Photo courtesy of U.S. Army Medical Research Institute This picture shows cells of an animal that died of inhalational anthrax, an infectious disease that can be transmitted to humans by handling infected products.
By Kiyoshi Tomono
Daily Bruin Contributor
Nestled off one of the long corridors of UCLA’s Center for the Health Sciences, Dr. Scott Layne’s sparsely decorated office looks more like a modest-sized broom closet than a Pentagon war room.
But for the last few years, that is where Layne, an associate professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health, has been plotting the logistics for a large-scale molecular biology laboratory capable of thwarting a bioterrorism attack.
While the mainstream media has scrambled to define how a bioterrorist attack might be pulled off in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Layne said a smarter approach lies in using biotechnology to prevent one from occurring in the first place.
“A few kilograms of this (biological) material is the size of a few milk cartons and you could obtain that by many means,” Layne said. “The immature questions are: how is this going to happen … or can this ever happen – who cares? The real question is what are we going to do about it?”
In a recent article titled “Public-health preparedness for biological terrorism in the USA” in the medical journal “The Lancet,” a rundown of the chief biological suspects to be used in a bioterroristist attack read much like an FBI’s Most Wanted list.
Agents that cause diseases like the plague, anthrax and smallpox topped the inventory for their high mortality rate and easy transport.
According to the Lancet article, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers called for enough small pox vaccine in its initial plan to immunize a quarter of the United States population and enough antibiotics to treat 10 million people infected with anthrax on both coasts for six weeks.
But identifying which agent a terrorist has used, especially when those agents have multiple and sometimes drug-resistant strains, may be half the battle, Layne said.
As evidence of how difficult identification of a disease-causing agent can be, Layne pointed to a recent case in Ohio where about three people came down with meningococcus due to natural causes.
In the ensuing panic, Layne said, about 20,000 people visited the hospital to receive antibiotics while another 18,000 received a vaccine before the particular strain could even be identified.
“By the time those decisions were made, they hadn’t done the laboratory analysis to know if the strain was vaccine-resistant or not,” Layne said.
Layne said that for every 100 people infected, 10 representative samples would have to be analyzed – and analyzed quickly.
“As of now, there is no laboratory in the country that has that capability,” he said.
In several of his research papers, symposiums, and in a graduate-level class that Layne teaches each spring titled “Public Health Responses to Bioterrorism,” he has pushed his vision for a multi-million dollar laboratory capable of providing such results.
Following a biological terrorist attack, the lab could be called upon to isolate, prepare and fingerprint the particular agent used in the attack from hundreds, if not thousands of samples, to use as a response agent or to identify attackers.
In its lull time, Layne said the lab could be used as a resource to track and rapidly identify the different strains of diseases that currently afflict Americans, like tuberculosis and influenza.
“As soon as we’ve gotten and fingerprinted their samples through national security programs, we can go back to these various terrorist leaders and say, ‘if your strain ever shows up in the wrong place, and we’re not going to tell you how we know – you may not be very happy when the sun rises on your capital,’” Layne said. “It gives us teeth.”
High-tech or not, Layne’s vision for a large-scale lab has yet to become a reality. With a price tag of several million dollars, Layne said there are no governmental grants large enough to fund such a laboratory. There haven’t been any takers in terms of foundations or private companies either.
In the meantime, Peter Katona, an assistant clinical professor of infectious diseases, said Los Angeles County has been focusing on a smaller, organized system that could do for the city during a terrorist attack what Layne’s lab could do for a larger attack on the nation.
“People are being educated, the proper people who need to be involved are getting prepped, and the proper facilities are being put together for testing and stockpiling,” said Katona, who has been working as an adviser on bioterrorism for the past few years.
“Most of us thought it would happen regardless, but the new issues of the last two weeks make us think it could happen sooner than we thought,” he said.
Katona, who also serves as a consultant to the L.A. County Department of Health Services on bioterrorism preparations, said panic, and not disease, might be the greatest factor if a bioterrorist attack occurs.
“The more you worry and alter your lifestyle, the more the terrorists are able to force you to do exactly what they want you to do,” he said.