Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat

[davidbfpo]

From FP Blog and possibly a better title would be 'What is the bio-scientist doing in the lab?'.

A long article and hardly calming:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article..._door?page=0,0

The Dutch experiment appears to have reached Hilary Clinton's desk; slightly edited comments she made:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a surprise visit to Geneva on Dec. 7, addressing the Biological Weapons Convention review conference. The highest-ranking U.S. official to speak to the biological weapons group in decades, Clinton warned "The emerging gene-synthesis industry is making genetic material widely available. This obviously has many benefits for research, but it could also potentially be used to assemble the components of a deadly organism.

A crude but effective terrorist weapon can be made by using a small sample of any number of widely available pathogens, inexpensive equipment, and college-level chemistry and biology. Less than a year ago, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula made a call to arms for, and I quote, 'brothers with degrees in microbiology or chemistry to develop a weapon of mass destruction".

In the UK in a different field, radiology, much effort is spent on physical defences, but vetting the staff - at universities - is not included.

I do wonder whether the "bubble" of 'trust me, I'm a scientist' is redundant.

[AdamG]

I do wonder whether the "bubble" of 'trust me, I'm a scientist' is redundant.

Art imitates life. Life imitates art.