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Revision as of 19:56, 19 December 2002 by 142.227.121.39 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of bacteria, virus or other disease-causing organism as a weapon of war.
Biological warfare is believed to have been practised in the Middle Ages, often by flinging victims of the Black Death over castle walls using catapults. Its use has also been documented in the French and Indian War when British troops distributed blankets infected by smallpox to Native Americans.
Use of such weapons was banned in international law by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. The 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention extended the ban to almost all production, storage and transport. However, since the signing of the convention, it is believed that the number of countries capable of producing such weapons has only increased.
The military usefulness of biological warfare is extremely limited for state actors due to the fact that any biological attack would require several days to be effective allowing much time for massive retaliation. Most of the concern on biological warfare has therefore focused on bioterrorism by non-state actors.
Research carried out in Britain during World War II left a Scottish Island contaminated with anthrax for the next 48 years. Considerable research on the topic was performed by the United States, the Soviet Union, and probably other major nations throughout the Cold War era, though it is generally believed such weapons were never used. There have been reports that United States Army has been developing weapons-grade anthrax spores at a biological and chemical weapons facility in Utah at least since 1992. However, the United States had and maintains a stated policy of never using biological weapons under any circumstances.
Diseases likely to be considered for use as biological weapons include anthrax, pneumonic plague, cholera and smallpox. These disease are contenders because of their lethality (if delivered efficiently), and robustness (making aerosol delivery feasible). However the primary difficulty in mounting a biological attack is not the production of the biological agent. Rather the main difficulty is to deliver the agent in a form in which it will infect large numbers of people. For example, a mass attack using anthrax would require the creation of aerosol particles of a precise size. Too large and the aerosol would be filtered out by the respiratory system. Too small and the aerosol would be inhaled and exhaled. Moreover, to deliver the aerosol in a way that it would not be dispersed by the weather and to package the anthrax so that it would remain active are only two of the technological difficulties involved in mounting a biowarfare attack.
Nevertheless, biowarfare has been a cause of concern because a successful biowarfare attack could theoretically result in thousands, possibly even millions of deaths and could result in severe disruptions to societies and economies.
2001 anthrax attack
Numerous cases of anthrax broke out in the United States in the fall of 2001, caused deliberately. They may well be the first use of biological warfare since the signing of the convention, and possibly the first act of bioterrorism. They also gave rise to various efforts to usefully define biodefense and biosecurity in the context of active human-authored threats (previous, more limited definitions of biosafety had focused on unintentional or accidental impacts of agricultural and medical technologies).
See also Chemical warfare, asymmetric warfare, biosecurity