Category Archives: Germ Warfare

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Germ Warfare | Germ Warfare Definition by Merriam-Webster

WASHINGTON - Although anthrax and other biological weapons seem like 21st-century threats, they have been tools of terror for ages. Ancient armies, for instance, tainted water supplies of entire cities with herbs and fungus that gave people horrible diarrhea and hallucinations. One germ-warfare assault in the 1300s apparently got out of hand, triggering an epidemic that ravaged the population of Europe. British troops in the French and Indian War launched a stealth smallpox attack on Indians. During World War I, German agents ran an anthrax factory in Washington, D.C. World War II anthrax bombs left a whole island uninhabitable for almost 50 years. "The earliest reference to anthrax is found in the Fifth Plague," said Dr. Philip Brachman, an anthrax expert at Emory University in Atlanta. It took 10 calamities inflicted on the Egyptians to finally convince an obstinate pharaoh to liberate the ancient Hebrews, according to the Bible. The plagues probably date to about 1300 B.C. They ranged from Nile River water turned blood-red and undrinkable to the one-night destruction of all the first-born of Egypt. The Fifth Plague (Exodus 9:3) was an infectious disease that killed all the cattle in Egypt, while sparing the Hebrews' cattle. Brachman and other experts think the biblical account actually refers to a natural epidemic of anthrax. Such epidemics periodically decimated domestic animals in the ancient Middle East. The anthrax might have spared the Israelites because their sheep would have been grazing on poorer pastures where infections don't take hold as well. Domestic animals (and wild animals such as deer and bison) get anthrax by eating spores of the bacteria while grazing on contaminated land, or from eating contaminated feed. Animal anthrax still is an important problem in developing countries, especially in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Humans can catch the disease from contact with infected animals, their meat, hide or hair. Medical historians see anthrax's fingerprints in manuscripts from the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Hindus in India, which contain descriptions of animal and human anthrax. They think history's most serious anthrax outbreak was "Black Bane," a terrible epidemic that swept Europe in the 1600s. It killed at least 60,000 people and many more domestic and wild animals. People called it "Black Bane" because many cases involved the cutaneous, or skin, form of anthrax, which involves a blackish sore. Anthrax actually was named from a Greek word that refers to coal and charcoal. Cutaneous anthrax can be quickly cured today with Cipro, penicillin, doxycycline or other antibiotics. Like other infections in the pre-antibiotic era, however, it often killed. Brachman said that epidemics of anthrax were common in Europe during the 1700s and 1800s, with up to 100,000 cases of human anthrax annually. Medicine's first major advance against anthrax occurred in Germany as the United States celebrated its 100th birthday. A physician named Robert Koch discovered how to grow bacteria on gelatin-like material in glass laboratory dishes, and rules to prove that specific bacteria caused specific diseases. In 1876, Koch identified the anthrax bacteria. It led to development of a vaccine that was first used to immunize livestock in 1880, and later humans. Other biological agents have roots as almost as ancient as anthrax. Some of the first recorded biological terror attacks occurred in the 6th century B.C. The ancient Assyrians (whose civilization began around 2400 B.C. in modern Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq) poisoned enemy wells with ergot, a fungus that can grow on wheat, rye and other grains. It produces LSD-like chemicals that cause hallucinations and other symptoms. In another 6th-century biological assault, the ancient Greeks, besieging a city called Krissa, poisoned its water supply with the herb hellebore. It causes violent diarrhea. During their sieges, ancient Roman soldiers threw decaying human corpses and carcasses of dead animals into their enemies' water supplies, and catapulted them over the walls of enemy towns. A Tartar army in 1346 launched a biological assault that may have gotten out of control - big time. While besieging a city in modern-day Crimea, soldiers hurled corpses of bubonic plague victims over city walls. Fleas from the corpses infested people and rats in the city. Plague spread as people and rats escaped and fled. Some experts believe it triggered the great epidemic of bubonic plague -the "Black Death" -that swept Europe, killing 25 million people. In 1797, Napoleon tried to infect residents of a besieged city in Italy with malaria. During the French and Indian War, the British suspected American Indians of siding with the French. In an "act of good will," the British gave the Indians nice, warm blankets -straight from the beds of smallpox victims. The resulting epidemic killed hundreds of Indians. Dr. Anton Dilger, an agent of the Imperial German Government during World War I, grew anthrax and other bacteria in a corner of his Washington home. His henchmen on the docks in Baltimore used the anthrax to infect 3,000 horses and mules destined for the Allied forces in Europe. Many of the animals died, and hundreds of soldiers on the Western Front in Europe were infected. In 1937, Japan began a biological warfare program that included anthrax, and later tested anthrax weapons in China. During
World War II, Japan spread fleas infected with bubonic plague in a dozen Chinese cities. The United States, Great Britain and other countries developed anthrax weapons during World War II. The British military in 1942 began testing "anthrax bombs" on Gruinard Island, a 500-acre dot of land off the northwestern coast of Scotland. After the war, the project was abandoned. However, the Gruinard experiments established the terrible environmental consequences of using anthrax as a weapon of mass destruction. British scientists thought the anthrax spores would quickly die or blow away into the ocean. But the spores lived on. Huge numbers remained infectious year after year. Finally, in 1986, after critics labeled Gruinard "Anthrax Island," the British government decided to clean up the mess. Workers built an irrigation system over the entire test range. It saturated the ground with 280 tons of formaldehyde -"embalming fluid" -diluted in 2,000 tons of seawater. The fluid flowed 24 hours a day for more than a year. Gruinard finally was declared decontaminated in 1990. It remains uninhabited today. Modern biological warfare programs have resulted in environmental contamination as well. An accident in 1979 at a Soviet biological warfare plant in Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg), released anthrax that killed at least 68 people who lived downwind. A 1972 treaty, ratified by 143 countries, banned production, deployment, possession and use of biological weapons. Analysts think that a dozen countries still may have clandestine biological weapons programs, including Iraq. Iraq is believed to have hidden stockpiles of weapons-grade anthrax and other biological agents, plus artillery shells and other weapons to deliver the germs. < B>Link MainPage http://www.rense.com This Site Served by TheHostPros

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The History Of Germ Warfare - Very Long, Very Deadly

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Germ Warfare | Definition of Germ Warfare by Merriam-Webster

by Donald S. McAlvaney, Editor, McAlvaney Intelligence Advisor (MIA), August 1996

Unfortunately, the U.S. government and military have experimented on U.S. soldiers and civilians without their informed consent or knowledge on a number of occasions since 1945 and when caught or exposed, have gone into elaborate cover-up operations.

1. AGENT ORANGE is perhaps the best known example of the U.S. military injuring or infecting its troops and then going into an elaborate cover-up operation which spanned over 20 years.

[ED. NOTE: Agent Orange was probably not an intentional experiment as much as a major mistake made by our military in VietNam].

