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Nature 415, 364 (24 January 2002) | doi:10.1038/415364b

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Bioweapon agents: more access means more risk

Richard H. Ebright1 & Nancy D. Connell2

  1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Waksman Institute, Department of Chemistry, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA
  2. Center for Biodefense, Lourenco Center for the Study of Emerging and Re-emerging Pathogens, New Jersey Medical School, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, UMDNJ, Newark, New Jersey 07103, USA

In the News Review article "Bioweapons: Delivering death in the mail" (Nature 414, 837–838; 2001), you quote Stanford biophysicist Steven Block as opposing restrictions on access to bioweapons agents, endorsing having "a lot of terrific [biomedical] scientists working on the problem" and forecasting "a 'molecular arms race' between bioweapons developers and biodefence specialists".We believe that increasing the number of institutions and people with access to bioweapons agents will increase the likelihood of their release.