Arms control advocates contend that research planned for a new Department of Homeland Security laboratory at Fort Detrick would violate the international ban on biological weapons and could touch off a global biological arms race.
A worldwide distributed computing network that harnessed the downtime on 2.4 million computers in more than 190 countries, the Vatican and Antarctica, has trimmed years from the research effort by winnowing 35 million potential smallpox drug molecules down to a few thousand with promise. Now scientists can test those molecules in the lab at the Army's biodefense research center at Fort Detrick in Frederick
Decades after the U.S.-Soviet race to the moon captivated the world during the Cold War, China is quietly conducting a space race of its own, albeit at a more leisurely pace. Manned lunar and Mars missions seem nothing more than fanciful propagandist dreams, experts say, but China is on track to put people in orbit this year.
Wade Boese, research director at the Arms Control Association, warns that if the U.S. plans to pre-emptively use a nuclear weapon, "it's embarking on a path that would undercut U.S. leadership in the world, undermine more than 30 years of efforts to stem the spread of nuclear weapons and break a nearly 60-year-old taboo against their use."
The White House chief of staff refused yesterday to rule out the possibility of using nuclear weapons during a war with Iraq to prevent what he called a "holocaust" caused by the possible use of weapons of mass destruction by Baghdad.
Iraq's bioweapons program that President Bush wants to eradicate got its start with help from the United States two decades ago, according to government records getting new scrutiny in light of the discussion of war against Iraq.
A flood of new funding for bioterrorism research promises to increase rapidly the number of labs and people with access to such lethal pathogens. Some scientists say that without new limits and tougher regulations, the law of unintended consequences could come into play. The biodefense research boom could lead to diversions of organisms or expertise for new terrorist attacks, making Americans less safe rather than safer.
The U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground confirmed last night that it has produced dry anthrax powder in recent years but said the anthrax has been "well-protected" and is all accounted for.
For nearly a decade, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the mail attacks that have killed five people, government sources say.
Thanks to the development of more sensitive electronic cameras, and high-speed computers, the roster of the known solar system grows by the thousands every month, faster than they can be agreed upon.