Ebola as a bio-weapon

 

by 

Mayur. M



Ebola virus is a deadly virus which was discovered in 1976 near the Ebola river. Since then the virus has been infecting people from time to time, leading to outbreaks in several African countries. According to the nature of the virus they believe it is an animal borne disease. Ebola vaccine rVSV-ZEBOV was approved on December 19, 2019, but this vaccine is designed to protect against only the Zaire Ebola virus species of Ebola. There are many other species of Ebola virus for which there are no vaccines designed and which are very deadly

If some worse case scenarios are to believed, then terrorist group could use the recent outbreak of Ebola in Africa to their advantage. In theory, a terrorist could mass disseminate the hemorrhagic virus by small particle aerosol. But executing such an attack would take an incredible amount of technology and financing. However, someone with basic skills in virology could infect only a few people with Ebola and the event would cause worldwide havoc

Although Ebola is a deadly virus, it is notoriously unstable when removed from a human or animal host making weaponisation of the virus unlikely. Some bio-terrorism experts warned that terrorist could harness the virus as a powder, load it into a bomb and then explode the bomb in a highly populated area. It could cause a large number of horrific deaths. But the idea of Ebola being harvested for use in a dirty bomb sounds more like a science fiction

Although Ebola is listed by the centres for disease control and prevention (CDC) as a possible bio-terrorism agent, that doesn’t necessarily mean the virus could be used in a bomb. The thing about Ebola is that it’s not easy to work with so it would be difficult to weaponize it.

2001 anthrax attacks terrorised the nation. Amidst the reality of these attacks funding became a greater priority and in the mid 2000’s, the National Institute of Health (NIH) began to increase research dollars for other bio-terrorism agents such as Ebola. Scientists started partnering with biotech companies to come up with countermeasures against Ebola.

When the media began heavily covering the 2013 to 2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the public pushed for more resources toward combating Ebola. However, Ebola research is an expensive, complicated endeavour. Ebola research on humans is nearly impossible given the ethical questions.


The three reasons why Ebola isn’t likely to be used as a bio-terrorism agent are as follows.

1.    In order to make Ebola into a biological weapon, a terrorist organisation would need to first obtain a live host infected with the virus, either a human or an animal. Only a few animals serve as Ebola hosts, including primates, bats and forest antelope, and none of these are particularly easy to detain.

2.    In contrast to hardiness of anthrax bacteria, the Ebola virus is sensitive to climactic conditions, like exposure to sunlight and extreme temperatures Once the virus is removed from its host, it requires a very particular environment in which to survive, including relatively high temperatures and humidity.

3.     Ebola is not airborne, and relies on transmission through the consumption of contaminated meat and direct contact with infected bodily fluid, thus making the transmission very slow

Therefore, we can conclude that the chance of Ebola being made into a biological weapon is less than nil.


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