DRDO scientist cautions on biological warfare

New Delhi, Oct 15: The government has cautioned the people to be on high alert against the possibility of biological and chemical warfare by terrorists in India, following reports of anthrax exposure in the US.
“We can’t predict such attacks”, the country’s top defence chemical scientist Dr RV Swamy said, asserting that the authorities were “well prepared” to deal with similar attacks here.

Declaring that anthrax was endemic to this country, the DRDO scientist said that the defence ministry along with the home ministry was preparing “rapid response teams” to combat threats of such terrorist attacks.

Walking a fine line between setting off a panic and the public’s right to be informed, Swamy along with two other leading DRDO scientists assured that anthrax which could spread through skin irritations, injections and inhaling was a treatable disease, with the country possessing enough stocks of antibiotics to deal with this threat.

He outlined measures including carrying out special crash courses for medical and forensic experts at its research headquarters at Gwalior to deal with the threat. Swamy said though there was an anti-anthrax vaccine, it was stored by the US authorities, who had earmarked it for its own armed forces.

For the first time the country’s top chemical scientists outlined that terrorists threat could also come in the shape of attacks using nerve agents, toxic agents, blister agents and blood agents.

Cautioning that nerve agents and toxins could be more lethal, Dr Swamy said even three drops of toxins measuring just 20 to 100 mg were enough to kill a man and in cases of nerve agents like sarin, sohan, VX and tabium the person could be affected within ten minutes of injection or inhaling.

— Reuters