WSU scientists ready to combat bioterrorism

PULLMAN – The two-headed calves and grossly enlarged animal skulls mounted on the walls of the Washington State University veterinary hospital are known as monsters, but they are not the type that keep scientists here awake at night.

The researchers are much more worried about plague, E. coli, anthrax or other deadly agents that terrorists could use to kill Americans or destroy the nation’s food supply.

The WSU College of Veterinary Medicine is on the front lines of the war on terrorism, part of a nationwide early warning system to detect if bioterrorists have struck the United States.

While it may not be as dramatic as flying jetliners into buildings, or taking over a school, bioterrorism has the potential to kill far more people, WSU officials said.

“Our society is so removed from large outbreaks of disease in animals or food, it’s hard to imagine it,” said Charlie Powell, spokesman for the veterinary school.

Last February, President Bush ordered the federal government to develop new procedures to protect the nation’s food supply from terror attack. He called for creation of systems to contain any outbreaks of plant or animal disease that result from terror attack, and to prevent or cure the diseases themselves.

It is vets who must fight those threats.

If terrorists try to contaminate cattle, poultry or other farm animals, Dr. Terry McElwain, director of the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab, would be among the first to know.

The lab, created in 1974, can quickly perform tests on thousands of samples. After the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, the WSU lab became one of 12 in a national network responsible for spotting exotic disease outbreaks in animals.

That includes potential “agroterrorist” weapons like foot and mouth disease, swine fever, avian flu and others, plus lethal disease such as Ebola, plague and tularemia.

The vet hospital also has its own SWAT team, a field disease unit headed by Dr. Clive Gay. The unit can move on short notice to the scene of unexplained animal deaths such as cows dropping in fields, or large numbers of chickens expiring in their coops.

An outbreak of avian flu in British Columbia this year killed 17 million birds and prompted the WSU team to conduct mass testing of poultry along the border in April and May.

“We did 5,000 tests in three weeks to make sure it had not moved south of the border,” McElwain said. All the tests turned out negative.

Last October, the National Institutes of Health awarded nearly $10 million to eight WSU researchers to develop ways to protect the nation’s food and water supply, especially from E. coli, listeria and salmonella.

The Department of Homeland Security recently awarded a full scholarship to a WSU veterinary student, Lindsay Fry of Boise, who described in her application the role vets play in the nation’s defense.

Veterinarians have extensive training in comparative medicine, diagnoses of exotic and emerging diseases, and diseases that affect both humans and animals, she noted. They are also trained to recognize symptoms of disease agents that would rank high among the options for terrorists, she said.

While a case of mad cow disease discovered in Washington state last December caused panic and a huge disruption in the beef market, mad cow is not considered a major terrorist tool because it takes years to incubate.

There are all kinds of dangers out there. Perhaps the most frightening is avian flu, a disease that appears to be moving from birds to cats, and may jump to humans.

“What’s scary is if you look genetically at the virus in chickens, it is more closely related to the viruses in people than we thought,” McElwain said. “Viruses are evolving in ways we would not have predicted, and jumping species more quickly.”

An outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Great Britain a few years ago showed the catastrophic potential of such diseases. The disease doesn’t kill cattle, but causes them to drop weight and milk production so much that it destroys farm revenues.

“It’s no secret that the federal government and the USDA believe the most devastating and fairly easy-to-introduce agent is foot and mouth disease,” McElwain said.

An outbreak of exotic Newcastle disease in California in 2002 killed more than 3 million hens, and placed the state’s chicken and egg farms under quarantine. The disease paralyzes and kills all species of birds, but isn’t a threat to humans.

The worst case scenario would be the intentional introduction of a biological agent at several places in the United States, which would overwhelm diagnostic lab capacity, McElwain said.

“The system can be overwhelmed,” he said.