FBI Intelligence Analyst visits CSC, talks with students
A brisk morning greeted students and a few faculty members as they made their way to the Student Center for the “Bioterrorism Talks” presentation Friday.
An FBI Intelligence Analyst gave three presentations throughout the morning, all of them focusing on different areas of diseases, biological terrorism, and how the FBI finds terrorists.
His first presentation, “Category ‘A:’ Biological Agent,” focused on Ebola, anthrax, and plague, and how they affect humans and how they work.
Ebola, a Viral Hemorrhagic Fever, was brought up frequently due to the current outbreak, along with statistical figures about the disease. Ebola’s lethality, death rate, is usually 20 percent, but with this outbreak the lethality has been unusually high with 60-80 percent, he said.
The way Ebola works is that it infects the white blood cells in the body, which usually fight infections. In order to stop the infection from spreading, the antibodies kick in, but cannot overcome the disease, so they are killed by Ebola also; these are usually known as the second defense from infections.
From there, the infected person develops a high fever, and their blood moves rapidly throughout the body, which makes the person bleed from most orifices. This is often seen in the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears. Eventually, that person’s organs start to shut down because of the loss of blood, leading to death. In the beginning stages when a person becomes sick with Ebola it looks likes tonsillitis, flu, or strep because it comes with a fever and a sore throat.
He then spoke about plagues. Plagues come from fleas who find their way to human skin, bite them, ingesting the human’s blood, but also transferring their own infected blood and saliva into the human.
Along with plagues, he talked about bacillus anthracis, or anthrax. Farmers and ranchers generally deal with anthrax because cows catch it by kicking up soil and breathing it in. Anthrax is in all parts of the soil everywhere.
In theory, anthrax isn’t necessarily bad for a person. It’s not the substance itself that is harmful, but instead the plasma in it that makes a person sick. Anthrax acts like a protective antigen for the plasma; the plasma cannot hurt anyone by itself so it uses anthrax like a host.
There are three ways a person can ingest anthrax. The first and most common method is through cutaneous, when anthrax spores go into the skin through a cut. It cannot be absorbed through the skin.
According to the Center for Disease Control website, this is the least dangerous of the three because it usually takes one-seven days to develop and if properly treated, most patients survive the infection.
The second is inhalational, which is just breathing in anthrax spores. This affects the lungs and causes breathing problems, but also spreads throughout the rest of the body. This takes about a week to develop, and untreated will result in death.
The third way is gastrointestinal, when a person ingests raw or undercooked meat from an animal infected with anthrax.
This is the rarest of the three, but also the most dangerous with the highest mortality rate. This affects the digestive tract and takes anywhere from one-17 days to develop. A positive side to anthrax is that is cannot be transferred from one person to another.
In his second session, “Lasting Effects of a Weaponized Biological Agent,” the FBI Investigative Analyst talked about how people use these diseases and toxins to infect other people. There are three elements terrorists usually follow when planning an attack, he said. They are opportunity, intent, and capabilities/knowledge. What are they going to use?
Most often, people who design these attacks are politically motivated to enforce a violent attack on civilians, and want to be known.
When a person does plan an attack, they must account for numerous items including the weather; what kind of virus they want to use; if they want people to just get sick, or if they want them to die; and if they want people to die, do they want their death to occur slowly or quickly. This is also where the capabilities and knowledge come in, because if the people wanting to attack have no to little knowledge about viruses or diseases, then they are not necessarily a threat. For instance, he said bombs are not a good use for a viral attack because viruses and bacteria cannot survive in hot temperatures; therefore, a bomb, which emits heat, would not do any good.
He also talked about biological weapons, and how the military chooses not to use them. Biological weapons cannot be controlled, so there is always that chance of hurting others besides the enemy. It makes no sense for the military to use them, he said.
“Ebola as a biological Weapon” was the final topic discussed.
He focused mainly on the outbreaks of Ebola, spanning back to 1967, to current outbreaks, and how the FBI can predict how a terrorist could use the disease as a weapon—and how they could stop someone from bringing an outbreak to America.
Currently there are six known strains of Ebola-Reston, Sudan, Zaire, Tai Forest, Bundibugyo, and Marburg.
All of these strains come from the area where the outbreak occurred. The worst outbreak is the Zaire outbreak, which is the current West Africa outbreak people have heard about in the news. It is at 14,000 victims for the outbreak, with a mortality rate of no more than 90 percent. However, the first outbreak of this strand came in 1976.
One issue with the strains is that they can mix and turn into a more lethal strain. The Zaire outbreak developed from bats in the West Africa area. Animals are more likely to carry the strains and spread them to humans, according to the FBI Intelligence Analyst. If pigs were to be exposed to two different Ebola strains and they mixed inside the pig, a new strain could be produced.
There is no way of knowing when this would happen, and if the outcome would be lethal, but it is an option the FBI look into in case it does happen.
The FBI use discussions to figure out how someone could access Ebola, store it, and even multiply it to use as a weapon.