A panel of outside experts told the CIA that advances in technology due to genomic research could produce the worst known diseases and the “most frightening” biological weapons, a CIA report said on Friday. “The effects of some of these engineered biological agents could be worse than any disease known to man,” the panel told the CIA. The unclassified two-page CIA report dated Nov. 3, 2003, and titled “The Darker Bioweapons Future,” was posted on the Federation of American Scientists Web site at http:/www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/bw1103.pdf. It summed up a January workshop of a panel of non-government science experts who discussed with the CIA the potential threat from new biological weapons. Growth in biotechnology and a knowledge explosion due to the genomic revolution which provided an understanding of genes and how they work could be used in unpredictable ways, the panel warned. Full Story