essay on biological warfare in english

Biowarfare and Bioterrorism: History and Origin Essay

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Bioterrorism is the intentional use of toxins, chemicals, microbes, or infected samples to cause terror and instill fear among the population. Other terms like biological weapon or germ weapon are sometimes used to refer biological means employed during war confrontations. The most common disease-causing agents used in wars are bacteria, viruses, rickettsia, fungi, and other chemicals that adversely affect humans’ and plants’ lives. Both biological and chemical weapons are capable of mass destruction. The only difference is that the former cannot destroy physical infrastructures, such as roads, buildings, and equipment. These biological weapons are indiscriminate and can be used by psychopaths to commence pandemic that threatens human life worldwide. The main research question is “Why more research is still needed as biological weapons are concerned?”. This paper, therefore, traces the origin and history of biological weapons. Biological weapons are an open-ended concept that can have devastating negative consequences and require in-depth study.

Biological weapons and bioterrorism are not new concepts as history is filled with biological means of fighting. According to Edmond and William (2021), the dawn of bioterrorism dates back to the nineteenth century, when Louis Pasteur and Robert Koech studied and understood the basics of microbiology. Their research found that there was a possibility to separate and produce a large number of disease-causing organisms, such as viruses and bacteria. Moreover, the research also proved that the dissemination of these pathogens could be controlled under certain conditions and restrictions. History records that by the fourteenth century, that is, in the middle age and colonial period, biological weapons had been put to practice when the Hittites used diseased rams purported to be infected with tularemia weakened their enemies (Barras & Greub, 2017). Moreover, another application of biological weapons is traced to the eightieth century during the French and Indian war (Edmond & William, 2021). It is recorded that British forces, led by Sir Jeffrey Amherst, deliberately issued smallpox infected blackest to Native Americans to spread the disease and weaken their enemies.

Biological warfare advanced and reached sophisticated levels in the 1900s. According to Oliveira et al. (2020), the German army created several diseases during the First World War. This included anthrax, glanders, cholera, and wheat fungus (aflatoxin) deployed in St. Petersburg, Russia, Mesopotamia, and in French Calvary as biological weapons to spread the plagues and weaken the populace. In the Second World War, the Japanese were thought to have secretly used biological research facilities to endanger the lives of many prisoners as specimens. As history records, the Chinese unethical act exposes about 3000 victims to the dangers of anthrax, syphilis, and other agents (Newman, 2021). The Japanese did autopsies on the dead victims of whom they believed could enhanced their understandings as anthrax and other biological weapons are concerned.

The United States also formed a War Research Service in 1942, where anthrax and botulinum toxin were nurtured and used against the German soldier. Moreover, the British also tested their prepared anthrax bombs on Gruinard Island between 1942 and 1943. In 1979, there was an accidental miscalculation of anthrax facility in Sverdlovsk in Russia, which led to the release of anthrax, claiming the life of sixty-six victims. The Russian government disagreed but later admitted the anthrax accident in 1992 (Newman, 2021). As such, several occasions in the past have employed biological weapons to hurt or weaken their enemies besides other biological pathogens used by notorious psychopaths.

In the world today, several countries continue with offensive research and use biological weapons. Regarding the dangers of biological weapons, alleged countries are preparing biological bombs that are meant to instill fear in the world. The use of biological tools and microbes has taken another route that must be taken care of. Most terrorists have resided in the use of biowarfare to threaten the country’s well-being. For example, Iraq, the known war and terrorist hotspot, began the offensive research on anthrax and botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin, which was deployed following the Persian Gulf war in 1985 (Chugh, 2019). In addition, the unethical research on biowarfare led to the release of salmonella in September 1984, where about 751 people were intentionally infected. Basing the arguments on the harmful effects of these biowarfare agents, the world, through its medicine teams, has a responsibility to research and counteract these attacks. Therefore, as humans and livestock live, there is a need to research to produce antidotes that counteract the effects of these disease-causing organisms and chemicals.

In conclusion, biowarfare and terrorism use disease-causing organisms in times of war or for psychopathic reasons. These pathogens and chemicals are deliberately released to harm, spread, or kill the targeted population for selfish or ill motives. The history of biological weapons started in the fourteenth century where the Hittites used tularaemia against their enemies. Moreover, the idea of biological weapons got the sense when Mr. Pasteur and Robert studied the microbiological nature of organisms. With their findings, the misuse of these diseases-causing organisms came into play where large numbers were produced and launched on people and animals. Other biological use cases have been noted to have occurred during both the First and the Second World Wars.

Barras, V., & Greub, G. (2017). History of biological warfare and bioterrorism. Clinical Microbiology and Infection , 20 (6), 497-502. Web.

Chugh, T. (2019). Bioterrorism: Clinical and public health aspects of anthrax. Current Medicine Research and Practice , 9 (3), 110-111. Web.

Edmond, H., & William, C. (2021). Biological warfare: history, facts, agents use, and lists . eMedicineHealth. Web.

