Could Insects Be Used as Bioweapons?
By Lee Dye, ABCNEWS.com – 8 April 2004 Sonny Ramaswamy is trying to walk a very fine line. He doesn’t want to be seen as an alarmist, but he thinks people ought to know about the thought that keeps haunting him these days. Ramaswamy, who chairs the department of entomology at Kansas State University, is concerned that the tiny little insects he has spent a lifetime studying could become implements of international terrorism. It’s possible, he says, that even a stable fly, or something as tiny as an aphid, could be used to distribute deadly pathogens over a wide geographical area in a surprisingly rapid and efficient manner. Bugs as delivery systems for weapons of mass terror. “It wouldn’t be as spectacular as the World Trade Center,” he says, “but it would be more insidious.” Poison-Fed Flies His concern began almost as a joke with a colleague at Kansas State. The two entomologists were talking a couple of years ago about the war in Afghanistan and the effort to flush terrorists out of
