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<p>U.S. intelligence officials said Russia is secretly continuing to build deadly biological weapons in violation of an international treaty.</p> <p>"Their BW production is actually increasing," said one official with access to reports on the issue.</p> <p>Moscow for decades denied that its military had any offensive biological weapons.</p>

Did the Communist Chinese military create the SARS virus as a bioweapon – only to see a horrific accident unleash this killer on innocent citizens worldwide? A wise man with strong connections to U.S. intelligence recently opined that the SARS outbreak may in fact not be a naturally forming virus. Instead, it may be a "Chinese biowar disaster" along the lines of the anthrax release years ago in the Soviet city of Sverdlosk. Indeed, there are tantalizing clues that lead to Beijing's secretive military establishment: In a Wall Street Journal article from Beijing just days ago, reporters Peter Wonacott and...

The mounting death toll exacted by SARS in China has triggered speculation that the virus could ultimately be traced back to a leak from military bio-weapon programs. Although most reporting favors a natural origin for SARS, a bio-weapon link should at least not be ruled out, according to Richard Fisher, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. "While there is no reported evidence that SARS is indeed a weapon, there are plenty of ways that a real weapon with the properties of SARS could prove decisive in a military conflict," he said. China's most famous dissident,...

Although SARS does not appear to be as contagious as the 1918 Spanish flu, its mortality rate is higher. The current pandemic shows that in the future, new infectious diseases will increasingly be a global problem. Modern air transportation can spread a disease all over the world within a very brief period of time. In other words, as was the case with food-borne epidemics, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, insect-borne diseases such as the West Nile virus and AIDS, an outbreak anywhere in the world is soon a threat everywhere. As we experienced with the Hong Kong bird flu in 1997, when more...

A bio-terrorist attack might not be evident until a significant number of patients start displaying unusual symptoms, a leading health professional has warned. Healthcare systems would also struggle to cope with the extra thousands of patients needing advanced life support in the event of a major attack. The comments came from Dr Vivienne Nathanson, of the British Medical Association, who was attending a bio-terrorism conference in London. Danger There are no known vaccines or antibiotics that could deal with most potential biological weapons, said Dr Nathanson, the BMA's director of professional activities. "One of the dangers which we have to...

The vast weight of reporting thus far on the origins of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) points to a mutation of the coronavirus, which causes the common cold. This view holds that the virus most likely jumped from animals to humans somewhere in China's Guangdong Province. But there are compelling reasons, however unsettling, to at least ask whether there might be any linkage between SARS and China's biological warfare efforts. To be sure, the dominant scientific opinion on the source of SARS-- confirmed by the World Health Organization on April 16--points to a strain of the coronavirus thought to...

S. African Scientist Offers U.S. Agents Cache of Man-Made Pathogens First of two articlesPRETORIA, South Africa -- Daan Goosen's calling card to the FBI was a vial of bacteria he had freeze-dried and hidden inside a toothpaste tube for secret passage to the United States.From among hundreds of flasks in his Pretoria lab, the South African scientist picked a man-made strain that was sure to impress: a microbial Frankenstein that fused the genes of a common intestinal bug with DNA from the pathogen that causes the deadly illness gas gangrene."This will show the Americans what we are capable of," Goosen...

ACADEMICIAN KOLESNIKOV: THE VIRUS OF ATYPICAL PNEUMONIA HAS BEEN CREATED ARTIFICIALLY IRKUTSK, April 10, 2003. /RIA Novosti correspondent Alexander Batalin/--The virus of atypical pneumonia has been created artificially, possibly as a bacteriological weapon, believes Sergei Kolesnikov, Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. He expressed this opinion at a news conference in Irkutsk (Siberia) on Thursday. According to him, the virus of atypical pneumonia is a synthesis of two viruses (of measles and infectious parotiditis or mumps), the natural compound of which is impossible. This can be done only in a laboratory, the academician is convinced. He also said...

The virus of atypical pneumonia has been created artificially, possibly as a bacteriological weapon, believes Sergei Kolesnikov, Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. He expressed this opinion at a news conference in Irkutsk (Siberia) on Thursday. According to him, the virus of atypical pneumonia is a synthesis of two viruses (of measles and infectious parotiditis or mumps), the natural compound of which is impossible. This can be done only in a laboratory, the academician is convinced. He also said that in creating bacteriological weapons a protective anti-viral vaccine is, as a rule, worked out at the same time....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Experts said on Saturday they were worried by a leaked report that describes an outbreak of smallpox in the Soviet Union -- one they say may point to the testing of a smallpox biological weapon.Seven people became ill in the 1971 outbreak and three died of what appeared to be the more fatal, and more rare, hemorrhagic form of the infection, said Dr. Alan Zelicoff of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, one of the authors of the report."Someone has successfully disseminated smallpox as an aerosol," Zelicoff said in an interview."It has been talked about and it...