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U.S. Response: Pentagon to Create Strain of Super-Anthrax U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week reapproved a plan to develop a uniquely potent form of anthrax bacteria to test the country’s defenses against biological attack, the New York Times reported yesterday. Before September 11, Pentagon officials had put the plan on hold to discuss concerns that it might violate the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention on germ warfare, according to the Times. Pentagon lawyers have now determined that the plan is “fully consistent” with the BWC, and President George W. Bush is meeting this week with European allies to discuss new measures for enforcing the treaty (see GSN, Oct. 23). According to the Times, super-potent anthrax was first engineered by Russian scientists in the early 1990s. By 1997, the scientists created a strain that overcame Russian anthrax vaccine in hamsters, sparking anxiety at the Pentagon. The Defense Intelligence Agency was told to develop a super-strain of anthrax to test the U.S. military’s anthrax vaccine (Judith Miller, New York Times, Oct. 23).
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