Reuters Health Information (2002-11-06): Germ warfare nothing new, Tartar bioterror shows Germ warfare nothing new, Tartar bioterror shows

Last Updated: 2002-11-06 12:45:46 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By E. J. Mundell

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Imagine populations in the West terrified by the prospect of biological attack from enemies lurking deep within central Asia.

Sound familiar? For the inhabitants of Europe nearly 700 years ago, the threat of bioterrorism--in those days from Mongol hordes storming across Russia--was all too real. And historians say that in at least one incident, the "Tartars" succeeded in unleashing the bacterium responsible for the Black Death on a trapped and helpless citizenry.

In 1346 "the Mongol army hurled plague-infected cadavers into the besieged Crimean city of Caffa, thereby transmitting the disease to the inhabitants," writes Dr. Mark Wheelis, a microbiologist and expert on bioterrorism at the University of California, Davis. He believes the medieval attack could provide lessons on the magnitude of the bioterror threat facing the world today.