IMAGINE a mind-altering drug that is harvested from a plant grown in just a
few small regions of the world. Efforts to curb demand are floundering and
international trade has made the barons of the industry rich and powerful. Then,
one day, crop dusters fly over the crops, scattering a fungus or bacterium which
the plants can鈥檛 resist.
A new way of waging war on crack and heroin? Well, it could be. 杏吧原创s
working for the US government and the UN admit they are trying to develop
biological agents to destroy coca bushes and opium poppies, and make no secret
of their desire to use them in such places as Colombia or Afghanistan
(see p 20).
But what if the fields in this scenario were the vineyards of Bordeaux or the
Napa Valley? And what if the attackers were Islamic extremists bent on lashing
out at the West鈥檚 favourite recreational drug? OK, so it鈥檚 unlikely, but there
is almost nothing to stop terrorists or rogue states arming themselves with
biological agents that could be used against Japanese rice, Russian potatoes or
Californian grapes.
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Plant disease agents are a lot easier to manufacture and deliver than
biological weapons aimed at people. They can鈥檛 attack your technicians, are
adapted to travel vast distances on winds or insects, and are easy to
release鈥攗pwind and you鈥檙e off. What鈥檚 more, most are fungi that produce
conveniently hardy spores that can persist in soil for years.
The agents now being developed to attack opium, coca and marijuana plants
have been in the pipeline a long time. But that鈥檚 mainly because the researchers
are looking for strains that infect only the drug crops. Terrorists and
dictators wouldn鈥檛 have to be so fussy. A cheap and dirty anti-crop agent could
be produced far more easily than an anthrax bomb.
The notion isn鈥檛 new. Before it disavowed biological weapons in 1972, the US
had developed a wheat rust bomb to drop on the Ukraine, while in Uzbekistan,
Russian scientists were developing something similar to drop on Kansas. Now,
concern about this type of bioweapon is growing again among senior security
chiefs. And while cold-war style paranoia may be part of it, there are some real
causes for concern.
The most obvious is the huge strain that will be placed on food supplies as
the world鈥檚 population expands, making crops a more seductive target. Another
factor is that, thanks to an upsurge in new plant diseases through increases in
global agricultural trade and monocultures, there are now more strains of crop
pathogens for weapons makers to choose from鈥攁nd more vulnerability in the
fields they might target.
Sceptics may doubt whether anti-crop agents could act quickly enough to be
powerful instruments of war. But the lesson from BSE and the Belgian dioxin
fiasco is that you may not need to cause mass starvation to wreak economic or
political havoc. In many nations, grain prices alone make a big difference to
urban peace. And it may take only a hint of contamination with fungal toxins to
close down a nation鈥檚 food exports.
Against this background, the enthusiasm of the US and UN for using a
Fusarium fungus to infect drug crops seems reckless bordering on the crazy.
Advocates claim that such agents are ecologically safe provided they exist
naturally in the targeted regions. And most probably do, but not in the quantity
that spraying would bring. The sheer scale of the infection could increase the
risk of the fungi mutating into strains capable of attacking non-drug plants,
causing who knows what damage to farms or ecosystems.
The UN claims the fungi are merely 鈥減est control agents鈥� which will be
released only in countries whose governments consent. It also points out that
various disease spores are used to control thistles and water weeds in the US
and no one calls it biological warfare. Try telling this to the four million
peasants who depend on coca or poppy crops, or to the drug barons, or to the
neighbouring country into whose fields the spores may drift.
Deliberately infecting crops, even drug crops, starts us down a slippery
slope. It tells the world that using disease to achieve an end is
legitimate鈥攁nd fairly easy. Whatever the UN might say, these fungi
certainly look like biological weapons, which are supposed to be prohibited by
an international treaty. Developing them may well be easy. Putting the genie of
biological weapons back into the bottle may not be.
