Transcripts For ALJAZ Invisible Threat 20240713

World but still fewer than the nearly 800 italian dead announced on saturday should the Prime Minister koizumi is calling it the countrys toughest crisis since world war 2 all nonessential businesses are being shut for the time being russia is dispatching called a planes of military medical aid to italy germany is banning gatherings in public of more than 2 people and chancellor Angela Merkel is in quarantine off the contact with an infected doctor. Spain the state of emergency is being extended till april 11th after the governments announced nearly 400 new coronavirus deaths and the pandemic appears to be taking a particularly high toll on health workers. As you can often appear but another figure that is what our ng ows and the one that is affecting the most people involved in the Crisis Response is the number of Health Care Professionals affected. These are 3475 and it represents 10 percent of all cases that greece with more than 600 firm cases is to impose a curfew on monday in the United Kingdom as you can see its quiet but there are still people out on the streets and thats because even though the government to shut down many businesses its advice to stay inside and socially distance yourself at the moment fall short of an outright order but Boris Johnson is hinting that if people continue to ignore this tougher measures could follow i take this is vice seriously follow it because its absolutely crucial and as ive said throughout this process we will keep the implementation of these measures under constant review and yes of course we will bring forward further measures if we think that is that is necessary the u. K. With 281. 00 deaths could be just 2 or 3 weeks behind italy says the Prime Minister. Al jazeera london. At least 23 people were killed when a riot broke out in a colombian prison spurred on by panic over the corona virus 83 others were injured during the unrest that a jail in the capital bogota its the latest in a string of prison riots across the country with many fearing an outbreak behind bars more than a 1000000000 indians have been asked to stay indoors during the daytime nationwide curfew with the number of cases rising every Day Health Care Officials Say the country is now at a critical stage all metro passenger trains on interstate buses have counseled their services until the end of the month the financial fallout from the virus is growing with more airline suffering as demand plummets emirates one of the worlds biggest carriers is suspending most passenger flights from wednesday keeping on a small number of destinations jobs wont be lost but staff do face pay cuts and Turkish Airlines is also halting almost all of its International Flights in the United States where one in 5 people is now under lockdown new yorks mayor says the city now has more than 8000 confirmed cases of corona virus there are now more than 27000 confirmed cases in america and at least 340 deaths Army Helicopters are being used in lebanon to spread the stay at home message they circled over cities across the country with safety messages being sent out from loudspeakers lebanons borders ports and airports have all been shut until the end of the month lebanon has 248. 00 infections of coronavirus and 4 deaths those are the top stories up next manmade invisible threat thanks for. The. Its bad enough to catch a disease naturally but to take a disease and turn it into a weapon to enhance the disease to make it more virulent or more contagious or resistant to known vaccines thats particularly again just kind of goes off the charts there its turning Mother Nature against us. Weapons that destroyed by spreading deadly diseases have a long in unhappy history billions of dollars have been spent by governments to create pathogens that can cause fatal illnesses even today some countries are stockpiling just such a deadly arsenal in a widely reported News Conference syria has admitted as much. A perhaps more dangerous than the age of rapidly advanced technology its quite possible for individuals or groups to create biological mayhem. 12 countries that are battling an outbreak of a nasty strain of e. Coli live theater strains of all the consequences of this would be longer just not a libya harm see image i know alison intrigues you all to do that im for the clearly not Mission Critical 16 people have already died identify the source of this because like contamination has become ever more urgent some have even suggested that the super super of the 3 strain recall i could have been engineered in a lab. The World Health Organization calls the deliberate contamination of our food one of the major biological threats of the 21st century. In the modern globalized economy where food gets transported all over the world there are a lot of opportunities for somebody to contaminate food with with biological agents. And i dont want to go into much detail but there was a an article that was published in the proceedings of the National Academy of sciences about. Some touching Dairy Products milk using a bunch of talks and you can cause horrible damage with death many thousands of coffee. Cold jackson is a Senior Scientist at one of the United States most important biological laboratories. That is kind of frightening when you think over the last 2 different passes will somebody there are a Large Population or a small part of the population what goes with food there are cases in the are not so this will pass for people about that. Oregon authorities announced that the most serioUs Biological attack in u. S. History was carried out not by Foreign Terrorists but by the followers of a homegrown religious cult. Salad bars and 10 oclock restaurants were deliberately contaminated with salmonella. 