The wave of anthrax strikes that followed Sept. 11 brought concerns about biological terrorism to the fore, and the government responded by attempting to seal off the information channels through which biological information could be turned against the nation.

In the wake of the attacks, biological science has accumulated more red tape than it has faced since the Cold War.

Some new restrictions affect who can conduct research. Others limit the dissemination of research findings themselves. And President Bush has authorized federal officials to craft these regulations based on what many feel is a vague new research category and a blank check for further restriction.

Many of the restrictions are based on a current list of almost 80 biological pathogens called “select agents.” Before Sept. 11, this list was about 10 times smaller.

At present, SPH is the only school at Harvard to perform research involving select agents—and even then, according to Bloom, very sparingly. Most research, he explains, is undertaken only on pathogens’ components, rather than the substances in their dangerous forms.

“There’s an enormous amount of science that does not involve the actual substance, whole in a freezer in the lab,” he says.

Section 817 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the broad-ranging anti-terrorist legislation passed in October of 2001, bars “restricted persons”—researchers who either have criminal backgrounds or who come from countries that the U.S. has identified as state sponsors of terrorism—from any access to select agents.

And many potential researchers from foreign countries have trouble even making it into the U.S. to start with.

The Technology Alert List, which predated Sept. 11 but was expanded in its wake, is a compilation of fields that the government fears could be applied toward subversive activity. Flagged pursuits range from biological research to landscape architecture, but Washington addresses them uniformly.

If a foreign researcher’s interests match those on the list, his or her visa is subject to extra scrutiny—a process that accounts for considerable backlog and, in some cases, prevents scientists from meeting their research objectives in the U.S.

Meanwhile, legislation following the terrorist attacks changed research standards themselves.

An executive order on homeland security that President Bush issued in 2002 authorized government officials to bar “certain international students” from education and training in “sensitive areas.”

It’s unclear what “sensitive” research—a formal Cold-War category just short of classified that was abandoned in the 1960s—means today.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice says the “sensitive” category has not been formally revived.

According to Casey, though, those on the ground aren’t convinced.