Biological Threats Quotes

I think the fact that Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World and talked about anthrax bombs probably helped because at least we... people had the understanding before the war began that's something we didn't want to get into.

When I was doing 'Executive Orders,' I talked about Ebola to people who know about infectious diseases and their use as weapons of war, and guys told me that these weapons are more psychological than physical.

In our efforts to battle terrorism and cyber attacks and biological weapons, all of us must be extremely aggressive. We must protect our people from danger and keep America safe and free.

NIH biodefense research is ultimately directed toward the development of new and effective medical countermeasures, including vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics against potential bioterror agents.

Natural epidemics can be extremely large. Intentionally caused epidemics, bioterrorism, would be the largest of all.

Nuclear weapons need large facilities, but genetic engineering can be done in a small lab. You can't regulate every lab in the world. The danger is that either by accident or design, we create a virus that destroys us.

An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us.

Now we must worry as much about hard-to-detect small-scale biological weapons producers as we do about the large-scale nuclear weapons programs

One of the things that I always say about bioterrorism, whether it's ourselves at the federal level, folks at the state level, or folks in the private industry, we've done many great things, especially since 9/11.

It's true that my research expertise is in biology: for example, the Ebola virus, the Marburg virus, and monkey pox, and not bacteriology as in the case of the anthrax organism. It's also true that I have never, ever worked with anthrax in my life. It's a separate field from the research I was performing at Fort Detrick.

When we're talking about technology that involves weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, there has to be an element of preemption.

We've put huge resources into predicting tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes. HIV/AIDS is like an earthquake that's lasted 30 years and touched every country on the planet. We have such incredible capacity to think about the future, it's time we used it to predict biological threats. Otherwise we'll be blindsided again and again.

One letter to bin Laden reveals that al Qaeda was working on chemical and biological weapons in Iran.

In the 21st Century, the community of nations may see more and more of this very kind of threat that Iraq poses now - a rogue state with biological and chemical weapons. If we fail to respond, Saddam and all those who follow will believe that they can threaten the security of a vital region with impunity. But if we act now as one, we will send a clear message to would-be tyrants and terrorists that we will do what it takes to protect our security and our freedom in this new era.

Certainly there was the Affordable Care Act part, then unaccompanied children [there has been a surge of children entering the country illegally and without parents, particularly in Texas], and things like, we find smallpox in an NIH lab, after 50 years? Why didn't you find it, like, five weeks ago or three years ago? There was thing after thing. But the big ones were [dealing with] the Ebola [outbreak], the unaccompanied children. [It was] perhaps a bigger challenge than I had calculated on my yellow pad as I was thinking about this role.

A study of Disease-of Pestilences methodically prepared and deliberately launched upon man and beast-is certainly being pursue in the laboratories of more than one great country. Blight to destroy crops, Anthrax to slay horses and cattle, Plague to poison not armies but whole districts - such are the lines along which military science is remorselessly advancing.

Withdrawing federal funds to prevent radiological or biological terrorist attack - that doesn't just hurt Los Angeles: that hurts America.

But I am just as appalled that my experience, knowledge, dedication and service relative to defending the United States against biological warfare has been turned against me in connection with the search for the anthrax killer.

Keep an eye on the weather, which is changing faster than predicted, and on the new diseases escaping or being made, even as we speak. It's a race between new tech and biosphere bankruptcy, I'd say.

Chemical and biological weaponry will be one of the grave threats to the world.

Dual use research of concern (DURC) is research that, based on current understanding, can be reasonably anticipated to provide knowledge, products, or technologies that could be directly misapplied by others to pose a threat to public health and safety, agricultural crops and other plants, animals, the environment, or materiel

Scientists and security experts will never come to a consensus about the risks of dual-use research in synthetic biology..

Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.

The United States and WHO [World Health Organization] have no clear protocols for DURC, no standards for determining safety, and no plans for a coordinated global response.

Although biological weapons are highly dangerous, their actual use in war and in terrorist attacks has been relatively rare