A paper from the National Academy of Sciences analyzing military experiments notes that B. Another controversial experiment described in Cole's book involved a test at the Norfolk Naval Supply Center. The experimenters packed crates with fungal spores to see how they would affect the people unpacking those crates. Cole's book notes that "portions of a report about an army test in involving Aspergillus fumigatus In the military reports cited by Cole, researchers claim they are preparing for an attack that might target black citizens.
He quotes from a section that reads: "Since Negroes are more susceptible to coccidioides than are whites, this fungus disease was simulated. When these experiments were first revealed in , the racial aspect of these tests engendered controversy and skepticism about the "army's interest in the public welfare," according to Cole.
Many of these experiments on the American public were first investigated by what we would consider questionable sources. One Washington Post news story discusses open air experiments in the Tampa Bay area involving the release of pertussis, or whooping cough, in State records show that whooping cough cases in Florida spiked from one death in to 1, 12 deaths in , according to that story. But it's hard to trace how accurate the information about the whooping cough release is: The only documentation goes back to an investigation by the Church of Scientology.
The Church of Scientology formed a group called American Citizens for Honesty in Government that spent a significant amount of time investigating controversial experiments run by the Army and CIA, according to the Post. Through FOIA requests they uncovered a number of documents related to these experiments in the late s. Cole understands why some people are skeptical of those reports. Many of the documents Scientologists made public were the same documents he'd received doing his own research, redacted in the same places.
Many details about the army's tests over populated areas remain secret. Most of the test reports are still classified or cannot be located, although a few of the earlier ones have become available in response to Freedom of Information Act requests and in conjunction with the Nevin case. Among those available, sections have been blocked out and pages are missing. Military officials were called to testify before Congress in after information about these biological warfare experiments was revealed.
At the time, those officials said that determining just how vulnerable the US was to a biological attack "required extensive research and development to determine precisely our vulnerability, the efficacy of our protective measures, and the tactical and strategic capability of various delivery systems and agents," according to a record of that testimony quoted in "Clouds of Secrecy. There was "a different mindset in the country then But, he argues, that doesn't justify glossing over the already known potential danger of the agents used.
At the same time, part of what the military knows about how clouds of chemicals spread comes from these experiments. Cole says that knowledge gleaned from these biological warfare testing programs helped inform the US reaction when reports came in on the potential use of chemical weapons in the first Gulf War.
Cole says that the obvious question that's on people's minds is what's happening now. After all, if secret tests could occur then, what prevents them from continuing? Are they, in fact, still going on? Biological agents are still studied and tested, but informed consent is more widely appreciated now. There's also less of a Cold War mentality that would be used to justify this research.
In , a New York Times report revealed projects testing biological weapons that began under the Clinton administration and continued under the second Bush administration. A treaty theoretically prohibited developing biological weapons, but this program justified it with the argument that new weapons needed to be studied in order to develop adequate defenses. The Pentagon released records earlier this year showing that chemical and biological agents had been sprayed on ships at sea.
The military reimbursed ranchers and agreed to stop open-air nerve agent testing at its main chemical weapons center in the Utah desert after about 6, sheep died when nerve gas drifted away from the test range.
But the Pentagon never before has provided details of the Alaskan, Hawaiian, Canadian and British tests. The Defense Department planned to formally release summaries of 28 biological and chemical weapons tests at a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee hearing Wednesday.
The documents did not say whether any civilians had been exposed to the poisons. Military personnel exposed to weapons agents would have worn protective gear, the Pentagon says, although the gas masks and suits used at the time were far less sophisticated than those in use today.
Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican. Cities on both coasts were surreptitiously used as laboratories to test aerosolization and dispersal methods when simulants were released during covert experiments in New York City, San Francisco, and other sites. Aspergillus fumigatus, Bacillus subtilis var globigii , and Serratia marcescens were selected for these experiments 7 , Organisms were released over large geographic areas to study the effects of solar irradiation and climatic conditions on the viability of organisms.
Concerns regarding potential public health hazards were raised after outbreaks of urinary tract infections caused by nosocomial S. The outbreak followed covert experiments using S. In addition to these efforts in the USA, many other countries continued their biological weapons research, including Canada, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. In the United Kingdom, the Microbiological Research Department was established in and expanded in 2 , Plans for pilot biological warfare were made, and research continued on the development of new biological agents and weapons design.
Britain conducted several trials with biological warfare agents in the Bahamas, in the Isles of Lewis, and in Scottish waters to refine these weapons. However, in , the British government decided to abandon the offensive biological warfare research and to destroy stockpiles. At that time, a new emphasis was put on further development of biological defensive research At the same time, the Soviet Union increased its efforts in both offensive and defensive biological warfare research and development 1.
