The laid-back attitude of the government's biotechnology fraternity extends to the U. S. Public Health Service. Last April NBC broke the bizarre news that during the 1980s PHS's Centers for Disease Control shipped deadly viruses via Express Mail to researchers in Iraq, South Africa, Cuba, the Soviet Union and China -- all nations suspected of biological warfare research -- ostensibly for public health reasons.("DEADLY CONTAGION," ERIC NADLER; ROBERT WINDREM, The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY); FORUM; Pg. 3D; January 20, 1991)The virus requested by, and supplied to, an Iraqi researcher in Basra was an Israeli strain of West Nile encephalitis. The virus had been the subject of a long-term vaccine research project in Israel supported by the U. S. Army because of its potential as a bio-warfare agent. The same virus was a cause of concern inside the Israeli defense forces medical corps due to outbreaks in Negev desert posts in the early 1980s. When NBC asked the CDC to provide documentation of these exports under the Freedom of Information Act, the center said it had no records, since such transfers are handled "informally." Remarkably, CDC staffers expressed no fear that the exported agents (all Biohazard level 3 and 4 materials -- the deadliest classification) would be used for germ warfare, "because we know these people," as CDC spokesperson Gayle Lloyd breezily put it. She called any biological war scenario "farfetched." The Israelis were not so sanguine, privately expressing shock at the transfer. And President Bush ordered national security adviser Brent Scowcroft to investigate. (Since NBC's report aired, "there have been no further biological shipments to Iraq," says Chuck Fallis of the CDC.)