EXPLAINER: Did Plague Just Escape From a Russian Lab?

A young scientist died in a Russian plague lab. Officials deny an accident. Is biowarfare a real threat, or is the bigger risk something else?

Robert Lufkin MD looks at the death of a young lab worker at Russia's Irkutsk anti-plague institute, why Moscow's denials are hard to take at face value, and what Annie Jacobsen's book Biological War: A Scenario gets right and wrong. Untreated pneumonic plague is almost always fatal. The right antibiotics cut deaths sharply. A strain that shrugs off t...