Microbes by the ton: Officials see weapons threat as North Korea gains biotech expertise

MSN ^ | 12/11/17 | Joby Warrick

[Lazamataz]

Five months before North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, U.S. intelligence officials sent a report to Congress warning that secret work also was underway on a biological weapon. The communist regime, which had long ago acquired the pathogens that cause smallpox and anthrax, had assembled teams of scientists but seemed to be lacking in certain technical skills, the report said.

"Pyongyang's resources presently include a rudimentary biotechnology infrastructure," the report by the director of national intelligence explained.

A decade later, the technical hurdles appear to be falling away. North Korea is moving steadily to acquire the essential machinery that could potentially be used for an advanced bioweapons program, from factories that can produce microbes by the ton, to laboratories specializing in genetic modification, according to U.S. and Asian intelligence officials and weapons experts.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

You can blame some part of North Korea's nuclear capability on Pakistan, whose AQ Khan not only stole nuclear technology for his own nation, but also proliferated it to North Korea and Iran.

But the root cause of the mess that is North Korea - its enabler and its patron - is the People's Republic of China. This global threat is something they've created and it's quite obvious they don't know how to defuse this monster on their border. North Korea is first and foremost China's problem.

[SargeK]

I hope MSN is misinformed. Reference collections of smallpox virus is supposed to only exist in two places, the CDC in Atlanta and Biopreparat in Russia. However USSR defector Ken Alibek has alleged that the Soviets maintained a massive clandestine bio weapons program, including smallpox, in defiance of the Convention.

IF the Norks have a seed stock of variola (causative virus in smallpox) it is extremely dangerous. Smallpox has been eradicated in the wild. The last wild case was seen in Germany in 1979. Very few people have been vaccinated in the past 30+ years. Even among us older folk who were vaccinated as children, the immunity is likely to have faded over the years. Smallpox could cause a brushfire epidemic that would kill many millions.

Stocks of Dryvax vaccine are very limited. I don’t think it’s been produced for many years. More people now suffer from autoimmune conditions like eczema who cannot be vaccinated (it is a live attenuated virus vaccine).

A bio weapon attack should be considered the same as a nuclear weapons attack and draw the same retaliatory response.

[SargeK]

Correcting myself:

Russian stocks at Vector, not Biopreparat.

Last case in Europe in Meschede, Germany in 1970.

Last wild case in a child in Bangladesh.