Smallpox attack would hit developing world hardest

LONDON -- It is a nightmare that has gained the public's attention since Sept. 11: a terrorist walks into an airport and releases the smallpox virus, a scourge that killed millions of people before it was eradicated more than two decades ago.

Seventeen unsolved cases of anthrax in the United States have made the threat of a chemical or biological terrorist attack seem more real and has prompted the U.S. government to start stockpiling enough smallpox vaccine -- 300 million doses by the end of 2002 -- to protect every American citizen. Other Western countries are taking similar steps.

However, smallpox's potency and unpredictability could have a boomerang effect. Scientists say that once it is released, the disease would probably spread quickly throughout the world, infecting many of the same people in whose name the terrorists say they are fighting.

Would Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network unleash a disease that could end up killing millions of Muslims?

"These terrorists believe that Muslims will rise up and strike down the secular governments of the West," said Michael Swetnam, chairman of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington, Va. "That kind of fundamentalist approach can easily support the belief that any tool was rational and usable because Allah is on your side."

Scientists say the developing world will be least ready to deal with smallpox, which would entail paying for the production of millions of doses of new vaccine and then administering the drugs to the population.

"The industrialized countries are, and will be, much better equipped to contain it than are developing countries," said Dr. David Heymann, executive director for communicable diseases at the World Health Organization.

Smallpox was one of the most devastating diseases known to humanity. Repeated epidemics swept across continents, decimating populations and changing the course of history. It used to kill 3 to 4 million people a year and left millions more disfigured, blind or both.

Experts fear most, if not all, of that immunity has worn off by now and that the disease could spread rapidly from an isolated outbreak to the other side of the globe.

Swetnam said the possibility of a smallpox attack should be taken seriously, but he added that other weapons are more likely to be used because smallpox is hard to get ahold of.