• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Next bioterror weapon may be influenza

Hospital Safety Connection, July 3, 2003

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Hospital Safety Connection!

A new study concludes that the future of bioterrorism may lie in new mutations of an old nemesis: influenza.

A group of University of Texas researchers warned in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine that scientists could take an easily accessible virus such as influenza and build a more potent virus that could kill many more people than anthrax or smallpox, Reuters reports. The study referred to a series of flu epidemics in the early 1900s from Spain to Russia and Hong Kong that killed millions of people as the virus naturally mutated.

Sequencing of the genome of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic is nearly complete, meaning rogue scientists could develop a potentially more deadly virus. Terrorists could spread the weaponized virus in aerosol form, since the flu virus is transmissible through tiny droplets in the air.

To prevent this from happening, the study suggested more immunization, increased laboratory security, stockpiling of antiviral drugs, closer monitoring of outbreaks, and fitting filters and sensors to buildings.

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Hospital Safety Connection!

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive