Don't Amplify Bioterror
Fears, Say UK Researchers
Excerpt By Karla Gale, Reuters Health

LONDON (Reuters Health) - Long-term social and psychological damage from the threat of biological or chemical terrorism may be worse than any physical illness these weapons cause if care is not taken, editorialists observe in the British Medical Journal for October 20.

Dr. Simon Wessely, a professor at Guy's, King's and St. Thomas' School of Medicine in London, and colleagues warn that fears of biological and chemical warfare can lead to panic and have already produced cases of ``mass sociogenic illness,'' in which groups of people develop symptoms in response to an imaginary threat.

And some methods for dealing with the threat of terrorism, such as having investigators arrive on the scene of a suspected biological attack wearing ``space suits,'' can further amplify fears, the authors warn.

The fact is, they note, that biological and chemical warfare agents are very limited as military weapons. Their real purpose, they add, is to ``wreak destruction via psychological means--by inducing fear, confusion, and uncertainty in everyday life.''

Wessely and colleagues point out that people have lived through other types of attacks designed only to terrorize, such as aerial bombing. And many societies today, Wessely adds, have learned to cope with terror as a daily threat.

He offered Irish Republican Army bombings in Belfast and London as examples of how civilians cope with a continuing threat. ``It becomes an irritation,'' he told Reuters Health in a telephone interview. ``For some people, it was an appalling tragedy, but for society it was something to get used to. The quicker that happens, the better.

``We can easily underestimate the powers of resilience of civic society,'' he continued. ``We can easily underestimate people's capacity to absorb adversity.''

Wessely and his colleagues urge physicians and others in positions of authority to beware of inadvertently amplifying psychological responses to bioterrorism.

``It's sometimes difficult for physicians to not get swept up in the general anxiety,'' Wessely told Reuters Health. ``They should remember their training and stay cool.''

In 1995, when members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult released sarin on the Tokyo subway, which Wessely described as ``the most concentrated area of humanity in the world,'' there were only 12 fatalities. ``If that's the best they can do...'' he said, his voice trailing off.

The only way terrorists can bring society to its knees, he said, is when the response is to shut down government, media, commerce and industry. ``That is the purpose of it. Terrorists couldn't do it by any other way, because the weapons themselves are not particularly effective.''

SOURCE: British Medical Journal 2001;323:878-879.

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