Helping the Enemy? The U.S. Army is catching some flak for patenting two devices that could be used to launch bioweapons. Critics say the patents may violate a weapons-control treaty--and could give terrorists a blueprint for manufacturing the devices. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued the two patents (numbers 6,523,478 and 6,047,644) over the last year. One details a "nonlethal cargo dispenser" that attaches to the end of a rifle and uses a bullet's momentum to zip a chemical or biological payload to its target. The other describes a cartridge that can spread an aerosol cloud. The Sunshine Project, a nonprofit arms-control group with offices in Austin, Texas, and Hamburg, Germany, first raised questions about the patents last month, saying they appeared to violate the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which bars the development of delivery devices. And this month, Greg Aharonian, publisher of the prominent Internet Patent News Service, piled on. "Which words in the phrase 'aiding and abetting the enemy' does the Army not understand?" he asks, adding that "it is hypocritical to complain about countries developing biological and chemical weapons when we are openly educating them on how to do so." He says the military should have classified the patents. The Army says it is looking into the issue. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol300/issue5627/r-samples.shtml#300/5627/...