Mutant flu - the view from the newsroom

摘要

When the federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed in 1995 by antigovernment terrorists, the newspaper I write for, The Washington Post, ran a story about how easy it was to make a bomb from nitrogenous fertilizer and motor oil. The papers editors had debated over whether they should run the story, and whether it should be put on the website - which was very new - thereby rendering it easily accessible forever. They decided to put it up. A lot of dangerous information is now within a few key strokes of the reading public. We hear that all the information needed to make a nuclear weapon is on the Internet (although I am not competent to judge).