Talk:Timeline of biorisk

Review by Vipul starting 2024-09-02

Big picture comments

• The full timeline gives lots of examples of the early use of biological warfare. I think the big picture row for "Up to the 19th century" should include a sentence mentioning this.
• For the summary by decade, it feels like a bit of a stretch to mention the COVID-19 pandemic in the 2010s instead of the 2020s, considering that it was discovered in November 2019 and only started being taken seriously around January 2020, so in the 2020s.

Line-by-line comments

• Repetitive wording: "Unit 8604 is formed in Guangzhou. Also known as Unit 8604 or Detachment Nami,": Here, you say "Unit 8604" for the name and then say "Also known as Unit 8604"; the repetition is unnecessary. Is there another alternative name you wanted to share?✔
• Duplicate content between rows: There is significant overlap between the two adjacent rows for Gruinard Island in 1942, one about the facility and one about the first test. Might it make sense to reduce some of the duplication of information?✔
• Duplicate rows: There are two rows about the launch of Operation Whitecoat, one for 1954-1976 and one for 1955.✔
• Duplicate rows: There are two rows for the 1971 smallpox outbreak in Araisk.✔

Extended timeline

Year	Risk type	Event type	Biological agent/hazard	Details	Country/location
1909–1918	Intentional	Bioterrorism	Salmonella typhi	Henri Girard, while studying bacteriology, employs S. typhi and toxic mushrooms to commit murder and claim death benefits from the insurance policies he sells to his victims. He becomes successful in killing two individuals, but six others survive after being infected or poisoned by him.
1933	Intentional	Bioterrorism (individual criminal)	Yersinia pestis	Dr. Taranath Bhatacharyna, a physician skilled in bacteriology, and Benoyendra Chandra Pandey jointly kill Amarendra Pandey, who is Benoyendra's half-brother. The motive behind the murder is a dispute over the division of their father's estate. They administer a deadly amount of Y. pestis to carry out the crime.	India
Late 1940s	Intentional	Espionage	None	Soviets use a trick to monitor US researchers' activities, revealing that the United States is focused on building a nuclear bomb rather than engaging in biological weapons research.
1953				"Conduct of the St. Jo Program stages mock anthrax attacks on St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Winnipeg using aerosol generators placed on top of cars. Tests show that large-scale deployment of a bioweapon from the land is feasible.
1955				"Operation Whitecoat uses human research volunteers to study the effects of biological agents on human volunteers. The operation will continue for the next 18 years and involve some 2200 people.
1957				"Operation Large Area Concept kicks off to test the release of aerosols from airplanes; the first experiment involves a swath from South Dakota to Minnesota and further tests cover areas from Ohio to Texas and Michigan to Kansas. Tests show that large-scale deployment of a bioweapon from the air is feasible; some of the test particles travel 1200miles.
1965				"government agents at what is now Reagan National Airport secretly sprayed harmless bacteria onto passengers."
1965		Operation	Mosquito	Operation Magic Sword
1969 (November 25)				"Nixon announces that the United States will renounce the use of any form of deadly biological weapons that either kill or incapacitate. The end of an era in US offensive biological weapons research, production, and storage.
c.1970	Intentional			The US leftist terrorist group Weather Underground attempts to blackmail a homosexual officer at the US Army's bacteriological warfare facility in Fort Detrick, Maryland, into supplying organisms which would then be used to contaminate the water supply of a city or cities in the US.
1972 (April 10)				"The Biological Weapons Convention, which bans all bioweapons, is completed and opened for signature. Seventy-nine nations signed the treaty, including the Soviet Union.
1973	Intentional		Anthrax, botulinum	Threat by a biologist in Germany to contaminate water supplies with bacilli of anthrax and botulinum.
1975 (March 26)				"The Biological Weapons Convention officially goes into force; the US Senate also finally ratifies the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Political will to ban biological weapons on the international front.
1975				The Symbionese Liberation Army, a radical left-wing group, was found with manuals on how to make biological weapons.
1975	Intentional	Bioterrorism (preventive research)	Multiple	Griffith suggests that biological weapons are suitable for terrorist use.
1978				"Injection as a means of delivering biological agents may also take place through the use of a syringe or other mechanical device. A primary example of this occurred in September 1978, when a Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, received a lethal dose of ricin from the tip of an umbrella (Alibek and Handelman, 2000)."
1979				"Nearly 70 people die from an accidental release of anthrax spores in the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk. The United States suspects that anthrax bacterial spores were accidentally released from a Soviet military biological facility.
1980				"A Red Army Faction safe house reportedly discovered in Paris included a laboratory containing quantities of botulinum toxin."
1983	Intentional	Notable case	Ricin	FBI arrest of two brothers who manufactured an ounce of nearly pure ricin.
1984				"followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh contaminated salad bars with Salmonella bacteria in a small town in Oregon. It was the largest scale act of bioterrorism in US history. More than 750 cases of salmonellosis resulted from the salad bar contamination. It was later discovered that the Rajneeshees wanted to influence the local county elections. Cult members obtained the Salmonella strain through the mail from American Type Culture Collection and propagated the liquid cultures in their compound’s medical clinic.
1984	Intentional		Multiple	Two Canadians attempt to pose as microbiologists from the Canadian firm ICM Science, to order pathogens over the telephone from the American Type Culture Collection of Rockville, Maryland.	Canada, United States
1984				"The Rajneeshees contaminate food with Salmonella bacterium in a small town in Oregon to influence local elections. The first significant act of bioterrorism in the United States.
1989				"A Soviet defector from Biopreparat, Vladimir Pasechnik, reveals the existence of a continuing offensive biological weapons program in the Soviet Union. Evidence that the Soviet Union is violating the Biological Weapons Convention.
