Scripps Howard – Getting useful tips from biochemical soup left over from an anthrax, plague or botulism toxin attack might sound like an impossible task, but scientists at Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories are able to find many of them.
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Wall Street Journal – The U.S. government plans to spend at least $1 billion on new facilities to fight bioterrorism over the next decade???The government plans to build seven large new buildings housing laboratories for research designated “biosafety level-4
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Yomiuri Shimbun – The Japanese government will establish within three years conditions for the operation of a bio-safety level 4 (BSL4) facility that can isolate for safe handling and study dangerous infectious disease agents.
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Ottawa Citizen – Canada needs to do a better job of overseeing the use of micro-organisms and biotechnologies that could be misused by terrorists, says a survey of senior scientists and federal officials.
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Knight Ridder – Although the civilized world has long rejected germ warfare, biotechnology is busting out all over with new ways of tinkering with organs and cells and even DNA. The aim of nearly all the research, most by private companies or academics, is to conjure up medical miracles unimagined a generation ago.

Those same biotechnology advances could double for terrorists and militaries alike.
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Associated Press – A former university professor convicted of fraud after his report of missing plague bacteria from his lab prompted a bioterrorism scare will be released from a halfway house Jan. 2.
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Medical News Today [Proceedings of the National Academy of Science] – A scientific method that has been used to track the source of illegal drugs, explosives, counterfeit bills and biological warfare agents may have some new uses: detecting rapidly growing cancers and studying obesity and eating disorders.
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Associated Press – Four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, terrorist use of disease agents to inflict mass casualties looms more and more as the bottom line of America’s sum of all fears. Tom Ridge, former homeland security secretary, has said authorities don’t believe terror groups can build nuclear bombs, and so bioweapons become the greater threat.
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Washington Post – Where should the line be drawn regarding which research should be published and which should be classified? A look at the case study of the 1918 Spanish flu influenza virus???
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Wired – Anthrax attacks and hazardous waste leaks travel fast. Urban micrometeorology goes with the flow, as scientists study how winds whip through city streets to inform evacuation and containment plans.
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Reuters – Montana’s Bitterroot Valley will soon host one of the nation’s few biowarfare defense labs at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a controversial $66.5 million building where scientists will research dangerous pathogens in an effort to stem deadly attacks.
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Fort Detrick Standard – A series of interviews with Col. Erik A. Henchal, outgoing commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

Fort Detrick Standard – Part 2 – At USAMRIID, ‘a new way of doing business’.
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CIDRAP – The members of a new government board that will guide efforts to keep terrorists from exploiting the fruits of federally funded biotechnology research were announced this week by Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.
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Washington Post – In 1920, the Irish Republican Army reportedly considered a terrifying new weapon: typhoid-contaminated milk. Reading from an IRA memo he claimed had been captured in a recent raid, Sir Hamar Greenwood described to Parliament the ease with which “fresh and virulent cultures” could be obtained and introduced into milk served to British soldiers. Although the plot would only target the military, the memo expressed concern that the disease might spread to the general population.

Although the IRA never used this weapon, the incident illustrates that poisoning a nation’s milk supply with biological agents hardly ranks as a new concept. Yet just two weeks ago, the National Academy of Sciences’ journal suspended publication of an article analyzing the vulnerability of the U.S. milk supply to botulinum toxin, because the Department of Health and Human Services warned that information in the article provided a “road map for terrorists.”
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Washington Post – Protesters drumming on orange plastic buckets and wearing white, biohazard-style coveralls rumbled down the usually quiet Sunday streets of downtown Frederick, warning that plans to create a biodefense research campus at Fort Detrick could pose a threat to residents’ health.
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Medical News Today – The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases today announced four-year grants totaling approximately $80 million for two new Regional Centers of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research (RCE). The grants to the University of California, Irvine, and Colorado State University (Fort Collins) mark the completion of a national network of academic centers that conducts research to counter threats from bioterror agents and emerging infectious diseases
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CIDRAP – Federal health officials yesterday announced 12 grants and contracts worth $27 million to support development of drugs and vaccines for botulism, anthrax, and other diseases that terrorists might try to spread.
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Boston Globe – The latest status of Boston University’s proposed biodefense lab.
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Wired – Today it’s easy to secretly spread deadly germs around and harder to figure out who did it. But pioneers in the emerging field of bioterrorism forensics hope to change that equation by exposing the secrets lurking in the DNA of bioweapons.
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Sacramento Bee – The BioIndustry Initiative was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the aim of helping former Soviet bioweapons scientists apply their skills to peaceful ends, such as by producing vaccines and drugs.
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The Connection – While the government prepares for bio-terror on a grand scale, more than 700 of the nation’s leading scientists are warning that the billions of government dollars pouring into research on anthrax and other potential bio-weapons are costing Americans more than money. They say it’s taking the focus off diseases that are already killing people. So is Biodefense the Best Defense? (Real Media format)
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Washington Post – More than 750 scientists have signed an open letter to National Institutes of Health Director Elias A. Zerhouni saying a funding shift that has directed large amounts of money to study a few microbes considered bioterrorism risks has substantially reduced federal support for research on other microbes that are arguably a greater danger to the public.
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Boston Globe – Opponents of Boston University’s proposed bioterrorism laboratory vowed last night to keep building momentum against the high-security lab at the first public forum since news broke that researchers accidentally exposed themselves to an infectious agent at another BU lab.
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New York Times – A team of about 50 scientists and emergency planners will release a harmless gas sometime between March 7 and March 21 to study how air might flow through New York City in the event of a terrorist attack or an accident involving toxic chemicals.
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Technology Review – The bigger picture regarding the problems with Boston University’s biodefense laboratory proposal.
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UPI – If the White House gets its way, the Department of Health and Human Services will devote $4.2 billion during fiscal year 2006 to preparing for and countering a bioterror attack. Despite the large total, the increase over last year is modest.
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Boston Globe – More on the controversy surrounding the Boston University bid for a bioterrorism laboratory.

