Viruses, vaccines and villains: highlights of the XIth International Congress of Virology, Sydney, 1999

Highlights of the XIth International Congress of Virology, Sydney, Australia, 1999, are discussed, ranging from DNA vaccines to bioterrorism, prion diseases to polio and to emerging diseases not yet identified. In part of the world people are working to control infectious disease with the goal of eradicating them, and other parts of the world are those who try to develop those diseases and perhaps plan to spread them.