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PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY GLEN WEXLER |
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| Will We Be Safer? |
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O.K., so we won't walk the dog in a space suit. But expect bold innovations to cope with terrorist threats |
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By Richard Lacayo |
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Posted Sunday, Sept. 21, 2003; 1.15p.m. BST
wo years after that day in September, the world is still worried about terrorism. In London this month government and emergency-services officials staged an elaborate — and chillingly realistic — mock chemical attack on the Underground. But will our cities ever be really prepared to cope with terrifying scenarios like a "dirty bomb" or a smallpox outbreak? There's help on the way. A variety of companies and laboratories are rushing to produce technologies that address our deepest post-9/11 fears, and many will come online in the next year or two. "There isn't going to be one big breakthrough, one killer app," warns Katrina Heron, former editor of Wired, who, along with David Kuhn, is co-editing a book for HarperCollins on science and technology in the age of terrorism.
She's right — there will be many, many projects spearheaded by teams of scientists and engineers seeking to head off an array of potential threats. This much you can count on: some will be elaborate but ineffectual (can you say Maginot Line?), some will be all hype, but some will improve our sense of safety. Because terrorists can pick targets anywhere, counterterrorism has to defend everywhere — from airports to office buildings to cargo ships to hospitals. So get ready for the next wave of high-tech defense: radiation detectors, Internet safeguards, handheld anthrax "sniffers." There's no panacea, but in a world of ancient hatreds, modern shields still have their uses. Here's what's next in three key areas:
AIRPORTS
Expect more big changes at air terminals — probably at the security checkpoints. The screening devices that currently check your bag and the beeping gateways you walk through are best at finding suspicious metal objects only. Soft explosives, such as plastique, can slip right through. In an age of suicide bombers, that's a fatal shortcoming. QinetiQ, a British firm specializing in military and aviation security, is marketing technology for a machine that uses "millimeter microwave" technology, similar to what the U.S. military already uses to "see through" walls, to examine passengers for everything from explosives to ceramic weapons to glass or plastic vials. Another British firm, Smiths Detection, is now selling a device that scans airborne particles from passengers' clothing and skin for traces of explosives. This device might have detected the PETN and TAPT explosives in Richard Reid's shoes when he boarded an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001 in an attempt to blow it up.
As for checked luggage, devices that inspect it now at airports use X rays and C.T. scans to signal the possible presence of explosives. If they turn up something suspicious, a human handler has to open the suitcase and poke around inside. But within the next year, InVision, a Newark, California, manufacturer of baggage-screening devices, plans to begin selling machines that marry existing baggage scanners with devices that use "X-ray diffraction" technology. When a bag is found to contain something suspicious, the specialized scanners can zoom in on the indicated area and analyze the suspect materials, all with the suitcase closed.
BIOTERRORISM
This is the area where defenses most need a quick fix. Smallpox vaccines haven't improved much since the 1960s. Until 9/11, few drug companies felt the economic impetus to develop costly antidotes to all-but-conquered infections and ailments. Viagra was a sexier sell. Smallpox was considered to be a "market you hope will never exist," says Alan Goldhammer of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
President Bush kick-started the U.S. effort to improve medical defenses against biowarfare by launching Project BioShield last January. Its aim is to make Washington the guaranteed buyer for vaccines and drugs to combat bioterrorism. If it gets under way as planned — Senate passage still awaits — billions of U.S. government dollars will be available to develop, purchase and stockpile those drugs over the next 10 years. The British government has already ordered up 60 million doses of vaccine to inoculate the population in case of a smallpox attack. The exact amount of the U.S. stockpile remains unclear, but when the House approved Project BioShield in July by a vote of 421-2, it moved to cap the figure at $5.6 billion over 10 years, not the $6 billion Bush had first sought.
That sounds like a lot of cash, but when it can cost, say, $900 million to develop just one drug, according to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, money goes fast. The standard drug-approval process in the U.S. poses a problem, and Washington hopes to reduce the time and expense by simplifying the approval process for pharmaceuticals useful against bioterrorism. Because things like radiation poisoning or plague occur rarely, it's difficult to find human subjects to test new cures. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has eased the rules for bioterrorism-related drugs in America, allowing tests to be conducted entirely on animals, though a human test to establish safety is still required.
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