The Working Group on Civilian Biodefense, an expert panel convened by the Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, says that botulinum toxin poses a major biological weapons threat to the public. Botulinum toxin is the cause of the disease called botulism. The report's principal authors, Steven Arnon, MD, and Robert Schechter, MD, of the Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program of the California Department of Health, worked to complete the analysis with a team of 23 national experts, which included six Johns Hopkins University faculty members. Thomas Inglesby, MD, a researcher with the Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies and assistant professor of infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, served as the project's leader at Johns Hopkins.
Botulinum toxin is a serious threat as a weapon, because it is extremely lethal and easy to produce.
Botulinum toxin comes from the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, which grows in soil. Naturally-occurring botulism is usually contracted through eating contaminated foods or by absorbing the bacteria through cuts in the skin. It is a rare disease in the U.S. with fewer than 200 cases reported each year. The Hopkins Working Group believes that intentional contamination of the food supply or aerosol dissemination of the toxin is the greatest terrorism concern. Several nations, including the former Soviet Union and Iraq, were found to have developed and stockpiled bioweapons containing botulinum toxin, despite being signatories to the Biological Weapons Convention.