ABSTRACT
Over the history of mankind, military organizations have occasionally used biological agents as weapons. With the advent of microbiology in the 20th century, multiple national research and development programs have applied microbes to the creation of weapons of mass destruction. In recent years, terrorist organizations-particularly organizations with strong religious affiliations-have also begun deploying biological weapons. Fortunately, the capacity to create sophisticated biological weapons and carry out a massive biological attack appears to be beyond the resources of most terrorist organizations. Unfortunately, these organizations seem unrestrained by the humanitarian concerns that normally limit biological warfare. In the last two decades we have witnessed an increase in the number and lethality of bioterrorist attacks, raising the spectre of a successful large-scale attack in the future. To prepare for the worst, we must anticipate the agent the bioterrorist will use in an attack. While ‘germ’ warfare and ‘bioterrorism’ have different goals and different limitations, they often use the same biological agents for weapons. Six organisms appear to be the weapons of choice: anthrax, smallpox, plague, tularemia, hemorrhagic fever, and the toxin from Clostridium botulinum. The following pages examine in greater detail the background and limitations of bioterrorism, the variety of weapons in the biological armory, and the specific bacteriologic and clinical features of these six potential terrorist weapons.
