• Anthrax-decontamination foam used in meth lab cleanup

    The meth cleanup problem in the United States is a big one; the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration lists thousands of locations where law enforcement agencies have found chemicals or paraphernalia indicating the presence of either clandestine drug laboratories or dumpsites; Sandia’s decontamination foam, originally developed to deal with anthrax, is now also a meth eraser

  • Thwarting the botulinum neurotoxin

    The botulinum neurotoxin is the most poisonous substance known to man, causing botulism; it can be used by terrorists for deadly attacks; the toxin paralyzes muscle cells by disrupting their connections with the nerves that tell them how and when to move

  • Kansas biolab project on life support

    In 2008, DHS chose Manhattan, Kansas, as the location for a new, $650 million BioLab Level 4; the new lab was planned as a replacement for the aging Plum Island facility; critics argued that the lab’s location — in the middle of Tornado Alley and at the center a region which is home to a large portion of the U.S. beef industry – was not ideal for a facility doing research on deadly animal and human pathogens; it now appears that budgetary considerations have doomed to project

  • A bioterrorism threat for the birds?

    In his first guest column, Leonard A. Cole, an expert on bioterrorism and on terror medicine who teaches at Rutgers University, explores the recent controversy over bird flu research, its implications on national security, and why efforts to curb information regarding the research will likely have limited success

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  • Scientists urge accelerated flu research

    The discovery by scientists that H5N1 virus could potentially be transmitted between mammals has led to fears both of misuse and of accidental release – and to requests of two leading science publication to edit and redact portions of two articles in which the findings of the research are reported; a leading specialist argues that H5N1 viruses circulating in nature may already pose a threat because influenza viruses constantly mutate and can cause pandemics

  • Federal court hears debate over California bio weapons research facility

    Earlier this month opponents of the bioweapons research center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory argued before a federal appeals court that government officials failed to heed a 2006 court ruling and recklessly went ahead with the research facility without considering terrorist threats

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  • Kansas State takes over pathogen research from Plum Island

    As New York’s Plum Island Animal Disease Center begins to shut down, much of its pathogen work will be transferred to Kansas State University’s Biosecurity Research Institute in preparation for the opening of DHS’ new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in nearby Manhattan, Kansas

  • Delicate balance: scientific freedom and national security

    Two legal scholars argue that the U.S. government’s request that the journals Science and Nature withhold scientific information related to the genetically modified H5N1 virus because of biosecurity concerns does not violate the First Amendment

  • Chicago's new bio-attack response facility

    Chicago is preparing itself for a biological attack with the recent unveiling of a new 40,000 square-foot, fourteen story state-of the-art medical decontamination facility; the new facility is fully equipped to handle a sudden influx of patients from a biological attack or other mass casualty incident

  • Budget cuts hamper U.S. response to biological attack

    A recently released report charges that state and federal budget cuts have weakened U.S. bioterrorism response capabilities

  • How the bioweapon ricin kills

    Ricin is one of the deadliest plant based poisons in the world, and what makes it especially dangerous is that it comes from the humble castor oil bean and is available in many health food shops or online; scientists discover the protein that controls how ricin kills

  • Detecting botulinum toxin

    A company specializing in molecular diagnostic tests based on Single Molecule Array (SiMoA) technology has been awarded a contract from DHS to develop an assay capable of detecting single molecules of botulinum toxin (BoNT) within complex environmental samples

  • U.S. unprepared for biological attack

    The United States is inadequately prepared to respond to a biological attack and there are several severe weaknesses in its defense capabilities. According to a New York Times investigative report, funding issues, competing agencies with different priorities, and an overall lack of urgency have contributed to a situation where the U.S. lacks countermeasures to combat a number of biological agents that could be used in an attack

  • Alien species: a dangerous new bioterrorism threat

    Federal counterterrorism officials have a potentially catastrophic new threat to worry about – invasive alien species; the threat is so serious, Lawrence Roberge, an associate professor of anatomy and physiology at Laboure College, warned that terrorists could seek to use invasive species as biological weapons

  • Research into bird flu raises bioterrorism fears

    In order to stay ahead of H5N1, scientists have been tweaking the virus’s genes in the lab to learn more about how this virus works and what it is capable of; in the process, these scientists made the virus more virulent and more contagious; now, security experts and scientists debate whether or not to make the results of these recent experiments public; security experts say doing so could potentially reveal how to make powerful new bioweapons.