How easily can they be spread into the population?
The knowledge required and technology needed to develop and spread these agents in a bioterrorist attack is very difficult and complicated. • For technical reasons related to the agent, the introduction of tularemia (rabbit fever), plague and the viral haemorrhagic fevers into the population, and their subsequent spread, is very unlikely to occur. • The botulinum toxin is also difficult to introduce into a large population and does not spread person to person. • Smallpox can be spread from person to person, but people ill with smallpox are generally very sick and are usually confined to their beds. They are unlikely to be able to travel in public. Since its eradication in 1977, world experts feel that its containment makes smallpox a very unlikely bioterrorism agent and that its introduction into a population would be very difficult to achieve. All countries agree, however, that even a single case of smallpox anywhere in the world would be an international health emergency. In this eve