Newman, T. (2021). Biological weapons and bioterrorism: Past, present, and future . Medicalnewstoday.com. Web.

Oliveira, M., Mason-Buck, G., Ballard, D., Branicki, W., & Amorim, A. (2020). Biowarfare, bioterrorism, and biocrime: A historical overview on microbial harmful applications. Forensic Science International , 314 , 110-366. Web.

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IvyPanda . 2022. "Biowarfare and Bioterrorism: History and Origin." December 15, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/biowarfare-and-bioterrorism-history-and-origin/.

1. IvyPanda . "Biowarfare and Bioterrorism: History and Origin." December 15, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/biowarfare-and-bioterrorism-history-and-origin/.

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Biological weapons

Biological and toxin weapons are either microorganisms like virus, bacteria or fungi, or toxic substances produced by living organisms that are produced and released deliberately to cause disease and death in humans, animals or plants. 

Biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin and plague can pose a difficult public health challenge causing large numbers of deaths in a short amount of time. Biological agents which are capable of secondary transmission can lead to epidemics. An attack involving a biological agent may mimic a natural event, which may complicate the public health assessment and response. In case of war and conflict, high-threat pathogens laboratories can be targeted, which might lead to serious public health consequences.

Biological weapons form a subset of a larger class of weapons sometimes referred to as unconventional weapons or weapons of mass destruction, which also includes chemical, nuclear and radiological weapons. The use of biological agents is a serious concern, and the risk of using these agents in a terrorist attack is thought to be increasing.

WHO focuses on the possible public health consequences of an incident due to a biological agent, regardless of whether it is characterized as a deliberate act or a naturally occurring event. 

When a Member State is concerned about biological agents and wants to be better prepared, WHO advises strengthening public health surveillance and response activities, with an emphasis on: 

• more effective national surveillance of outbreaks of illness, including alert and response systems at all levels that can detect diseases that may be deliberately caused; 
• improved biosafety and biosecurity throughout the health sector;
• better communication between multiple sectors, including public health, animal health, water supply, food safety, poison control, civil protection, law enforcement, and security services;
• improved assessments of vulnerability, and effective communication about risks and threats to both professionals and the public; 
• preparation for handling the psychosocial consequences of the deliberate use of pathogens to cause harm; and 
• contingency plans for an enhanced response capacity by all sectors. 

WHO’s global alert and response activities and the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) represent a major pillar of global health security aimed at the detection, verification and containment of epidemics. In the event of the intentional release of a biological agent, these activities would be vital to effective international containment efforts.

With the occurrence of a potential, suspected or confirmed deliberate biological event, WHO would, upon the invitation of the affected Member State(s), work closely with the Member State government(s), other UN agencies, and other international partners as appropriate, support the event response, and assess and mitigate the public health consequences. These activities could include:

• working with relevant international or national organizations to better characterize the nature, scope and impact of the event;
• facilitating the public health investigation of the event, including referral to appropriate laboratories for confirmation and characterization of the pathogen;
• offering targeted training to public health responders;
• facilitating the identification and acquisition of necessary materials (such as personal protective equipment) appropriate to the event;
• supporting the continued delivery of essential health services; and
• developing guidance material specific to the pathogen or toxin in question.
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The future of biological warfare

It is an axiom of human history that whatever technology is available will be applied in warfare as one side or the other seeks to gain an advantage. Humans are unique among the species in their capacity for fighting prolonged conflicts where the nature of the war reflects the types of technologies available. Stone, metal, leather, wood, domesticated animals, wheels, etc. were each exploited by ancient societies in warfare. In late antiquity the adoption of the stirrup in Western Europe transformed warfare by enhancing the fighting capacity of the mounted warrior, which eventually led to the emergence and prominence of the knightly class. More recently gunpowder, steam engines, aircraft, chemicals, electronics and nuclear physics were employed in warfare. In each epoch, the technologies available had enormous influence on the strategy and tactics used. Biological warfare is ancient but its applicability to the battlefield has been limited by its unpredictability, blowback possibility and uncertain efficacy. However, the biological revolution that began in the mid‐20th century has led to the development of powerful technologies that could potentially be used to generate new biological weapons of tremendous destructive power. Although biological warfare is currently prohibited by the 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC) a review of prior attempts to limit the use of certain weapons such as the medieval crossbow, and more recently gas warfare, provides little encouragement for the notion that a technology that is useful in war can be limited by treaty. Furthermore, the BTWC restrictions apply only to signatory nation states and are irrelevant to terrorist organizations or lone wolves type of terrorists. Given the human track record for conflict and the potential power of biological warfare we are led to the sad conclusion that biological warfare has a future, and that society must prepare for the eventuality that it will used again by either nations or individuals. In this essay I will try to peek into the far horizon to identify some general themes that might be helpful in protecting against future horrors fully aware that the nature of technological change is so rapid and profound that any such view must necessarily be myopic.