Agent Orange was an herbicide widely used as a defoliant in the VietNam War that contains dioxin as a contaminant. Agent Orange accounted for over 60% of total herbicides disseminated over VietNam (11.7 million gallons of a total 19.4 million gallons). Upon returning from VietNam, thousands of Vets complained of neurological and mental problems, birth defects in children, and a host of mysterious medical problems. They also developed rare cancers.

For almost two decades, the U.S. government and the U.S. Army denied that there was any problem, telling the Vets they were suffering from stress and other psychological problems and that Agent Orange was not involved.

A class action lawsuit was filed by sick VietNam Vets in 1979 against the manufacturers of Agent Orange and was settled in 1984 for $180 million (no payments were received by the Vets until 1989 many were dead by that time). It wasnt until January 1991 over 15 years after the VietNam War that Congress finally authorized permanent disability benefits for Veterans who had been exposed to Agent Orange and now suffer from one or two rare cancers.

2. THE CIA DID MUCH ALTERING EXPERIMENTS ON U.S. AND CANADIAN CITIZENS IN THE 1950s

The Orange County Register (11/19/92) wrote in an article entitled: Canada To Pay Victims of U.S.-Funded Brainwashing: The Canadian government has announced compensation for victims of brainwashing experiments that were conducted in the 1950s and 1960s with financing by the CIA.

The de-patterning experiments were carried out on about 80 people and who were drugged and subjected to electrical shocks and other experiments to clear their brains.

The experiments conducted at Montreals Allan Memorial Institute by psychiatrist Ewen Cameron from 1950 to 1965 were jointly financed by the Canadian government and the CIA.

The CIA wanted to learn about psychological de-programming and covertly gave Cameron money between 1957 and 1962. The rest was financed by Canadas health-care grants program.

The U.S. Justice Dept. reached an out-of-court settlement in 1988 that gave similar compensation to nine Canadians who sued the United States for their treatment under Camerons CIA-financed experiments.

The New York Times (11/19/92) wrote in an article entitled: Canada to Pay the Victims of Mind-Altering Treatment: Canada has agreed to compensate victims of psychiatric experiments carried out mainly in the 1950s and financed in part by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The experiments began after some prisoners returned from the Korean War brainwashed, and Western intelligence agencies began studies and experiments on the nature and possibility of mind control. An institute at McGill University in Montreal, headed by Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, a psychiatrist who died in 1977, was one of the centers where such experiments were carried out.

Now, the Canadian government says the 80 or so patients who underwent the so-called psychic driving treatment in Montreal, intended to wipe the brain clear of all trauma, can receive almost $80,000 each.

The patients at the Allan Memorial Institute at McGill were put into a drugged sleep for weeks or months, subjected to electroshock therapy until they were de-patterned, knowing neither who or where they were, and forced to listen repeatedly to recorded messages broadcast from speakers on the wall or under their pillows.

In October 1988, the Justice Dept. announced an out-of-court settlement with Velma Orlikow and eight other victims, a total of $750,000. John Hedley, a CIA spokesman, commented: Its a sad episode that happened more than 30 years ago, and the case is closed.

John Marks, a former State Dept. official whose 1979 book, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, called attention to the experiments, said that a CIA front called the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, funneled more than $60,000 to Dr. Cameron for the studies. Ottawa gave him more than $200,000.

The 11/7/88 New York Times carried an article entitled, The CIA and the Evil Doctor, which wrote: The Justice Department agreed last month to pay $750,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by nine victims of the Central Intelligence Agencys brainwashing experiments in the 1950s. The research was conducted by the late Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, one of the most famous psychiatrists of his time.

What caught the Central Intelligence Agencys eye was his comparison of psychic driving to techniques of coerced interrogation and brainwashing. Using one its front organizations, the agency solicited a grant application from Dr. Cameron and funded his work. With the CIA funds, Dr. Cameron continued his experiments. Using patients who came to him for psychiatric treatment, but without disclosing that he was experimenting, he tried to break through patients resistance to the taped messages.

To this end, he induced severe regression in the patients, using combinations of extremely intensive electric shock, barbiturate-induced sleep for up to 60 days at a stretch, sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic drugs. These techniques left patients dazed, confused, incontinent and often in a state of utter panic. The CIA funding was secret.

The article concluded: Let us be wary, then, not just of CIA abuses but of ambitious yet misguided experiments performed in the name of treatment.

The CIA and U.S. Army have experimented on a number of innocent victims using LSD. On 8/9/79, the Washington Star, in an article entitled: U.S. Agrees To Pay $1.7 Million To Veterans Given LSD, wrote: The government has agreed to pay one of the largest private claims in history $1.7 million to an Army veteran who was given LSD without his knowledge or consent18 years ago.

[ED. NOTE: in 1961]. After concealing the facts of the case, failing to give the serviceman follow-up medical care and then fighting his claim in court, federal officials said this week that they would support special legislation to aid James R. Thornwell. The 41-year- old black veteran, now living in Oakland, CA, has suffered from psychiatric disorders and physical pain ever since he was given the psychedelic drug during Army experiments in Europe.

Court records show that Thornwell was the only American among 10 persons who received LSD in a covert Army drug-testing program known by the code name Operation Third Choice. The purpose of the experiments was to test the value of the hallucinogen as a truth serum in questioning Army intelligence sources.

The relief bill for Thornwell would provide $1.7 million, more than twice as much as the $750,000 award made in 1976 to the family of Frank R. Olson. Olson, a civilian biochemist who worked for the Army at Fort Detrick, MD, jumped to his death in 1953 after CIA agents laced his drink with LSD.

Thornwell won a college scholarship awarded to the most outstanding black student in his high school class and went to South Carolina State College for one year. He was stationed in France, at the Army message center in Orleans, when he was given LSD.

A 1961 Army report says that Thornwell was interrogated with abusive and profane language, threatened with physical harm including death, referred to as a homosexual, not allowed to sleep blindfolded, handcuffed and, at pistol point, taken to a place where he was subjected to very painful treatment.

Operation Third Choice was one phase of a larger program of LSD experimentation begun by the Army in the 1950s. In another phase, the drug was given to volunteer at the Armys chemical warfare laboratories in the Edgewood, MD Arsenal.

The suicide or murder of Frank R. Olson, one of the nations top germ warfare scientists in 1953, is closely tied with the CIAs LSD/mind control projects under a super secret CIA mind control project called MK-UL-TRA (the purpose of which was to investigate how to modify an individuals behavior by covert means).

The Washington Post (11/29/94), in an article entitled, New Study Yields Little on Death of Biochemist Drugged by the CIA wrote: Scientists investigating the 1953 death of Frank R. Olson, an Army biochemist who plunged 13 stories after the CIA drugged him with LSD, announced yesterday that they doubted his death was a suicide but had uncovered no conclusive evidence to prove a murder.

Members of Olsons family, who live in Frederick, MD, did not learn until 1975 that he had been drugged. They later received a $750,000 settlement from the government.

