mycotoxins in Southeast Asia in the 1970'

As far as I know, the mycotoxin case(yellow rain) in former Indochina has never been proven or backed by any solid scientific data. This story took place during a peak of cold war and was subject to a confrontation in the united nations between soviet union and USA. I guess that it was a payback from the US to the soviet union after the Vietnam war and orange agent.

For the smallpox, as I said earlier, it took years and dozen of millions of dollars to top class team of microbiologist (Eckard Wimmer) to synthesize the Polio in 2002 and this virus is relatively simple (7000 base). The Smallpox is much bigger (180 000 base) and would be complex to synthesize. More recent work have managed to assemble the entire genome of a bacterium (580 000 base pairs) but in the case of bacteria, synthesizing the DNA is not sufficient to create a synthetic life form (for example, you'd need to synthesize the rest of the component of the cell and somehow jump start the metabolic processes). If one has enough money to start this task, why wouldn't he try to take a known virus or bacteria and change its DNA to make it more potent or resistant to treatment ? Would be a better strategy. Also, since 2001, the US government stockpiles enough vaccine to protect the entire population (this is theoretical as vaccine are effective before contamination and a newly created smallpox may or may not respond well to the vaccine). That being said, the rapid advance of synthetic biology is a concern but creating a bio agent is very time and resource consuming and it's only a small step of the equation. You need to weaponize it and spread it effectively. I meet many expert and the opinions are very polarized on this questions, some says it will be a threats while others are not very worried.

As for Russians, they haven't been very transparent about their Chem / Bio program since the fall of the soviet union. Even after signing the the Bio Convention of 1972, they did everything they could to go around it and fool the international community by creating secret lab and production facilities. In the 80s, soviet officials were negotiating the chemical weapon convention (signed in 1993) on one side and plotting against it on the other side by studying how to create chemical weapons (Novichok A-232) that wouldn't be seen during OPCW inspections. The western world have raised concerned in the early 90s about that but the new context and more pressing concerns (secure the soviet stock of nuclear warheads) was more important than upsetting the Russian with their Chem/Bio program. On the Russian matter, I would recommend to read the transcripts of the US Subcommittee Hearing: "Assessing the Biological Weapons Threat: Russia and Beyond"

One of the speakers said: "The ‘‘elephant,’’ ignored for 18 years, demands our attention. The ‘‘elephant in the room’’ is, of course, the Russian biological weapons capability. The problem is not new, but the context, Putin’s new Russia is. In fact, for most of you, even if you never ever knew anything about this topic, the assumption will be that this is old hat, a problem that was taken care of way back in the early nineties, the 1990s that is, and the story goes something like this: The Soviets and Russians, admitted possession of a massive biological weapons research, development, testing, production, stor- age, and launch capability; but did that actually happen? No, I con- tend. They committed to destroying the system, all weapons and methods of dissemination, agents, seed stocks, and productions and operational plans; but did that actually happen? No, it didn’t. Complete openness was achieved, and the new Russian state al- lowed inspections and verification of all suspect sites; but did that actually happen? No. As far as I am aware, pretty much all discussion between the U.S. and the U.K. and Russia ground to a halt in mid-1990s be- cause of Russian insistence on pursuing reciprocity, a condition that the then Soviet negotiators persuaded the U.S. State Depart- ment to accept at their very first encounter in London in 1990, fol- lowing the defection of Vladimir Pasechnik in 1989. I know because I sat around that table. "

A top group of interntioanl expert describe very well the Chem/Bio situation in Russia And also Vil Mirzayanov state secret book. Check Vladimir pasechnik account (Ken Alibek is a joke however)