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By Root 1280 0

about such possibilities cite precedents, ancient and modern, for the use of poisoned food and drink to achieve political ends. The Athenians forced Socrates to drink hemlock; Shakespeare’s Queen Gertrude succumbed to poisoned wine intended for Hamlet; the Borgias were notorious for their deft poisoning of political opponents. Medieval leaders of church and state employed tasters to protect against precisely such activities. As such examples demonstrate, food-borne biological weapons do not need to be confined to wartime but can be used to achieve more personal political objectives.51 Modern instances also abound. In 1997, an evidently disgruntled U.S. laboratory employee sent electronic mail messages inviting coworkers to partake of doughnuts; his message failed to mention that he had laced his treats with a particularly virulent type of Shigella, and 45 people became ill. Also in the U.S., during the 2001 December holidays, nearly 300,000 pounds of ham products had to be recalled because an angry employee spiked them with nails, screws, and other nonfood materials.52 A review of such episodes, published early in 2001, describes poisonings of water at German prisoner-of-war camps with arsenic, Israeli citrus fruit with mercury, and Chilean grapes with cyanide, suggesting that no food or drink is invulnerable to such contamination.53

Far-fetched as it may seem, the single known case of food terrorism designed to achieve political goals in the United States involved the deliberate poisoning of salad bars with Salmonella. This widely cited incident occurred in 1984 soon after followers of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh established communal headquarters in a small rural town in Oregon. Followers were easily identifiable by their red clothing, red beads, and aggressive interactions with neighbors, and they soon came into conflict over issues related to land use and building permits. To keep local residents from voting in an election for county commissioners who might enforce zoning laws, members of the commune sprinkled Salmonella over salad bars and into cream pitchers at 10 restaurants, thereby making at least 750 people sick.

This incident taught many lessons, not least that biological agents are easy to use and to obtain: the commune clinic merely ordered them from a biological supply house. Investigators had serious problems tracing the source of contamination, however. For one thing, they could not imagine that the poisonings were deliberate; nobody claimed responsibility, no motive was evident, and no such incident had been reported previously. They only were able to identify the perpetrators when one confessed. Officials also decided that publicity about the outbreak might incite copycat behavior and did not publish their findings until 1997. The incident became a classic example of how bioterrorism—even when causing no loss of life—can induce havoc. Although none of the victims died, 45 were hospitalized, and all but one of the affected restaurants soon went out of business.54

Beyond this example, the threat of food bioterrorism for political purposes remains theoretical. Nevertheless, fears of that possibility induce a wide range of responses, among them exploitation—the promotion and sale of unproved remedies. One practitioner, for example, suggests vitamin C as an alternative to vaccinations and antibiotics for bioterrorist-induced smallpox or anthrax: “Vitamin C . . . should prove highly effective against both of these conditions. I say ‘should’ only because their rareness has prevented any single vitamin C researcher from encountering enough cases to conduct a meaningful study and publish it. However, the likelihood that both of these conditions could be completely cured, even in their advanced stages, is compelling.”55 Largely as a result of such misleading suggestions, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine informs visitors to its Web site that no herbal or vitamin products can protect against bioterrorism, and the Federal Trade Commission sends warning letters to Web sites