Of even greater concern to intelligence and security agencies is the development of new and deadly forms of biological weapons. Countries such as China, North Korea, Russia, Iraq, Cuba, Libya and Vietnam are all thought to have stockpiles of biological weapons. And scientists in these countries, particularly in Russia, are known to be conducting genetic engineering research into producing hybrid germ-warfare agents. In 1997 Russian scientists published a report detailing how they had spliced the gene for the Ebola virus into vaccinia, a harmless cousin of smallpox. This technology could be used to create a hybrid smallpox-Ebola agent that would be highly infectious, almost 100per cent fatal and virtually impossible to treat with any known drug.
Smallpox is a particular favorite of bio-weaponeers.
In 1996 the World Health Organisation declared the world rid of the disease and announced that the two reservoirs of the smallpox virus, in the US and Russia, would be destroyed in 1999. The eradication of smallpox was a medical success story. It was also an opportunity not to be missed by countries looking for new and better ways to kill people. Just before the World Health Organisation was due to oversee the destruction of the smallpox stocks in the US and Russia, the White House announced that America's reservoir of smallpox would be left brewing in a high-security laboratory at the Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta. President Bill Clinton says the decision had been made because US scientists had to use the stocks to develop vaccines against the disease and to develop detection devices that could warn if an outbreak of smallpox has occurred.