[65298] in Cypherpunks
Re: Fear of Flying -- from HotWired
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frantz)
Thu Sep 12 15:19:09 1996
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 12:03:18 -0700
To: declan@well.com (Declan McCullagh), cypherpunks@toad.com
From: frantz@netcom.com (Bill Frantz)
At 1:16 PM 9/12/96 -0500, Declan McCullagh quoted:
>... former CIA director James Woolsey: responded with some seemingly
> gratuitous anti-Net
> rhetoric. Terrorists may use biological weapons like anthrax, he said.
> "Anthrax is colorless, odorless, and has a 90 percent lethality. One
> gram has 100 million lethal doses." Then Woolsey delivered the zinger:
> "The knowledge of how to make anthrax is widely available, including
> on the Internet."
Gee, biotech has come a long way. Now I can download the Anthrax DNA
sequence from the net and insert it in some carrier bacteria and start
making Anthrax bacteria. Neat!
Or did he mean I can chemically synthesize Anthrax toxin? Or did he mean I
can get information on culturing bacteria on the net, but must obtain a
sample of the bacteria from other sources?
BTW - My dictionary says that Anthrax is primarily an animal disease which
only occasionally infects humans. It sounds like a poor choice for bio-war
terror.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz | "Lone Star" - My personal | Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506 | choice for best movie of | 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz@netcom.com | 1996 | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
