A magic sword or a big itch: an historical look at the United States biological weapons programme.

In the late 1950s interest in entomological warfare increased, and literature describing the US biological warfare programmes on the use of the mosquito Aedes aegypti, the vector for transmitting yellow fever, has now been released. Yellow fever was considered as a suitable disease to use in southern regions of the former Soviet Union. The US destroyed its biological weapon stockpiles in the early 1970s. In addition to its offensive biological warfare programme, the US conducted extensive trials to assess its own vulnerability to biological attack. These trials and a later series of threat analyses indicate that biological agents could, indeed, affect large areas of the US if the attackers were allowed to proceed unmolested. Some of the threat analyses present highly questionable scenarios.