Physic Nut; Bio Diesel or Weapon?
June 03, 2006

George Sharon

Head of the Burmese military government, Senior General Than Shwe, had ordered to grow Physic Nut allover the country including 100,000 acres in the Kachin ceasefire groups’ controlled areas. Innocent people in Burma have lack of knowledge about Physic Nut. The junta advertises the nut on TV and demonstrates its uses like burning in oil-lamp, running a single stroke engines as a bio-diesel and gives training to grow it.

I am afraid of people in Burma who do not aware the harmful toxicity of the Nut. Currently, most of the workers employing in government office are busy for planting physic nut in the whole country. There is an order to grow at least one acre each to families’ dwelling in the government controlled areas.

This made a lot of confusions and questions to scientists in Myanmar. This can be used as a reserve fuel for the military government at the end of foreign investments. As the history shows that it can also be used as Biological Warfare Agents (BWA) by extracting Ricin (contains in Castor Nut) and Cursin (contains in Physic Nut). The nuts are listed as Biological Warfare Agents in the section 3 of Military Critical Technologies List in U.S Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

Ricin and Cursin

Ricin was once referred to as Agent W. The most notorious of Ricin is if an assassination weapons. Castor Ricinus (Communis) and Physic Nut (Jatropha Curcas) belong to the same Euphorbiaceous family and chemically analysis showed that the function of toxicity caused by Ricin and Cursin are almost the same. The poison makes irritation to human body with acute abdominal pain and nausea about 1 or 2 hour following ingestion. Diarrhea and nausea continue. Depression and collapse may occur, especially in children. Four to five seed are said to have caused death, but the roasted seed is said to be nearly innocuous. Bark, fruit, leaf, root, and wood are all reported to contain HCN (Watt and Breyer-Brandwijk, 1962). Seeds contain the dangerous Toxalbumin Curcin, rendering them potentially fatally toxic.

Ricin is a glycoprotein toxin from the seed of the castor plant and Cursin from the Physic Nut plant. It blocks protein synthesis by altering the RNA, thus killing the cell. Ricin’s significance as a potential biological warfare agent relates to its availability worldwide, its ease of production, and extreme pulmonary toxicity when inhaled.

Overall, the clinical picture seen depends on the route of exposure. All reported serious or fatal cases of castor bean ingestion have taken approximately the same course: rapid onset of nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps and severe diarrhea with vascular collapse; death has occurred on the third day or later. Following inhalation, one might expect nonspecific symptoms of weakness, fever, cough, and hypothermia followed by hypotension and cardiovascular collapse. The exact cause of death is unknown and probably varies with route of intoxication. High doses by inhalation appear to produce severe enough pulmonary damage to cause death.

In oral intoxication, fever, gastrointestinal involvement, and vascular collapse are prominent, the latter differentiating it from infection with enteric pathogens. With regard to inhalation exposure, nonspecific findings of weakness, fever, vomiting, cough, hypothermia, and hypotension in large numbers of patients might suggest several respiratory pathogens.

Therapy is supportive and should include maintenance of intravascular volume. Standard management for poison ingestion should be employed if intoxication is by the oral route. There is presently no antitoxin available for treatment.

There is currently no prophylaxis approved for human use. Active immunization and passive antibody prophylaxis are under study, as both are effective in protecting animals from death following exposure by intravenous or respiratory routes.

This article attempts to save people in Burma by discussing some of that mysterious history and background of biological weapons and by reviewing agents mainly a few toxics that cause coetaneous disease and death. While a biological attack could result in a made epidemic of unprecedented scale, the classical principles of clinical medicine and epidemiology would apply. Prompt diagnosis and early interventions could reduce morbidity and mortality, and mitigate the effects of a biological attack. In the aftermath of a biological attack, dermatologists could play a critical role in recognizing the differential diagnosis of an epidemic exanthema and alerting public health officials, leading to prompt medical and public health interventions, hopefully preventing wide-spread mortality.

The opinion expressed here are author’s own.

Historical Review of Biological Warfare

‘Biological Warfare’ (BW) is defined as the “employment of biological agents to produce casualties in man or animals or damage to plants.” An early BW attack took place in the Black Sea port of Kaffa (now Feodossia, Ukraine) in 1346. Rats and their fleas carried the disease to attacking Tatar soldiers. In spite, the Tatars catapulted the bodies of victims at the defending Genoese who contracted plague and left Kaffa. The same rats afflicting the Tatars likely brought disease to the Genoese.

Another attempted use of biological warfare occurred between 1754 and 1767 when the British infiltrated smallpox-infested blankets to unsuspecting American Indians during the French and Indian war. Smallpox decimated the Indians, but it is unclear if the contaminated blankets or endemic disease brought by the Europeans caused these epidemics. In 1932, the Japanese began a series of horrific experiments on human beings at ‘Unit 731’ outside Harbin, Manchuria, China. At least 11 Chinese cities were attacked with the agents of anthrax, cholera, shigellosis, salmonella, and plague, and at least 10,000 died during their gruesome experiments.

The United States started an offensive biological warfare program at Camp Detrick (today Fort Detrick) in Frederick, Maryland in 1943. Ten years later, the defensive program began. By 1969, the U.S. had weaponized the agents causing anthrax, botulism, tularemia, brucellosis, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, and Q fever.

These were soon destroyed after President Nixon unilaterally ended the U.S. offensive biological warfare program that year. 1972 the U.S. signed the Biological Weapons Convention stating that it would never develop, produce, stockpile, acquire, or retain BW agents or the means to deliver them.

Despite this convention, the development of BW weapons has continued. Controversial evidence suggests that ‘yellow rain’ (trichothecene mycotoxins) attacks in Southeast Asia caused thousands of deaths between 1974 and 1981. At least 66 people died of inhalational anthrax when an aerosol of Bacillus anthracis spores was accidentally released from a BW research facility in Sverdlovsk, USSR in 1979.

By 1991, the Iraqis had weaponized anthrax, botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin. Fortunately, these were not used during Desert Shield or Desert Storm. The United Nations destroyed the final remains of the Iraqi offensive program in 1996.

Finally, in 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo cult, that released sarin nerve gas in a Japanese subway, was found to possess rudimentary biological weapons including anthrax, botulism, and Q fever.