Existential threats to humanity

In considering the importance of biological warfare as a subject for concern it is worthwhile to review the known existential threats. At this time this writer can identify at three major existential threats to humanity: (i) large‐scale thermonuclear war followed by a nuclear winter, (ii) a planet killing asteroid impact and (iii) infectious disease. To this trio might be added climate change making the planet uninhabitable. Of the three existential threats the first is deduced from the inferred cataclysmic effects of nuclear war. For the second there is geological evidence for the association of asteroid impacts with massive extinction ( Alvarez, 1987 ). As to an existential threat from microbes recent decades have provided unequivocal evidence for the ability of certain pathogens to cause the extinction of entire species. Although infectious disease has traditionally not been associated with extinction this view has changed by the finding that a single chytrid fungus was responsible for the extinction of numerous amphibian species ( Daszak et al ., 1999 ; Mendelson et al ., 2006 ). Previously, the view that infectious diseases were not a cause of extinction was predicated on the notion that many pathogens required their hosts and that some proportion of the host population was naturally resistant. However, that calculation does not apply to microbes that are acquired directly from the environment and have no need for a host, such as the majority of fungal pathogens. For those types of host–microbe interactions it is possible for the pathogen to kill off every last member of a species without harm to itself, since it would return to its natural habitat upon killing its last host. Hence, from the viewpoint of existential threats environmental microbes could potentially pose a much greater threat to humanity than the known pathogenic microbes, which number somewhere near 1500 species ( Cleaveland et al ., 2001 ; Taylor et al ., 2001 ), especially if some of these species acquired the capacity for pathogenicity as a consequence of natural evolution or bioengineering.

The universe of threats

The universe of threats can potentially encompass all microbes that inhabit the planet. Although most authorities divide microbes into those that are pathogenic and non‐pathogenic there is a fundamental fallacy in assigning the property of pathogenicity to a microbe alone, for virulence is a microbial property that is expressed only in a susceptible host ( Casadevall and Pirofski, 2001 ). For example, highly virulent microbes such as variola major virus are not virulent in hosts immunized with vaccinia. On the other hand, microbes normally avirulent for immunologically competent hosts such as Aspergillus spp. can be highly pathogenic for hosts with impaired immunity. The fact that virulence is expressed only in a susceptible host implies that it is not an independent microbial property. This is an important concept for it makes it difficult to unequivocally exclude any particular microbe as a potential threat.

Given the enormous microbial diversity in the planet it is remarkable that there are relative few microbes capable of causing human disease. This paucity presumably reflects the effectiveness of vertebrate immunity combined with high temperatures that exclude the overwhelming majority of environmental microbes ( Casadevall and Pirofski, 2007 ; Robert and Casadevall, 2009 ). Pathogenic microbes can be divided into two general groups, those acquired from other host and those acquired from the environment. Pathogenic microbes acquired from other hosts tend to be host adapted, are relatively few in number, and include most of the well‐known pathogens. Host‐acquired pathogenic microbes are usually communicable and have historically been responsible for devastating epidemics. In contrast, pathogenic microbes acquired directly from the environment represent a completely different challenge for the host since these have acquired their capacity for pathogenicity by virtue of non‐mammalian selection pressures, such as the interaction with amoebae ( Casadevall and Pirofski, 2007 ).

Among environmental microbes the major threats to humans come from those microbes that can survive mammalian temperatures. Although the elevated temperatures of mammals almost certainly create a thermal exclusionary environment for a large percentage of environmental microbes, one cannot automatically dismiss microbes that are not thermal tolerant. In this regard it is noteworthy that it was possible to adapt an insect pathogenic fungus to tolerate mammalian temperatures by simple thermal selection in the laboratory ( de Crecy et al ., 2009 ). Whether this adaptation conferred the capacity for mammalian virulence is unknown but the example provides a precedent for the notion that it may be possible to greatly enlarge the number of microbes with human pathogenic capacity by simple selection for more thermally stable variants.

If the universe of threats from the natural world was not enough humanity also faces potential threats from synthetic biology ( Tucker and Zilinkas, 2006 ; Tucker, 2011 ). Although the risk of generating Frankenstein microbes accidentally from synthetic biology is quite low, it is not zero. Given sufficient time, experimentation and selection it is possible that technologies emerging from synthetic biology‐related research can find applications in biological warfare.

