Disease as an agent of war. Most people abhor the idea of biological warfare, but new technologies may soon make it easier

In the hands of a spy or a terrorist, it's an ideal poison. About all the victim feels is a momentary sting when the dart or pellet breaks the skin. He's unlikely to have built up natural immunity. And an antidote, while available, is fairly rare, and probably not at hand. Even if treatment is available, it's difficult to figure out just what insidious toxin is at work - perhaps until it's too late.

The substance is rattlesnake venom.

The problem is - or, rather, used to be - collecting it. ``Milking'' snakes was a time-consuming, unpredictable, and dangerous task.

For years, the United States government kept only tiny amounts of venom stockpiled for research purposes and producing antidotes. It was also kept for ``special operations'' by intelligence agencies - in unadorned language, assassinations.

In the American intelligence community, it was commonly assumed that the Soviet Union did the same. Neither superpower, however, seriously considered rattlesnake venom as a weapon to be used on a larger scale, by military forces.

Not that it wouldn't be effective.

Tiny metal darts, called flechettes, coated with venom could turn a tiny nick of the skin into a painful and ultimately fatal injury, a US intelligence analyst explains. A bomb loaded with them would give new meaning to the term ``antipersonnel.''

But, another US official explains, both superpowers calculated that it would be difficult to collect the poison for such a weapon, let alone hide the effort.

Sending out Red Army recruits to milk rattlesnakes in Central Asia ``would have a pretty obvious signature [by satellite],'' the official says.

But now, both the US and the Soviet Union have the capability to produce nearly unlimited amounts of rattlesnake venom - without ever going near a snake. In fact, the feat has become old hat, a US intelligence analyst says, as technology has advanced at an even faster pace.

Cloning snake venom these days, he says, ``is nothing new.''

Cloning involves the use of recombinant DNA technology, or ``gene splicing.'' A simple, harmless microbe - such as one that's common in the human intestine - can be altered so that as it reproduces itself, it also reproduces new genetic material that has been spliced into it.

Cloning is a biological breakthrough that was only dawning 16 years ago, when many of the world's nations banned biological warfare. It has opened up the possibility of a new generation of chemical and biological weapons.

It has also spawned a multimillion-dollar military competition, involving the deadliest microbes, viruses, and bacteria known to man. It's a race to identify - and protect against - exotic new toxins and biological warfare agents.

Simply put, as mankind's understanding of the foundations of material life has increased, so has the understanding of new ways to end it.

``We're living through the time of a certain revolution in biotechnology in general,'' says Yevgeny Sverdlov, head of the Laboratory of Nucleic Acids Biotechnology at Moscow's Shemyakin Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry.

``And any revolution has two sets of consequences,'' Professor Sverdlov says. ``One is usually used to raise up the welfare of the people. The other can be used for annihilation.''

Jeremy Rifkin, president of Washington's Foundation on Economic Trends, puts it more graphically: ``Microbes are the foot soldiers of the 21st century.'' The foundation is concerned with the moral and ethical questions of biotechnology, and has filed a number of lawsuits to limit the Pentagon's chemical and biological defense research programs.

Most of those programs are conducted openly, but the Monitor has learned that the Pentagon also conducts classified research, the results of which are kept secret. The purpose: to ensure that US protective gear will stand up to new chemical and biological agents that might be concocted by some enemy.

US intelligence agencies claim that 10 countries, including the Soviet Union, are involved in prohibited biological weapons research. Pentagon sources, accordingly, say the US is forced to spend millions of dollars annually to research the threat posed by new weapons, and to defend against them.

But there are critics in both the East and West who say the research poses a dilemma: The more military strategists delve into this shadowy area of warfare, the more dangerous will be the knowledge they amass.

US biological research: from bust to boom

THE Reagan years have produced something of a boom for biological defense research in the US. The Pentagon's budget for the program rose from $15.1 million in 1981 to some $90 million in 1986, according to a study by the majority staff of the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management. Spending has declined in the last two years, but is still about $70 million annually.

The US renounced offensive biological warfare in 1969, convinced the weapons were unpredictable and inhumane. It converted the biological weapons facility at Fort Detrick, Md., into a research center.

In 1972, the US, Soviet Union, and other countries signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons. The convention essentially outlawed biological warfare. It did not, however, prohibit defensive research. Both the US and Soviet Union have maintained extensive defense research programs all along.

Moreover, the convention did not include provisions to verify compliance. As a practical matter, therefore, it is unenforceable.

