What's underplayed about Tobiason's CD is his argument that people have a right to know how to protect themselves against biological attack, especially the "accidental" kind. The Connecticut victim of anthrax lived due west of Plum Island, which is located off the coast of Long Island, and is a controversial laboratory which does classified research on animal diseases. Locals have protested for years about its activities. One favorite complaint is that wild animals on the island get infected and then swim across Long Island Sound to Connecticut or across an narrow inlet to the LI mainland. Deers swim the sound; rodents, squirrels and rabbits swim the inlet; and birds fly everywhere up and down the coast and inland. The laboratory's officials claim there is no threat to the public, that their research only involves foot and mouth disease. Nobody believes that for infected deer have turned up in CT and small mammals and birds on Long Island. I've not seen any mention of Plum Island in connection with the anthrax case, and mammals usually are not a source of the inhalation type, but could be transporters of the powder. Still, it would not be surprising that Plum has been doing research with a variety of animal-borne diseases for that is what it was set up to do several decades ago. Critics have questioned why the laboratory has been allowed to continue to operate within the New York Megalopolis. But the same is said of Brookhaven National Laboratory, located not far away. Biolobical scientists who have visited the facility have reported to scientific colloquia at the American Museum of Natural History inManhattan that weird and scary stuff happens on Plum Island -- disease, germs, insects, pests within pests within peculiar parasitical containers waterborne, airborne and human-borne. Even military visitors reportedly come away shaken.