A WASP as a WOMD? or The Tiny Terrors of Tora Bora

Can insects be used to flush out Bin Laden? A seemingly satirical question but one recently asked in a recent ABC News Report featuring a couple brainstorming scientists and a lineup of unsuspecting anti-terrorist arthropods.

A few years ago At the University of Kansas, Sonny Ramaswamy, Entomology Department Chair and a colleague trivially discussed the possibility of unleashing blood-thirsty stable flies impregnated with anthrax to bite and subsequently infect military targets such as Osama Bin Laden and his horde hiding out in the mountainous expanses of the Afghan-Pakistan border. Turns out they might have been on to something.

Stable flies, like ticks and other blood feeders track their much larger "prey" by following trails of CO2, body heat and other irresistible odors emanating from our (and other warm-blooded animal) bodies. Thousands of infected flies could be released into the mountains, feed on Al-Qaeda operatives and infecting them with deadly anthrax bacteria.

Insects as agents for Homeland Security is not necessarily a new idea or even practice. Several years ago I visited the lab of Dr. Joe Lewis at the University of Georgia, Tifton. He was using the natural food-smell associations of tiny, almost microscopic wasps to detect volatile compounds such as gunpowder or explosives. The wasps are fed sugar water as the scientists waft over a singular scent such as gunpowder or even illegal drugs at as little as 4 parts per billion (that's a really, really small amount). Like tiny, winged Pavlov dogs the wasps associate a reward with a particular smell and when released will aggregate on a suitcase or box that might be contain explosives or some china white.

But the use of the little self-armored terrors goes back even further than this. During World War II Japan attempted to drop plague-infested fleas on China and even the United States. While successfully establishing a plague epidemic in Manchuria, the attacks on US cities were called off after ethical consideration of some Japanese War Strategists. Still, plague occurs naturally and is maintained in rodent populations in California.