S. Popov: Look what happened with the American biological program: people were practically tossed out on the street, without... without any livelihood or help at all. They just stopped thinking of them as socially useful, although they had been working in complex branches of science for many years, risked their lives and, basically, done very, very unpleasant things in their lives. And then it turned out that all of that was of absolutely no interest to anybody. Society forgot about them, gave them the cold shoulder and said, "Well, okay now, okay, forget that you did that, and what will become of you now is of no concern to anyone."
Slava Paperno: But is the different type of work you're doing, civilian work, completely different in that sense?
Popov: Well, basically, yes. What... what I'm working on now is pretty much the complete opposite. That is, it's a matter of how... how to treat the same diseases. How to cure the... that same anthrax, what the mechanisms are for doing that. Although the scientific methods, they're, I guess, the same, the approaches we're taking, and the... the... how... really, how... that is a totally different issue.