Olson plunged from a room at the Hotel Statler on Nov. 28, 1953, nine days after the CIA gave him LSD without his knowledge. The experiment was part of a CIA program known as MK-ULTRA to study the effects of LSA and other drugs for intelligence and military purposes.

After learning he was given the mind-bending drug, Olson sank into a paranoid depression. He told his Army superiors he wanted to quit his job as one of the nations top germ-warfare scientists, and his family now says they believe he was slain because he had become a security risk.

The Los Angeles Times (9/29/76) wrote in an article entitled: LSD Death Compensation: The Senate passed and sent to the White House Tuesday a bill to pay $750,000 to the family of Army scientist Frank Olson, of Frederic, MD, who leaped to his death in 1953, after being given LSA as part of a CIA drug experiment. As the Washington Post (7/12/94) wrote: President Ford invited Olsons family to the White House in 1975, to personally apologize for the CIAs use of Frank Olson in an experiment without his permission. Also the government paid the family $750,000 to settle their claim that the CIA was responsible for what was then believed to be a suicide.

And regarding still another case, the Los Angeles Times (7/12/91), in an article entitled, Pentagon OKs Paying Ex-GI Given LSD, wrote: More than 30 years after an Army sergeant unwittingly submitted to experiments with LSD, the Defense Dept. has dropped its opposition to compensating him for health problems, lost income and behavioral changes. James Stanley of West Palm Beach, FL, 57, learned in 1975 that he had been given LSD to drink during interviews he underwent in the Army in 1958. He sued in 1977 for damages, but the Supreme Court rejected his suit.

[ED. NOTE: So whats the point of these articles on the CIA-US Army illegal LSD/mind control experiments on unsuspecting military personnel and civilians? It is that if they secretly and illegally experimented on soldiers and civilians in the past, with total disregard for their lives, they might do it again as in the Desert Storm War. The complete text of these articles can be retrieved at any large public library.

Two excellent books (for those wishing to do more study in this subject area) which analyze in depth and document these experiments are:

1) Journey into Madness: the True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse, by Gordon Thomas. Bantam, NY, 1989; and

2) The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: the CIA and Mind Control (The Story of the Agencys Secret Efforts to Control Human Behavior), by John Marks (co-author of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence.

3. THE U.S. MILITARY DID NUCLEAR RADIATION EXPERIMENTS ON U.S. TROOPS IN THE 1950S

A 5/27/91 Los Angeles Times article entitled: Leukemia Victim Searches for Other Atomic Veterans, wrote: Richard Jenkins recalls staring with wide-eyed wonder as one gigantic mushroom cloud after another fanned into the blue skies above the West Pacifics Marshall Islands 33 years ago. At the time, Jenkins, now a custom boat builder, did not realize that the explosions would cast a pall over his life.

As a Navy radio operator aboard the destroyer Mansfield during the militarys nuclear testing, called Operation Hardtack, Jenkins was within a 30-mile range when 30 nuclear bombs were detonated in 1958. At 52, he now suffers from mild leukemia, live and kidney disorders and has undergone surgery for cataracts. He has also battled digestive tract problems and chronic fatigue off and on for the last 20 years.

It was not until 1988 when the Dept. of Veterans Affairs acknowledged that radiation from those explosions could cause leukemia and 12 other cancers that he found what he believes is the root of his medical trouble. Jenkins was one of about 200,000 military personnel who participated in 235 atomic blasts detonated after World War II in the West Pacific and Nevada. The government said that only about 1,700 of them were exposed to larger doses of radiation than now allowed under federal occupational guidelines for radiation workers.

[ED. NOTE: And the government would never lie to protect itself, would it?]

A federally-funded study released in 1985 showed that military witnesses of a single 1957 atom bomb explosion suffered abnormally high death rates from leukemia. The report also concluded that scientists cannot convincingly either affirm or deny that leukemia deaths are radiation-related. Nevertheless, legislation in 1988 established a link between veterans radiation exposure and health problems, naming leukemia and 12 other cancers for which the veterans can receive treatment and benefits.

Jenkins, Oscar Rosen (National Commander of the Association of Atomic Veterans), and others in the 4,000-member association say they were used as human test animals in experiments designed to measure their reactions to radiation exposure. We feel we were used as guinea pigs, Rosen said. The military calls them tests, but we call them experiments.

The military admits that it was testing the personnels psychological responses to the mushroom clouds they watched take shape, said Navy Capt. William J. Flor, who heads the governments effort at the Defense Nuclear Agency to contact atomic veterans. Although the military monitored individuals exposure to radiation during the nuclear blasts, the government does not acknowledge that it tested their physical endurance.

Operation Hardtack was a series of 35 nuclear tests in 1958, all but two of which were detonated in Eniwetok and the Bikini Islands in the Marshall Islands, government documents say. Jenkins was among about 300 on board his ship who were issued protective sunglasses and badges with film to register exposure to radiation.

The sailors stood on deck and watched atomic bombs explode from 15 miles away, Jenkins said. So they moved the ship closer and told us to go to the other side of the ship. When they returned to the side closest to the blast, paint had peeled back from the heat, he said.

The personnel had to wear the film badges on cords around their necks. When the film turned from black to a reddish color, Jenkins said, the sailors were taken off duty, washed down and detoxified. Then, he say, they were issued new badges and sent back to work. Their exposure was measured while they were on active duty, but no records were kept after their discharges.

Because Jenkins and other atomic veterans had injuries that did not show up for decades after their discharge, they would not otherwise have been eligible for VA benefits unless they were indigent, officials said.

This year, Jenkins was denied disability compensation by the Dept. of Veterans Affairs. His letter of denial said he was ineligible because he had not developed symptoms of any of the 13 cancers while on active duty. When you see the bumper stickers that says, One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day, Im living proof. It has ruined 20 years of my life.

[ED. NOTE: This writer has talked with, and had letters from families of men who were part of those nuclear radiation experiments. One woman told of her father and a number of his fellow troops being placed miles from the Nevada nuclear tests (i.e. from ground zero) with minimum protection. Her father later died of cancer, along with a number of his friends who underwent the experiments].

4. THE U.S. EXPERIMENTED ON ESKIMOS IN THE 1960S.

The Orange County Register (5/4/93) in an article entitled: Eskimos Used in 1950s Drug Tests, wrote: The U.S. government subjected more than 100 Alaskan villagers to radioactive drugs in the 1950s as part of a medical experiment to find out whether soldiers could better survive in arctic conditions, Cable News Network said Monday.

The CNN Special report said doctors hired by the U.S. military gave pills containing small doses of iodine to 102 Eskimos and Indians to measure its effect on their thyroid glands, but did not explain to them what they were doing.

No one know whether people suffered medical ailments from the testing because the military did not follow up with another visit.

Some of the people from six native villages in Alaska who were part of the tests told CNN they thought the military had been studying Alaskan diets.

Senator Frank Murkowski said he wants the government to investigate. The implication of people being used as human guinea pigs is something we simply have got to find the answer to, the Alaskan Republican told CNN.

