Eggheads call for bioweapons database

A leading US biologist has called for a database of bioweapons to be established to help scientists combat terrorist attacks.

Claire Frasier, head of the Institute for Genomic Research, called for the database at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston last week.

She told the BBC that such a database would greatly help researchers when presented with new biological weapons.

She said that they would be able to identify new threats and devise defences to them much more quickly if there was a reliable resource of information on existing diseases.

The US has diverted millions of dollars to biowarfare research and delegates at the AAAS event urged the Bush administration to rejoin the Biological Weapons Convention, so that the US's efforts to defend itself against biological terror weapons could be shared with the rest of the world's scientific community.

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