New research has shown that the common Flu virus could be a far more dangerous bioterror weapon than smallpox or anthrax.

Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, scientists said information from the sequencing the genome of the 1918 flu epidemic, which killed between 20 and 40 million people, could be misused by terrorists.

They warn that once the sequencing is complete, unscrupulous scientists could use the information to create more virulent strains.

The fact that it should be possible to transmit flu in aerosol form also increases its attractiveness as a biological weapon, they warn.

Full article at BBC News