Bioterrorism and your brain by Radio National 9:31am 3rd May, 2007   May 2007 (ABC Online: Radio National)    Knowledge can be dangerous. As neuroscience delves more deeply into our organ of thought and its complex soup of neurotransmitters - could it also be exploited for malign purposes? Is the brain the next target of terrorism? Pharmaceutically enhanced soldiers, chemical torture, incapacitants, neurological weaponry... The possibilities are frightening and progress rapid. Two leading researchers into biological weapons present their concerns, and argue scientists need to take action now. But are we at risk of paranoia?    Malcolm Dando: The problem with the kind of weapon we''re talking about now, the chemical and biological weapon is that you cannot contain it in the way that we''ve been able to slow proliferation of nuclear weapons down, by restraints on the nuke fissile material    Mark Wheelis: What we have to do is develop a much more complex, much more comprehensive, much more diverse control regime and that control regime really has to rest on an international consensus that these are weapons that no-one in the world wants developed.    Natasha Mitchell: My guests this week are Dr Mark Wheelis, a microbiologist and senior lecturer at the University of California, Davis. He''s active with the Center of Arms Control and Non-proliferation in the USA. And Malcolm Dando, also a biologist, Malcolm is now professor of international security in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford in the UK. Together they''ve co-edited a recent book, Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945 and they''ve penned a paper with the unsettling heading Neurobiology: A Case Study of the imminent militarisation of biology. A compelling reason to get them on.    Mark Wheelis and Malcolm Dando, joined me on the program this week.    Natasha Mitchell: You both suggest that biology will very much become the next military technology. Malcolm, why is that so?    Malcolm Dando: Well the first thing to say is that we don''t have an example of a major scientific and technological revolution which hasn''t been applied in a major way to hostile purposes as well as to benign purposes. So unless we do something radically different it''s very likely that this huge revolution that''s going on in the life sciences will get applied in a major way to hostile purposes.    Natasha Mitchell: What makes you suspect that the tools and knowledge of neuroscience and our really emerging understanding of the sophistication of brain chemistry are particularly vulnerable to abuse?    Malcolm Dando: Well if you look at the kind of reports which are being produced for example by the national academies in the United States, it begins just after the turn of the century with reports stressing that we have to be careful that the traditional biological agents, the pathogens, can be modified by genetic engineering. But then when it''s looked at more systematically the argument is then expanded to say it''s just not about genetic modification of pathogens, there are many other ways in which hostile purposes could be achieved.    For instance if you were to interfere with the immune system you wouldn''t have to worry too much about what pathogen you were using because the person would be open to any kind of attack from any pathogen that was around. So it''s across the whole range of biology that we have to be careful and we have to look very carefully at the possibilities of misuse. And in that context you can see how rapidly change has taken place in our understanding of the nervous system. We know attempts have been made in the last 50-odd years to do precisely that, to use the current neuroscience in order to achieve hostile ends.    Natasha Mitchell: Mark Wheelis, let''s then walk back a moment into history, because certainly the nervous system has been a target in the past – obviously mustard gas comes to mind in the early days – but perhaps give us a couple of other examples to trigger our memories.    Mark Wheelis: Well I wouldn''t say that mustard gas was specifically targeting the nervous system but certainly after the second world war there were conscious attempts on the part of several countries, we know about the UK and the United States in particular, in developing not only more lethal chemical agents such as the nerve agents, but also in developing non-lethal agents for different kinds of tactical purposes. So the United States went as far as to stockpile at least an ostensibly non-lethal chemical agent called BZ – although the stockpile didn''t last very long and the United States ultimately destroyed its BZ stockpiles.    Natasha Mitchell: And what was BZ?    Mark Wheelis: It''s a chemical that specifically interacts with the nervous system in particular ways by binding to particular classes of neuro-receptor.    Malcolm Dando: You know that the lethal chemical agents, things like sarin and soman and VX interfered with the operation of the acetylcholine neurotransmitter by blocking the enzyme that cleared it from the synapse and therefore flooding the body with acetylcholine with disastrous effects. Well BZ interfered with the same synapses but in a different way and therefore led to confusion, all kinds of aberrations in central nervous system operations.    Mark Wheelis: As far as I know that was the only psycho-active chemical that was stockpiled for non-lethal purposes. So there was a continuous effort from the 1950s to the beginning of the 1990s in identifying agents that would specifically interact with the nervous system in a non-lethal way but would incapacitate the targets.    Natasha Mitchell: And of course we remember the CIA experiments with psychedelics.    Mark Wheelis: Yes, LSD was one of the major compounds investigated and tetra hydro cannabinoids were also investigated; a wide variety of pharmaceutical agents and many others.    Natasha Mitchell: Well certainly the brain has become the focus of a huge amount of public research in the civilian world since, and of pharmaceutical research for medications of the mind; we''ve had the decade of the brain – to what extent is all this excitement spilled into military circles more recently?    Malcolm Dando: Well I think that what you have to say is that all of those efforts following from the second world war ran into the problem that they didn''t know enough about the nervous system and they couldn''t generate enough different chemicals very easily to test a whole range of chemicals. What changes in the 1990s is that first of all you have much, much better understanding of the variety of the different types of neuro-receptors in the brain and you have the growth of forms of chemistry which allow you to generate huge ranges of different kinds of chemicals to test against those receptors. So there''s a new thinking going on that maybe, maybe what we couldn''t do 50 years ago we may be able to do now. And you have evidence of continuing interest in the military circles in being able to do that.    * Visit the link below to access the complete transcript from this disturbing program. Visit the related web page
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