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The threat of
bioterrorism has increased in the last two decades, with a
number of rogue countries working on the offensive use of
these agents. There is also growing concern that the
previously developed bioweapon agents, including smallpox
virus, which was eliminated from nature in the late 1970’s and
now stored in only two laboratories at the CDC in Atlanta and
the Institute for Viral Precautions in Moscow, Russia, may
have been sold by desperate ex-Soviet scientists seeking
money. The Department of Defense is leading a federal effort
to train the first responders in 120 American cities to be
prepared to act in case of a domestic terrorist incident
involving bioterrorism and other weapons of mass destruction.
The Department of Justice is currently assessing the domestic
preparedness infrastructure for all the counties in the U.S.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have
bioterrorism-related cooperative agreements with most of the
state health departments in order to boost state laboratory
capabilities and epidemiology and response systems, and
provide rapid communication capabilities between local and
state health departments and CDC. |
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