Posted on 04/30/2003 10:13:20 PM PDT by Sweet_Sunflower29
The mounting death toll exacted by SARS in China has triggered speculation that the virus could ultimately be traced back to a leak from military bio-weapon programs. Although most reporting favors a natural origin for SARS, a bio-weapon link should at least not be ruled out, according to Richard Fisher, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.
"While there is no reported evidence that SARS is indeed a weapon, there are plenty of ways that a real weapon with the properties of SARS could prove decisive in a military conflict," he said.
China's most famous dissident, the exiled Wei Jingsheng, in an opinion piece this week cited rumors circulating in China, such as the idea "that SARS emanated from China's biological weapons research facilities."
Without explicitly dismissing the possibility, Wei noted in the piece, published in the International Herald Tribune, that Chinese President Hu Jintao had visited a bio-military research facility to dampen the rumors.
Many analysts consider a link between Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and bio-weapons far-fetched, citing the lack of any evidence to support it.
"This speculation is pretty baseless," said Stephanie Lieggi, an East Asia expert at the California-based Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
"I have seen nothing in recent reports that would support any connection between SARS and biological weapons," she said.
No known biological weapon has all the properties so far associated with
But rough parallels -- deadly viruses that reproduce and spread through a human population by multiple means -- do exist, according to analysts.
The main argument against the theory is the low kill ratio associated with SARS, as more than 90 percent of those struck by the virus seem to recover.
And although it is transmitted relatively easily, it seems to be less contagious than most known viral bio-weapons, according to experts.
But it is exactly the innocuous nature of SARS that could make it militarily useful for someone wanting to sow panic and prompt political instability, Fisher argued.
"A seemingly 'natural' epidemic would lessen suspicion of the main 'enemy state' by the target country and its main allies," he said.
"With that target government increasingly preoccupied by a major health crisis, it would then be distracted from other possible threats, thus increasing the chances an outside attack could succeed," he said.
The theory that SARS was a leaked weapon would depend on the existence of an offensive biological weapon program in China, and not just a defensive effort aimed at protection from foreign attack.
According to US intelligence sources, the People's Liberation Armydoes have an offensive program, although it appears to have been scaled down over the past two decades.
The Institute of Military Medicine near Beijing has been engaged at least in defensive research, while some other biotechnology facilities could have both civilian and military uses.
One crucial but unknown factor is the role played by biological weapons in China's military doctrine.
Overseas analysts simply do not know for sure whether China envisages the use of biological weapons in future wars.
Strategic planners in China are fascinated by the concept of "asymmetrical warfare", which facilitates victory over a stronger enemy, such as the United States, by hitting it where it is relatively weak.
Much of this research is believed to focus on high-technology capabilities such as satellite jamming, rather than biological weapons.
However, the exact thinking of the higher rungs inside the PLA remains obscure to the outside world, leaving several possibilities open.
"In the absence of clear knowledge of PLA doctrine in this area, one can presume that the PLA at a minimum maintains a stock of bioweapons for retaliation purposes," said Fisher.
Not neccessarily. It would depend upon the stage of the research. You have to create the 'bug' first before you can find a way to fight it- until you do that you have to be very, very careful about containment. Only after you've made at least a small supply of the pathogen can you have samples to introduce to lab animals or research subjects, and only then can you try to find a treatment. When introduced to lab animals, containment is more difficult than the earlier stage of research. Now you have to contain the animals, too- and isolate them from other critters and vermin- as well as dispose of their waste in a safe manner. The Chinese aren't known for being overly concerned about safety. This means more and more people are involved in the chain of responsibility, and the more people involved, the greater the chance of a mistake.
China is not a first-rate power nor are its institutions up to western standards. Their citizenry have low morale, poor living and working conditions, and this is in large part a result of corruption and inefficiency throughout every level of society. There is a strong incentive in all societies which are centralized to cover up bad news as long as possible as the bearers of such news are not going to be received well- we saw this in Iraq and in the USSR, and we saw it in this case with China, where they hid the problem rather than to confer with others on how best to take action to prevent "collateral damage." There's not much innovation going on in China, either. Instead they depend on corporate espionage as well as the more traditional kind to advance the stage of their technological development.
It's possible the Chinese could get into something over their heads because they skipped over the stages of development which would have prepared them for unexpected problems- the Chinese have been known to religiously copy every detail of swiped tech including the flaws, because they didn't fully understand or explore the trechnology before replicating it. All of this means that people will be careless, unwitting, or may even act out of disgruntlement, none of which is conducive to meticulous lab work.
