Author: Dean Foust and John Carey
in Washington, D.C., Edited by Sheridan Prasso
Publication: Business Week
Date: September 20, 2002
URL: http://www.businessweek.com/print/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2002/nf20020920_3025.htm
A 1995 letter from the Centers for
Disease Control lists all the biological materials sent to Saddam's scientists
for 10 years
As the West Nile Virus spreads nationwide,
some congressional leaders are asking whether the mosquito-borne illness
could be linked to terrorism or to Iraq's bioweapons program. If so, a
more troubling question may be whether Iraq's weapons efforts were unwittingly
helped by U.S. scientists.
In a previously unreleased letter
obtained by BusinessWeek, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
admitted that the CDC supplied Iraqi scientists with nearly two dozen viral
and bacterial samples in the 1980s, including the plague, West Nile, and
dengue fever. The letter, written in 1995 by then-CDC director David Satcher,
was in response to a congressional inquiry.
The CDC was abiding by World Health
Organization guidelines that encouraged the free exchange of biological
samples among medical researchers -- before Congress imposed tighter controls
on biological exports in 1995, says Thomas Monath, who headed the CDC lab
where the viruses came from during the period in which they were handed
over. "It was a very innocent request, which we were obligated to fulfill,"
recalls Monath. Plus, in the 1980s, Iraq and the U.S. were allies.
Scientists say the West Nile strain
that so far has killed 46 people in the U.S. is not the same strain provided
to Iraq, and they find it unlikely that it could have mutated. They also
question whether terrorists would even try to develop West Nile as a weapon
when more virulent viruses are available.
Still, some observers believe there
should have been more prudence. "We were freely exchanging pathogenic materials
with a country that we knew had an active biological warfare program,"
says James Tuite, a former Senate investigator who helped publicize Gulf
War Syndrome. "The consequences should have been foreseen."
The CDC's 1995 Letter to the Senate
In 1995, the Center for Disease
Control & Prevention provided to then-Senator Donald Riegel (D-Mich.)
a complete list of all biological materials -- including viruses, retroviruses,
bacteria, and fungi -- that the CDC provided to Iraq from Oct. 1, 1984
through Oct. 13, 1993. Among the materials on the list are several types
of dengue and sandfly fever virus, West Nile virus, and plague-infected
mouse tissue smears. In his letter to Riegel, then-CDC Director David Satcher
wrote: "Most of the materials were non-infectious diagnostic reagents for
detecting evidence of infections to mosquito-borne viruses."
Here's the complete letter and list
of biological materials:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/images/sep2002/a39tab28.gif
