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There were no documented uses of biological weapons this year. However, in January a man in Florida was arrested after having been found to have ricin in his possession. In March and November there were false positive alarms for anthrax being detected in Department of Defense mail facilities; while in October there was a false positive alarm for tularemia being detected on the Mall in Washington D.C.

Natural outbreaks this year involving Category I agents included:

• Outbreaks of Anthrax which occurred in China, Guinea Bissau, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkey, and Zimbabwe (twice).
• Outbreak of Yersinia pestis in Congo.
• Outbreak of Ebola in Congo.
• Outbreak of Marburg in Angola.
• Outbreaks of Tularemia in Russia and the United States.

Progress was made this year in developing the following countermeasures:

• Drugs – development of new drugs continued for the treatment of anthrax, botulinum toxin, and smallpox.
• Vaccines – development continued on new vaccines against anthrax, clostridium botulinum, francisella tularemia, ricin, smallpox, viral hemorrhagic fevers and yersinia pestis.
• Diagnostics – development continued on new diagnostic tests for smallpox.

Several recurring themes were identified throughout this year’s biodefense news stories:

• Although overall there has been some increase in funding, the US public health system remains underfunded, in spite of clear evidence of the dangers of this. This underfunding leads to a lack of readiness in state public health departments.
• The controversy over the safety of the US military’s current anthrax vaccine and whether it should be administered to US military personnel.
• The looming threat of the emergence of new infectious diseases, as evidenced by the avian influenza outbreak.
• Apathy of the pharmaceutical industry towards the Project BioShield legislation, leading to the drafting of a new round of legislation to encourage their participation in the development of biodefense countermeasures.
• The operational refinement and integration of the automated disease surveillance programs.
• The increasing use of simulations – aka biodefense wargames – such as Atlantic Storm – in learning how to improve planning for a response to a biological warfare attack at the international, national, regional, and local levels.
• Preventing research which can lead to the development of new genetically engineered virulent infectious diseases is impossible.
• The controversy over whether biodefense research should be conducted in secrecy or in the open, and how to balance the openness of scientific research with the potential dangerous uses it can be put to, as articulated by the controversy over publishing the article on how to contaminate the US milk supply with clostridium botulinum toxin in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.
• The increasing opposition voiced by individuals who are going to have biodefense laboratories built in their neighborhoods, best evidenced by the residents of Boston’s South End and residents near Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland.
• The growing opposition to the amount of resources being invested in biodefense research, to the detriment of research in cancer, etc.

Finally???
The mysterious story of the year was the inability of the US to identify the individual(s) responsible for the ricin attacks of 2004 as well as the individual(s) responsible for the anthrax attacks of September 2001, coupled to the legal jousting between the US government and “person of interest” Steven Hatfill.

The most surprising story of the year was how poorly trained individuals in the US medical and public health systems were found to be in terms of their ability to detect and respond to a bioterrorist attack.

The most sobering story of the year was the end of the unsuccessful hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The most chilling story of the year were the continued rumors that terrorist organizations are seeking to obtain biological weapons.