关键词：
Science
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
摘要：
WashingtonTHE US Department of Defense (DoD) said last week that the Soviet Union appears to be trying to apply genetic engineering research to an already broad biological warfare research effort that violates the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972. Although the allegation, contained in the department's latest annual assessment of Soviet military power, is not accompanied by any evidence, the DoD pamphlet argues that genetic engineering could open up a large number of biological warfare possibilities. Natural organisms could be modified to carry diseases for which an opponent has no cure, and agents now thought too unstable for storage or biological warfare could be turned into practical *** says the Soviet Union has at least seven biological warfare centres, including one in the city of Sverdlovsk. It was this centre, the United States believes, which was responsible for a major anthrax leak in 1979 that may have infected as many as 3,000 people. The Soviet Union says the anthrax was caused by contaminated meat sold on the black *** DoD assessment reports that defence research and development by the Soviet Union is growing at a rate of six to seven per cent a year and supports a network of 3,200 research institutes. The Soviet scientific enterprise, DoD ruefully points out, enjoys several advantages over that of the United States. Soviet educational institutions graduate five times as many scientists and engineers; and funding for strategically important pro grammes is not subject to the political uncertainties endemic in the United *** this indigenous effort, DoD claims, is a coordinated campaign to poach scientific and technological expertise from the West. The Soviet Academy of Sciences and several of its institutes follow Western science and technology and subscribe to the growing number of computerized data bases established in the West to disseminate findings. Although it concedes that the bulk of such technology tra
