Gregg Easterbrook

Gregg Easterbrook is a senior editor at the New Republic magazine and a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution. In the following viewpoint, he questions the use of the term “weapons of mass destruction” to describe biological (and chemical) weapons. Although biological agents can be harmful to humans, they are difficult and impractical to use as weapons. Historic efforts to use biological weapons have resulted in very few fatalities, he notes, and concludes that the attention paid to biological weapons can distract Americans from a true weapon of mass destruction—the atomic bomb.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. What is the public perception of biological weapons, according to Easterbrook?
2. Why is a mass outbreak of smallpox unlikely, in the author’s view?
3. Why...