From: Adamsc@io-online.com (Adamsc)
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 06:28:27 +0800
To: "Bill Frantz" <declan@well.com>
Subject: Re: Fear of Flying -- from HotWired
Message-ID: <19960917173431968.AAA223@IO-ONLINE.COM>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Thu, 12 Sep 1996 12:03:18 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote:

>>... former CIA director James Woolsey: responded with some seemingly 
>>   gratuitous anti-Net
>>   rhetoric. Terrorists may use biological weapons like anthrax, he said.
>>   "Anthrax is colorless, odorless, and has a 90 percent lethality. One
>>   gram has 100 million lethal doses." Then Woolsey delivered the zinger:
>>   "The knowledge of how to make anthrax is widely available, including
>>   on the Internet."

>Gee, biotech has come a long way.  Now I can download the Anthrax DNA
>sequence from the net and insert it in some carrier bacteria and start
>making Anthrax bacteria.  Neat!

Now the bad news:  the DNA replicator only works under Windows 95 and comes
with buggy drivers!

>Or did he mean I can chemically synthesize Anthrax toxin?  Or did he mean I
>can get information on culturing bacteria on the net, but must obtain a
>sample of the bacteria from other sources?
<sarcasm>
I guess we need to ban all those "science" pages; after all, why would any
non-terrorist want to learn about bacteria? 
</sarcasm>
>BTW - My dictionary says that Anthrax is primarily an animal disease which
>only occasionally infects humans.  It sounds like a poor choice for bio-war
>terror.

Unfortunately, it can be very deadly.  The idea here is that it rarely infects
humans - in the normal course of events.  If a determined biowarrior is trying
to infect people, all bets are off.

# Chris Adams <adamsc@io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp
# cadams@acucobol.com | V.M. (619)515-4894
"I have never been able to figure out why anyone would want to play games on
a computer in any case when the whole system is a game.  Word processing,
spreadsheets, telecoms -- it's all a game.  And they pay you to play it."
	-- Duncan Frissell