The Los Angeles Times (5/4/93) carried a similar article entitled, Eskimos Got Radioactive Drugs in Medical Testing, Report Says, which wrote that: The U.S. military doctors did not explain to the Alaskans what they were doing.

5. THE U.S. GOVERNMENT SECRETLY RADIATED HEALTHY PEOPLE IN THE 1940S

On 1/19/95 The New York Times carried an incredible article entitled, Healthy People Secretly Poisoned in 40s Tests, which confirms that radiation experiments were run on unknowing U.S. citizens.

Some patients injected with small amounts of radioactive substances in experiments at the University of Rochester at the dawn of the atomic age were not terminally ill, according to documents unearthed by a Presidential panel. The findings contradicted statements by the experimenters that the patients had not been expected to live very long, said the panel, the Presidents Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, which made the documents public today. The panel also said patients were not informed of the experiments.

In connection with the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, at least 31 patients were injected with radioactive plutonium, uranium, polonium, americium or zirconium, the advisory committee determined.

Robert Loeb, public information director at Strong Memorial Hospital at the University of Rochester Medical Center, said that the experiments had indeed been conducted there but all patients and researchers involved were now dead.

The investigating committee, a panel of ethicists, historians and scientists, was appointed by President Clinton to search all Government agencies for information about experiments on humans using radiation. The action came after Congressional hearings and a disclosure in 1993 by The Albuquerque Tribune of experiments in which plutonium was injected into 18 people.

After months of searching, the committee has collected about 200 cubic feet of documents that have led to a revision of the medical and ethical history of the early atomic era.

Stephen Klaidman, a committee spokesman, said, we have no idea that the subjects of these experiments were not terminally ill, not suffering from cancer, and may not even have been chronically ill. He added that they were doing experiments of unknown risk on people who potentially had a full, long life ahead of them.

At the University of Rochester, 11 patients were injected with plutonium; six or more were injected with uranium; and five were given polonium. At least nine other patients at other universities and hospitals around the country received similar single injections of radioactive substances.

Scientists did not choose terminally ill patients for the experiments at Rochester, as some of them said later, but selected relatively healthy hospital patients, including an 18-year-old-boy, to be injected with plutonium, uranium, and other radioactive substances, the documents show. The experiments were intended to show what type or amount of exposure would cause damage to normal people in a nuclear war.

The patients in the experiments carried out from 1945 to 1947 were never told they were being experimented on, according to reports, Dr. Patricia Durbin wrote for the Atomic Energy Commission in 1971.

[ED. NOTE: Would the U.S. government test dangerous radioactive materials on unsuspecting, unknowing U.S. civilians and military personnel? History confirms that they would and did! Would the U.S. government test biologicals on unsuspecting, unknowing U.S. civilians and military personnel? What do you think?]

Joyce Riley has said, I have verified that mycoplasma was used as a research item on private citizens by the University of Maryland in 1970. I have the actual ad from the newspaper back in 1970 that says it was a vaccine safety test. It says, If you would like to come to our pleasant surroundings and make $20 per day at the University of Maryland, etc. I have talked with participants in that test who are today very ill with GWI symptoms.

Scientists have been using mycoplasmas experimentally as a transmission agent because they are transferred very easily from man to man, woman to woman, throughout the population and it doesnt cause much of an immediate problem if you have a strong immune system. It is also being tested on prison populations (see the book: Drug Experimentation on Prisoner: Ethical, Economic, or Exploitative, by Peter B. Meyer, Lexington Books, 1975).

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Germ Warfare Against America: Part IIIb - U.S. Government ...

Biological warfare (BW)also known as germ warfareis the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi with the intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. Biological weapons (often termed "bio-weapons", "biological threat agents", or "bio-agents") are living organisms or replicating entities (viruses, which are not universally considered "alive") that reproduce or replicate within their host victims. Entomological (insect) warfare is also considered a type of biological weapon. This type of warfare is distinct from nuclear warfare and chemical warfare, which together with biological warfare make up NBC, the military acronym for nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare using weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). None of these are conventional weapons, which are primarily due to their explosive, kinetic, or incendiary potential.

Biological weapons may be employed in various ways to gain a strategic or tactical advantage over the enemy, either by threats or by actual deployments. Like some of the chemical weapons, biological weapons may also be useful as area denial weapons. These agents may be lethal or non-lethal, and may be targeted against a single individual, a group of people, or even an entire population. They may be developed, acquired, stockpiled or deployed by nation states or by non-national groups. In the latter case, or if a nation-state uses it clandestinely, it may also be considered bioterrorism.[1]

There is an overlap between biological warfare and chemical warfare, as the use of toxins produced by living organisms is considered under the provisions of both the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Toxins and psychochemical weapons are often referred to as midspectrum agents. Unlike bioweapons, these midspectrum agents do not reproduce in their host and are typically characterized by shorter incubation periods.[2]

Offensive biological warfare, including mass production, stockpiling and use of biological weapons, was outlawed by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The rationale behind this treaty, which has been ratified or acceded to by 170 countries as of April 2013,[3] is to prevent a biological attack which could conceivably result in large numbers of civilian casualties and cause severe disruption to economic and societal infrastructure.[citation needed] Many countries, including signatories of the BWC, currently pursue research into the defense or protection against BW, which is not prohibited by the BWC.

A nation or group that can pose a credible threat of mass casualty has the ability to alter the terms on which other nations or groups interact with it. Biological weapons allow for the potential to create a level of destruction and loss of life far in excess of nuclear, chemical or conventional weapons, relative to their mass and cost of development and storage. Therefore, biological agents may be useful as strategic deterrents in addition to their utility as offensive weapons on the battlefield.[4][5]

As a tactical weapon for military use, a significant problem with a BW attack is that it would take days to be effective, and therefore might not immediately stop an opposing force. Some biological agents (smallpox, pneumonic plague) have the capability of person-to-person transmission via aerosolized respiratory droplets. This feature can be undesirable, as the agent(s) may be transmitted by this mechanism to unintended populations, including neutral or even friendly forces. While containment of BW is less of a concern for certain criminal or terrorist organizations, it remains a significant concern for the military and civilian populations of virtually all nations.

Rudimentary forms of biological warfare have been practiced since antiquity.[6] During the 6th century BC, the Assyrians poisoned enemy wells with a fungus that would render the enemy delirious. In 1346, the bodies of Mongol warriors of the Golden Horde who had died of plague were thrown over the walls of the besieged Crimean city of Kaffa. Specialists disagree over whether this operation may have been responsible for the spread of the Black Death into Europe.[7][8][9][10]

It has been claimed that the British Marines used smallpox in New South Wales in 1789.[11] Historians have long debated inconclusively whether the British Army used smallpox in an episode against Native Americans in 1763.[12]

By 1900 the germ theory and advances in bacteriology brought a new level of sophistication to the techniques for possible use of bio-agents in war. Biological sabotagein the form of anthrax and glanderswas undertaken on behalf of the Imperial German government during World War I (19141918), with indifferent results.[13] The Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibited the use of chemical weapons and biological weapons.