Preparing against the known and unknown

Despite a universe of threats that is overwhelming with regards to the number of microbes with pathogenic potential current biodefence efforts remain focused on a tiny proportion of biological threats. In fact, governments have responded to the threat of bioterrorism by the creation of lists that aim to protect society by restricting access to certain microbes and toxins and creating legal tools for the prosecution of individuals on the basis of possession alone ( Casadevall and Relman, 2010 ). Furthermore, such lists have been used to prioritize the development of countermeasures such as increased vigilance, detection devices, diagnostics, vaccines, drugs and therapeutic immunoglobulins. In general, microbial threat lists have been designed by creating algorithms that attempt to identify the most dangerous types of microbes. Although such algorithms are not in the public domain some hint of the types of considerations taken into account in the generation of such lists can be found in an article authored by scientists from the Center of Diseases of Control (Atlanta, GA) ( Rotz et al ., 2002 ), the institution responsible for the administering the Select Agent and toxins regulations. It is noteworthy that their risk matrix analysis for assessing the public health impact of potential biological terrorism agents included such diverse criteria as mortality, need for hospitalization, likelihood for dissemination, availability of countermeasures and public perception ( Rotz et al ., 2002 ). The last parameter is interesting since public recognition of a known danger such as anthrax spores is far more likely to cause panic and societal disruption than less well‐known threats.

A fundamental problem with any microbial threat list is that it is necessarily a backward looking document. History consistently shows that generals always prepare to fight the last war and biological warfare is probably no exception. In this regard, microbial threat lists are primarily populated with agents that have been investigated by the military for biological warfare use, such as Bacillus anthracis , or have caused terrible epidemics in history, such as variola major and Yersinia pestis . Organisms like fungi that have not been associated with major epidemics tend to be ignored in threat analysis scenarios despite the fact that this kingdom, as a whole, includes many species with high weapon potential ( Casadevall and Pirofski, 2006 ) and the fact that fungal diseases are currently decimating certain amphibian and bat populations. Moreover, recent decades have seen the emergence of numerous new microbial diseases including the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus, Ebola virus, Legionella spp., etc. At least 335 new infectious diseases have been described since 1940, with the majority being zoonosis ( Jones et al ., 2008 ). The identification of so many new diseases over the past seven decades shows no sign to slowing, and it is almost a certainty that humanity will continue to confront new microbial threats and that many of these agents, such as SARS coronavirus, possess a significant weapon potential when recovered from nature ( Casadevall and Pirofski, 2004 ). However, the experience with SARS in 2003 also provides encouragement that even the emergence of a new agent that disseminates rapidly worldwide can be contained. In that outbreak international cooperation combined with good surveillance and a healthy research environment that was able to rapidly identify the agent within weeks of the outbreak, generate diagnostic methods and produce a therapeutic mAb in about 1 year. Consequently biodefence efforts are intimately linked to surveillance efforts for emerging infectious diseases and any defence strategy against biological weapons much consider the development of countermeasures against yet identified threats.

The near and far horizons

The realization that a handful of envelopes containing B. anthracis in 2001 was sufficient to cause widespread panic, and precipitated the first evacuation of the houses of the US government since the war of 1812, provided a clear demonstration of the power of cheap biological weapons. In an age of terrorism biological weapons are perfectly suited for asymmetric warfare where the relatively low costs of producing such weapons combined with their potential for amplification through communicability have a disproportionately strong effect on targeted populations. Consequently, biological weapons are likely to remain very attractive to terrorists and fringe groups like millennial sects. Thus the near horizon is likely to witness continued concern about low intensity use of biological weapons fashioned around known pathogenic microbes such as Salmonella spp. and B. anthracis , which have already been used in terrorism.

The scene on the far horizon is much harder to discern simply because the current rapid the pace of technological advance suggests that new technologies are likely to be developed in coming years that will completely change the landscape for biological warfare offensive and defensive possibilities. Even without envisioning new biological agents, such as those that could be generated by synthetic biology, the technology already exists for significantly enhancing the lethality of biological weapons. The introduction of antimicrobial resistance genes into bacterial agents could significantly enhance their lethality by reducing treatment options. In this regard, it is relatively easy to generate B. anthracis resistant to first line antimicrobial therapies such as ciprofloxacin ( Athamna et al ., 2004 ). The efficacy of vaccines can be circumvented by genetically modifying agents to express immune modifier genes that interfere with the immune response as was demonstrated by the expression of IL‐4 in ectromelia virus ( Jackson et al ., 2001 ). It is noteworthy that microbial modifications to increase lethality is only one possible outcome for engineering biological weapons since these could also be designed to incapacitate instead of kill.

Given the enormous universe of microbial threats, the power of modern biology to enhance the microbial virulence and the high likelihood that biological weapons will continue to threaten humanity one must face the question of how best to protect society. The sheer number of threats and the availability of technologies to modify microbes to defeat available countermeasures suggest that any attempt to achieve defence in depth using microbe‐by‐microbe approaches to biodefence is impractical and ineffective.

