QUOTE
Biotoxins Fall Into Private Hands
Global Risk Seen In S. African Poisons
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 21, 2003; Page A01
Second of two articles
PRETORIA, South Africa -- In three days of secret meetings last July, the man known throughout South Africa as \"Doctor Death\" astounded U.S. law enforcement officials with tales of how the former white-minority government carried out unique experiments with chemical and biological weapons.
Wouter Basson, the bearded ex-commander of South Africa's notorious 7th Medical Battalion, spoke candidly of global shopping sprees for pathogens and equipment, of plans for epidemics to be sown in black communities and of cigarettes and letters that were laced with anthrax. He revealed the development of a novel anthrax strain unknown to the U.S. officials, a kind of \"stealth\" anthrax that Basson claimed could fool tests used to detect the disease.
But most disturbing was the question Basson could not answer: Who controls the microbes now?
Global Risk Seen In S. African Poisons
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 21, 2003; Page A01
Second of two articles
PRETORIA, South Africa -- In three days of secret meetings last July, the man known throughout South Africa as \"Doctor Death\" astounded U.S. law enforcement officials with tales of how the former white-minority government carried out unique experiments with chemical and biological weapons.
Wouter Basson, the bearded ex-commander of South Africa's notorious 7th Medical Battalion, spoke candidly of global shopping sprees for pathogens and equipment, of plans for epidemics to be sown in black communities and of cigarettes and letters that were laced with anthrax. He revealed the development of a novel anthrax strain unknown to the U.S. officials, a kind of \"stealth\" anthrax that Basson claimed could fool tests used to detect the disease.
But most disturbing was the question Basson could not answer: Who controls the microbes now?