Drug discovery - biotech, pharmaceuticals, research, clinical trials, etc. In the pipeline - Corante

Anthrax:

The other big attack on America was the Anthrax attacks. It happens there's news about that too--or, at least, a new piece of investigative reporting. Needless to say, the FBI doesn't get off easy. They don't deserve to get off easy. The biggest question in the piece is, "could this stuff have been civilian-made?"

So Matsumoto concentrates on the processing of the spores: their particle size, and their possible coatings and treatments to make them disperse better. This is where the homebrew/high-tech distinction should be clear, and this is just where the available information has the most contradictions. Initially, reports were that the spore samples had very small, very uniform particle sizes, and may well have had additives to them to keep them from aggregating. Alan Zelicoff, of Sandia, was quotedat the time saying that whoever made the Senate anthrax had "the keys to the kingdom." (I remember reading that, and having a sudden, terrible vision of just what kingdom that was.) But you can now find leaks and reports that dispute both of these contentions, though. The difference is especially marked in statements the FBI has made in the last few months, which make the spores sound much less well-processed than their earlier reports. As Matsumoto puts it:

The reversal was so extreme that the former chief biological weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission, Richard Spertzel, found it hard to accept. "No silica, big particles, manual milling," he says: "That's what they're saying now, and that radically contradicts everything we were told during the first year of this investigation."

Hat tip: LGF.