Ironically, also in 1972, two California researchers collaborated in pioneering gene-splicing technology. In so doing, they unwittingly provided the means for new, more efficient, and less costly ways to produce deadly substances.

Trillions of cells

Consider this: Some harmless cells, given the right conditions, reproduce themselves as frequently as once every half hour. During the course of a single day, an experiment starting with a single cell could theoretically end up with 281 trillion (281,000,000,000,000).

If the original cell has been altered to contain, for example, a deadly virus, then the virus also multiplies in exponential fashion along with the original cell. It isn't long before enough of the deadly material is on hand to start creating weapons.

The Pentagon acknowledges that it is creating some disease-causing substances using such techniques as recombinant DNA research. (See diagram, Page B2.) Among them is anthrax, a classic biological warfare agent. It is being reproduced, Pentagon officials say, to aid in vaccine production.

Anthrax, although deadly, has been studied for decades; much is known about how to combat and treat anthrax infection. (See story, Page B10.)

But that is not the case with many of the microbes now under study by the Defense Department. Some have no known antidotes. The possibility that they could be altered, even inadvertently, to make them even more deadly or harder to defend against, is troubling to the Pentagon's critics.

``We're talking about the possibility of powerful new genetic weapons that could rival nuclear weapons in the future,'' says Mr. Rifkin of the Foundation on Economic Trends.

``People think AIDS [acquired immune deficiency syndrome] is dangerous?'' he asks rhetorically. ``Imagine what could happen if military establishments set out to deliberately create a virus that has no cure.''

`Novel agents' - a step beyond mother nature?

FOR years, the dividing line between chemical and biological warfare was clear: Biological agents could reproduce themselves. Chemical agents could not. But scientists in both the US and the Soviet Union say the line is now blurred by advances in biotechnology. Things that can't reproduce themselves in nature can be reproduced in a laboratory. Consequently, a ``gray area'' is developing between classic chemical warfare agents, such as mustard gas and nerve agents and biological agents, such as anthrax.

Specialists have adopted an imprecise, catchall term for substances in this gray area: They call them ``novel agents.''

Among them are:

Well-known biological warfare agents, such as anthrax, produced by new methods, such as genetic engineering.

Toxins, like spider venom, previously so difficult to collect that they were discounted as warfare agents.

Unique mixtures of poisons, resulting in compounds that are potentially more lethal, virulent, or difficult to treat than the component parts.

Substances that occur naturally in the human body, such as biological regulators and hormones, but that in abnormal amounts can have an unpredictable impact on human life.

``Low-molecular-weight agents'' - poisonous chemicals of such infinitesimally small proportions that they could, theoretically, slip through the activated charcoal filters of a gas mask or protective suit, as air molecules already do.

Genetically altered micro-organisms that closely resemble known disease-causing agents, but have a critical change in protein structure that renders present-day vaccines obsolete.

Some experts say they worry that ``novel agents'' could unlock a Pandora's box of new problems for arms controllers and military strategists.

At present, bioengineering is producing ``the same old substances,'' says Nikita Smidovich, a diplomat in the Soviet Foreign Ministry's Department on Peaceful Use of Outer Space and Nuclear Energy. But, he warns, ``if we look into the future, there could be things that surpass the lethality of known agents.''

``If you take a toxin - and biotech makes it that much easier to make them - and then apply some biochemistry to it, you start to make something that doesn't appear in nature,'' says Graham Pearson, director of the British Chemical Defense Establishment at Porton Down, England. ``And you start to say to yourself, `Now, he [your adversary] has the possibility of making them ... too.''

Ake Bovallius, director of the Swedish Defense Research Establishment's Department of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense, laments the ``mistrust between states.''

``It's a rather small step between a scientific experiment that's a success ... and equipment to produce a weapon,'' he says. ``In this business, it can move rather fast.''

It is mistrust that has prompted the Pentagon to venture into the eerie world of tailor-made toxins and microbes.

The secret research behind the openness

THE US biological warfare defense program, when compared with the Soviet Union's, is a model of openness. Contracts are a matter of public record, and there is extensive documentation of the research in environmental-impact statements and other documents.

In addition, the Pentagon's main biological defense research facility, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md., issues an annual report detailing the research it is supporting.

Still, government documents indicate that the Pentagon is also conducting secret research with both chemical and biological warfare agents. Pentagon sources acknowledge that tests are being conducted to determine if certain substances can penetrate the current generation of US gas masks and chemi cal protective gear.

