KARACHI, Nov 4: Former foreign minister, Sahabzada Yakub Khan, has expressed concern over biological warfare as a weapon of terror, the anthrax scare the world over and the difficulties Pakistan is most likely to face due to influx of more Afghan refugees as a result of the current war.

He was delivering a key-note address on the 14th convocation of the Aga Khan University on Saturday, during which he said that the Sept 11 tragedy is indeed a watershed in the evolution of human affairs at the threshold of the 21st century.

He said that biological weapons of terror and the anthrax scare that has gripped the United States has engaged the attention of everyone.

“Even more weighty than these events and their fall-out is the invasion of consciousness by a new array of anxieties of a kind that mankind has probably never experienced,” he said.

He emphasized that psychosomatic symptoms had, for many years, been part of the study of medicine, but the current dimensions were likely to grow to unprecedented proportions. “Additionally, the coefficient of the unknown is so great and the general climate of angst so contagious — specially in Western societies — that it has resulted in generalized panic,” he said.

It is true, he said, that the USA is the main theatre or stage upon which this drama is being played out, but the scourge is spreading more widely in different forms. “Above all, the impact of this worldwide terror on the human mind and the effect of full-fledged neurosis that could accompany it, and its psycho- somatic syndromes, are subjects that will no doubt have impact on the teaching, practice and research in the health sector,” he added.

Sahabzada Yakub Khan also referred to the hazards and difficulties resulting from the effects of starvation on a massive scale in Afghanistan and in expanding refugee camps which are already hotbeds of sickness and infectious disease.

He was confident that those who belong to medicine would vigorously discuss antidotes to meet future contingencies.