Ever since
former President Clinton read and personally became more than
a little agitated over the events depicted in Richard Preston's
fictional work The Cobra Event (which extrapolated from the naturally-caused
contagion depicted in Preston's more factual Hot Zone), the United
States - among others - has witnessed an immense growth in the
funds dedicated and words
expended in
order to battle a new bogeyman: the non-state actor (aka terrorist)
armed with biological or chemical weapons intent on using them
in the US.
Since the
mid-90s, Washington - hopefully not influenced by the tirade of
ill-conceived, and often, self-serving, literature on the subject
- has pumped billions of dollars into researching and preparing
for a 'WMD (weapons of mass destruction) event' and seems to be
ready to continue to do so (current anti-terrorism funding exceeds
$10 billion annually, or 4% of the entire US defence budget).
http://chembio.janes.com/
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