Biological Warfare Potential
There has been interest in melioidosis because it has the potential to be developed as a biological weapon. It is classed by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as a Category B agent. B. pseudomallei, like its relative B. mallei which causes Glanders, was studied by the U.S. as a potential biological warfare agent, but was never weaponized. It has been reported that the Soviet Union was also experimenting with B. pseudomallei as a biological warfare agent.
Read more about this topic: Melioidosis
Famous quotes containing the words biological, warfare and/or potential:
“I am fifty-two years of age. I am a bishop in the Anglican Church, and a few people might be constrained to say that I was reasonably responsible. In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attributea white skin.”
—Desmond Tutu (b. 1931)
“Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings ones heart; but death is a splendid thinga warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.”
—George Bernard Shaw (18561950)
“The planet on which we live is poorly organized, many areas are overpopulated, others are reserved for a few, technologys potential is only in part realized, and most people are starving.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (19211990)