That doesn't mean they have a bioweapon on their hands- it may mean they have unwittingly allowed a research project get out of hand. Or this may be "natural" - China has some serious problems with city planning and the sanitation is quite "third world." In this case an engineered pathogen released into the environment could be disaster.
If China is the victim of a Bio-attack, it could be from several possible sources:
It could be the victiom of a natural outbreak of a mutated pathogen, an attack by internal dissenters, a lone nut, external enemies, or some researcher could simply have screwed up. going by the KISS method, the first and the last seem more probable.
Islamic terrorists groups--Osama Laden had said in an Arab TV in 2001, that "..after I had destroyed the US , I will next destroy China, the World's second greatest power...".
I haven't heard that rant; it doesn't sound like one of his rants. He would have mentioned Israel, Russia, and probably even India before China as his target. Also, China is NOT the world's second-greatest power; it's ability to project power is virtually nil. Of course, bin Laden's accuracy rating is low and he may not know that, but it has not been lost on his followers in al Qaeda that China is a good trade partner. We fire a cruise missile at al Qaeda, al Qaeda sells it to China for their reverse engineering program.
Islamic Separatist Terrorist groups from the Xinjiang Province in China have been carrying out terrorist bombings attacks on Chinese civilians, even bombing Chinese school-buses ,and killing 100s of Chinese school-children
I doubt they are able to do much bioresearch. Islamic separatist terrorists verses Chinese communists trying to integrate Xinjiang- it's hard to tell those two terrorist groups apart. One obeys Allah and blows up people, the other obeys the socialist state and cheers on tanks in Tianamen square.
Assuming Xinjiang terrorists did it, they would have had to be supported by someone else- I doubt Xinjiang is a hotbed of Islamic bioresearch. What state would want to hand over bioweapons to strangers in Xinjiang? Pakistan? I doubt it since the Pakis wopuld rather deal with China than risk ticking it off. Iraq? I doubt that- Iraq was a client of China. India wouldn't do it as they would fear it would be used on them. Iran and Cuba? Not likely- they're buddies. Russia? Unlikely as they have their own Islamic separatist prolems and wouldn't want blowback. A criminal syndicate might sell some old Russian materials.
Non-governmental Right-Wing Anti-Communist Extremists groups, from the US, Japan etc
There is no such thing as "right" and "left" politically, at least not as it is commonly - and erronously- presented, the opposite ends of a bar. They are really two ideological Siamese twins of the modern "left," adjacent points on a political chart. The so-called left, Communism, is just International Socialism. The so-called right, called Socialism is just National Socialism. Both are group-rights socialist ideologies - and thus are in opposition to individual liberty- which is what we call conservatism here in the US. The American right is antisocialist- and is in opposition to both forms of socialism, national and international. Socialism and communism are extremist ideologies and murderous in the extreme; opposing them in any fashion is not extreme. At the worst, it can only be on par.
Taiwanese Separatist Groups-the more extreme ones
There is no such thing as an "extreme" Taiwanese separatist, nor even a "separatist" Taiwanese. That you refer to anticommunists as extreme, when communism is itself a horrific extremist ideology, and you refer to Taiwanese NATIONALISTS as "separatists," indicates you are probably mainland Chinese. Taiwan, never being the territory of the communist Chinese government, cannot "separate" from it. It has never been under the rule of the mainland regime, and if anything, its government preceded the one currently occupying China. The mainland government, by the way, is the rebellious "separatist" government. An "extremist" would be a Taiwanese who wants to integrate with a communist state.
It is unlikely that any Govts would do this
It's probably true that no government would do it deliberately. But it is very possible, assuming it's not "natural," that a government agency of China or Chinese research facility could have accidently released it just as has happened with the Russians.
But seriously, the thought of an unintentional bioweapon release hit me first, although the Chinese could lose a few million people and still have plenty left.(figure 0.1% of their population for every million deaths, and you begin to get the picture). Could be a war of attrition..
Not necessarily. They may have been working on that part when the virus escaped.
It is also possible that a few million indigenous casualties could be seen as acceptable losses when infecting the world, especially by a nation of a Billion people. The trail leads pretty firmly back to China, source of many of the latest flu varieties.
It is entirely possible, given sanitation there, that this is simply another mutated virus strain, like swine flu.
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