-
 Could
a mysterious disease that has taken at least 16 lives in the Four
Corners region of the Southwest since this past May be related to
the U.S. biological warfare program? In June, federal and state
investigators blamed the outbreak on hantaviruses. Although
hantavirus-related illnesses were unknown in the U.S. before this
year, they have been studied by military and civilian researchers
since the 1950s, when U.S. troops fighting in Korea became
infected with a flulike disease that attacks the kidneys.
The virus, named after Korea's Hantaan River, is carried by
rodents and is transmitted by airborne particles of the feces or
urine of infected animals. The Four Corners illnesses were almost
certainly caused in this way, asserts C. Mack Sewell, an
epidemiologist for the state of New Mexico, who notes that the
virus had previously been detected in deer mice in the area.
Rumors have nonetheless persisted among Native Americans and
others in the Four Corners region that Fort Wingate, an army base
near the epicenter of the epidemic, was somehow involved. In June,
Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico queried the Pentagon about
possible biological warfare activities at the base. The Pentagon
acknowledged that the fort was once used as a storage depot for
chemical weapons but denied that biological weapons were ever held
or tested there.
Yet Fort Wingate has served as a target site, or "impact zone," for
missiles launched from other military bases, according to a former
congressional investigator who requested anonymity. One possible
launch site is the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, several hundred
miles to the north. The army has conducted experiments at Dugway
with both chemical and biological agents for decades. Dugway earned
notoriety in 1968 when a jet aircraft from the site accidentally
released nerve gas over a nearby ranch and killed thousands of
sheep.
The investigator suggests that tests initiated at Dugway may have
infected the Fort Wingate region with biological agents years ago.
The epidemic may then have been triggered by demolition or other
disturbances related to the decommissioning of Fort Wingate early
this year.
There is also reason to doubt that all the Four Corners illnesses
stemmed from hantavirus, the investigator notes. Fewer than half of
the victims tested positive for hantavirus. Moreover, deaths were
attributed not to kidney failure - the usual outcome of hantavirus
infection - but from hemorrhaging of the lungs. Congress recently
appropriated $6 million for a study of the Four Corners outbreak.
Whatever the conclusions of the study, the suspicion engendered by
the accident shows the need for greater openness within - and
perhaps demilitarization of - the biological defense program, argues
Leonard A. Cole of Rutgers University, an authority on the history
of biological warfare. "It would be in the army's interest to
eliminate the conspiratorial attitude toward these outbreaks," he
points out. This year, Congress required the Department of Health
and Human Services to examine the feasibility of shifting some
biological defense research from the army to the National Institutes
of Health.
(Scientific American, ISSN 0036-8733, Copyright
1993 by Scientific
American, Inc., 451 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10017-1111.)
|
Return to The Trapline Page