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During the past century, more than 500 million people died of infectious diseases. Several tens of thousands of these deaths were due to the deliberate release of pathogens or toxins, mostly by the Japanese during their attacks on China during the Second World War. Two international treaties outlawed biological weapons in 1925 and 1972, but they have largely failed to stop countries from conducting offensive weapons research and large-scale production of biological weapons. And as our knowledge of the biology of disease-causing agents—viruses, bacteria and toxins—increases, it is legitimate to fear that modified pathogens could constitute devastating agents for biological warfare. To put these future threats into perspective, I discuss in this article the history of biological warfare and terrorism.