Reports regarding offensive research repeatedly occurred in the s and s, although officially the Soviet Union claimed not to possess any biological or chemical weapons. Other allegations occurred during the post—World War II period 11 :. During the late s, public and expert concerns were raised internationally regarding the indiscriminate nature of, unpredictability of, epidemiologic risks of, and lack of epidemiologic control measures for biological weapons 11 , In addition, more information on various nationsbiological weapons programs became evident, and it was obvious that the Geneva Protocol was ineffective in controlling the proliferation of biological weapons.
In July , Great Britain submitted a proposal to the UN Committee on Disarmament outlining the need to prohibit the development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons Furthermore, the proposal provided for measures for control and inspections, as well as procedures to be followed in case of violation. Shortly after submission of the British proposal, in September , the Warsaw Pact nations under the lead of the Soviet Union submitted a similar proposal to the UN.
However, this proposal lacked provisions for inspections. Under the BWC, the development of delivery systems and the transfer of biological warfare technology or expertise to other countries are also prohibited.
It further required the parties to the BWC to destroy stockpiles, delivery systems, and production equipment within 9 months of ratifying the treaty. This agreement was reached among cosigning nations, and the treaty was ratified in April The BWC went into effect in March 1. Signatories that have not yet ratified the BWC are obliged to refrain from activities that would defeat the purpose of the treaty until they specifically communicate to the UN their intention not to ratify the treaty.
Review conferences to the BWC were held in , , , and Signatories to the BWC are required to submit the following information to the UN on an annual basis: facilities where biological defense research is being conducted, scientific conferences that are held at specified facilities, exchange of scientists or information, and disease outbreaks 1 , However, like the Geneva Protocol, the BWC does not provide firm guidelines for inspections and control of disarmament and adherence to the protocol.
In addition, there are no guidelines on enforcement and how to deal with violations. Alleged violations of the BWC were to be reported to the UN Security Council, which may in turn initiate inspections of accused parties, as well as modalities of correction. The right of permanent members of the Security Council to veto proposed inspections, however, undermines this provision.
More recent events in and again illustrated the complexity and the enormous difficulties the UN faces in enforcing the statutes of the BWC. In the USA, the offensive biological weapons program was terminated by President Nixon by executive orders in and 7. The USA adopted a policy to never use biological weapons, including toxins, under any circumstances.
National Security Decisions 35 and 44, issued in November microorganisms and February toxins , mandated the cessation of offensive biological weapons research and production and the destruction of the biological weapons arsenal.
However, research efforts continued to be allowed for the purpose of developing countermeasures, including vaccines and antisera. After the termination of the offensive program, USAMRIID was established to continue research for development of medical defense for the US military against a potential attack with biological weapons. Despite the agreement reached in , several of the signatory nations of the BWC participated in activities outlawed by the convention 1.
These events clearly demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the convention as the exclusive approach for eradicating biological weapons and preventing further proliferation. The number and identity of countries that have engaged in offensive biological weapons research is largely still classified information.
However, it can be accurately stated that the number of state sponsored programs of this type has increased significantly during the past 30 years. In addition, several assassination attempts and attacks, as well as non—state-sponsored terrorist attacks, have been documented. During the s, biological weapons were used for covert assassinations.
This weapon discharged a tiny pellet into the subcutaneous tissue of Markov's leg while he was waiting at a bus stop in London. The following day, he became severely ill, and he died only 3 days after the attack. On autopsy, the pellet, cross-drilled as if it was designed to contain another material, was retrieved. As it was revealed in later years, this assassination was carried out by the communist Bulgarian secret service, and the technology to commit the crime was supplied to the Bulgarians by the Soviet Union 1 , Only 10 days before the assassination of Markov, an attempt to kill another Bulgarian exile, Vladimir Kostov, had occurred in Paris, France.
Kostov said that one day when he was leaving a metro stop in Paris, he had felt a sharp pain in his back. When he turned around, he saw a man with an umbrella running away. Two weeks later, after he had learned of Markov's death, Kostov was examined by French doctors. They removed a similar pellet, which was made from an exotic alloy of iridium and platinum and contained the toxin ricin.
In the late s, allegations were made that planes and helicopters delivering aerosols of different colors may have attacked the inhabitants of Laos and Kampuchea 1 , 7.
People who were exposed became disoriented and ill. Some of these clouds were believed to comprise trichothecene toxins e. During April , an epidemic of anthrax occurred among the citizens of Sverdlovsk now Ekaterinburg , Russia.
The epidemic occurred among people who lived and worked near a Soviet military microbiology facility Compound 19 in Sverdlovsk. In addition, many livestock died of anthrax in the same area, out to a distance of 50 km European and US intelligence suspected that this facility conducted biological warfare research and attributed the epidemic to an accidental release of anthrax spores. Early in February , the widely distributed German newspaper Bild Zeitung carried a story about an accident in a Soviet military settlement in Sverdlovsk in which an anthrax cloud had resulted When this story was published, other major Western newspapers and magazines began to take an interest in the anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk, a city of 1.
