Access

News

Nature 421, 4 (2 January 2003) | doi:10.1038/421004a

Open Innovation Challenges

Law sends laboratories into pathogen panic

Erika Check

When unknown parties mailed anthrax spores to several US addresses in the autumn of 2001, plant researchers at a herbarium at Harvard University began to get nervous.For years, the researchers had stored a set of innocuous-looking brown envelopes that contained samples of anthrax.