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Ring around the rosy. Bubonic plague creates reddish welts on the neck. Pocket full of posies. Medieval people thought putting flowers in their clothes staved off death. Ashes, ashes. Houses of the dead sometimes were torched. We all fall down. Entire families perished. Some historians believe the common children's rhyme may have been an attempt by children to cope with the long-ago horrors that swept Europe from about 1300 to about 1600. In the first five years that the plague ravaged Europe, it killed at least 25 million people. Millions more succumbed in the pandemic's later waves - dwarfing today's...

CUBAN President Fidel Castro has urged Baghdad to destroy "the last cubic centimetre of chemical or biological weapons" to remove any pretext Washington might have to attack it. At the close of the new Cuban parliamentary legislature, in which Castro's re-election as head of the government and the state came as no surprise, the Cuban leader praised Iraq's decision to destroy its Al-Samoud 2 missiles. "The American Government will no longer have the least legal or moral pretext to attack Iraq," Castro said. He slammed Washington for closing its eyes to atomic weapons held by Israel having provided the means...

“We have yet to find any weapons of mass destruction. …Does it matter that we were misled into war?” - New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, 4/29/03 “Nissar Hindawi, a leading figure in Iraq's biological warfare program in the 1980's, says the stories and explanations he and other scientists told the United Nations about the extent of Iraq's efforts to produce poisons and germ weapons ‘were all lies.’ …He said military officials had asked him to tell inspectors that he was the head of a single-cell protein facility. The plant, in fact, had made botulinum toxin and anthrax. He said...

"Originally, Saddam was not a religious fanatic and he didn't like communism; the people of Iraq liked this. Later on I saw his torture chambers underground where people had been irradiated and injected with Ricin ... what I saw still haunts me to this day." These are just some of the comments of Dr. Gazi George, a former high-ranking Iraqi scientist who spoke at a conference for the Michigan Tactical Officers Association. His speech dealt with the time he worked for Saddam Hussein and his eventual escape with his family from Iraq. To a standing-room only audience of law-enforcement and...

Anthrax case raises bioterrorism fears By David Usborne in New York 30 April 2003 A crew member of an Egyptian freighter has died in Brazil apparently after opening a suitcase filled with anthrax that he was planning to take to Canada. His death has renewed anxiety in North America over the risk of bioterrorist attacks. Brazilian officials believe the man, identified as Ibrahim Saved Soliman Ibrahim, was given the case before he left Egypt to join the ship, which was loading bauxite bound for Canada. They said the incident appeared to be part of a bioterrorism plot that went wrong....

Secret exposure: U.S. tested chemical weapons on own citizens Earlier this year news that the army would conduct bio-terrorism tests in central Oklahoma sent a near panic through some communities. Clouds of clay dust and other substances were dropped to see if weather radar could detect a bio-terrorist attack. The army was up front and told those concerned what they were doing and promised there was nothing to worry about. But it hasn't always been that way when the army was testing the atmosphere. Oklahoma City and a local solider endured a secret exposure. It was in the 1950s...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Six Iraqi scientists working at different Baghdad research institutions were ordered to destroy some bacteria and equipment and hide more in their homes before visits from U.N. weapons inspectors in the months leading up to the war, the scientists told The Associated Press. In separate interviews, all of the scientists said they were involved in civilian research projects and none knew of any programs for weapons of mass destruction. It was not clear why their materials, ostensibly for nonmilitary research, were ordered destroyed. But their accounts indicate the government of Saddam Hussein may have had advance...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Six Iraqi scientists working at different Baghdad research institutions were ordered to destroy some bacteria and equipment and hide more in their homes before visits from U.N. weapons inspectors in the months leading up to the war, the scientists told The Associated Press. In separate interviews, all of the scientists said they were involved in civilian research projects and none knew of any programs for weapons of mass destruction. It was not clear why their materials, ostensibly for nonmilitary research, were ordered destroyed. But their accounts indicate the government of Saddam Hussein may have had...

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...