A prescription for defence in depth

• Continued development of specific diagnostic assays and countermeasures (vaccines, drugs, antibodies) for high risk threats identified by current matrix threat analysis. This is essentially a continuation of the major societal response to perceived biological threats in the first decade of the 21st century when a significant proportion of government supported research has focused on known agents such as variola major, B. anthracis and other high risk agents. This approach makes sense given that known agents will continue to be the most likely threats in the near horizon.
• Develop host‐targeted interventions that enhance immune function against a wide variety of threats. In other words, develop therapies that produce temporary increases in immune function that would protect against known and unknown threats. This approach would provide defensive options against yet to be identified microbial threats.
• Develop new ways to assess the healthy state that could allow monitoring of the population to identify the appearance of new agents. Although physicians can readily identify the disease state and surveillance systems for known agents are critically important for identifying a biological attack, such approaches may not suffice for all threats. For example, consider the situation with the outbreak of the HIV epidemic. The epidemic was identified in 1981 as a consequence of clusters of cases with known infectious diseases that did not fit known epidemiological parameters for such maladies as they included rare diseases in individuals with no predisposing conditions. However, we now know that AIDS can follow many years after the HIV infection and the interval between infection and disease is characterized by a slow decline in immune function during which the individual does not exhibit signs of disease. Arguably, the existence of methodology that could assess the healthy state might have identified the silent spread of the virus in certain populations years prior to the onset of the epidemic.
• Obtain a better understanding of microbial diseases in animal species and especially those that come in close contact with humans. Given that 72% of emergent infectious diseases described in recent decades have been zoonosis ( Jones et al ., 2008 ), it is reasonable to assume that wildlife will continue to be source of new pathogenic microbes for humans and a potential source of biological weapons. Consequently any effort to design a system for defence in depth should include efforts to describe, catalogue and study microbial diseases in wildlife.
• In preparing for known and unknown threats the availability of a vigorous scientific research establishment that can respond rapidly is an essential component for any effort to defend society. The rapid identification of HIV as the cause of AIDS and the development of effective anti‐retroviral therapies was made possible by prior societal investments in studying the biology of retroviruses at a time when these were not associated with human diseases. Hence, continued investments in basic research with emphasis on fostering a better understanding of host–microbe interactions is an essential cornerstone for any effort to defend in depth against biological weapons.
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• Future Perfect

Can a 50-year-old treaty still keep the world safe from the changing threat of bioweapons?

How geopolitics and technological advances are making this a riskier world for bioweapons.

by Jen Kirby

GENEVA — Venomous Agent X is a deadly nerve agent , though you likely know it by another name: VX. It’s an amber, oil-like liquid that targets the body’s nervous system. A single drop on the skin can kill within minutes. In 2017, North Korea is believed to have used VX to assassinate Kim Jong Un’s estranged half-brother in a Malaysian airport. Kim Jong Nam suffered severe paralysis , dead in about 20 minutes from a weapon of mass destruction.

Sean Ekins and his team thought of the toxin for a possible experiment, one he needed to meet a last-minute deadline for a presentation at the Spiez Laboratory in Switzerland, at a conference examining how developments in science and technology might affect chemical and biological weapons regimes. Ekins is a scientist and CEO of Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, a lab that uses machine-learning platforms to seek therapeutic treatments for rare and neglected diseases. He and his colleague Fabio Urbina wanted to see if they could flip their AI software, MegaSyn. Instead of steering the software away from toxicity, they wanted to see if they could guide the model toward it.

The scientists trained the software with some 2 million molecules from a public database , and then modeled for specific, toxic traits.

In just six hours , the AI generated some 40,000 molecules that met the scientists’ criteria, meaning that, based on their molecular structure, they all looked quite a lot like toxic chemical agents. The AI designed VX. It designed other known toxic agents. It even designed entirely new molecules that the scientists hadn’t programmed for, creating a sketch for potentially lethal and novel chemical compounds.

The experiment was computational — a digital recipe for molecules like VX, not a physical creation of it or any other substance. But Ekins and his team used open source, publicly available data. The AI they used was also largely open source as well; they just tweaked the models a little bit.

Ekins was horrified. What he and his colleague had thought was a banal experiment ended up creating a cookbook for chemical agents. “If we could do this,” Ekins said, “what’s to stop anyone else doing it?”

VX, after all, is a banned substance under the Chemical Weapons Convention. A lab can’t just produce or go out and order up VX; countries face inspections to make sure they don’t have the stuff, or something like it, hanging around. VX doesn’t exist in nature, and it has no dual uses; that is, it has no therapeutic value or positive benefit. The only reason to have VX is to kill.

That isn’t the case for many things found in nature, like a virus or, well, your own DNA. Which is why this experiment got so much attention, not just among chemical warfare experts but among those who worry, specifically, about biological weapons. It showed just how simple it might be to apply it to the things that exist all around us, that can’t be tightly controlled, and that very likely have dual uses. Machine learning could be used to find ways to tweak a virus to make it less virulent, or more treatable. Or it could be used to make that virus more difficult to detect, or more deadly. And, if you or a nation-state are so inclined, wield it as a biological weapon.

Biological weapons, of course, are outlawed, too. The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) prohibits the production, use, development, stockpiling, or transfer of biological toxins or disease-causing organisms against humans, animals, or plants. More than 180 countries are party to the pact, which came into force in 1975 as the first multilateral treaty to ban an entire class of weapon. And in the years since, the taboo against state use of biological weapons has largely held.