With the onset of World War II, the Ministry of Supply in the United Kingdom established a BW program at Porton Down, headed by the microbiologist Paul Fildes. The research was championed by Winston Churchill and soon tularemia, anthrax, brucellosis, and botulism toxins had been effectively weaponized. In particular, Gruinard Island in Scotland, during a series of extensive tests was contaminated with anthrax for the next 56 years. Although the UK never offensively used the biological weapons it developed on its own, its program was the first to successfully weaponize a variety of deadly pathogens and bring them into industrial production.[14]

When the USA entered the war, mounting British pressure for the creation of a similar research program for an Allied pooling of resources, led to the creation of a large industrial complex at Fort Detrick, Maryland in 1942 under the direction of George W. Merck.[15] The biological and chemical weapons developed during that period were tested at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Soon there were facilities for the mass production of anthrax spores, brucellosis, and botulism toxins, although the war was over before these weapons could be of much operational use.[16]

The most notorious program of the period was run by the secret Imperial Japanese Army Unit 731 during the war, based at Pingfan in Manchuria and commanded by Lieutenant General Shir Ishii. This unit did research on BW, conducted often fatal human experiments on prisoners, and produced biological weapons for combat use.[17] Although the Japanese effort lacked the technological sophistication of the American or British programs, it far outstripped them in its widespread application and indiscriminate brutality. Biological weapons were used against both Chinese soldiers and civilians in several military campaigns.[18] In 1940, the Japanese Army Air Force bombed Ningbo with ceramic bombs full of fleas carrying the bubonic plague.[19] Many of these operations were ineffective due to inefficient delivery systems,[17] although up to 400,000 people may have died.[20] During the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign in 1942, around 1,700 Japanese troops died out of a total 10,000 Japanese soldiers who fell ill with disease when their own biological weapons attack rebounded on their own forces.[21][22]

During the final months of World War II, Japan planned to use plague as a biological weapon against U.S. civilians in San Diego, California, during Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. The plan was set to launch on 22 September 1945, but it was not executed because of Japan's surrender on 15 August 1945.[23][24][25][26]

In Britain, the 1950s saw the weaponization of plague, brucellosis, tularemia and later equine encephalomyelitis and vaccinia viruses, but the programme was unilaterally cancelled in 1956. The United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories weaponized anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, Q-fever and others.

In 1969, the UK and the Warsaw Pact, separately, introduced proposals to the UN to ban biological weapons, and US President Richard Nixon terminated production of biological weapons, allowing only scientific research for defensive measures. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention was signed by the US, UK, USSR and other nations, as a ban on "development, production and stockpiling of microbes or their poisonous products except in amounts necessary for protective and peaceful research" in 1972. However, the Soviet Union continued research and production of massive offensive biological weapons in a program called Biopreparat, despite having signed the convention.[27] By 2011, 165 countries had signed the treaty and none are proventhough nine are still suspected[28]to possess offensive BW programs.[28]

It has been argued that rational state actors would never use biological weapons offensively. The argument is that biological weapons cannot be controlled: the weapon could backfire and harm the army on the offensive, perhaps having even worse effects than on the target. An agent like smallpox or other airborne viruses would almost certainly spread worldwide and ultimately infect the user's home country. However, this argument does not necessarily apply to bacteria. For example, anthrax can easily be controlled and even created in a garden shed; the FBI suspects it can be done for as little as $2,500 using readily available laboratory equipment.[29] Also, using microbial methods, bacteria can be suitably modified to be effective in only a narrow environmental range, the range of the target that distinctly differs from the army on the offensive. Thus only the target might be affected adversely. The weapon may be further used to bog down an advancing army making them more vulnerable to counterattack by the defending force.

Ideal characteristics of a biological agent to be used as a weapon against humans are high infectivity, high virulence, non-availability of vaccines, and availability of an effective and efficient delivery system. Stability of the weaponized agent (ability of the agent to retain its infectivity and virulence after a prolonged period of storage) may also be desirable, particularly for military applications, and the ease of creating one is often considered. Control of the spread of the agent may be another desired characteristic.

The primary difficulty is not the production of the biological agent, as many biological agents used in weapons can often be manufactured relatively quickly, cheaply and easily. Rather, it is the weaponization, storage and delivery in an effective vehicle to a vulnerable target that pose significant problems.

For example, Bacillus anthracis is considered an effective agent for several reasons. First, it forms hardy spores, perfect for dispersal aerosols. Second, this organism is not considered transmissible from person to person, and thus rarely if ever causes secondary infections. A pulmonary anthrax infection starts with ordinary influenza-like symptoms and progresses to a lethal hemorrhagic mediastinitis within 37 days, with a fatality rate that is 90% or higher in untreated patients.[30] Finally, friendly personnel can be protected with suitable antibiotics.

A large-scale attack using anthrax would require the creation of aerosol particles of 1.5 to 5m: larger particles would not reach the lower respiratory tract, while smaller particles would be exhaled back out into the atmosphere. At this size, conductive powders tend to aggregate because of electrostatic charges, hindering dispersion. So the material must be treated to insulate and neutralize the charges. The weaponized agent must be resistant to degradation by rain and ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, while retaining the ability to efficiently infect the human lung. There are other technological difficulties as well, chiefly relating to storage of the weaponized agent.

Agents considered for weaponization, or known to be weaponized, include bacteria such as Bacillus anthracis, Brucella spp., Burkholderia mallei, Burkholderia pseudomallei, Chlamydophila psittaci, Coxiella burnetii, Francisella tularensis, some of the Rickettsiaceae (especially Rickettsia prowazekii and Rickettsia rickettsii), Shigella spp., Vibrio cholerae, and Yersinia pestis. Many viral agents have been studied and/or weaponized, including some of the Bunyaviridae (especially Rift Valley fever virus), Ebolavirus, many of the Flaviviridae (especially Japanese encephalitis virus), Machupo virus, Marburg virus, Variola virus, and Yellow fever virus. Fungal agents that have been studied include Coccidioides spp..[31][32]

Toxins that can be used as weapons include ricin, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, botulinum toxin, saxitoxin, and many mycotoxins. These toxins and the organisms that produce them are sometimes referred to as select agents. In the United States, their possession, use, and transfer are regulated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Select Agent Program.

The former US biological warfare program categorized its weaponized anti-personnel bio-agents as either Lethal Agents (Bacillus anthracis, Francisella tularensis, Botulinum toxin) or Incapacitating Agents (Brucella suis, Coxiella burnetii, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Staphylococcal enterotoxin B).

