"The HIV is very handy for biological terrorism as a very wide-spread virus", he said. The so-called "liquid" narcotics - ready-to-use aqueous solutions of narcotic substances, which are a favourable environment for the human immunodeficiency virus -- have become wide-spread in Russia. In Bobkov's opinion, this presents a great danger from the point of view of biological terrorism because such a solution can be infected to be sold to many.
"This model is very efficient to create panic among the population", he said.
Dmitri Lvov, director of the Virology Institute, noted that there are very many scenarios for the bioterrorist use of viruses.
"If a leading specialist has developed such a scenario, fighting against will be very hard. If a non-specialist has developed a scenario, detecting it and understanding mistakes will be rather easy", Lvov said.
However, "criminal groups with the minimum of medical training can make a terrorist attack on the population".
The detection of viruses unusual for a location is not always an evidence of biological terrorism, Dmitri Lvov stressed. By way of example he said that, during a business trip by researchers from his institute to Karelia (Russia's North-Western region) several years ago, they found the Californian encephalitis virus there. The initial version of its artificial emergence was later disproved: the virus was of a natural character and spread country-wide.