751 people were poisoned and 45 hospitalized as disciples of korea right knew she sought to incapacitate voters and see their own candidates when the 1984 was a go county election. The sun the incident occurred in the United States the biological attacks could happen anywhere in the world and so father has not been a coordinated global plan about how to deal with this. I know. 6 the word terrorism evokes images of airplanes smashing into Office Towers of bombs blowing up in markets these remain real threats so do attacks by chemicals mustard gas defoliants on nerve agents. But there is something even more insidioUs Biological weapon. Thats the whole point of terrorism is this to put enormous psychological pressure on the audience to try to reach for talking about biological agents i mean unseen in many cases that you can smell them for that very reason those kinds of weapons have a much more powerful psychological impact audiences. Even going 5 people with a bio as you would would be more scary than killing 200. 00 people with a conventional explosive its been no confirmed. Cases of anthrax in britain but its been a day of false alarms the sorting office in liverpool was closed down and workers were forced to leave the Stock Exchange in london for a short time today Police Say People should stay calm but vigilant the latest victims in florida the scene of the 1st outbreak of anthrax 5 new cases reported by the American Media company overnight on the basis of blood tests carried out on every employee the fact that this seems to be spreading 10 days after the 1st victim died confirmation of americas worst fears never mind the source then the point is the kind of on capitol hill today you could hear it loud and clear threats from biological and chemical agents are real. Following the 911. 00 attack and the 2001 anthrax murders the United States government poured billions of dollars into Homeland Security experts from around the world were trying to do well funded scientifically burra toris and think tanks high on their list of threats to be investigated with the use of deadly pathogens as weapons a long and ugly stain on the history of mankind oh my gosh warfare 1st reared its head when man started fighting man you know whether it was putting scorpions in a clay pot and tossing him at your enemy or taking bodies people who had died from the plague and tossing them over city walls in Medieval Times poisoning Water Supplies these are all ancient techniques and biological warfare but it was only during the major wars of the last century where science started. To conduct this time. The real danger of the real threat was the beginning of the 20th century youre moving into bombs airplanes and the. Really and so microbiology. During the sino japanese war the japanese government engaged in a massive biological Weapons Program between 19401943 japan dropped hundreds of bombs infected with deadly germs on 11 chinese cities. As many as 200000 chinese citizens harish. They did initially the attacks on northern cities with plague and people did die and then later in the early part of the 1940 s. There were more aggressive attacks where they used anthrax planters cholera and other diseases. Martin for months is a United States pathologist with an interest in medical history in 1998 a colleague sent him a package containing autopsies performed on chinese victims years before i opened it up and they were page after page of these people murdered by biological weapons. It was the 1st time and one of the few times when i was looking at it. I could feel palpable evil in there were. Docked with them and discovered that some of the victims of japanese bombing had survived in 2000 to travel today if it is called make villages for the simple reason that people who were there in the summer of 1942 got rotten eggs when you interview these people you get a very similar story a lot of people started getting boils on their bodies throbbing thing it burst minute it loses pus and blood and continues to be horribly painful and essentially never heal eventually talked of the most ski concluded that the villages was suffering from glendas a disease that attacks horses and which for decades had been all but eliminated. The japanese had dropped bombs laden with this pathogen they spread cholera they spread typhoid fever is produced in theory they spread glanders they spread anthrax and they spread plague. Especially doing a biological scorched earth. Perhaps even more horrific than the dropping of germ bombs where the experiments carried out by unit 731. In manchuria. Japanese sent out their secret police and rounded up troublemakers and they would end up at unit 731. 