1989				"In Minnesota, four members of the Patriots Council, an antigovernment extremist group, were arrested in 1991 for plotting to kill a US marshal with ricin. The group planned to mix the homemade ricin with a chemical that speeds absorption (dimethylsulfoxide) and then smear it on the door handles of the marshal’s car. The plan was discovered and all four men were arrested and the first to be prosecuted under the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
1989 (August 14)	Intentional		Fusarium	Request from an Iranian pharmacologist to a Canadian veterinary pathologist for two strains of the fungus fusarium.
1991				"In Minnesota, four members of the Patriots Council, an antigovernment extremist group, were arrested in 1991 for plotting to kill a US marshal with ricin. The group planned to mix the homemade ricin with a chemical that speeds absorption (dimethylsulfoxide) and then smear it on the door handles of the marshal’s car. The plan was discovered and all four men were arrested and the first to be prosecuted under the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
1992 (April)				"Russian president Boris Yeltsin admits the 1979 outbreak was caused by the Soviet military but gives few details. An admonition that the Soviet Union operated an offensive biological warfare program in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention."
1993 (April)				"Much has been made of the potential of aerosolized powders and respiratory droplets in factual and fictitious biothreat scenarios. The largest infectious disease outbreak in the history of the United States occurred in April 1993. The event was caused by an accidental waterborne contamination. The outbreak of cryptosporidiosis, which occurred in the greater Milwaukee area, was estimated to have caused more than 430,000 people to become ill with gastroenteritis among a population of 1.6million (MacKenzie et al., 1994). Approximately 4400 people were hospitalized and about 100 people died as a result of the outbreak."
1993 (June)	Intentional			Attempt by a visiting research scientist to acquire a deadly fungus in Canada.	Canada
1993	Intentional		Multiple	The US House Committee on Armed Services expresses concern about the spread of biological weapons falling into the hands of terrorists.	United States
1993	Intentional	Bioterrorism (individual criminal)	HIV	Iwan E, a Dutch man, injects his former girlfriend, Gina O, with 2.5 ml of HIV-contaminated blood following their breakup.
1995				"In 1995 Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese doomsday cult, became infamous for an act of chemical terrorism when members released sarin gas into the Tokyo subway. What many people do not know about the group is that it developed and attempted to use biological agents (anthrax, Q fever, Ebola virus, and botulinum toxin) on at least 10 other occasions. Despite several releases, it was unsuccessful in its use of biologicals. This program is examined more thoroughly in chapter Case Studies."
1995	Intentional	Notable case	Ricin	Conviction of individuals (Douglas Baker and Leroy Wheeler) for attempting to poison U.S. agents using ricin.
2001 (June)		Simulation		"the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security ran the Dark Winter scenario, simulating a bioterrorist attack in which residents of Oklahoma City were deliberately infected with smallpox, which quickly spread across the country. Just a few months after the simulated attack took place, a real bioterrorist attack occurred: envelopes containing anthrax were mailed to media outlets and politicians’ offices, killing five people."
2001	Fall			"Envelopes filled with anthrax spores are sent to various media and political figures in the United States; 22 people, from Florida to Connecticut, are infected; 5 die. A national movement begins to prepare a citizenry against the threat of bioterrorism, which has now become a household word."
2003				"Letters containing ricin have been mailed to public officials from various people and places. Many perpetrators have been caught and convicted. Others remain at large. These small-scale incidents keep us mindful that some biological agents are easy to acquire and utilize in crimes and small-scale acts of terrorism."
2003				"several letters containing ricin were recovered from a mail-sorting center in Greenville, South Carolina. A note from someone calling themselves the “Fallen Angel” accompanied those letters."
2004				"ricin was sent to the office of Senator Bill Frist. Some federal investigators believe that this instance may be tied to the Fallen Angel, but no one has been identified for this biocrime or the 2003 incident."
2007	Both		Multiple	In a calculation by American national security expert Jason Gaverick Matheny, he estimates that there could be up to ten to the sixteenth (1016) potential life years if humanity were to live the average lifespan of a species. This estimate, however, is contingent on reaching a population of ten billion and maintaining that number through space colonization according to Cassidy Nelson, head of Biosecurity Policy at The Centre for Long-Term Resilience. In this scenario, the potential for human lives becomes astronomically high. The statement by Matheny, while not explicitly mentioning "biorisk," indirectly alludes to the potential threats posed by events, including biological risks, that could jeopardize the continuity and well-being of the human species.
2013				"ricin was sent to US President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. A woman from Shreveport, Louisiana, was arrested for this biocrime and later convicted on several charges."
2013				"a letter containing ricin was sent to President Barack Obama, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, and Mississippi judge Sadie Holland. A Tupelo, Mississippi man was convicted of crimes related to these incidents and sentenced to 25 years in prison."
2014				"a Philadelphia man sent a romantic rival a scratch-and-sniff birthday card laced with ricin. In 2015 he was convicted on several charges related to the incident and subsequently received a sentence of 20–40 years in prison."
2019 (October)		Simulation		"In October 2019, the Hopkins center ran Event 201, simulating an outbreak of a novel coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people. Originating in Brazil, the fictional CAPS virus went on to kill sixty-five million people. Within two months, the not-at-all-fictional COVID-19 virus made its way from bats to humans—perhaps via civets or pangolins—and swept from Wuhan, China, to every other country in the world."
2020				According to Abrahm Lustgarten's How Climate Change Is Contributing to Skyrocketing Rates of Infectious Disease, each year, five new diseases emerge.
2022			Multiple	A cost-effective biosecurity study is conducted by Andrew Schneider BD and Piers Millett from the Future of Humanity Institute. Emphasis on the potential cost-effectiveness of investing in reducing global catastrophic biological risks compared to traditional biosecurity measures.