The Times articles, beginning then and continuing even as I write, lasered in on United States diplomats' reporting about the most explosive situations in the world: Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, an out-of-control and increasingly weaponized North Korea, deep instability and unreliability in Pakistan.
There are five different categories of biological agents that could be weaponized and used in warfare or terrorism.
At present no effective vaccines exist for preventing infections from glanders, brucellosis, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, ricin, or T-2 mycotoxins all biological agents that some countries have researched for military use or have weaponized in the past.
Most weaponized lethal biological agents are intended to be delivered as aerosols, which would cause infections when breathed by the targeted personnel.
Fungi pathogens that can be weaponized for use against crops to cause such diseases as rice blast, cereal rust, wheat smut, and potato blight.
Anthrax has been weaponized by a number of states.
Viruses intracellular parasites, about 1/100 the size of bacteria, that can be weaponized to cause diseases such as Venezuelan equine encephalitis.
Toxins poisons that can be weaponized after extraction from snakes, insects, spiders, marine organisms, plants, bacteria, fungi, and animals.
Although there is little concern that Klebsiella or Acinetobacter might be weaponized, the basic science of their mutation and resistance could be useful in helping us to understand these threats.
I enjoyed the Hirshhorn show against my will, which came weaponized with decades of misgivings.
It looks a little like an ice-cream truck, lightly weaponized for inner-city work.
