Emerging Technologies for Bioweapons Defense

The Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) has changed the way we think about national security. The tragic events of Sept. 11 have shown us that world of the 21(st) century is clearly a dangerous place. Terrorism, more than ever, affects the very lives of each and every citizens of our country. Al Qaida has proven that it is able to use simple rudimentary methods to invoke strategic economic losses to our society with our own domestic resources as its weapons. The dawn of the new century has brought forth a new kind of asymmetric war where guerilla fighters are armed not with rifles but with technology at the touch of a keyboard. Warfare as we know it has changed and just as the military has its "transformation", medicine so too must have its own transformation in order to protect our citizen against the ever changing threat of bioterrorism. Virtual Reality and its applications can play a vital role in developing new countermeasures to minimize the catastrophic effects of a potential bioterror attack.