Weaponized Botox?

I picked up a copy of the June, 2010 edition of Scientific American yesterday; thought I'd catch up on some of the interesting goings on in the world of science and technology. There's a lot of fascinating stuff in it, but one thing that truly caught my attention was an article by Ken Coleman and Raymond Zilinskas called "Fake Botox, Real Threat."

It seems illegal labs are producing the botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) and selling it to unscrupulous doctors and cosmeticians. Irvine California based Allergan has the patent and there are only seven companies in the world licensed to make the popular substance that, injected in tiny amounts, reduces wrinkles. They estimate that up to 90% of the Russian market and a third to a half of the botox in some other countries are black market produced.

The problem is that BoNT is "the deadliest substance known to science." One ten millionth of a gram is a lethal injected dose for a 170 pound person. One gram could be lethal to 14,285 people if ingested, 1.25 million if inhaled and 8.3 million if injected. And they say that anyone with a master's degree in biology would have little trouble growing the anaerobic botulism microbes and harvesting their waste product, which is the BoNT. Chad Livdahl and Zarah Karim pleaded guilty to doing just that in 2006 and received sentences of nine and six years, respectively. Illicit production seems to be extremely high in Southern China and Southern Russia, possibly including Chechnya.

The ramifications for terrorists taking note of this are terrible to contemplate and probably just around the corner. If it's easy to grow and just a little bit of it can kill a whole lot of people it sounds like a mass murderer's dream-and everyone else's nightmare. It's just one more thing for the world's security agencies to worry about in our increasingly dangerous world.