Bio Warfare

Order our emergency preparedness book so you can be prepared for a terrorism emergency. Don't wait until it is too late.

The qualitative and quantitative impact of biological warfare, or the threat of such warfare, on military forces and urban communities has changed markedly in the past 20 years. Improved production techniques have resulted in more virulent strains of organisms and the genetic modification of non-pathogenic organisms to pathogenic strains with virulent characteristics. The implications of genetic engineering for chemical and biological warfare are far-reaching. Genetic engineering provides the potential for improved virulence by the incorporation of genes (i.e., specific strands of DNA) permitting increased production of a pathogen or toxin. Thus, as much as 100 times more pathogen or toxin could be produced per cell than that which could be produced by naturally occurring strains. Cells that normally do not produce toxins may be altered to produce toxins for biological weapon development. Conversely, known pathogens or toxins may be genetically inactivated for vaccine countermeasure development. Cells can also be modified to produce antibodies directly for passive immunization against specific infectious agents. As with the human immune system, many current biowarfare detection kits depend on antibodies reacting with the antigenic surface coatings of pathogenic bacteria or viruses. Thus, modified non-pathogens can be used to mask the agent from the immune-based detector and, potentially, from the human immune system itself to increase the agent’s effectiveness.

Order our emergency preparedness book.