<p>A year and a half ago, we watched terrorists turn an airplane filled with innocent people into deadly a missile. These extremists turned our free and mobile society into a weapon against us. Unfortunately, it's only a matter of time before terrorists think of other ways to hijack our free society and our advances in science and technology. They will continue to look for ways to twist technology into a tool for terror.</p>

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 US. 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," Mr Goosen said then. On May 6 last year, Mr Goosen slipped the parcel to a retired...

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...

<p>Here's a story ripped from today's headlines. A mysterious flu-like disease with no known cure which originated in southern China in November hits Hong Kong in March. It kills dozens, and sickens and infects thousands there. It spreads, leaving that health-care system on the brink of collapse, and moves like wildfire throughout the world and to America thanks to travelers.</p>

U.S. Raids Home of Iraq's Bio Lab Chief By DAVID CRARY .c The Associated Press U.S. special forces Wednesday raided the Baghdad home of a microbiologist nicknamed ``Dr. Germ'' who ran Iraq's secret biological laboratory. Despite the start of joint U.S.-Iraqi police patrols, throngs of looters ransacked food from a major Baghdad warehouse complex. The special force raid, backed by about 40 Marines with machine guns, was carried out at the home of Rahib Taha, in charge of a laboratory that weaponized anthrax. Troops brought out boxes of documents and three men with their hands up; Taha's whereabouts weren't immediately...

In separate articles, today's authors argue the cases for and against smallpox vaccination, as the government urges inoculations for medical personnel and emergency response workers amid terrorism concerns TODAY'S BYLINE: Zelicoff is a physician and senior scientist at the Center for National Security and Arms Control at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. Nelson is an emergency room physician in Santa Fe and active in efforts to clean up nuclear weapon contamination from the Cold War. By Alan Zelicoff Smallpox was eliminated as a naturally occurring disease in the late 1970s after a massive vaccination effort directed by the World Health...

A NORWICH trained Iraqi scientist – dubbed Dr Germ - is believed to have fled into hiding in Syria after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's reviled regime. Dr Rihab Taha, who studied microbiology at the University of East Anglia, may have been among a group of high-profile scientists to have slipped across the border in recent days. Intelligence agencies believe they might include Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, nicknamed "Mrs Anthrax" for her role in Iraq's biological weapons programme, as well Dr Taha. The fleeing of officials linked to the Saddam regime comes as America stepped up its hunt by offering...

Scientists have discovered why different strains of the bacterium that causes anthrax differ so much in virulence, a finding that in theory could produce more effective vaccines and better tools for distinguishing and tracking the lethal germ. But the finding could also aid the creation of designer varieties of anthrax that are potentially deadlier to humans. Because of that potential danger, a debate occurred over whether the discovery should be kept secret, scientists said. In the end, it was decided that the benefits of publication outweighed the risks. ...Dr. Kaplan of the University of Texas, who heads the publication board...

<p>"When spring comes, a young man's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of love," wrote Tennyson. But with Iraq's brutal dictatorship caught in a death grip and seeking any way to strike back, this spring has brought thoughts of bioterrorism.</p> <p>The best way to deal with terrorists is at the root: Hunt them down and kill them. Nevertheless, we must also build a multilayered defense against deadly microbial attacks. Biotech companies across the country are doing just that: developing an incredible array of vaccines, drugs, and detection devices.</p>

Moscow ‘Paranoid’ About Iraqi Bioweapons The one weapon in Saddam's arsenal that is most feared is his biological weapon. During the early 1990s, U.N. weapons inspectors were able to find tons of anthrax and evidence of extensive biological weapons development. Historical evidence shows that Iraqi weaponized anthrax appeared immediately after the U.S. delivered anthrax samples for a medical program in the late 1980s. However, a U.N. inspector asserts that the Iraqi biological weapons program did not have roots in the U.S.A. A bioterrorism expert recently stated that Russia has been Iraq's "main supplier of the materials and know-how to weaponize...

Scientists are developing a new breed of genetically engineered plants that can sense the presence of harmful chemical or biological agents. The hope is to deploy these leafy recruits in the fight against terrorism.