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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Calls for Massive Research Project to Counter Biological Terrorism
The United States needs to engage in a research project to counter the threat of biological terrorism greater than the effort that led to the development of nuclear weapons, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 14). “I think we need to do something that even dwarfs the Manhattan Project to stay ahead, to be prepared, in a flexible way, to (respond to) agents that can be altered, that can be changed,” Frist said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He said an attack would occur within the next decade. Frist, along with former CIA Director John Deutch, warned that terrorists could obtain smallpox with which to conduct an attack. One possible source, according to Frist, is the former Soviet Union, which produced as much as three tons of smallpox annually during the Cold War. “Do we know where all that is? No, nobody can know for sure,” he said. Another possible source for traces of smallpox is “old graves, dumps of one kind or another” in “less hygienic parts of the world,” Deutch said. He called for mass smallpox and anthrax vaccinations. Frist also warned that the threat of bioterrorism is “not just one country’s problem.” “It’s a global threat,” he said (Agence France-Presse/TurkishPress.com, Jan. 27).
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