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English: While going through this work, we had mixed feelings: on the one hand, we were tempted to criticize it as a work that abruptly approaches different areas (in the sense of abruptly moving from one subject to another), apparently unrelated to each other; on the other hand, reading this book carefully and to the end, I understood the guiding idea that made its authors resort to such a presentation. Having finished reading the book, I found it to be a coherent work, well-constructed in terms of ideas and logic, with a richly illustrated and well-documented presentation.

But this book contains some strange, atypical aspects. First of all, in the way it deals with the chosen subject. The field of bioterrorism has not so far been approached by other authors from an economic perspective. As a rule, the literature on the subject (bioterrorism) is treated either from a technical point of view (by describing the technology supposedly used in the preparation and execution of bioterrorist attacks) or from the point of view of its historical and/or political origins and the factors that encourage it. The present paper makes very little presentation and analysis of the political and historical factors (with all possible aspects of political, ethnic, religious, territorial or other conflicts) that could be at the root of the bioterrorist phenomenon. Also, as regards the technology that could underlie bioterrorism, this paper only provides an introduction without going into the subject in depth. Instead, the two authors (both of whom are economists by training) have entered a field unexpected to the reader: economics; the specific study of the medical-pharmaceutical market, with a focus on pharmaceutical market issues. Such an approach is interesting to say the least because it brings to light completely unexpected origins and enablers in relation to the phenomenon of bioterrorism: specifically, causes and enablers of an ECONOMIC nature, while also involving legislative, national security management and strategic security vision issues.

Indeed, quite surprisingly, this paper has not attempted to explain why terrorists are terrorists, or what motivates them to resort to such acts, what are the causes and the historical path that followed the action of these causes, what is their policy, and from what origins did they originate. Such theories have already been published everywhere - there is a rich bibliography - and, in any case, they refer in a general way to the phenomenon of terrorism, attempting to explain and characterise it. In contrast to all these works, this book seeks to demonstrate that terrorist organisations (whatever their existence or historical/political origins) are organisations whose activity is strongly influenced by the technological and financial factors.