00 as human guinea pigs and they would inoculate them with diseases to see how long they would die and they would tie them to stakes and drop bombs out of airplanes to see how well the bombs spread the disease. Theres always an aspect when youre dealing with biological weapons or chemical weapons some extent of extermination the way you would exterminate. After the end of the wool. Japanese scientists who worked at unit 731 were granted amnesty by the United States in exchange for information on the biological Weapons Program the japanese who did bad science killed thousands of people doing it got off scot free in may ended up going back to the universities and became chairman of departments and became captains of industry and an. On happy life. Successive japanese governments have been extremely reluctant to take responsibility for atrocities committed during world war 2. All the major powers have dabbled in the germ warfare but british scientists did their grim work here in this Research Establishment they stored 50 kilograms of bacteriological agents enough to kill every living thing on a. The british experimented with typhoid dysentery and cholera testing these pathogens on animals. If youre using live agent tests and this was done out in the ocean in many cases what you would do is tie animals on cages on deck and disperse the agent and see how well it would affect the animals and this was also done for example by the United Kingdom with sheep being tested with anthrax on go and island. World war 2 did not bring an end to biological weapons the cold war heated up providing another excuse to produce this deadly arsenal. Britain france and canada for example embarked on a program that experimenting with many kinds of diseases. That awful it would be enough to. Be illegal dose and it was to kill Something Like 50000. 00 people this bottle on the other hand contains a biological agent simulants if that were friends of senator ensigns which causes the disease to remain there could be enough in that vault to infect every man woman and child in the world. But it was the Us Biological Weapons Program that was the most dangerous 8 it was by far the largest and most ambitious 8 aggressor military leaders know of disadvantage chemical and biological agents cannot ordinarily be detected by the human sensory or reactionary. The effect can be deadly to part of the state guard the experimenters dangerous organisms are confined to safety cabinets. Using rubber gloves which are sealed to the cabinets scientists can handle deadly cultures and still be safe from infection. With the cold war the United States begins a biological Weapons Program which is twinned with the Nuclear Program i thought unicity of any potential agent is another important criteria. Of course youre familiar with the pathogenicity of the 2 linus talks of a suspension of which is were being tested by intraperitoneal injection of mike. Many kinds of animals were used in us experiments mice rats rabbits guinea pigs and most especially monkeys the restraining boxes used to hold the monkey in position to receive the measured air assault. The on a horse and passed through a series of air locks and positioned in a sealed exposure chamber commensurate using monkeys got all the monkeys you want but you still dont know at the end of the day whether to make a human sick how much will make a human sick how long the person will stay sick and so you need to have human subjects in order to proof test whether. We went through all kinds of room. Lights we changed our clothes in the scrub then weve got on the elevator and went up to a catwalk in each port hole they had a like a telephone booth and thats when you went into them theyd close the door naturally you were hooked up to the tube. You can smell it taste it. If you 2nd so poor. Ken jones was inhaling q. Fever a bacterial infection which can result in hepatitis and pneumonia. He is a religious pacifist one of a 2000 Conscientious Objectors who volunteered for operation white coat. You want to end 43. 00 where some 600. 00 military and civilian scientists Work Together in research at the Army Biological Laboratories to protect this country against a biological attack that is a silent assault by an invisible cloud that carries disease organism. There was testing on humans often done in a facility at fort dietrich known as the 8 ball which was in l. A. Sion chamber where they could disperse aerosols and see you know how much it takes to infect a human but they were given immediate medical treatment into the best of my knowledge there were no fatalities. By code volunteers claim that the Us Government assured them that all testing would be for defensive purposes only this is the make of the vaccine to protect you. And make it a hazmat suit to protect you against mass to protect you. Lot of hospital procedure come from this operation. What was happening at fort dietrich was not only a defensive program but also an offensive program so. It was research that could be used for either purpose. Here was here controversy about the White Coat Program there was a lot of heat about the biological Weapons Program there were ethical worries that is it do we really want to start a disease that might sweep the country. We just got rid of. Any. Biological weapons that. President nixon had decided that given the success of hiroshima and nagasaki in ending world war 2 Nuclear Weapons with a supreme deterrent the Us Biological alsono was deemed unnecessary in 969 the United States halted offensive biological research and eventually destroyed all stockpiles the idea was that the nation state the us as a nation state didnt need it it had the clear weapons with which we could destroy large numbers of people quite nicely thank you. And that you know that possessing these things would just encourage other people to go. Whitehall april 10th 972 a place from the time of real significance for the future of the world and the people in it in 1972103 nations including the United States and the soviet union approved a Convention Prohibiting the production of biological weapons. The treaty to which these nations have committed. Bind them to stop making biological weapons and to destroy all existing stocks of those most of gusting means of math the good thing about the biological Weapons Convention is a stablish the norm and the stablished and or against. Other people would do what other states would do and at least not that on the. But critics felt the convention was all but useless it had no team it still has no inspection provisions in large part because even before any country put in on paper signing that treaty there was the prevailing concept that it was impossible it was unverifiable this servia chilling in actually use the convention to embark on the largest and most destructive biological Weapons Program in the history of the world and soviet signing. The biological Weapons Convention while at the same time embarking on a huge ramp up of their biological Weapons Program. There are no words to describe just how heinous that type of a government policy is. To syria q new or old is believed that there was not rules behind these conventions and they believed the divas to. Use the convention. And to develop the biological weapons secretly in spite of the commission. If they believed exactly the same. So the 2 could mention 22. 00 summers. In a senior soviet scientist and an army colonel worked at version and in the hour all see it was here year after year that the soviet union tested weapons loaded with the most deadly diseases imaginable the Political Year is full of the reservists who are less of the stuff. We used to be able to get in really we were able to give. Police a resolution to the war 2 there is still a war. But there were serious be real to the case proves that she was global with the bully are real to a beautiful issue. Restorable to google is over well get with this the truth must be. Split as the rest of us are but really its bull as it really is a war should you be. A Russian Chemical Weapons Center a ciccone on the. It suspected chemical and biological weapons are still being developed at sites like this so western satellites have been watching for years. The soviet biological Weapons Program was roughly the same size as the nuclear Weapons Program and it was ultra secret very deeper than. So were talking about roughly 50 facilities and upwards of 50000 scientists technicians thats a lot of technical talent could toward the development of these types of weapons begins to plants against animals against people. I think many of us were very surprised at the enormity of the soviet and. Rise because i think until the end of the cold war we really didnt understand how big it was and they said this is officer the purpose of this were going to make vaccines organisms for Pesticide Use and so on and thats what there is of what they call the legend system that their real purpose and they become by far the biggest biological Warfare Program that the world has ever seen and probably the most sophisticated. A lot of what the io they do exist. But my sister saved me when i lost my last year with my family who talked about the reality of addiction in the arab wilds and the struggle for covering. It was just me and its a drug. Ill just say oh well it goes inside a rehab clinic in the nile downtown. Rehab egypt edge of a diction on aljazeera. April on aljazeera. Countries are imposing drastic measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic well bring you all the latest developments from around the world both Untold Stories from across asia pacific one i want east brings new insights from the wealth might copulated region as the democratic president ial race narrows how will the corona Virus Outbreak impact the u. S. Election come play an indepth and a reinvestigated well actually burning cash a group of independent journalist and becky wrote in the global fight against fate means the u. S. Will count its population and a once in a decade census with coronavirus concerns will it get the full picture april on aljazeera. Overthrown and exiled they appoint and can say if you all thought this race let me tell you an intimate film about the struggle of the elected leader of madagascar to return to his country and reinstate his presidency he knows that the truth was forged by and leave. Nothing to do you think is that all along well look for a change this return of a president on aljazeera. This is al jazeera with a check on your world headlines italys Prime Minister says the coronavirus pandemic is the countrys toughest crisis since world war 2 another 651 people died there on sunday and spain will extend its state of emergency for a further 15 days germany will ban public gatherings of more than 2 people while chancellor Angela Merkel will enter self isolation after coming into contact with an infected doctor. Often. Being in public is permitted only with people from the same household always one other person who does not live in the same household at least 23 people were killed when a riot broke out in a colombian prison spurred on by panic over the corona virus 83. 00 others were injured during the unrest that a jail in the capital bogota its the latest in a string of prison riots across the country with many fearing an outbreak behind bars more than a 1000000000 indians have been asked to stay indoors during a daytime nationwide curfew with the number of cases rising every Day Health Care Officials Say the country is now at a critical stage all metro passenger trains and interstate buses have Care Services until the end of the month the financial fallout from the virus is growing and more airlines suffering as demand plummets emirates one of the worlds biggest carriers is suspending most passenger flights from wednesday keeping on a small number of destinations jobs wont be lost but staff face pay cuts and Turkish Airlines is also halting almost all of its International Flights. In the United States where one in 5 people is under lockdown new yorks mayor says the city now has more than 8000 confirmed cases of coronavirus officials in the hardest hit areas are warning of major shortages of critical medical supplies as the virus continues to spread through all 50 states there are now more than 27000 confirmed cases in america and at least 340 deaths. Army helicopters are being used in lebanon to spread the stay at home message they circled over cities across the country would safety messages being sent out from loudspeakers lebanons borders ports and airports have been shut until the end of the month the country has 248. 00 infections of coronavirus and 4 deaths those are the top stories its back to man made investment invisible threat next on aljazeera then its the news hour also you that. It is impossible to overstate the mental scarring of the survivors sure peter lived in the home until the age of 4 when the nuns sold them all to fun and family by that time hed lost his sister she like nearly 800 others thats the name recorded in a desperate just to go to Catholic Organization to put bodies in here there were baptized yet to put them into our own consecration ground savages from the campaign is saying the government is so frightened of the damage to the church that the full excavation would do that it is resisting its so theyre threatening court action i think the only way in which this will be result is strewed an order of the spirit of courts of this country i cant see any other way because there is no will theres no wish there is no appetite church and state in this country are still wedded in a poisonous pact. Sagna ben. Is a professor at George Mason University and an expert on biological weapons she was born in tunisia and studied in france they had several people from teaching. To the western countries by antibiotics that were available at the time and these were used sent back to the former soviet union and used to devil up pathogens that would be resistance resistant to those antibiotics some of the diseases which the soviet scientists experimented with have long threatened mankind lithuanian born Raymond Zilinskas is a former microbiologist and a director at the Monterey Institute of International Studies nobody thought that anybody with so irresponsible as to be working with smallpox. So there was another contagious from it spreads from person to person and its very deadly in nature across the 30 percent. But with a weapon as its probably Even Stronger and that maybe 50 percent or even higher for so there was horrible and then the circa one i was really awful was a place where the marburg virus the clones which there is no vaccine no treatment its about 80 percent. Of all. Ironically it was soviet citizens themselves residents of the Industrial City of faired last who discovered how deadly their nations bio weapons were in 1979 anthrax was accidentally released into the air the wind blowing southward towards the city carried the pathogens 60 people died. For 16 years sergey popped off worked as a scientist in soviet lib oratory creating some of the most destructive weapons ever conceived by mankind after the collapse of the soviet union he immigrated to the United States. I clearly understood that it was biological Weapons Research there was no way around it because the system to engage people and did not let them go. There would be to record the k. G. B. Record. Wherever you go. The idea was to set up an Automated Research facility to synthesize different purposes so it was a clear attempt. To take advantage of new approaches. And genetic Engineering Design new varieties of information so. When these agents are used people who get infected develop the symptoms of one day. And when the physicians try to treat a start treating a person for that disease the treatment triggers the other agent which eventually kills. The person as horrific as this program was unlike in the United States the soviet scientists did not test the disease on human beings but they did use animals extensively. The typical experiment when they didnt lose control of their body so they did not control the real him and that resulted him listen then this. Experiments and mark is created demonstrate. The weapons. For some of this there will be no protection. It will become pleat collapse of the social life of the society over all of the Economic Life a devil opt aerosols fat to spread the bacteria or virus fire of the air make it abhorrent and therefore. Increase the number of people that get infected the effects of a contagioUs Biological attack could spread around the world literally within a matter of days. With the collapse of the soviet union in 1901 the new russian state simply couldnt afford to support a program that cost the country billions of dollars bio Weapons Research and production were shut down ultimately into it turned out to be a very stuff of effort and money complete 1st for. Sake a power bar was one of thousands of russian scientists who suddenly found themselves without a paycheck obscure people who never established our careers you know in communication vis visit Academic Research just so it was very difficult to present ourselves you know as scientists and nobody would hire us. To know accomplishments in the biological weapon p. C. Which so it was a kind of thought trap so the crowd most of the thousands of scientists involved in the bio Weapons Program remained in russia and tried to adapt to the new society dr popof managed to immigrate currently a researcher in biotechnology at George Mason University. With the dismantling of the soviet program it was hoped that biological weapons would become obsolete this was not the case for years it had been secretly stockpiling a deadly arsenal weapons they had produced themselves they had developed to really serious systems one was based on bombs. That had 3 different kinds of words one worse than tracks the 2nd was was by trying toxin and a certain one was something called aflatoxin. So those were ready to go they were loaded they had about 200. 00 of those and then theyre 25. 00 scud missiles with the same kind of words and they were ready to. Well base sooner than on some of the things that were considered the classic agents in the major western soviet program like anthrax like clostridium but on but then they also did some unusual things why would one turn a disease that causes liver cancer. Into a weapon the results would have been shocking. The gulf or was over so quickly the iraqis did not have a chance to use their deadly arsenal the United States was pretty clear in articulating that Response Options would be considered. Used chemical or other weapons. And i think that caused some hesitation on his part after the gulf war ended it x. Bio Weapons Program remained hidden until in 1995 United Nations inspectors finally uncovered it the inspectors didnt let him get away with it if they had just thrown in the towel. It its very troublesome to think about how that would have changed the course of history in the middle east because iraq would have retained a super secret and the tinsel a very potent category of weapons. It asks program illustrated vividly that it is conceivable that nations of all sizes could get their hands on bio weapons. Secretive countries such as north korea are suspects and syria has actually admitted to stockpiling weapons of mass destruction including biological i think there are some states out there that are still in this nasty business so if you really want to knock out weapon why not go for the one thats comparatively a lot cheaper easier to develop technologically and when theyre not looking for. A more way. Russia and the United States both in says that they are not presently engaged in the research or production of offensive biological weapons questions remain however i believe that the United States but not as for the same is the United Kingdom but we have very Little Information about version facilities still we have for this zarif facility is russian and. Indeed in the biological. Research nobody ever defrocked from those facilities but it was allowed to visit. Believe you may in black books is. At present the concern is not so much about nation states using bio weapons as individuals especially those with scientific knowledge seth caris is a professor at the National Defense university in washington he has written extensively on bioterrorism and bio crimes but one of the the things that surprised me when i started digging into this was the number of people who used biological agents of one kind or another for criminal purposes its not uncommon today to see people trying to get hold of toxins to users instruments of murder. 1983 on finesse it in oh we and nursing home manager was convicted of killing 22 patients by injecting them with curious it a muscle relaxing drug used by the holmes medical staff in prison he admitted to murdering many more people in the mid 960 s. Zuki a japanese physician then bacteriologist handed out sponge cakes filled with salmon and dysentery bacteria to his colleagues he was eventually linked to an outbreak of typhoid fever and dysentery that sickened 200 people and killed 4. Even more dangerous than vengeful individuals or groups bent on destruction. For georgia man have been charged with conspiring to possess a destructive device one of the accused said there is no way for us is published save this country to seem georgia doing something highly illegal this wasnt just hong kong taken real steps toward iran carrying out their plans for the alleged plot involved explosions and a deadly biological toxin noticed there was like a little of the us have some other. Bioterrorism is a real concern there are certain groups that are motivated and some of those groups are motivated might have the capabilities at some point theres probably going to be some of it some point we are going to have bio terrorist could be potentially serious according to al jazeera and many other reliable news sources al qaeda had progressed much further towards developing biological weapons before 911. 00 then the world had realized while there has not been a biological attack by this group so far it remains a real concern u. S. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton in december 2011 warned that there is evidence. That al qaeda in yemen is hard at work developing weapons of mass destruction in particular biological pathogens. Often called the brains behind a sama bin laden aiman also what is now likely to assume the leadership of the diffuse organization that is al qaida film together by al jazeera in the mountains along the afghan pakistan border on less described as bin ladens closest mental this was in 20032 years after 911 the concern about all of. Us primarily from the fact that its one of the few terrorist groups a. Has been interested in causing mass casualties and b. Has explicitly expressed interest that in fact us and try to put together a biological Weapons Program fact that so who is still their house that has to be concerned. Paradoxically the danger of bioterrorism has increased with the revolution in the sciences that are prolonging and enhanced single human life as cures for cancer and other diseases a found the number of trained people who could use their knowledge for nefarious purposes has also grown without the big change has been that biotechnology has spread throughout the world and that means that all the equipment and supplies related to civilian peacefully directed by technologies out there are all over the place. And that means that theoretically every buddy whos to civilian biotechnology can do military but a technology a fermenter does not know that its from mounting bacillus thuringian says to become a fire pesticide or bacillus anthraces to become the biological weapon of the biological weapons system and thats compound good by the internet having become the worlds shopping center. The number of people who know how to use the tools of biology and could with conceivably do as has grown steadily so that millions of people are in that category now of thirst if i wanted to equip a laboratory that would be potentially capable of producing. Some important quantities a biological agent i could buy that for not a whole lot of money in the end the reality is you could do that almost anywhere in the world that. The al qaeda was buying its equipment in pakistan and had no trouble clipping. Laboratory in afghanistan. You know the kinds of things from enter the War Laboratory equipment that you would need and you can buy pretty much anywhere there are to do this yourself botulinum toxin you can buy that already and lasts most of those are in asian for particular Mainland China on the internet and so we can provide any quantities you need in thats something completely new that you can buy the most toxic substance in the world over the internet as the 1st so and then the question is what about the what we call the lone operators people now that are setting up molecular biology laboratories in their homes and their garages and resellers or whatever and theyre doing for the fun of it are they going to be able to create a pathogen and would one of them be crazy enough to want to do that yeah i would worry about that and. Maybe one of the most troublesome aspects of the life science revolution is that the information emerging is available to everyone no matter what their motivation you know most of the science that you need to create a biological weapon is obtainable through open scientific literature that needs to exist in order to improve the worlds health. Since the 1990 s. No respect i just got the only idea is that all the biological literature should be online so your University Undergraduate anywhere in europe has access to stuff behind pay walls their digital arbors and has access on an equal basis as the 16 year old kid from bangalore. Nothing illustrates the dial a number of readily Available Research more than the bird flu controversy in september 2011 a team of dutch and u. S. Scientists announced that they had engineered a strain of h 5 n one that could spread among mammals and possibly humans it caused a worldwide approach its a real life tale that reads like Science Fiction a dutch scientist using u. S. Government funding creates a deadly synthetic virus this super lethal bird flu physical model of an influenza virus of which bird flu is one inside our genes that change and its within this heart that mutations happen previously thought into thought it would take many mutations to bed for it to become airborne now we know it only takes 5 in february 2012 the World Health Organization convened a meeting of experts who concluded that the h 5 n one research should not only continue but also be published a tsunami of controversy descended. In order to defend ourselves against the possibility. We need to do that kind of research but the question is still is it worth the risk and thats some people say you know the cost benefit on that the costs are too high because it could be released out of the laboratory and then it would really be how. And other ones to say no you know its being done under under the highest security conditions and were learning a lot from it so we are better prepared so make a choice but given that Mother Nature is the ultimate bioterrorist i think you. To push forward on the research i dont think we have a lot of a lot of options a small group of scientists. Socalled community essentially created a weapon of mass destruction and they did so to make a political point that more Public Health resources and attention should be focused on this particular problem and the risk of publishing it wasnt just that some malefactor is going to make this and let it loose you know because he thinks it will bring armageddon but that it will now spread to dozens of laboratories who make it and study it you know the risk is in a small number of years you know this will get out to larger scientific community. To put it mildly let the rest of humanity down. The bird flu controversy highlights a difficult question facing the worlds population what can we do to stop terrorists individuals or groups from creating and using biological weapons so far the Global Community has not come up with a planned response to this threat the u. S. Government has spent billions of dollars developing vaccines against pathogens such as anthrax but many critics believe that Io Technology is changing so rapidly that these will be rendered useless we dont have a medical corner measure for every possible disease especially with viruses so if a terrorist or one of those kinds of. We have a problem a certain possibility that we were. Existing after if a terrorist group were to. Go there theyre resistant to some of the more common and that we start it would create tremendous problems for us. Its not trivially simple to do but its also Rocket Science i think expecting that there could be. A factor of control over all the components and all the materials and all the equipment that could be used to manufacture. I think this is a fantasy i still think thats possible for some effort is being made to put in place global safeguards the manufacturers of synthetic d. N. A. For example in the United States europe and china have established guidelines regulating who would have detained this material but these are not industry wide and they are voluntary another strategy is for scientists to report any erratic behavior by. The f. B. I. Supported by president obama would like. Say more about what goes on in Life Science Laboratories but United States scientists resist this they believe they can police their labs themselves filmed be convinced that the bridge deletions in this field i important but the one to be sufficient. People take very seriously the possibility of biological that are not dark but i see individual scientist has access to biological agents so brooke and this people see in people next. To you is is very important probably the only way to really. To prevent some dangerous taking place ironically the best way to control biological terrorism may have to do with the weapons themselves to somebody if i some cells with a horrible disease i mean that their death is going to be hideous is going to be prolonged and horrible at least. Its a lot more romantic to go out with that with a glorious bank than it is with with a slow painful whimper and all of our rules and International Conventions are designed by nations for nations but because of the internet that has been a quantum shift or because now were dealing with individuals the concert comment or National Routes you have a computer in a city every home how can you control it all so i think thats really the biggest bunch of control issues in their lives and the chemical and biological field right now. In the end scientific ethics and basic human good will may be the only deterrent to the proliferation of biological terrorism whether by countries groups or individuals. I would still go some place in places of shabby right across all possible straight us we should do the wet season continuing hesam well whether theyre just around the Cape York Peninsula but for much of all its fine interop a few showers just around the east coast of New South Wales pushing up towards the Sunshine Coast burst but 20 celsius lossie fine and 5 victoria laurie fine and dry as well but 10 degrees colder in melbourne at around 80 degrees as some rain pushing across South Australia just easing out of the alabama will see some fine and dry weather over towards that western side of the country perth around 34. 00 degrees celsius that rain that we do have just around the South Australia could be have enough to produce some localized flooding for a time to study something to watch out for still a few showers there just around the bases side in the south wales and into wards queensland as well weve had some showers today some of the wintry nights are just making the way across across such a pad pulling out of the way that bright skies now coming back in behind quite as warm as it has been recently 17 celsius the top temperature there for tokyo and also for a saka so i wanted to choose to it cools off a little a few showers still in place fondant rather cross the Korean Peninsula but some western weather for central and southern parts of china. Perception is validation we believe what we see but in one life time we cannot see everything that we would lie and he experiences of others and the legacies of previous generations. Of that testimony we let you know very little. With this documentaries that open your eyes on aljazeera. Revealing Eco Friendly Solutions to come back threats to our planet on aljazeera. Aljazeera. Youre watching the news hour live from london im coming up in the next 60 minutes 651 more deaths in italy germany bans gatherings of more than 2 people and a nuclear in the u. K. To protect the vulnerable across europe on the world the coronavirus pandemic shows no sign of slowing down. At least 23 people are dead after coronavirus fear a spark or riots in a colombian