Gen. Howard Eggleston, head of the Army's Space and Special Weapons Directorate, confirms that ``there is a program that's not part of the biological defense research program at Fort Detrick.''

It involves testing with simulants (microbes that mimic dangerous substances but are not themselves harmful) and novel agents. The test results are not reported publicly. For that matter, General Eggleston says, they are not even reported to the National Institutes of Health, which theoretically oversees the Pentagon's biological research.

The reason, he says, is that such research, if publicly disclosed, could be used to target weaknesses in US military protective gear, and that would jeopardize American soldiers.

Dr. Thomas Welch, a chemical and biological warfare adviser to US Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, says only that the program is ``modest'' in scope and conducted safely.

Pentagon officials would provide no further details.

But interviews and examinations of government documents provide details about some of the poisons under the Pentagon's microscopes.

Of cobras and scorpions

LAST year, in response to a lawsuit by the Foundation for Economic Trends, the Defense Department revealed that it is researching a veritable rogues' gallery of bacteria, viruses, and toxins.

Says Rifkin, the foundation's president, ``They're working on every deadly pathogen known to man.''

Among the substances are bacteria like Yersina pestis, the ``Black Death'' of the 14th century (see map, Page B2), and tularemia (rabbit fever), which is known to cause blisters, high fevers, and in some cases, death.

Also on the list are virus diseases, including well-known ones like yellow fever and polio, and rare, exotic ones with names like Chikungunya and O'Nyong Nyong.

The Pentagon also acknowledged in the legal proceeding that it is researching the military uses of toxins from cobras, Mojave rattlesnakes, scorpions, and shellfish.

These bacteria, viruses, and toxins are lethal enough in their own right. But Pentagon strategists say there is a possibility that novel agents could, in effect, combine the worst aspects of the lot - with nightmarish battlefield results.

Eggleston sketches out one possible scenario:

One day, Army medics confront an outbreak of disease that seems like a highly infectious fever. But once they begin treatment, the symptoms suddenly begin to resemble poisoning by snake venom.

Worse, Eggleston says, it is conceivable that the treatment administered for the first symptoms - the fever - could actually trigger the onset of the second - the snake bite poisoning. Treatment would then become a macabre guessing game. Computer concoctions

EGGLESTON says the Pentagon has even considered the possibility that computers, using artificial-intelligence techniques, could be used to concoct formulas for such deadly potions.

The Pentagon, he says, must try to anticipate such threats, and ensure that US soldiers are protected. Eggleston flatly dismisses the suggestion that there is anything objectionable about the secret research.

``This is a good-news program,'' he stresses. ``What we're doing fully supports our high regard for human life.''

But the Pentagon biological defense program is dogged by controversy - a fact even its backers acknowledge, but blame on misperceptions.

``When people think of a place like this, they're making something of an analogy to a bomb factory,'' says Lt. Col. David Huxsoll, commander of USAMRIID at Fort Detrick. ``But what we're doing here is making drugs and vaccines.''

Colonel Huxsoll says such research is, unfortunately, necessary in the modern world. When it comes to biological warfare, he warns, ``Right now, the only warning device we have is man.''

Some experts, both in and out of government, are skeptical about the Pentagon's biological warfare defense program for an even more basic reason: They doubt that novel agents even exist.

One US intelligence analyst insists that every agent under study is ``either a chemical agent or a biological agent.'' Even genetic engineering doesn't produce unique agents, he argues, but only results in more efficient production of known agents.

``Most of this stuff is science fiction,'' Harvard biochemist Matthew Meselson says of novel agents. He is one of a handful of nongovernmental experts on chemical and biological warfare in the US.

``It isn't out there. It's exaggerated,'' Professor Meselson says.

Moreover, he says, it would be a waste of time for any country to explore new lethal agents when there are already so many in existence.

``Recombinant DNA [research] doesn't change anything,'' he continues. ``A cell is still a cell. It can be stopped [by protective equipment].''

That assertion, however, gets at one of the central paradoxes of biological defense research. Nobody can test protective gear without knowing a great deal about the kinds of agents that might be encountered in battle. And the more researchers learn about those agents, the more they know about how to produce them.

How to defend against the unknown?

`IT'S very hard to draw a line between'' offensive and defensive research, says Mr. Smidovich, the Soviet diplomat. But Huxsoll, commander of USAMRIID, contends that only in the case of ``very elementary studies,'' such as vaccine production, is the line between defense and offense difficult to recognize.

