Although only a limited number of viruses are considered suitable as biowarfare agents, a greater number might be made suitable through genetic engineering or other modifications. Those viral agents that have not been recognized previously as credible biowarfare agents pose a special threat, because their use would contain the element of surprise. For such agents, there would be no vaccines for prevention, no detection, and perhaps no therapies, and the potential destructive consequences would be far greater than those of the anthrax bacterium.
A recently published study,1 that used a text-mining variant known as literature-based discovery,2,3 identified viruses that could be considered as potential candidates for biowarfare agents. Generically, the study examined publicly available knowledge on different facets of biowarfare agents found in non-overlapping, highly specialized literatures and integrated these disparate literatures to identify viruses that had high potential as candidate biowarfare agents.
Specifically, the study postulated that biowarfare agents ...
