We have, generally, fewer tools and less information to protect citizens from terrorism than we have had to protect a defined military force from the classical biological warfare agents. I should note that, with regard to biological weapons, the threat to the force today may be more like the terrorist threat to our cities than the battlefield scenario for which we prepared during the cold war. Secondly, the collapse of the former Soviet Union and subsequent reduction in funding of its massive biological warfare infrastructure may have resulted in a vulnerability for recruitment by states trying to establish biological warfare programs. These factors make the important job of our intelligence community extremely difficult and complicate effective implementation of nonproliferation efforts. We are afraid of what we don't understand.
Education is a critically important and cost-effective part of the solution.
Education of our doctors, our first responders, our media, our leaders and our citizens. We all come in contact with dangerous chemicals daily. The gasoline we put in our automobiles is potentially extremely dangerous. It can burn us, it can damage our skin and it can make us sick if we inhale its vapor. In a liquid preparation, whether anthrax bacteria or botulinum toxin or Ebola virus, the biological agents will not move from an open container into the air without the addition of energy.