Yet a volatile geopolitical environment, combined with the rapid advance and increased access in the ability to edit and engineer pathogens, is straining and testing the nearly 50-year-old BWC as never before.

“It’s like a race between the technology being developed really quickly and the biosecurity community racing to put the safeguards around it,” said Jaime Yassif, vice president of global biological policy and programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

No treaty is perfect, but from the BWC’s beginnings, critics have said it lacked vital elements, like a verification mechanism to make sure everyone is following it. Global tensions, scientific advances, and the ever-expanding repertoire of what is possible with both biology and chemistry are making those flaws and cracks ever more visible.

Late last year, at the Ninth Review Conference for the Biological Weapons Convention at United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, countries broadly agreed that they needed to find ways to strengthen the pact, to make it fit for purpose in a more chaotic, unpredictable world.

As is often the case in arms control, agreement is one thing, action another. The same forces buffeting the treaty are also making it nearly impossible to update it for a different age, or even agree on what it means now. The longer the BWC stands still, the faster barriers against a deliberate biological attack begin to fall away. That makes the world more vulnerable than ever to a threat the international community tried to eradicate 50 years ago.

Illness, weaponized

Biological weapons are the “poor man’s atom bomb,” said Yong-Bee Lim, the deputy director of the Converging Risks Lab and Biosecurity Projects Manager at the Council on Strategic Risks. They are weapons that can often be built on the cheap, using materials found in nature. Even before the world understood what caused disease, countries used things against their enemies they knew carried contagion: catapulting plague-infested corpses over fortified walls , or giving or selling clothes or blankets from smallpox patients.

But biological weapons were always held in a separate category in warfare. They are inherently risky: Contagions are hard to control and contain, and the same pathogens that can infect your target can also sicken you and your population. This is also why they tend to be used as a stealth agent of war; humanity has a general repugnance toward disease and poison that doesn’t extend to other armaments. “It has always been seen as an ungentlemanly weapon,” said Filippa Lentzos, a biosecurity expert and associate professor at King’s College London. “It’s never an element of your arsenal that you are proud to display. It’s always an underhand thing.”

Those factors helped bolster a taboo against biological weapons, which the international community first tried to prohibit with the 1925 Geneva Protocol against chemical and biological methods of warfare. That pact didn’t stop many countries from building biological weapons programs through World War II, with germs used most notoriously by Japan in China . Well into the Cold War, the United States had a program of its own housed outside Washington, DC, at Fort Detrick , along with a chemical and biological weapons testing base in Utah.

The US wasn’t alone. The Soviet Union also had an offensive biological weapons project, as the two superpowers raced to match each other in armaments. But in the late 1960s, some high-profile mishaps linked to the US chemical and biological weapons programs — including a toxic cloud from a test of VX that killed or injured 6,000 sheep — along with public anger over the use of herbicides like Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, prompted Congress to pressure the Nixon administration to review the biological and chemical weapons programs. “Biological weapons have massive, unpredictable and potentially uncontrollable consequences,” President Richard Nixon said in 1969 after the release of the review, which essentially concluded that these kinds of offensive programs weren’t worth the risks.

The US would ultimately renounce the use of biological warfare, instead focusing its research on defense and safety measures. The American decision, which came after other allies turned away from their biological weapons programs , seeded the conditions for the creation of the BWC.

States have not engaged in known biological weapons attacks since — which is not the same thing as saying the treaty hasn’t been violated. The Soviet Union continued to build a big and sophisticated biological weapons program in the decades after it signed the BWC. That became clear after the fall of the USSR in 1991 . Other signatories have been suspected of maintaining offensive weapons programs at different points post-1975, including South Africa and Iraq . Today, US intelligence assesses that Russia and North Korea maintain active offensive programs, both in violation of the BWC.

The good and the bad of the BWC

The BWC calls the deliberate use of biological weapons “repugnant to the conscience of mankind.” The document itself is short , just 15 articles, with the first explicitly banning the development, production, stockpile, and transfer of microbial or biological agents or toxins, “whatever their origin or method of production.”

It is broad and not particularly specific, but given the dual-purpose and rapidly changing nature of biological research, that is also its strength: “It does make the convention quite future-proof,” said Daniel Feakes, chief of the BWC Implementation Support Unit (ISU), the main body overseeing the convention.

The BWC is designed to be adaptable, but that also comes with a problem: It makes it difficult to ensure everyone who says they are following the BWC really is. Or, in arms control treaty-speak: It has no legally binding verification regime.

The Chemical Weapons Convention is arguably narrower, banning specific agents. It also has an enforcement body that carries out inspections. Nuclear treaties between the US and Russia, though they’re almost all but officially dead , included robust data-sharing and inspection. “Verification is a pretty standard element of most disarmament conventions, and that’s why people keep on coming back to the issue in the BWC,” Feakes said.

