Should Americans be afraid of an attack with biological weapons?

The country is in no grave danger of germ warfare from abroad, according to one Harvard professor who says the media tends to exaggerate the threat and inflate popular fears.

In a speech to a national scientific organization on Friday, Cabot Professor of Natural Sciences Matthew S. Meselson expressed cautious optimism that biotechnology will not necessarily be used for weapons of mass destruction.

Meselson's speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, entitled "The Problem of Biological Weapons," noted that although superpowers have developed and stockpiled biological weapons for over 50 years, they have only been employed once, by Japan in the 1930s.

"Every major technology--metallurgy, explosives, internal combustion, aviation, electronics, nuclear energy--has been intensively exploited not only for peaceful purposes but also for hostile ones," Meselson said in the speech. "But it may be possible to reverse the usual course of things and avoid the hostile exploitation of biotechnology."

But an article in Saturday's edition of the San Francisco Chronicle claimed Meselson "charged that Russia's widespread network of germ warfare plants remain barred to Western inspectors despite long-standing agreements with the United States and Britain to end the secrecy."

Despite the article's claim, he says, no agreement ever existed between the three nations, though talks about a similar agreement broke down several years ago.

Meselson says such reporting is an example of the trend towards feeding fears of terrorist attacks involving nuclear or biological weapons from the former Soviet Union. Such an attack is very unlikely, he adds.