Philadelphia’s yellow fever epidemic in the 1700s, but it is too soon to tell what the future will bring. The world is rapidly changing as new technologies emerge (think CRISPR and other genomic modification tools) and as parts of Earth are being explored for the first time. This makes room for plenty of man-made mutant pathogens created in labs, eradicated pathogens, and newly discovered pathogens from newly explored areas of the world to be brought into civilization for the first time or for the third.
Evidence of a Smallpox Outbreak in Ancient Egypt from a Mummified Human |
It is clear that a new age of warfare is emerging, and it could be even deadlier than the nuclear weapons we have feared for most of our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment