Cutting Edge

Chapter 9
The Public Debate

In 1977, Fort Detrick became the eye of a hurricane when the long-awaited report, U.S. Army Activities in the U.S. Biological Warfare Program, was submitted to Congress. It outlined in detail the entire BW research effort involving Camp and Fort Detrick; Dugway Proving Ground, Utah; Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland; Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas; Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Colorado; and numerous smaller testing sites around the Nation.

It discussed in general terms the weapons development program, which was controversial at the start and remains so to date. Biological weapons are still as silent, deadly, and inhumane, whether they kill, maim, or incapacitate.

There is no question that biological weapons may be used effectively as a weapon of choice. Like atomic weapons, biological weapons are a valuable deterrent and any choice to use them would have been a last resort, according to scientists who took part in the research.

An executive summary with the two-volume set, pointed out:

The policy of the United States regarding biological warfare between 1941 and 1969 was to first, deter its use against the United States and its forces, and secondly, to retaliate if deterrence failed ... From its inception, the program was characterized by continuing in-depth review and participation by the most eminent scientists, medical consultants, industrial experts, and government officials.

The volumes noted the variety of weapons systems but refrained from providing specifics because such information may still be used by the Nation's potential adversaries. Only a few persons in the Department of Defense have expressed an understanding of the importance of that information and the need to keep it under wraps, but the question is being addressed. Biological warfare has been termed "The Poor Man's Atomic Bomb," an appropriate analogy considering what has been learned since April 1943 at Fort Detrick.

The two-volume report spawned extensive congressional hearings and major news coverage. There has been pride and admiration expressed by many in the scientific community for the work done at Fort Detrick. At the same time indignation has been expressed from both scientific and nonscientific quarters about portions of the work, primarily because those detractors believe the U.S. citizenry was victimized by the program.

Much was learned at Fort Detrick about the life cycle of infectious organisms and toxins and their effects on the human body. Had the research not been done, American scientists agree they might still be struggling with diseases long since brought under control, like polio and measles.

Recombinant DNA research techniques, through which certain organisms have been cloned to produce weaker, stronger, or mutations of the original, are legacies of Fort Detrick, but they were not done in the Fort Detrick laboratories. A small circle of scientists cling to the belief that recombinant DNA techniques may result in more dangerous U.S. biological weapons.

In 1982, Dr. William R. Beisel, USAMRIID director of science, dealt with that question while being interviewed by a New York Times reporter. Dr. Beisel became frustrated with the reporter, who kept insisting that weapons research was or might be taking place at Fort Detrick's laboratories. Dr. Beisel jumped forward in his chair and blurted out, "But we aren't conducting offensive research! It is simply against the law!"

Dr. Beisel pointed out that Fort Detrick had no weapons specialists after the changeover of 1969. Most of the BW weapons technology was destroyed. Dr. Beisel stated that any terrorist organization-or Third World country, need not go to the expense of recombinant DNA to produce effective biological weapons. "You can produce biological weapons in your basement with very little money."

This threat was explored in a series of tests, which took place under the auspices of the Fort Detrick biological laboratories from 1943 to the mid-1960s.

In one such test, travelers at Washington National Airport were subjected to a harmless bacterium. Traps were placed throughout the facility to capture the bacterium as it flowed in the air. Laboratory personnel, dressed as travelers carrying brief cases, walked the corridors and without detection sprayed the bacterium into the atmosphere.

In the New York Subway, a light bulb filled with the same harmless bacterium was dropped on the tracks. The organism spread throughout the system within 20 minutes. Traps and monitoring devices showed the amount of organism-if it were one of the predictable, dangerous organisms, could have killed thousands of persons. No one was injured or became ill as a result of the test. In San Francisco, a U.S. Navy ship, equipped with spray devices operated by Fort Detrick personnel, sprayed Serratia marcescens, a nonpathogenic microorganism that is easily detected while the ship plied the San Francisco Bay. It spread more than 30 miles to monitoring stations. A lengthy legal case resulted from this test. Relatives of an elderly hospital patient, who died shortly after the test, claimed the microorganism was the cause. The court eventually held that the test organism was not proven to be the cause of death.

A jet aircraft equipped with spray devices flew a course near Victoria, Texas, and the harmless particles were monitored in the Florida Keys.

One story came to light that proved embarrassing to Fort Detrick because of the tragic impact of a research program that took place without knowledge of the principal directors or committees.

Dr. Frank W. Olson, a distinguished Fort Detrick scientist, was said to have committed suicide by leaping from a window in a New York City hotel. The seemingly innocuous news story brought to the public and Dr. Olson's family a story of intrigue with Dr. Olson described as an unwitting victim. Dr. Olson's death was the tragic result of clandestine research taking place within the secret confines of the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick in the 1950s. Researchers had been investigating the disorienting effects of LSD and similar incapacitating drugs as potential CW threats. Dr. Olson had been a member of the BW labs' team since World War II, but was said to have been unaware that he had ingested the chemical given him by a co-worker in the New York hotel room. Knowledgeable observers have noted this was a situation that got out of hand in a usually well-controlled research atmosphere. The Army was unaware that the LSD program was taking place and had not sanctioned the project.

In retrospect, the government admitted that some errors in judgment occurred; overall it had controls in place to monitor research projects, field testing, and human testing. However, controversy remains over the decision to expose millions of everyday Americans to live organisms in tests outside the laboratory.

While some may argue that these were dangerous and thoughtless experiments from the private citizen's standpoint, it proved how helpless the U.S. would be if an enemy were bent on causing problems. Many believe the U.S. still is vulnerable, one reason defensive BW research continues to take place.

