Ken Alibek was born in Kauchuk, Kazakhstan, in 1950. He
graduated in 1975 from the military faculty of the Tomsk Medical
Institute, where he majored in infectious diseases and
epidemiology. He holds a Ph.D. in microbiology for research and
development of plague and tularemia biological weapons and a
doctorate of science in biotechnology for developing the technology
to manufacture anthrax on an industrial scale. He joined
Biopreparat in 1975 and was its first deputy chief from 1988 to
1992. Since his defection to the United States in 1992, he has
briefed U.S. military intelligence on biological weapons. He is now
working in biodefense.
Stephen Handelman is a columnist at Time. He was the Moscow
bureau chief of The Toronto Star in the late eighties and early
nineties and is the author of Comrade Criminal: Russia’s New
Mafiya.
“Harrowing . . . richly descriptive . . . [an] absorbing
account.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Remarkable . . . terrifying revelations . . . [Ken Alibek’s]
overall message is ignored at great national peril.”—Newsday
“An important and fascinating look into a terrifying world of which
we were blissfully unaware. While we all grew up with the anxiety
of the threat of a nuclear winter, little did we know there was an
equally horrific menace from biotechnology. Biohazard takes you
behind the scenes of the Soviet Union’s clandestine bioweapons
program. Read and be amazed.”—Robin Cook, author
of Contagion
“As the top scientist in the Soviet biowarfare program and the
inventor of the world’s most powerful anthrax, Ken Alibek has
stunned the highest levels of the U.S. government with his
revelations. Now, in a calm, compelling, utterly convincing voice,
he tells the world what he knows. Modern biology is producing
weapons that in killing power may exceed the hydrogen bomb. Ken
Alibek describes them with the intimate knowledge of a top
weaponeer.”—Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone
“This is a gripping book. The hum of machines that kept deadly
airborne germs away from the scientists and their families can be
heard in the background. The technical details are vivid and
terrible even as the human story unfolds. It was fascinating—and
chilling—to peer inside this awesome war machine. I worked for a
dozen years to develop defenses against a Soviet threat that was
largely unknown. To see its full scope made me realize how
overpowered we would have been if it had ever been used. Military
casualties would have been incredible, but civilians would have
suffered equally as contagious diseases raced through cities and
towns. Some of the Soviet ‘advances,’ such as inducing
antibiotic resistance in classical pathogens like plague, would
have changed the practice of medicine forever.”—C. J. Peters,
author of Virus Hunter, former deputy commander of USAMRIID, now at
the CDC
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