[PDF] Against this backdrop, the 1997 JASON summer study sought to identify avenues of future development for biological warfare agents. This exercise had several purposes: First, it provided an opportunity to assess the strengths and weaknesses of bioweaponry
currently thought to exist.16 Second, it provided a useful framework for projecting what might someday come into existence, both through traditional approaches and through recent advances in biotechnology. Third, it helped us to consider what countermeasures
might usefully be brought to bear to defend populations—or at least to minimize the damage.
In the end, we arrived somewhat arbitrarily at six broad classes of unconventional pathogens that might, or might not, come to pose a threat during the twenty-first century. This list was never meant to be all-inclusive, but only to convey a sense of the spectrum of possibilities. [from TheMemoryBlog.org]
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