The United States developed an anti-crop capability during the Cold War that used plant diseases (bioherbicides, or mycoherbicides) for destroying enemy agriculture. Biological weapons also target fisheries as well as water-based vegetation. It was believed that destruction of enemy agriculture on a strategic scale could thwart Sino-Soviet aggression in a general war. Diseases such as wheat blast and rice blast were weaponized in aerial spray tanks and cluster bombs for delivery to enemy watersheds in agricultural regions to initiate epiphytotics (epidemics among plants). When the United States renounced its offensive biological warfare program in 1969 and 1970, the vast majority of its biological arsenal was composed of these plant diseases.[citation needed] Enterotoxins and Mycotoxins were not affected by Nixon's order.

Though herbicides are chemicals, they are often grouped with biological warfare and chemical warfare because they may work in a similar manner as biotoxins or bioregulators. The Army Biological Laboratory tested each agent and the Army's Technical Escort Unit was responsible for transport of all chemical, biological, radiological (nuclear) materials. Scorched earth tactics or destroying livestock and farmland were carried out in the Vietnam war (cf. Agent Orange)[33] and Eelam War in Sri Lanka.[citation needed]

Biological warfare can also specifically target plants to destroy crops or defoliate vegetation. The United States and Britain discovered plant growth regulators (i.e., herbicides) during the Second World War, and initiated a herbicidal warfare program that was eventually used in Malaya and Vietnam in counterinsurgency operations.

In 1980s Soviet Ministry of Agriculture had successfully developed variants of foot-and-mouth disease, and rinderpest against cows, African swine fever for pigs, and psittacosis to kill chicken. These agents were prepared to spray them down from tanks attached to airplanes over hundreds of miles. The secret program was code-named "Ecology".[31]

Attacking animals is another area of biological warfare intended to eliminate animal resources for transportation and food. In the First World War, German agents were arrested attempting to inoculate draft animals with anthrax, and they were believed to be responsible for outbreaks of glanders in horses and mules. The British tainted small feed cakes with anthrax in the Second World War as a potential means of attacking German cattle for food denial, but never employed the weapon. In the 1950s, the United States had a field trial with hog cholera.[citation needed] During the Mau Mau Uprising in 1952, the poisonous latex of the African milk bush was used to kill cattle.[34]

Outside the context of war, humans have deliberately introduced the rabbit disease Myxomatosis, originating in South America, to Australia and Europe, with the intention of reducing the rabbit population which had devastating but temporary results, with wild rabbit populations reduced to a fraction of their former size but survivors developing immunity and increasing again.

Entomological warfare (EW) is a type of biological warfare that uses insects to attack the enemy. The concept has existed for centuries and research and development have continued into the modern era. EW has been used in battle by Japan and several other nations have developed and been accused of using an entomological warfare program. EW may employ insects in a direct attack or as vectors to deliver a biological agent, such as plague. Essentially, EW exists in three varieties. One type of EW involves infecting insects with a pathogen and then dispersing the insects over target areas.[35] The insects then act as a vector, infecting any person or animal they might bite. Another type of EW is a direct insect attack against crops; the insect may not be infected with any pathogen but instead represents a threat to agriculture. The final method uses uninfected insects, such as bees, wasps, etc., to directly attack the enemy.[36]

In 2010 at The Meeting of the States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and Their Destruction in Geneva[37] the sanitary epidemiological reconnaissance was suggested as well-tested means for enhancing the monitoring of infections and parasitic agents, for practical implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005). The aim was to prevent and minimize the consequences of natural outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases as well as the threat of alleged use of biological weapons against BTWC States Parties.

It is important to note that most classical and modern biological weapons' pathogens can be obtained from a plant or an animal which is naturally infected.[38]

Indeed, in the largest biological weapons accident known the anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in the Soviet Union in 1979, sheep became ill with anthrax as far as 200 kilometers from the release point of the organism from a military facility in the southeastern portion of the city and still off limits to visitors today, see Sverdlovsk Anthrax leak).[39]

Thus, a robust surveillance system involving human clinicians and veterinarians may identify a bioweapons attack early in the course of an epidemic, permitting the prophylaxis of disease in the vast majority of people (and/or animals) exposed but not yet ill.

For example, in the case of anthrax, it is likely that by 2436 hours after an attack, some small percentage of individuals (those with compromised immune system or who had received a large dose of the organism due to proximity to the release point) will become ill with classical symptoms and signs (including a virtually unique chest X-ray finding, often recognized by public health officials if they receive timely reports).[40] The incubation period for humans is estimated to be about 11.8 days to 12.1 days. This suggested period is the first model that is independently consistent with data from the largest known human outbreak. These projections refines previous estimates of the distribution of early onset cases after a release and supports a recommended 60-day course of prophylactic antibiotic treatment for individuals exposed to low doses of anthrax.[41] By making these data available to local public health officials in real time, most models of anthrax epidemics indicate that more than 80% of an exposed population can receive antibiotic treatment before becoming symptomatic, and thus avoid the moderately high mortality of the disease.[40]

From most specific to least specific:[42]

1. Single cause of a certain disease caused by an uncommon agent, with lack of an epidemiological explanation.

2. Unusual, rare, genetically engineered strain of an agent.

3. High morbidity and mortality rates in regards to patients with the same or similar symptoms.

4. Unusual presentation of the disease.

5. Unusual geographic or seasonal distribution.

6. Stable endemic disease, but with an unexplained increase in relevance.

7. Rare transmission (aerosols, food, water).

8. No illness presented in people who were/are not exposed to "common ventilation systems (have separate closed ventilation systems) when illness is seen in persons in close proximity who have a common ventilation system."

9. Different and unexplained diseases coexisting in the same patient without any other explanation.

10. Rare illness that affects a large, disparate population (respiratory disease might suggest the pathogen or agent was inhaled).

11. Illness is unusual for a certain population or age-group in which it takes presence.

12. Unusual trends of death and/or illness in animal populations, previous to or accompanying illness in humans.

13. Many effected reaching out for treatment at the same time.

14. Similar genetic makeup of agents in effected individuals.

15. Simultaneous collections of similar illness in non-contiguous areas, domestic, or foreign.

16. An abundance of cases of unexplained diseases and deaths.

The goal of biodefense is to integrate the sustained efforts of the national and homeland security, medical, public health, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement communities. Health care providers and public health officers are among the first lines of defense. In some countries private, local, and provincial (state) capabilities are being augmented by and coordinated with federal assets, to provide layered defenses against biological weapon attacks. During the first Gulf War the United Nations activated a biological and chemical response team, Task Force Scorpio, to respond to any potential use of weapons of mass destruction on civilians.

The traditional approach toward protecting agriculture, food, and water: focusing on the natural or unintentional introduction of a disease is being strengthened by focused efforts to address current and anticipated future biological weapons threats that may be deliberate, multiple, and repetitive.

