What then is the link between ‘Emerging Infectious Diseases’ and bioterror that I’m proposing here?

About two years ago I began to think of writing a book on the history of ‘emerging infectious diseases’. By this time, there was a new strand in the biomedical literature around infectious diseases, namely the potential threat of bioterror. At that time I assumed that this was natural given that it followed the Anthrax letters scare of 2001. I also assumed that the huge interest in the use of infectious diseases as a terrorist weapon – bioterrorism – followed the anthrax letters scare. So it was unexpected to find that the interest in the potential of infectious diseases as a terrorist weapon preceded their actual use in 2001 by several years.

But before I explain what I found in my research into the recent history of bioterror and the discourses around it, I wanted to make a short diversion and give a few historical examples of bioterrorism, or alleged bioterrorism.