Stories: Biothreat
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Why the U.S. Is Building a High-Tech Bubonic Plague Lab in Kazakhstan
In 1992, Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, a biologist from the Soviet Union, boarded a flight in Almaty, then Kazakhstan's capital, for New York. When Dr. Alibekov—now known as Ken Alibek—sat down with the CIA, he had a terrifying secret to reveal: that bio weapons program the Soviet Union stopped in the 1980's hadn't...
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Central Asia’s First Biothreat Research Lab to Play Threat-Reduction Role
A state-of-the-art medical research laboratory is under construction in a suburb of Almaty, Kazakhstan’s business capital, using U.S. funds aimed at helping reorient former biological weapons-related research under the Soviet Union to peaceful public health uses, according to officials involved with the project. When it opens in 2015, the Central Reference Laboratory is expected to focus on...