Later that year several articles occurred in Soviet medical, veterinary, and legal journals reporting an anthrax outbreak among livestock. Human cases of anthrax were attributed to the ingestion of contaminated meat. In , Matthew Meselson Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts renewed previously unsuccessful requests to Soviet officials to bring independent scientists to Sverdlovsk to investigate the incident 1 , This request finally resulted in the invitation to come to Moscow to discuss the incident with 4 Soviet physicians who had gone to Sverdlovsk to deal with the outbreak.
The impression after these meetings was that a plausible case had been made, and further investigation of the epidemiologic and pathoanatomical data was needed. The Soviet Union maintained that the anthrax outbreak was caused by consumption of contaminated meat that was purchased on the black market However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin, then the president of Russia, directed his counselor for ecology and health to determine the origin of the epidemic in Sverdlovsk.
In May , Yeltsin admitted that the facility had been part of an offensive biological weapons program and that the epidemic was caused by an accidental release of anthrax spores. Among the evidence reviewed were a private pathologist's notes from 42 autopsies that resulted in the diagnosis of anthrax Demographic, ecologic, and atmospheric data were also reviewed.
The conclusion was that the pattern of these 42 cases of fatal anthrax bacteremia and toxemia were typical of inhalational anthrax as seen in experimentally infected nonhuman primates. In summary, the narrow zone of human and animal anthrax cases extending downwind from Compound 19 indicated that the outbreak resulted from an aerosol that originated there 27 , A report stated that the Russian program continued to exist after the incident and had temporarily increased during the s.
In , the program was still in existence and employed 25, to 30, people 1. At the same time, several high-ranking officials in the former Soviet military and Biopreparat had defected to Western countries. The information provided by these former employees gave further insight into the biological weapons program of the former Soviet Union. After the anthrax incident in Sverdlovsk, the research was continued at a remote military facility in the isolated city of Stepnogorsk in Kazakhstan, producing an even more virulent strain of anthrax 1 , In , the former Soviet Union expanded its bioweapons research program and was eventually able to weaponize smallpox.
This research was conducted at remote facilities in Siberia, and very little information is available about the extent and outcome of this research and where it was conducted 1. During Operation Desert Shield, the build-up phase of the Persian Gulf War Operation Desert Storm after Iraq had invaded and occupied Kuwait in the fall and winter of , the USA and the coalition of allied countries faced the threat of biological and chemical warfare 2 , The experience gained from observations during the first Persian Gulf War in the late s supported the information on biological and chemical weapons available to the Western intelligence community.
In fact, Iraq had used chemical warfare against its own people on many occasions in the s 1. Intelligence reports from that time suggested that the Iraqi regime had sponsored a very ambitious biological and chemical warfare program. Coalition forces prepared in — for potential biological and chemical warfare by training in protective masks and equipment, exercising decontamination procedures, receiving extensive education on possible detection procedures, and immunizing troops against potential biological warfare threats.
Approximately , US troops received a Food and Drug Administration—licensed toxoid vaccine against anthrax, and received a new botulinum toxoid vaccine 7. For further protection against anthrax spores, 30 million mg oral doses of ciprofloxacin were stockpiled to provide a 1-month course of chemoprophylaxis for the , US troops that were involved in the operation. Representatives of the Iraqi government announced to representatives from the UN Special Commissions Team 7 that Iraq had conducted research into the offensive use of B.
Iraq had extensive and redundant research facilities at Salman Pak, Al Hakam, and other sites, only some of which were destroyed during the war 1 , Despite these elaborate efforts by the UN, the struggle with enforcement of the BWC continued throughout the late s and into the 21st century.
As the recent developments in Iraq have shown, development of biological and chemical weapons is a real threat, and efforts to control its proliferation are limited by logistical and political problems. As long as there are no concrete provisions for enforcement, the BWC will remain a toothless instrument in the hands of the UN Security Council.
In addition to these state-sponsored and military-related biowarfare programs, private and civilian groups have attempted to develop, distribute, and use biological and chemical weapons.
One incident was the intentional contamination of salad bars in restaurants in Oregon by the Rajneeshee cult during late September 7 , A total of cases of severe enteritis were reported, and Salmonella typhimurium was identified as the causative organism. Forty-five victims were hospitalized during this outbreak.
Although the Rajneeshees were suspected, the extensive research and investigation conducted by the Oregon Health Department and the Centers for Disease Control could not conclusively identify the origin of the epidemic.
However, in , a member of the cult confirmed the attack and identified the epidemic as a deliberate biological attack Unfortunately, recent examples of the intentional use of biological weapons are not difficult to find. In the mid s, large amounts of botulinum toxin were found in a laboratory in a safe house of the Red Army Faction in Paris, France.
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