When Iraq and Iran were at war in the early 1980s, evidence was clear that Iraq was utilizing chemical weapons. Intelligence showed Iraq had a bona fide BW capability. When Operation Desert Shield began in August 1990, U.S. military experts were wary of the clear chemical and biological threat posed by the forces of Saddam Hussein. Deploying U.S. and coalition forces were fully briefed on the chemical and biological weapons threat.

The United Nations Coalition Forces in Operation Desert Storm quickly repelled the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Biological defense experts at Fort Detrick were consulted throughout Operations Desert Shield and Storm. Subsequently, USAMRIID and HQ, USAMRMC lent technical expertise to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) investigation of Iraq's BW program.

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Fort Detrick scientists also produced major advances in the applied sciences. During the American Civil War, many soldiers feared being wounded. Their fears centered on being required to enter a hospital where the danger of dying from disease acquired in the hospital represented a greater threat than a mini-ball wound. Hospitals today have effective barriers to disease and contamination. Surgeons and doctors can provide health care using techniques that provide comfort, support, and cure. They use vaccines, toxoids, and antibacterial and antiviral drugs that are a direct outgrowth of the 53 years of work done in the laboratories at Fort Detrick.

Fort Detrick's research left few areas untouched. One little known effort was conducted under the leadership of Dr. John Boucher, who worked with Dr. Michael DeBakey, in the first efforts to develop a working heart valve. The design has been duplicated and with certain modifications can be seen in the artificial hearts and heart machines that keep patients alive in hospitals.

William Royer, a skilled craftsman who once built models and devices in the biological labs, detailed the story shortly before he retired from the USABRDL. He wanted to turn over a device he had carried in his tool box for more than 20 years.

Royer said he was asked by Dr. Boucher in the late 1950s to build a one-way valve that could be used in working with the heart. Royer produced the stainless steel valve and associated devices. Dr. Boucher implanted the valve in the chest wall of a dog. Working with a transducer in the one-way valve, Dr. Boucher was able to draw blood directly from the aorta. The first animal died, but Royer then reengineered the valve and Dr. Boucher began to make progress. A similar valve on a larger scale was pictured in the Baltimore Sun in 1987 as it was being used to keep a heart patient alive.

Thousands of research papers have been authored by Fort Detrick investigators, including pioneering monographs on experimental airborne infection, bacterial genetics, and the Fort Detrick Design Criteria for microbiological facilities, produced by the entire Fort Detrick scientific community including the engineering staff. The latter book was updated in 1992 and continues to be the standard for construction of such facilities worldwide.

Through the years, Fort Detrick has been known as the leader in aerobiological work. Fort Detrick pioneered the work in the study of microbial aerosols and experimentally induced airborne infection.

Facilities, instrumentation, and techniques were developed under the leadership of Edgar W. (Bud) Larson, whose work spanned nearly 3 decades. Achievements included: generation of microbial aerosols of controlled concentration and particle size; containment of these aerosols in gas-tight chambers; sampling of air for its microbial content at rates up to 10,000 liters per minute; exposure of experimental animals or humans to microbial aerosols under conditions permitting precise quantitation of the inhaled dose of microorganisms; and study of such hosts subsequent to their experimental exposure.

The specialized equipment was applied to a wide spectrum of investigations of the airborne route of transmission of communicable disease. The CDC called on Fort Detrick's expertise in seeking answers to the outbreak of the so-called Legionnaire's Disease in Philadelphia. The institute's team set up smoke tests that showed the flow of exhaust from the hotel's air-conditioning system back into the air intake chamber. Tests in the institute's aerosol chambers and other facilities revealed the causative organism and solved a nationwide disease outbreak.

Other collaborative aerobiological studies with other institutions yielded information important to medicine and public health. These included evaluation in humans of the prophylactic efficacy of tularemia vaccines working with the medical schools of Ohio State University and the University of Maryland; evaluation in humans of the prophylactic efficacy of Q fever vaccines (University of Maryland and Walter Reed Army Institute of Research [WRAIR]); study in humans of respiratory viruses with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Baylor University Medical School; epidemiology of meningococcal meningitis (WRAIR); and epidemiology of industrially acquired anthrax with the National Communicable Disease Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

The biological laboratories understood the validity of experimental results being dependent on using laboratory animals of high quality and good genetic and health characteristics. In 1950, the Fort Detrick Animal Farm developed a highly successful method of screening for salmonellosis, which brought about the establishment of mouse and guinea pig colonies totally free from that disease. Salmonellosis had been widespread in laboratory animal colonies throughout the United States causing great losses.

In 1956, the farm performed its first caesarean derivation of mice into a germ-free environment and was thus one of the first laboratories in the country to demonstrate the use of this technique for the establishment of disease-free laboratory colonies. The procedure is widely used and accepted as the primary method for deriving pathogen-free animals.

When Fort Detrick celebrated its 25th anniversary in April 1968, Historian Richard Clendenin had no reason to believe Fort Detrick would cease its massive operations in the near future...

Fort Detrick today [Clendenin wrote of the post in 1968] is a permanent Army post responsible for an essential part of our national defense ... In its relatively short existence of 25 years, Fort Detrick has attained national prominence as a research and development installation. Working in some of the finest laboratory facilities to be found anywhere, its staff of eminent scientists and engineers can be counted upon to continue uncovering new knowledge that will benefit both the National Defense and the health and well being of the Nation.

Clendenin was correct in his assessment, except that he had no inkling that change was imminent.

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