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The intention of this reading list / curriculum is to provide a reference library of articles that can be used both by new users of BiodefenseEducation.org to bring them up-to-date on a subject; and by long-time users of BiodefenseEducation.org to help them quickly review a subject. In addition, taken in whole, this reading list may serve as a basic introduction to, and curriculum in, biodefense affairs that may be used to give context to current and future developments.

Last updated: January 1, 2006

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A superb overview
PBS Nova: BioTerror – An excellent overview of bioterrorism, produced in concert with New York Times reporters Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad. Read the transcript for complete details.

The New Yorker: The Bioweaponeers – Richard Preston’s absolutely chilling essay on what biological weapons could potentially do.

Department of Health and Human Services: Terrorism and Other Public Health Emergencies: A Reference Guide for the Media – The media’s guide on how to quickly and clearly communicate terrorism and public health emergency messages to the public.

Radio Television News Directors Association and Foundation: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering Bioterrorism, – This guide is intended to help reporters and producers prepare to tackle biodefense stories, but contains excellent background information of use to all.

Agroterrorism
RAND: Agroterrorism – What is the threat and what can be done about it? – Targeted initiatives could reduce the vulnerabilities of American agriculture and food industries to deliberate acts of biological terrorism.

US Army War College Parameters: Invasive Threats to the American Homeland – A blueprint for conducting agricultural terrorism against the US.

Anthrax
The New Yorker: A Man Named Hoffman – A historical case report by Berton Roueche of one of the last anthrax cases in the United States, from the early 1960’s, told in story form. An excellent review of what anthrax does to humans.

Washington Post: The Pursuit of Steven Hatfill – He says he’s a patriot, and some on the front lines of the war against terror sing his praises. But his provocative life and career have kept him at the center of the FBI’s frustrating hunt for the anthrax killer of 2001.

Disease Detection
Fort Detrick Standard: Course trains ’select few’ to identify biological warfare agents in field laboratories – A look at the Field Identification of Biological Warfare Agents course where students learn to set up, maintain, and operate a deployable laboratory under field conditions.

Disease Emergence
CIA: The Darker Bioweapons Future (PDF format) – A panel of outside experts told the CIA that advances in technology due to genomic research could produce the worst known diseases and frightening biological weapons.

Disease Surveillance

Healthcare Informatics: Battling Bioterror – An overview of the role disease surveillance systems play in biodefense.

History
WebMD: Biological and Chemical Terror History – A concise history of the use of biological agents in warfare.

StrategyPage: “Eye Of Newt And Toe of Frog”: Biotoxins in Warfare – A history of the use of biological weapons in warfare.

Iraq

PBS Frontline: Chasing Saddam’s Weapons – Nine months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. has still not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. An inside look at the hunt for WMD – and the still unanswered questions. The transcript of the entire program is here.

New York: The Source of the Trouble – An analysis of how Judith Miller’s series of exclusives for the New York Times about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq-courtesy of the now-notorious Ahmad Chalabi helped the Bush administration bolster the case for war and how the very same talents that caused her to get the story also caused her to get it wrong.

The Atlantic: Spies, Lies and Weapons: What Went Wrong – How could we have been so far off in our estimates of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs? A leading intelligence analyst, Ken Pollack, gives a detailed account of how and why we erred???

Public Health
Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center: How to Lead During Bioattacks with the Public’s Trust and Help – Gives decision-makers practical advice on how to handle the dilemmas that can arise in a public health emergency.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: Community-Based Mass Prophylaxis: A Planning Guide for Public Health Preparedness – designed to help communities nationwide make sure that all Americans have needed drugs and vaccines in the event of a natural epidemic or bioterrorist attack.

Trust for America’s Health: Ready or Not? Protecting the Public’s Health in the Age of Bioterrorism – More than 2 years after the Sept 11 attacks and after spending almost US$2 billion on bioterrorism preparedness, most US states are only “modestly” better prepared to respond to health emergencies. The report examines indicators to assess improvement and vulnerability, including rapid availability of funds, public-health infrastructure, and communications preparedness.

CDC MMWR: Terrorism Preparedness in State Health Departments — United States, 2001–2003 – Things are improving but there is still a long way to go???

Public Policy
Acumen: The Looming Threat – Bioweapons are much more prevalent and virulent than we realize???and we have little defense. (PDF format)

Arms Control Today: Building a Forward Line of Defense – Securing Former Soviet Biological Weapons – Neither the United States nor its key allies have taken the step of creating an effective forward line of defense against bioterrorism by rapidly accounting for and securing known stockpiles of pathogens on foreign shores.

Research
Salon: Bioterror Hysteria: The New ‘Star Wars’ – Is the federal rush to find antidotes for biological weapons is diverting essential funding from the fight against truly scary enemies — like cancer? Click on the “Free Day Pass” to read the whole article.

Technology Review: Biodefense Boondoggle? – Government grants for biodefense research have skyrocketed since the 2001 anthrax attacks; is it too much of a good thing?

National Academies Press: Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism: Confronting the ‘Dual Use’ Dilemma – A report that attempts to address how to balance the openness of scientific research with the potential dangerous uses it can be put to.

Self-Defense
RAND: Individual Preparedness and Response to Chemical, Radiological, Nuclear, and Biological Terrorist Attacks – – An excellent guide for surviving a weapons of mass destruction attack.

Department of Homeland Security: Ready.gov – a common sense framework designed to launch a process of learning about citizen preparedness against terrorist attack.

Simulation
Clinical Infectious Diseases: Shining Light on “Dark Winter” – Lessons learned from Dark Winter, a senior-level exercise in 2001 that simulated a bioterrorist smallpox attack on the United States.

Global Health Security Initiative: Exercise Global Mercury Post Exercise Report – Lessons learned from the global bioterrorism exercise ‘Global Mercury’.

Department of Homeland Security: Department of Homeland Security Releases Summary Conclusions From National Exercise – Lessons learned from the national bioterrorism exercise ‘Topoff 2′.

Smallpox
The New Yorker: The Demon in the Freezer
– An excellent history by Richard Preston of smallpox as a disease, and how it can be turned into a lethal weapon.

StrategyPage: The War Against Smallpox – A history of smallpox throughout time.

Terrorism
New York Times Magazine: The Education of a Holy Warrior – Where terrorism begins – In a Pakistani religious school called the Haqqania madrasa, Osama bin Laden is a hero, the Taliban’s leaders are famous alums and the next generation of mujahedeen is being militantly groomed.

New Yorker: The Terror Web – An excellent look into what Al-Qaeda is morphing into???

PBS Frontline: Al Qaeda’s New Front – An investigation into the threat radical jihadists pose to Western Europe and its allies – including the U.S. Read the Transcript, and the Interviews, Special Reports, and essay on Al Qaeda Today.

Washington Post: Technical Hurdles Separate Terrorists From Biowarfare – A look at the myriad technical obstacles that terrorists who might try to manufacture biological weapons could face.