The growing threat of biowarfare agents and bioterrorism has led to the development of specific field tools that perform on-the-spot analysis and identification of encountered suspect materials. One such technology, being developed by researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), employs a "sandwich immunoassay", in which fluorescent dye-labeled antibodies aimed at specific pathogens are attached to silver and gold nanowires.[43]

In the Netherlands, the company TNO has designed Bioaerosol Single Particle Recognition eQuipment (BiosparQ). This system would be implemented into the national response plan for bioweapon attacks in the Netherlands.[44]

Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Israel are developing a different device called the BioPen, essentially a "Lab-in-a-Pen", which can detect known biological agents in under 20 minutes using an adaptation of the ELISA, a similar widely employed immunological technique, that in this case incorporates fiber optics.[45]

Theoretically, novel approaches in biotechnology, such as synthetic biology could be used in the future to design novel types of biological warfare agents.[46][47][48][49] Special attention has to be laid on future experiments (of concern) that:[50]

Most of the biosecurity concerns in synthetic biology, however, are focused on the role of DNA synthesis and the risk of producing genetic material of lethal viruses (e.g. 1918 Spanish flu, polio) in the lab.[51][52][53] Recently, the CRISPR/Cas system has emerged as a promising technique for gene editing. It was hailed by The Washington Post as "the most important innovation in the synthetic biology space in nearly 30 years."[54] While other methods take months or years to edit gene sequences, CRISPR speeds that time up to weeks.[54] However, due to its ease of use and accessibility, it has raised a number of ethical concerns, especially surrounding its use in the biohacking space.[54][55][56]

(passim)

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Biological warfare - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alternative title: germ weapon

Biological weapon, also called germ weapon, any of a number of disease-producing agentssuch as bacteria, viruses, rickettsiae, fungi, toxins, or other biological agentsthat may be utilized as weapons against humans, animals, or plants.

The direct use of infectious agents and poisons against enemy personnel is an ancient practice in warfare. Indeed, in many conflicts, diseases have been responsible for more deaths than all the employed combat arms combined, even when they have not consciously been used as weapons.

Biological weapons, like chemical weapons, radiological weapons, and nuclear weapons, are commonly referred to as weapons of mass destruction, although the term is not truly appropriate in the case of biological armaments. Lethal biological weapons may be capable of causing mass deaths, but they are incapable of mass destruction of infrastructure, buildings, or equipment. Nevertheless, because of the indiscriminate nature of these weaponsas well as the potential for starting widespread pandemics, the difficulty of controlling disease effects, and the simple fear that they inspiremost countries have agreed to ban the entire class.

As of 2013 a total of 180 states and Taiwan had signed the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and 170 of those states and Taiwan had signed and ratified the treaty, which was opened for signature in 1972. Under the terms of the BWC, member states are prohibited from using biological weapons in warfare and from developing, testing, producing, stockpiling, or deploying them. However, a number of states have continued to pursue biological warfare capabilities, seeking a cheaper but still deadly strategic weapon rather than following the more difficult and expensive path to nuclear weapons. In addition, the threat that some deranged individual or terrorist organization will manufacture or steal biological weapons is a growing security concern.

Biological warfare agents differ greatly in the type of organism or toxin used in a weapons system, lethality, length of incubation, infectiousness, stability, and ability to be treated with current vaccines and medicines. There are five different categories of biological agents that could be weaponized and used in warfare or terrorism. These include:

Some of these biological agents have properties that would make them more likely candidates for weaponization, such as their lethality, ability to incapacitate, contagiousness or noncontagiousness, hardiness and stability, and other characteristics. Among the agents deemed likely candidates for biological weapons use are the toxins ricin, staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB), botulinum toxin, and T-2 mycotoxin and the infectious agents responsible for anthrax, brucellosis, cholera, pneumonic plague, tularemia, Q fever, smallpox, glanders, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, and viral hemorrhagic fever. Various states at various times have looked into weaponizing dozens of other biological agents in addition.

Most weaponized lethal biological agents are intended to be delivered as aerosols, which would cause infections when breathed by the targeted personnel. For this reason, the most-effective defense against biological weapons is a good protective mask equipped with filters capable of blocking bacteria, viruses, and spores larger than one micron (one micrometre; one-millionth of a metre) in cross section from entry into the wearers nasal passages and lungs. Protective overgarments, including boots and gloves, are useful for preventing biological agents from contacting open wounds or breaks in the skin. Also, decontaminants can neutralize biological agents in infected areas after a biological attack.

Developing and fielding effective biological weapon sensors that can trigger an alarm would allow personnel to don masks before exposure, get into protective overgarments, and go inside, preferably into toxic-free collective protection shelters. Medical teams could then immediately go into action to check and treat those who may have been exposed.

Biological warfare attacks can be made less effective, or ineffective, if the targeted persons have been vaccinated against the specific disease-causing agent used in an attack.

Civil defense against biological weapons has greatly improved since the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, but progress does not necessarily equal success. A successful civil defense against major biological attacks requires that significant progress be made in sensors, warning systems, vaccines, medicines, training of responders, and public education as well as in planning of emergency procedures. These aspects of civil defense are described briefly in this section, using as examples certain practices put into effect in the United States since September 11.

The foundation of any civil defense against a biological weapons attack is the medical system that has already been set up to deal with naturally occurring diseases. Special vaccines have been created, tested, and approved to deal with the two most lethal biological agents that can also be most easily weaponized: anthrax and smallpox. For example, the U.S. government has enough smallpox vaccine to vaccinate the entire American population and enough anthrax vaccine to inoculate at least every member of the U.S. military.

Effective vaccines for plague and cholera now exist and have been approved for use, but only small quantities have been produced, far short of what might be needed if large numbers of people were to be infected. Furthermore, in the United States a number of vaccines are still in the Investigational New Drug (IND) category and await further trials before the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) can validate their effectiveness and safety. Included among these are vaccines for Q fever, tularemia, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, viral hemorrhagic fever, and botulism.

At present no effective vaccines exist for preventing infections from glanders, brucellosis, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, ricin, or T-2 mycotoxinsall biological agents that some countries have researched for military use or have weaponized in the past. However, in some cases where vaccines are not yet available, medicines have been developed that help the sick to recover.

Long-term medical research is being conducted to investigate the possibility of developing vaccines and supplements that, when administered, might raise the effectiveness of the recipients immune system to protect against the whole spectrum of probable biological warfare agents.

One U.S. civil defense program that might make a difference in a biological emergency is the Strategic National Stockpile program, which has created 50-ton push packages of vaccines, medicines, decontamination agents, and emergency medical equipment, which are stored in a dozen locations across the country in preparation for emergencies. Furthermore, every U.S. state has bioterrorism response plans in place, including plans or guidelines for mass vaccinations, triage, and quarantines. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also drafted model legislation on emergency health powers for states to adopt in order to deal with such crises.

A new emergency response system was created in the United States following the September 11 attacks. The National Guard increased the number of its Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams, which respond to chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons attacksaugmenting the police, fire, and medical first responders in the local area of any attacks. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Department of Health and Human Services, invested heavily in passive defenses against biological attacks, focusing on such programs as Project BioShield and the Laboratory Response Network. The CDC also embarked on a training program on bioterrorism for thousands of medical lab technicians, and the National Institutes of Health funded new biocontainment research laboratories to further research in vaccines, medicines, and bioforensics.

