bioterrorism (Page 2)

It wasn’t just art that was looted in Iraq; dangerous strains of cholera, black fever, HIV, polio, and hepatitis may have been stolen from Iraq’s main disease control facility as well. The U.S. military is worried they may end up in the hands of people who want to use them as weapons. They may have even been stolen by organized gangs, the way art was stolen from the National Museum.

Looters took refrigerators full of deadly viruses Friday, but no one knows what’s actually missing. “They are in containers, all of these things taken together, cholera, AIDS and black fever,” one lab worker says.
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Before the Gulf War, some of Britain’s top microbiology labs were infiltrated by Iraqi scientists in order to gain expertise on germ warfare. The scientists, financed by grants from the Iraqi government, applied for and received research jobs in leading academic and medical institutions.

Dr. Joseph Selkon, an Oxford microbiologist, was working on a project to prevent bacteria from becoming more resistant to antibiotics. But antibiotic resistance is not a significant problem in Iraq, which made him suspicious. His suspicions grew when he questioned colleagues in other departments and found that Iraqis were only interested in microbiology, which could be applied to germ warfare.
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A recent international conference on germ warfare ended in anger and chaos after the United States cut off discussions about enforcing the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.

The 1972 treaty, ratified by the United States and 143 other nations, bans the development, stockpiling and production of germ warfare agents, but there is no enforcement mechanism. We now know that the former Soviet Union continued to do secret research on bioterrorist weapons long after the treaty was ratified. The purpose of the recent conference, which was held in Geneva, was to negotiate legally binding measures to enforce compliance.
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It?s been alleged that terrorists and criminals can easily purchase weapons at gun shows, but at the ?Crossroads of the West? gun show in Salt Lake City, Utah, Timothy W. Tobiason was selling printed and CD copies of his book, ?Scientific Principles of Improvised Warfare and Home Defense Volume 6-1: Advanced Biological Weapons Design and Manufacture,? a germ-warfare textbook that experts say is accurate enough to be dangerous.
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