The US pursuit of Saddam is sending a very explicit message to Kim Jong-Il, and that message is “use it or lose it”. If SARS is a North Korean strategic bioweapon, it almost certainly isn’t the only one. In fact, the nightmare scenario is that it may be the attenuated form of something like the ebola-equivalent mousepox strain that Australian scientists unwittingly stumbled across last year, and this release is a test run in case they feel the need to bring the house down by releasing the real thing. Dr Strangelove, eat your heart out …
Conflicting reports on whether or not this new bug is man-made or not. There’s a discussion forum linked from this piece that presents both/all sides of the question.