Sensors to detect the presence of biological agents in the air, in water, or on surfaces are still relatively ineffective, but the aim of research is to create a detect-to-warn system that would provide enough time for potential victims to don masks, cover up, and take shelter before they are infected. The current detect-to-treat capability is unsatisfactory because responders would be treating many persons already infected. Most current biological detectors are point detectors, which are not capable of giving advance warning after scanning an airborne cloud of particles to discern if those particles contain biological agents of a specific type.

One of the first recorded uses of biological warfare occurred in 1347, when Mongol forces are reported to have catapulted plague-infested bodies over the walls into the Black Sea port of Caffa (now Feodosiya, Ukraine), at that time a Genoese trade centre in the Crimean Peninsula. Some historians believe that ships from the besieged city returned to Italy with the plague, starting the Black Death pandemic that swept through Europe over the next four years and killed some 25 million people (about one-third of the population).

In 1710 a Russian army fighting Swedish forces barricaded in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia) also hurled plague-infested corpses over the citys walls. In 1763 British troops besieged at Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) during Pontiacs Rebellion passed blankets infected with smallpox virus to the Indians, causing a devastating epidemic among their ranks.

During World War I (191418) Germany initiated a clandestine program to infect horses and cattle owned by Allied armies on both the Western and Eastern fronts. The infectious agent for glanders was reported to have been used. For example, German agents infiltrated the United States and surreptitiously infected animals prior to their shipment across the Atlantic in support of Allied forces. In addition, there reportedly was a German attempt in 1915 to spread plague in St. Petersburg in order to weaken Russian resistance.

The horrors of World War I caused most countries to sign the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use of biological and chemical weapons in war. Nevertheless, Japan, one of the signatory parties to the protocol, engaged in a massive and clandestine research, development, production, and testing program in biological warfare, and it violated the treatys ban when it used biological weapons against Allied forces in China between 1937 and 1945. The Japanese not only used biological weapons in China, but they also experimented on and killed more than 3,000 human subjects (including Allied prisoners of war) in tests of biological warfare agents and various biological weapons delivery mechanisms. The Japanese experimented with the infectious agents for bubonic plague, anthrax, typhus, smallpox, yellow fever, tularemia, hepatitis, cholera, gas gangrene, and glanders, among others.

Although there is no documented evidence of any other use of biological weapons in World War II, both sides had active research and development (R&D) programs. The Japanese use of biological warfare agents against the Chinese led to an American decision to undertake biological warfare research in order to understand better how to defend against the threat and provide, if necessary, a retaliatory capability. The United Kingdom, Germany, and the Soviet Union had similar R&D programs during World War II, but only Japan has been proved to have used such weapons in the war.

In the Cold War era, which followed World War II, both the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as their respective allies, embarked on large-scale biological warfare R&D and weapons production programs. Those programs were required by law to be halted and dismantled upon the signing of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1972 and the entry into force of that treaty in 1975. In the case of the United States and its allies, compliance with the terms of the treaty appears to have been complete. Such was not the case with the Soviet Union, which conducted an aggressive clandestine biological warfare program even though it had signed and ratified the treaty. The lack of a verification regime to check members compliance with the BWC made it easier for the Soviets to flout the treaty without being detected.

After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and its subsequent division into 15 independent states, Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin confirmed that the Soviet Union had violated the BWC, and he pledged to terminate what remained of the old Soviet biological weapons program. (See also yellow rain.) However, another problem remainedthat of the potential transfer of information, technical assistance, production equipment, materials, and even finished biological weapons to states and groups outside the borders of the former Soviet Union. The United States and the former Soviet republics pledged to work together to contain the spread of biological warfare capabilities. With financing from the U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and other sources, help in obtaining civilian jobs in other fields was also made available for some of the estimated 60,000 scientists and technicians who had worked in the Soviet biological warfare programs.

Of the more than 190 members of the United Nations, only a dozen or so are strongly suspected of having ongoing biological weapons programs. However, such programs can be easily hidden and disguised as vaccine plants and benign pharmaceutical-production centres. Biological weapons are not as expensive to manufacture as nuclear weapons, yet a lethal biological weapon might nonetheless be the strategic weapon that would win a war. This prospect of military advantage might tempt some regimes to acquire the weapons, though perhaps clandestinely.

Since the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) has no existing verification or inspection procedures to verify compliance by its signatories, cheating on the treaty might be done with no outside proof to the contrary. It is entirely possible that even a small and relatively poor state might successfully embark on a biological warfare program with a small capital investment and a few dozen biologists, all of which could be secretly housed within a few buildings. In fact, a biological weapons program might also be within the technical and financial reach of a terrorist organization. In summary, the degree of biological weapons proliferation is highly uncertain, difficult to detect, and difficult to quantify.

Biological weapons have been used in a few instances in the past by terrorist organizations. In the 1980s followers of the exiled Indian self-proclaimed guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh settled on a ranch in Wasco county, Oregon, U.S. The Rajneeshies took political control of the nearby town of Antelope, changing its name to Rajneesh, and in 1984 they attempted to extend their political control throughout the county by suppressing voter turnout in the more populous town of The Dalles. Leading up to the countywide elections, cult members experimented with contaminating groceries, restaurants, and the water supply in The Dalles with Salmonella bacteria. Their efforts made at least 751 people ill. The plot was not discovered until the year after the attack, when one of the participants confessed.

In the period from April 1990 to July 1995, the AUM Shinrikyo sect used both biological and chemical weapons on targets in Japan. The members biological attacks were largely unsuccessful because they never mastered the science and technology of biological warfare. Nevertheless, they attempted four attacks using anthrax and six using botulinum toxin on various targets, including a U.S. naval base at Yokosuka.

Al-Qaeda operatives have shown an interest in developing and using biological weapons, and they operated an anthrax laboratory in Afghanistan prior to its being overrun by U.S. and Afghan Northern Alliance forces in 200102. In 2001 anthrax-laden letters were sent to many politicians and other prominent individuals in the United States. The letters killed 5 people and sent 22 to the hospital while forcing the evacuation of congressional office buildings, the offices of the governor of New York, several television network headquarters, and a tabloid newspaper office. This event caused many billions of dollars in cleanup, decontamination, and investigation costs. In early 2010, more than eight years after the mailings, the Federal Bureau of Investigation finally closed its investigation, having concluded that the letters were mailed by a microbiologist who had worked in the U.S. Armys biological defense effort for years and who committed suicide in 2008 after being named a suspect in the investigation.

Information on the manufacture of biological and chemical weapons has been disseminated widely on the Internet, and basic scientific information is also within the reach of many researchers at biological laboratories around the world. Unfortunately, it thus seems likely that poisons and disease agents will be used as terrorist weapons in the future.

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