``If you're talking about producing greater quantities, or making it more virulent, you're talking about a marked difference in effort,'' he says. Nonetheless, Huxsoll concedes, ``If one has as his agenda the building of a weapon, then let's not kid ourselves, it can be done.''

Last year, a study group convened by the Army Science Board reported that it found ``no evidence of any R&D projects ... intended for offensive BW [biological warfare].''

Still, the thrust of the US biological defense research program troubles critics.

Not only might genetic engineering produce an agent that is ``harder to diagnose and harder to eradicate,'' says Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a researcher at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Rye, N.Y. It might also result in ``putting toxins into widely occurring bacteria that could, if they escaped, find all sorts of niches in the environment.''

``There could be an accident,'' she warns. ``It could get out, and you could have an uncontrollable epidemic.''

Open-air testing

`THE emphasis of the biological defense research program in the 1980s is provocative and destabilizing,'' charges Nachama Wilker, executive director of the Committee for Responsible Genetics, in Boston. To carry out this program, she says, the Pentagon needs the actual agents. And, she adds, it has no business creating those agents.

Such research, she argues, should be transferred to a civil- ian agency that is specifically prohibited from creating novel agents, testing them for the military, or conducting open-air tests with agents or simulants.

Rutgers University researcher Leonard Cole is particularly critical of the Pentagon's open-air testing program. He says it has needlessly exposed civilian populations, without their knowledge, to actual bacteria that might prove harmful, particularly to physically sensitive individuals. Mr. Cole has documented hundreds of tests, some of them in cities like New York and San Francisco.

The Pentagon says it stopped conducting outdoor tests in populated areas in 1977, but they are still routine at isolated military areas such as the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. A Pentagon position paper says the testing ``requires the employment of biological simulants that are safe for the employees working with them, the environment, and the general public.''

Private-sector research

PENTAGON-FUNDED biological and chemical defense research takes place not only at government installations in the US, but also at private companies and other institutions.

Contracts for defense research in the private sector involving the use of actual agents totaled about $68 million in fiscal year 1987, according to a study by the congressional General Accounting Office.

Chemical defense research takes place at some 52 sites in the US, including a number of large cities. Biological defense research is under way at some 100 sites in 27 states and eight foreign countries.

The biological defense research sites include such prominent institutions as Harvard and Yale Universities, as well as the Universities of Alabama, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. (Those biological research facilities where the work involves ``high hazard'' organisms, genetically engineered microorganisms, and toxins are listed at right.)

Colonel Huxsoll, of USAMRIID, is an enthusiastic backer of funding such research in the private sector. He says it gives the Pentagon access to some of America's foremost researchers and facilities.

Last July, however, more than 500 biomedical researchers signed a pledge ``not to engage knowingly in research and teaching that will further the development of chemical and biological warfare agents.''

Jonathan King, a professor of molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was one of the prime supporters of the pledge campaign. He says it is simply impossible to develop biological defenses ``without development, growth, and handling of the very biological warfare agents'' that the Pentagon fears might be used against the US.

Sometimes, these agents are sent back and forth between research institutes and government facilities. Pentagon officials stress that the shipments are safe. But while chemical agents used for research are, in some cases, delivered in specially chartered aircraft or vehicles with police escorts, biological agents have been handled differently.

Until this year, most of the biological agents were shipped through the US Postal Service. The practice, revealed in a Pentagon document released publicly in July, was discontinued when a furor erupted.

The Pentagon, however, quietly shifted some of the shipments to private couriers, including Federal Express, according to an Army official.

There are, in fact, relatively few legal restrictions on how and where the Pentagon conducts chemical and biological research. There are, for example, no regulations prohibiting research in populated areas.

Safety concerns dog both bio and chemical research

ONE chemical defense research site, in particular, has stirred controversy. It is the laboratory of Geomet Technologies, Inc., in Gaithersburg, Md. Under a Pentagon contract, Geomet conducts research with such substances as nerve agents and mustard gas.

The amounts are small; Geomet is prohibited by law from keeping more than one liter (1.06 liquid quarts) of each dangerous substance on hand. They are stored in special high-security vaults when not in use.

Nevertheless, across a roadway from Geomet is the Washington Grove Elementary School. Pupils pass near the Geomet laboratory on their way to and from classes.

A Geomet official would not comment on the company's activities. In the past, however, the official has stressed that the lab does not pose a hazard.

