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Monday, November 22, 2004

Biowarfare

This USA Today article talks about the inadaquacy of our current approach to potential bio-warfare and what steps should be taken to prepare for this type of theat.

The trouble with Project BioShield is that it invests in technical solutions to detect known agents and to treat known threats. But it offers no equivalent investment in planning, analysis and research for stronger surveillance, international collaboration and other approaches that are needed to prevent the spread of new, potentially devastating biological weapons. Its game has little or no offense — and certainly not enough to win the bioterrorism game.
While the ideas they present are good, they are probably not sufficient. To put it plainly, with current and emerging technologies (technologies that are by and large beneficial) the capability to create bio-weapons is increasing at a phenomenal rate. These technologies will be in wide use and defending against any possible misuse of the technology is probably impossible. What is even more frightening is that this bio-warfare will probably be able to be used by individuals with minimal funding, perhaps even a lone crazy with a medium sized bank account. There is nothing we can do to stop such a person in advance, and probably little we can do to halt the damage before it becomes devastating. This will be one of the great challenges of the next century.

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