The BWC has none of that. Some of it has to do with the unique nature of biological weapons, which are distinct from things like chemical agents or nukes. But that has left the BWC with a huge gap since its inception.

“The holy grail that we’ve struggled with with the Biological Weapons Convention is how do you verify that the countries that have signed up to the treaty are not making biological weapons?” said Kenneth Ward, US special representative to the Biological Weapons Convention.

The closest thing that BWC has to a verification are Confidence Building Measures (CBMs), essentially a book report on a country’s bio activities. Not every country participates, or makes the documents public, and there is no way to fact-check what any country says.

And even if there were, the BWC is currently ill-equipped for such a task. The annual budget for the BWC is currently about $1.8 million , which in the past has come out to less than most McDonald’s franchise restaurants, according to one estimate in a 2020 book . About two-thirds of countries pay less than $1,000 into the BWC, including about 50 that pay around $100 . That is considerably less than the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which has an estimated 2023 budget of more than $80 million to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The Implementation Support Unit (ISU) that oversees the BWC just had its staff grow by a quarter — from three to four people. Compare that, again, to the OPCW, which has about 500 staff members . According to Feakes, what resources the ISU has mostly end up going toward the organizing and managing big meetings, like the Ninth Annual Review Conference. Even then, it’s barely enough: By the Friday morning session of the first week of the Review Conference in Geneva last year, the UN Web TV broadcast of the BWC negotiations had to be cut off because of cost concerns . If you can’t keep the live feed running, good luck preventing the potential proliferation of biological weapons.

That means the actual implementation of the BWC looks something akin to matchmaking, where a state may ask for technical or assistance or training, and the ISU seeks out another country or partner that might have the ability to actually do it, because the ISU definitely doesn’t.

But trying to fit BWC into the mold of other disarmament treaties is a lot trickier than you might think, largely because of the dual-use nature of biology. A nuclear warhead or VX gas has one purpose: warfare. But something like anthrax can and has been used as a biological weapon, and a legitimate lab may need to have anthrax on hand to make a vaccine. The same equipment you might use to try to find a cure to a virus or disease is much the same equipment you’d need to replicate or manipulate a virus for a biological attack. Germs are self-replicating which means countries don’t have to keep huge stockpiles of dangerous viruses.

Life science itself is far more decentralized than nuclear research, for example. Labs are spread out, and with materials fairly accessible. You can buy DNA online , and with technologies like benchtop DNA synthesis , you can print DNA in your lab with a tool that’s about the size of a microwave. There are far more people with expertise in the biological sciences, from geneticists to lab techs, around the world than there are nuclear scientists. A terror group getting ahold of weapons of mass destruction is always a risk, but the diffusion of biology means it’s probably easier to weaponize a virus — and certainly harder to detect — than it is to make a nuke. And, of course, the BWC only deals with nation-states anyway.

“You don’t want to create false confidence in a verification regime,” Ward, of the US State Department, said. “You have to be clear: What can we verify? What can we not verify? And we’re never going to be able to verify on a daily basis, is every biological facility in the world doing good things instead of bad things? It’s impossible to know.”

It’s also not like anyone hasn’t tried, either. Across decades, countries have attempted to figure out some way to create a verification mechanism. Perhaps the closest the BWC came was in 2001, but US opposition effectively sidelined efforts to create a more formal and transparent mechanism for verification for 20 years.

A lot has happened in those 20 years, including dramatic advances in life sciences — the mapping of the human genome, CRISPR gene-editing technology, mRNA vaccines, and more — which means the nature of biological threats is changing, too. Some verification is better than nothing, and almost certainly better than an absolute free-for-all — as the pandemic itself showed.

What is a bioweapon today — and tomorrow?

In a city, in one corner of the world, people start showing up to the hospital. They have some sort of respiratory illness, but it’s not clear what. The cases range in their severity: It is often fatal in older or immunocompromised people; for others, a mild to severe illness. Others still are asymptomatic, a virus in their bodies, spreading without any outward sign.

From there, the virus spreads, and spreads, and spreads. It shuts down economies, upends politics. Millions die; millions more get sick . A vaccine is developed quickly, so are treatments, but none are a perfect shield, especially as the virus, now out in the world, changes.

This is not a bioweapon but the Covid-19 pandemic. (Which, it’s worth emphasizing, is not a bioweapon , even if debates on its origins continue.) But what Covid-19 did do was show just how disruptive an entirely unintentional biological event can be. A deliberate one, or even the accidental release of a virus from a legitimate lab, could be far worse. (A 2018 pandemic tabletop exercise by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security modeled for a release of an engineered bioweapon and ended with 150 million people dead .) It’s still not easy to create such a deadly bioweapon, “but barriers are coming down, and risks are increasing,” Lentzos said.

