Hypothetical Bioterrorist Attack Involving Botulism - Essay Example

Not only were soda bottles with fruit juices, carbonated drinks, or colas attacked, but also bottled mineral water, beer bottles, and even cans. The terrorist had a few units where the botulism toxin was manufactured on a large scale and just a few milliliters of the toxin had to be introduced into each bottle of soda. Even milk was supposed to be attacked and milk bottles were found to be infected (Wein 2005). People across the US feel sick on consuming contaminated food products. Some of the common symptoms that were noted included double vision, slurring of the speech, drooping of the eyelids, difficulty in swallowing, muscle weakness, berating difficulties, dry mouth, general body weakness, etc (CDC 2012).

Young children and adolescents who especially consume high amounts of these drinks were the targets and required immediate hospitalization. Many of the patients with serious respiratory problems need admission to the ICU and ventilator support. The mortality rates were also high. In total, there were about 3200 cases of botulism reported throughout the US within the first 5 days, about 2300 people required admission to the hospital, 450 were critically ill and required ventilator support and 400 had mortalities. Initially, at the onset of the initial stages, it seemed that the increase in the sporadic cases of botulism toxin poisoning simultaneously in various cities across the US was supposed to be from consuming contaminated milk or drinking water.  Simultaneously it was found that many dairy cows were dying from some infectious disease.  It may strongly be suspected that the people involved in these attacks may have introduced certain toxic substances into dairy animals across the US to demonstrate that the contamination of food and other products was linked to animal deaths due to infections.

However, the biggest evidence to demonstrate that the outbreak of botulism was a suspected terrorist attack was the contamination of soda drinks and sodas. The water used for manufacturing and drinking water was also suspected. However, a majority of US cities and soft drink manufacturers used chlorinated water and there is no chance that botulism contaminates naturally. 2. Describe how the outbreak characteristics would have been different in the above scenario, if the outbreak had been natural, rather than intentional.

A natural outbreak of botulism already has mechanisms by which ultimately the people who consume the products are not infected. For example, water that may be contaminated would be treated with chlorine. Soft drinks are prepared using chlorinated water and milk is pasteurized before being packaged. Even some of the foods are disinfected before reaching the ultimate consumer (Medinet 2012). The second most startling fact that the outbreak was intentional was that it occurred in various cities in the US simultaneously.

More than 10 major cities in the US were attacked and most of these cities were high consumers of soft drinks and dairy products. The last fact that suggested that this was an intentional outbreak was various molecular laboratory tests conducted on the contaminated food product, the microorganism isolated was one particular strain, and this strain was one of the most virulent strains that produced large quantities of the toxin. A micro-fraction of a gram of the toxin was more than enough to poison and kill an adult

3. Describe how the federal/ local government should respond to the specific hypothetical bioterrorist attack.
Since poisoning with the botulism toxin occurs within 6 to 36 hours, the authorities should make an effort to notify the people immediately (at least within 24 hours of the outbreak) and suggest the measures to be taken. All suspected food products should be retrieved immediately from the market. The suspected strain of bacteria causing contamination should be identified and laboratories possessing these strains should be informed about any suspected leakage of their strains (Wein 2005). Immediately, the security of food and dairy products should be increased and manufacturers, distributors, and supermarket stores have to document the movement of the various food products. The authorities have to inform the manufacturers and distributors to inform them of suspected sabotage activities that may be going on.

Also since many of the dairy animals have been infected with infectious diseases, the cattle keepers should be informed about this attack, and they would have to inform the government immediately of any infectious disease noted in their animals. Such animals should be immediately isolated. The authorities should go about collecting samples from the market of the suspected contaminated food products, test the same in the laboratory and notify the public and vendors immediately of the list of contaminated food products. Vendors should be given strict orders to retrieve and destroy such products. Hospitals also have to be notified about reporting cases of botulism toxin poisoning (Stanford School of Business 2005).