Deadly secrets By Debora MacKenzie Random inspections of factories are essential in the global fight against biological weapons. A bomb explodes in central London. It does little obvious damage and is put down to a terrorist's mistake. Then hundreds of people start showing up in clinics with bad chest colds, which quickly progress to pneumonia and fever.
Patients start dying with lungs choked with fluid and the doctors alert the government.
When the lab results come in, the government urges anyone with cold symptoms who was in London the day the bomb exploded to come in for antibiotics. Such a scenario is credible as long as countries possess the means to make biological weapons. It explains why the US and Britain would rather go to war with Iraq than live with the possibility that Saddam Hussein could be hiding anthrax, botulism, aflatoxin and other lethal agents. However, most governments agree that as it stands the convention is ineffective. Unlike the treaties that ban nuclear and chemical weapons, the BTWC provides no legal means to check if countries are complying.