The Hippocratic Oath at root is: "Above all, do no harm". Would that Alibek, a doctor himself, would have heeded that simple credo. This book deals with the very scary world of biological warfare, one of the two so-called "poor man's nukes" (along with chemical weapons). I remember the early modern images of biowarfare in the 70s, with soldiers wearing gas masks and protective suits, looking like invading aliens.

Of course, the basics of biological warfare have been around for a long time-the Mongols hurling plague-laden corpses over besieged city's walls, for example. At any rate, what makes biowarfare so frightening is that with today's superior technology and industrial methods, biowarfare becomes not an exception, but an actual business. Similarly, production on such a scale leads to inevitable bioweapons accidents, which Alibek ably documents. One of the most horrifying accounts is that of a Soviet scientist who gets infected by one of their superbugs, and then clinically documents the progression of his illness for as long as he can before he inevitably succumbs to a horrible, lingering death. This is the stuff of nightmares - the next time somebody sneezes near you in public, you'll shudder.

Alibek was a high-up in the former Soviet Union's bioweapons program, and from his position, he reveals much of the USSR's bioweapons program in methodical and chilling detail as only an insider can. This book makes Richard Preston's "Hot Zone" seem like a folk dance, mostly because this is intentional, whereas superbugs like Ebola are simply freaks of nature. The book gives interesting glimpses of the Soviet Union in its dying days, of a bureaucracy run by Party officials who are like feudal barons - if ever there was a doubt that the USSR wasn't actually communist (anymore than the US is actually democratic), this book should reveal it. The paranoid secrecy and unaccountable authority of the Party bureaucrats can only seem like déjà vu to American readers, in our own national security state.

Biotechnology is the shotgun marriage of science and business-and biowarfare is the monstrous offspring of biotechnology itself. Alibek elaborates on efforts to gene-engineer hybrid viruses combining aspects of smallpox, plague, and/or ebola. A Frankenstein's monster if ever there was one.

The US claims to have not engaged in bioweapons research since 1969 (via a treaty banning it)-but given that the US is currently violating a 1967 accord against the weaponization of space, and that the former USSR moved forward with bioweapons in the wake of that 1969 treaty, I can't believe that our government isn't doing this kind of research, too, if only in that twisted logic of mutually-assured destruction that characterized the Cold War. To my mind, the Cold War continues - talk of the Peace Dividend lasted about two weeks, before bogeymen like narcoterrorists and Islamic fundamentalists were conjured up to justify the huge American military economy.

In fact, that's the scariest thing of all - Alibek speaks of his regretful involvement in bioweapons research, turning his medical degree on its head and using it create lethal organisms. Yet he defects to the USA after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and puts his considerable knowledge to work for bioweapons research yet again. Admittedly, he says he's working to come up with countermeasures against biowarfare, while at the same time noting that there are scientists in Russia who will most likely turn mercenary and develop similar programs in other countries. Is a defense possible? I doubt it. Its seems that if bioweapons get used on a large scale (and it doesn't take much - that's what is so scary) - humanity will pay a dear price.

My feeling with Alibek is he's a mix of Adolf Eichmann and Robert Oppenheimer. That may seem unfair, but the idea of the banality of modern evil comes readily to mind - he's not a scheming madman; rather, he's a doctor and former Communist Party bureaucrat, faithfully doing his job - just following orders, focusing narrowly on the task at hand, and not really thinking much about the larger consequences of his research. It is revealing to me that he sticks with the program in the USSR until it becomes inconvenient for him, whereupon he switches sides and continues to ply his talents, this time for different masters. I think he feels guilty for his past work, but I can't help but think that he hasn't learned his lesson.

The Cold War was used as a justification of an ongoing militarization of both the US and the USSR, each the mirror image of the other, and each using the other as a pretext for domestic social control. The USSR is gone, but the programs remain in place, and American policy itself is largely unchanged. Americans should read this book, if merely to get a sense that the only answer to biowarfare is seeking alternatives to war itself -- check out "The Conquest of War" by Harry B. Hollins, Averill L. Powers, and Mark Sommer is a good place to start. It seems the sanest response, rather than fighting fire with fire - because with bioweapons, everybody loses.

This book is worth your time, if only as a glimpse into a nightmare world not of science run amok, but science deliberately prostituted and perverted to suit the interests of nationalism, statecraft, and business, producing horrid offspring whose only purpose is to harm and hurt.