The Pentagon does publish extensive safety guidelines for contractors that handle chemical warfare agents. Nevertheless, a report by the General Accounting Office this year found that the Defense Department had not ``systematically assessed'' the consequences of, say, a fire in a laboratory.

In testimony before a congressional subcommittee this year, Edward Pyles, an official of the Gaithersburg-Washington Grove Fire Department, revealed that firefighters had an unusual standing order in the event of a fire at Geomet.

They were, he said, not even to enter the building.

There is conflicting evidence on the overall safety of the Pentagon's own chemical and biological testing facilities.

The Monitor obtained copies of the Pentagon's ``chemical incident log'' for the past five years. They contain only six accounts of accidents; most represented nothing more serious than minor blisters from contact with mustard gas.

But the Army inspector general earlier this year concluded that the Army's chemical warfare research program ``suffers from a lack of published policy guidance, inadequate staffing, no systematic program of oversight, and a less than clear statement of chemical safety responsibilities.''

Last year, an Army Board of Investigation found ``a significant number of problems in the environmental, safety, and occupational health arenas'' at Aberdeen Proving Ground, the nation's main chemical warfare research center.

It identified a number of safety hazards, among them a laboratory with a ``gaping hole in the ceiling,'' and emergency telephones that took several minutes to get a dial tone. It found that ``conditions ... particularly in regard to personnel safety and hygiene, are deplorable....''

This year, the majority staff of the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management ``uncovered serious deficiencies in [the Defense Department's] management of safety issues in the [chemical and biological warfare] research program, including inadequate regulations, lax safety enforcement, and documented safety lapses.'' The report concluded that ``Congress should not rest easy....''

Suspicion of Soviets

A MAJORITY of Congress has repeatedly been convinced, however, that chemical and biological defense research is necessary. One key reason: suspicion that the Soviet Union is secretly conducting research on offensive biological warfare and beefing up its formidable chemical warfare capability.

The specific evidence to back up these claims is classified. Nevertheless, interviews with intelligence analysts, military officials, and congressional sources - as well as a study of Defense Department documents - yield some insights into the US ``threat assessment.''

US intelligence agencies say they have confirmed the existence of two facilities where the USSR is conducting biological warfare research: the Microbiology and Virology Institute in Sverdlovsk, and the Scientific Research Institute of Sanitation in Zagorsk. They have identified at least six other ``suspect'' sites, at Omutninsk, Aksu, Pokrov, Berdsk, Penza, and Kurgan, as well as a storage facility at the Soviet city of Malta. The Pentagon also says there is a biological warfare test facility on Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea. (See map, Page B5.)

Intelligence analysts say there is, in all likelihood, biological warfare research taking place at other prestigious institutes in Moscow, Leningrad, and Novosibirsk. They admit, however, that at most of the facilities, other research in medicine, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture also takes place.

The Soviets themselves, in documents filed with the United Nations, declared that the Ministry of Defense conducts research with various biological warfare agents at laboratories in Sverdlovsk, Zagorsk, Leningrad, Kirov, and Aralsk. But the USSR maintains that all the facilities are involved in defensive research only, not offensive, and certainly not in weapons production.

An informed source says that the Soviet Union is conducting research on toxins, including poisons produced by blue-green algae. The US has also charged the Soviets with developing anthrax, rabbit fever, plague, and cholera as bacteriological warfare agents.

Suspicion about just what the Soviets are up to pervades the American intelligence community. Official Soviet secrecy only feeds speculation.

An odd building in Moscow

One facility that particularly intrigues US experts is the Shemyakin Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, on the outskirts of Moscow. Some United States officials suggest that offensive biological warfare research is conducted there.

But so little is known about the institute that even the shape of the building is a matter of fascination to intelligence analysts. Some think it's merely a gigantic example of architectural literalism, others a macabre metaphor in concrete.

The building, seen by satellite, resembles a huge DNA molecule. (See drawing above.)

In an interview at the facility, Professor Sverdlov, the head of the Institute's Laboratory of Nucleic Acids Biotechnology, says the suspicions about the facility are unfounded. ``In this institute, I want to stress, we don't work on biological weapons.''

But can he affirm that such research isn't under way elsewhere in the USSR? Here, his answer is curiously qualified:

``In this place, the Academy of Sciences, I may state definitely that none of my colleagues are involved. And the Academy of Sciences is the place of work for the most distinguished scientists. So, I can say none of the really outstanding scientists of the Soviet Union are involved.''

``This is mere logic,'' Sverdlov says.

