Bioterrorism and Bird Flu

It appears that U.S. public health officials have had a difficult time paying attention to the oncoming bird flu epidemic (Effect Measure has been following the story closely). Maybe this report from Canada will get their attention:

The military's intelligence arm has warned the federal government that avian influenza could be used as a weapon of bioterrorism, a heavily censored report suggests. . .

. . . [t]he report, entitled Recent Human Outbreaks of Avian Influenza and Potential Biological Warfare Implications, was obtained under the Access to Information Act by The Canadian Press. . .

I suppose that it’s asking too much that we pay attention to something in this country that isn’t related to the GWOT.

Effect Measure also alerts us to an open letter sent to NIH from 750 microbiologists warning that an overemphasis on "biodefense" was threatening to harm fundamental research in public health.