After reading this book you will not look upon a packed stadium or happy throng at a festival in the same way. Crowds at a park, population centers, sunlovers at a holiday beach ... all appear now as targets of bioterrorism. Even President Clinton has said such an "event" is likely in the next decade. It is not rhetoric.

Dr. Ken Alibek (Kanatjan Alibekov) and journalist Stephen Handelman have written a masterful, fast-paced account of Alibek's career as a leading Soviet bioweaponeer. Interspersed with vignettes about mishaps and disasters, "Biohazard" chronicles the Soviet Union's development of lethal biological weapons from the early days to the demise of Soviet communism. Alibek, who found he had no choice but to defect to the West in 1992, gives evidence that the world's largest (and one of the most secret) biological weapons program continues to this day.

Alibek should know. In the years leading to his defection he ran the Soviet biological weapons program and was deputy director of Biopreparat, the responsible agency. With 60,000 members and over 100 facilities, Biopreparat made startling breakthrough discoveries in deadly microbiology -- discoveries that even his Western debriefers found difficult to fathom at first.

Bioweaponeering work continues in Russia, Alibek contends. But what of those former Soviet microbiologists who have found other jobs with high pay from other foreign countries? As Alibek reports, "The disastrous economic conditions in Russia have driven many of our brightest scientists and technicians to seek work wherever they can get it." There is "lax security" and it is easy to smuggle a vial of freeze-dried powder past an inattentive guard. "Biological agents," Alibek says, "are rumored to be circulating freely in the Russian criminal underworld."

In any event, the services of an ex-Biopreparat scientist "would be a bargain at any price. The information he could provide would save months, perhaps years, of costly scientific research for any nation interested in developing, or improving, a biological warfare program." Alibek cites a number of his former colleagues who are now working abroad in such countries as Iraq and North Korea. He also points to meetings between Russian bioweaponeers and officials from Iran and China.

The recent spate of terrorist actions in the Mid-East give one pause. Although the preferred method of terror these days seems to be the suicidal use of explosives, it does not take a leap in logic to imagine biological weapons as a substitute.

The next time you're in a crowded shopping mall or sports complex, think about that.

The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It!

In this fast-paced memoir, Ken Alibek combines cutting-edge science with the narrative techniques of a thriller to describe some of the most awful weapons imaginable. The result will remind readers of The Hot Zone, Richard Preston's smart bestseller about the Ebola virus. That book focuses on the dangers of a freak accident; Biohazard shows how disease can become a deliberate tool of war. Alibek, once a top scientist in the Soviet Union's biological weapons program, describes putting anthrax on a warhead and targeting a city on the other side of the world. "A hundred kilograms of anthrax spores would, in optimal atmospheric conditions, kill up to three million people in any of the densely populated metropolitan areas of the United States," he writes. "A single SS-18 [missile] could wipe out the population of a city as large as New York."

Chilling passages like these, plus discussions of proliferation and terrorism, make Biohazard a harrowing book, but it also has a human side. Alibek, who defected to the United States, describes the routine danger of his work: "A bioweapons lab leaves its mark on a person forever." An unending stream of vaccinations has destroyed his sense of smell, afflicted him with allergies, made it impossible to eat certain kinds of food, and "weakened my resistance to disease and probably shortened my life." But it didn't take away his ability to tell an astonishing story.

Handelman has done a wonderful job in showing the corruption of Communist society and how the greed and wish for prosperity inherent in humans all over the world has led to organized crime. It amazed me how connected to organized crime the Russian state was and still is. The sections on drugs, arms smuggling and nuclear weapons were very interesting. The book also shows how race based the crime gangs are, like they are in the United States and everywhere else. But Mr. Handelman, stop referring to them as "mafiya". Yeah, it sounds "Russian" or whatever, but it's annoying. Overall, I liked the book because it is very well researched and documented.

This is not a bad first look at the world of Russian organised crime, updated from an earlier edition. Silly the way he insists on refering to Russian OC groups as "mafiya", though.

Comrade Criminal not only lays out the power of the Russian mob, which has been done before, but also gives the reader the history of the mob's growth. And this isn't just over the last ten years or so, but pre-World War II. The author profiles the evolution of Russia's underworld and shows how the Communist era made it into what it is today. Definitely worth the read.