Washington Post – Scientists’ Exposure Casts Doubt on Boston Lab Plan.
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Boston Globe – With state environmental officials signing off on the project earlier this month, Boston Univeristy seems to be winning the permitting battle on the construction of its biodefense lab. But it is losing the PR war to convince residents that hosting the lab in their backyard will be a good thing.
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Washington Post – When the Army’s infectious diseases center at Fort Detrick decided a decade ago that it needed more contract workers to supplement military and civilian staff in its labs, it turned to companies that specialized in such work.

Then last year, those workers were surprised when officials at the Frederick base decided to shift the management of all their contracts to an Alaska Native Corporation whose parent company was best known at home for a failing cruise ship line.
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Boston Globe – A federal draft environmental review of Boston University Medical Center’s proposed high-security biodefense laboratory says the facility as planned will be safe and have a negligible impact on the densely populated South End neighborhood around it.
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Associated Press – Fort Detrick beefs up its security.
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Boston Herald – Boston University details the security it has planned for its proposed biodefense laboratory.
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Associated Press – The value of freely sharing data on dangerous germs so vaccines and treatments can be developed outweighs the danger that bioterrorists may use the information to do harm, a scientific panel concluded Thursday.

More from Reuters.
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San Francisco Chronicle – More on the concerns surrounding the BSL-4 lab to be built in Boston.
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Medical News Today [Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine] – Laboratories working with biological threat agents must develop comprehensive programs in order to minimize the risk of occupational exposures, according to investigators at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in an article published this month in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
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Boston Globe – It will be one of the safest and most hazardous places on earth, right in the heart of Boston, a laboratory to combat pathogens like Ebola, smallpox, and anthrax. Scientists are calling it a biosafety lab, but others warn that it’s a bioterror lab. So which is it?
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UPI – More concern about Boston University’s proposed biodefense lab.
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Search through the last 3 months of MEDLINE for articles with the following MESH terms:
Biological Warfare, Bioterrorism, Bacillus Anthracis, Anthrax, Smallpox, Yersinia Pestis, Botulism, Clostridium Botulinum, Tularemia, Francisella Tularensis, Hemorrhagic Fevers, Viral

Boston Magazine – Depending on who you believe, a new bioterror laboratory planned by Boston University will be a boon to the city — or a catastrophe beyond imagining.
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New York Times – In 2004, a scientist who speaks out against government efforts to thwart terrorism does not win any popularity contests in Washington. The story of Dr. Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist with an intimate understanding of the science underlying the use of deadly germs as weapons.
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Baltimore Sun – The federal government has responded to the threat of bioterrorism with a spending blitz that has already surpassed the annual cost of the Manhattan Project to build the first atom bomb. But as illustrated by a recent mishap in which a Frederick lab inadvertently shipped lethal anthrax across the country, the biodefense push might be creating new hazards even as it seeks to make the country safer.
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Technology Review – Government grants for biodefense research have skyrocketed since the 2001 anthrax attacks; is it too much of a good thing?
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BBC – The American federal government has gone on the offensive in courting the biotech industry to develop products that will protect the nation and the modern soldier in the battlefield.
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Global Security Newswire – The United States has made progress in developing several new treatments and vaccines against a variety of biological weapons agents, with some set to be introduced into U.S. defenses by the end of 2005, according to Anthony Fauci, the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
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Search through the last 3 months of MEDLINE for articles with the following MESH terms:
Biological Warfare, Bioterrorism, Bacillus Anthracis, Anthrax, Smallpox, Yersinia Pestis, Botulism, Clostridium Botulinum, Tularemia, Francisella Tularensis, Hemorrhagic Fevers, Viral

Wired – Amid new warnings about a possible summer of terror, the U.S. government is preparing to spend billons in project BioShield to coax pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs to fend off a biological or chemical attack. But experts say the infusion of cash may be little more than a good start.
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Copley News Service – Is doing biodefense research more hassle than it is worth, in terms of obtaining the necessary security clearnances? Many scientists are beginning to think so???
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Associated Press – Arms control advocates are warning the Bush administration that proposed research for a new Homeland Security center may violate an international ban on biological weapons and encourage other countries to follow.
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Christian Science Monitor – More on the debate over whether to build a controversial lab in a densely populated neighborhood.
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NIH – A new initiative harnesses our nation’s computing skill to enhance our ability to respond to disease epidemics and bioterrorism. The initiative, called MIDAS, will develop powerful computer modeling techniques to analyze and respond to infectious disease outbreaks, whether they occur naturally, such as SARS, or are released intentionally in a bioterrorist attack.

BiodefenseEducation.org will next be updated on Saturday. See you then!
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