Technology Review has much of the March/April issue devoted to this issue, and it is a very real concern. At this link, click on the magazine at the left, or the table of contents link there, to browse some of it. Click the article titile "The Knowledge" to go to an extensive article. The article is based in part on interviews with "Serguei Popov, who for nearly two decades developed genetically engineered biological weapons for the Soviet Union, …now a professor at the National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases at George Mason University,"

A link at the beginning of the article offers a "rebuttal" view.

At page 2 of the article:

"In 2002, after all, a group of researchers built a functioning polio virus, using a genetic sequence off the Internet and mail-order oligonucleotides (machine-synthesized DNA molecules no longer than about 140 bases each) from commercial synthesis companies. At the time, the group leader, Eckard Wimmer of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, warned that the technology to synthesize the much larger genome of variola major -- that is, the deadly smallpox virus -- would come within 15 years. In fact, it arrived sooner: December 2004, with the announcement of a high-throughput DNA synthesizer that could reproduce smallpox's 186,000-odd bases in 13 runs."

So smallpox has been eradicated – but a terrorist could "create it" essentially from scratch using equipment and biochemicals you can get by mail order. FACT.

An extract from Biohazard, the autobiography of Ken Alibek, Biopreparat's former deputy chief, its leading scientist, … described how, in 1989, Alibek and other Soviet bosses had attended a presentation by an unnamed "young scientist" from Biopreparat's bacterial-research complex at Obolensk, south of Moscow. Following this presentation, Alibek wrote, "the room was absolutely silent. We all recognized the implications of what the scientist had achieved. A new class of weapons had been found. For the first time, we would be capable of producing weapons based on chemical substances produced naturally by the human body. They could damage the nervous system, alter moods, trigger psychological changes, and even kill."

Serguei Popov affirms he was that "young scientist."

" The "new class of weapons" that Alibek describes Popov's creating in Biohazard is a case in point. Into a relatively innocuous bacterium responsible for a low-mortality pneumonia, Legionella pneumophila, Popov and his researchers spliced mammalian DNA that expressed fragments of myelin protein, the electrically insulating fatty layer that sheathes our neurons. In test animals, the pneumonia infection came and went, but the myelin fragments borne by the recombinant Legionella goaded the animals' immune systems to read their own natural myelin as pathogenic and to attack it. Brain damage, paralysis, and nearly 100 percent mortality resulted: Popov had created a biological weapon that in effect triggered rapid multiple sclerosis. (Popov's claims can be corroborated: in recent years, scientists researching treatments for MS have employed similar methods on test animals with similar results.)"

One of the experiments on which Popov worked in Russia was the combining to infections bacteria with genetic material that would flood the victim's system with endorphins – apparently intended to "pacify" populations.(?)

Popov recently says: "To cause amnesia, schizophrenia -- yes, it's theoretically possible with pathogens. If you talk about pacification of a subject population -- yes, it's possible."

Other scientists agree. No one knows whether such agents have been produced.

(Question: would a perfectly pacified and tractably obedient population necessarily follow their fundamentalist preachers?)

" ... The recent report by the National Academies described many unpleasant scenarios: in addition to psychotropic pathogens, the academicians imagine the misuse of "RNA interference" to perturb gene expression, of nanotechnology to deliver toxins, and of viruses to deliver antibodies that could target ethnic groups." This seems to be something for the future – but not too far in the future.

In all, 12 (web) pages of pretty scary stuff, from – I believe – credible sources.

John