WP: Bioterrorism War Game Shows Lack Of Readiness [View All]

Bioterrorism War Game Shows Lack Of Readiness

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 15, 2005; Page A12


The imaginary patients started stumbling into emergency rooms in Munich and Frankfurt, then Istanbul and Los Angeles, and within hours after the start of a war game yesterday, Western intelligence agencies concluded that there had been a choreographed attack on numerous cities by terrorists wielding smallpox pathogens.

By mid-afternoon, health experts realized that millions of people worldwide would soon die agonizing deaths. World leaders -- or at least people posing as them -- who were assembled at a mock Washington summit yesterday interrupted each other and waved their arms as they debated potential real-life choices. Perhaps the most important: Would wealthy nations that possess smallpox vaccine share it with their unprepared neighbors?

The exercise, called Atlantic Storm, featured former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright as the U.S. president and eight current or former high-ranking officials of America's European allies -- such as Britain, France and Germany -- role-playing as the prime ministers of their respective countries....

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Perhaps the starkest lesson of the war game -- which was sponsored by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pittsburgh, among other organizations -- was that there is no playbook anywhere to guide international leaders on how to divide up the few extra doses of vaccine, or even who would make such decisions. By the end of the day, the participants agreed that the World Health Organization, a United Nations affiliate, should handle the job, but Albright said that, as a U.S. president pressured by constituencies that mistrust the United Nations, she agreed to that only reluctantly....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10746-2005Jan14.html