``Without the involvement of leading scientists, it is impossible to develop this technology. So the next conclusion is, it's likely that no such large biological work is under way in the Soviet Union.''

Even more troubling was a 1987 statement by Valentin Falin, then head of the USSR's Novosti Press Agency. He was talking about Moscow's response to new, US space-based weapons systems.

``We won't copy you anymore, making planes to catch up with your planes, missiles to catch up with your missiles,'' Mr. Falin said. ``We'll take asymmetrical means with new scientific principles available to us. Genetic engineering could be a hypothetical example. Things can be done for which neither side could find defenses or countermeasures, with very dangerous results. ... These are not just words. I know what I'm saying.''

Falin later tried to clarify the statement. But Huxsoll, of the Army's Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, had the words set in type; he hands out copies to visitors to his office at Fort Detrick.

In the end, Huxsoll says, continuing the search for chemical and biological defenses is not only a question of prudence - but also a question of morality.

``If we have any suspicion that these things are going to be used, then I don't have a moral problem with research to protect against these potential threats,'' he says. ``I think it would be immoral if we didn't protect against them.''

Glossary Bacteria: Typically one-celled microorganisms that have no chlorophyll; multiply by simple division; and can be seen only with a microscope. Some bacteria are traced as causing diseases; others are necessary for processes such as fermentation and nitrogen-fixing. Biotechnology: Use of the data and techniques of engineering and technology to study and solve problems concerning living organisms. Cloning: The technique of producing a genetically identical duplicate of an organism. DNA: Deoxyribonucleic acid. A substance found mainly in the nucleus of a cell, it plays a vital part in heredity. DNA chromosomes furnish duplicating cells with a complete set of `instructions' for the cells' own development. Gene: A unit of a chromosome by which hereditary characters are transmitted and determined. Recombinant DNA technology or gene splicing: A method by which a simple microbe is altered so that, as it reproduces itself, it also reproduces new genetic material that has been spliced into it. Toxin: Unstable, poisonous compound produced by some microorganisms, to which certain diseases are traced. Virus: An ultramicroscopic infective agent to which a variety of diseases in animals and plants are traced. It multiplies only in connection with living cells, and is regarded as a living organism as well as a comlex protein.

Pentagon-funded biological defense research takes place at: Auburn University Auburn, Ala. Biometric Systems, Inc. Eden Prairie, Minn. Bionetics Research, Inc. Rockville, Md. Brigham Young University Provo, Utah Centers for Disease Control Atlanta Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colo. Department of Energy Richland, Wash. Food and Drug Administration Rockville, Md. Govt. Services Division Salk Institute Swiftwater, Pa. Hahnemann University, School of Medicine Philadelphia Health Research, Inc. Albany, N.Y. Hawaii Biotechnology Group, Inc. Aiea, Hawaii Hines VA Hospital Chicago Imperial College of Science and Technology London, England Jefferson Medical College Philadelphia Kansas State University Manhattan, Kan. Korea University College of Medicine Seoul, South Korea Letterman Army Institute of Research San Francisco Molecular Genetics, Inc. Minnetonka, Minn. Natural Environmental Research Council Swindon, England Naval Research Laboratory Washington, DC New England Medical Center Hospitals Boston State University of New York Albany, N.Y. North Carolina State University Raleigh, N.C. Research Foundation of SUNY Albany, N.Y. Salk Institute fro Biological Studies La Jolla, Calif. Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation La Jolla, Calif. Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Ill. Southern Research Institute Birmingham, Ala. Southwest Foundation for Biomed Research San Antonio SRI International Menlo Park, Calif. Uniformed Services University of Health Science Bethesda, Md. University of Alabama Birmingham, Ala. Univeristy of California Los Angeles University of Florida Gainesville, Fla. University of Hawaii Honolulu University of Maryland Baltimore University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mass. University of Miami Coral Gables, Fla. University of Minnesota St. Paul, Minn. University of Texas Galveston, Texas University of Texas San Antonio University of Virginia Charlottesville, Va. University of Washington Seattle University of Wisconsin Madison, Wis. University of Wyoming Laramie, Wyo. US Army Biomedical Research and Development Laboratory Ft. Detrich, Frederick, Md. US Army Dugway Proving Grounds Dugway, Utah US Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense Edgewood Area Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases Ft. Detrick, Frederick, Md. Veterans Administration Medical Center Pittsburgh Washington University St. Louis, Mo. Walter Reed Army Institute of Research Washington, DC Wright State University Dayton, Ohio Yale University New Haven, Conn.