Barriers are coming down because of the expansion and advancement in the life sciences. There is gene editing, which has been made easier and more powerful with tools like CRISPR . A bad actor could use it to make a virus more transmissible, or more fatal, or more resistant to treatment. There is synthetic biology, which enables scientists to manipulate or even design entirely new organisms — maybe tailor-made to infect livestock, or a country’s wheat supply, or even a specific person . Then there are the computational tools, like the artificial intelligence used by Ekins where huge databases and the power of computing let scientists rapidly sift through potential pathogens much faster , or find new combinations of molecules to create entirely novel viruses.

Scientists also better understand how the body works; what regulates our hormones, immune systems, and neurotransmitters. Many experts I spoke to talked about bioregulators — systems that regulate our normal bodily functions — as a possible tool of manipulation. This knowledge has plenty of benign applications, and potentially revolutionary ones, but could also be applied for military or political manipulation : speeding up someone’s heart rate, or causing organ failure, or even altering moods, so all of a sudden an even-keeled president is an erratic one.

There isn’t really a question as to whether such an attack would fit under the BWC. Even though we were decades away from decoding the human genome when the convention was signed, its Article 1 prohibition against any deliberate use of biological material or a toxin fits under the definition.

But the larger question is whether the spread and development of these technologies incentivizes their malign use. That depends a lot on the political environment — on why a country would take the risk of breaking international law and norms. In a world where other disarmament treaties are falling away, great power competition is rising, and hybrid threats from cyber to information warfare offer the plausible deniability some governments seek, countries may start to see it as a risk worth taking.

Russia’s war in Ukraine is an example of how these dynamics are playing out. Moscow has very deliberately spread misinformation — amplified by everyone from the Chinese government to right-wingers in the US — alleging that the US has been funding bioweapons labs in Ukraine, including claiming that Washington and Kyiv have collaborated on an infection that is targeting certain groups, delivered by bats and birds. The claims have been disproven, and rejected by the United Nations Security Council , but some experts and officials fear it could serve as the basis for a false flag attack.

Biological attacks can also be difficult to verify because pathogens are naturally occurring, and even if scientists detect a new one, it’s difficult — if not impossible — to know if it’s something that has been deliberately created or something that emerged accidentally from nature or a lab. And given what Covid-19 demonstrated about the cracks in our defense against biological threats — and how little has been done to fix them over the past few years — a future bioweapon might “prey upon those existing vulnerabilities that haven’t been addressed,” said Saskia Popescu, a biodefense expert at George Mason University.

Decentralization further complicates matters, especially as the bioeconomy and biomanufacturing expands. The BWC is focused on nation-states, but this diffusion and access — again, you can buy DNA online and have it shipped to your lab — opens up opportunities for bad actors. “It’s easier for more and more people with less and less skills coming in the door to either make a pathogen from scratch or tinker with it to make it more dangerous,” said Yassif. “And that’s not contained within a few high-level labs, in a world-class lab with lots of resources. It’s increasingly democratized and distributed.”

Together, this creates a dangerous dynamic: The international bioweapons regime is basically standing still, as technology and geopolitics race ahead of it.

Can the BWC keep up?

All of this tumult spilled over at the Palais des Nations, United Nations headquarters in Geneva, this past December. There, states-parties to the Biological Weapons Convention gathered for the Ninth Annual Review Conference, or “RevCon,” as it’s known. These happen every five years, although the Covid-19 pandemic had delayed the scheduled meeting. It would ultimately complicate this one as well, as diplomats and delegates started testing positive. By week’s end, the officials presiding over the conference did so in KN95 masks — an outcome that felt a little too on-the-nose for a conference designed to shore up protections against biological threats.

In the Palais des Nations, a strange combination existed of low expectations and high hopes. The low expectations were mainly a hangover from the ghosts of BWC RevCon past, where states struggled to reach consensus. The war in Ukraine had also increased tensions, with Russia, in particular, playing spoiler because no one would give credence to their Ukraine bioweapons claims.

Yet many officials and experts hoped the disruptive power of Covid-19 would focus minds, providing a reminder of the threat of any kind of biological risks. New initiatives buzzed about, including ethical guidelines for scientists working in technologies that could be manipulated or misused. The Tianjin Biosecurity Guidelines for Codes of Conduct for Scientists included 10 principles for those practicing in the life sciences, an effort to raise awareness and accountability to mitigate biorisks. China, in particular, had championed these guidelines , which lots of other countries supported, too, including the United States. There were also discussions about creating a scientific or technical body, one that could review and advise on the latest biological and life science developments.

And, at long last, the United States cracked open the door to verification discussions. Ward said it was partly an acknowledgment from the Biden administration of the disruptive nature of Covid-19, but it was also an effort to move past two decades of ill will.

But that is always a tough task within international forums. The reality within the Palais was both slightly more boring and slightly more complicated. Politics played a big role in this. Russia, and some other familiar faces, including Iran used the forum to air their particular grievances — Moscow on Ukraine, Tehran on sanctions. The BWC is built on consensus — all the states-parties have to agree — so just one country can spoil the mood, and the progress.

Most of the intense discussions happened behind closed doors; out in the brightly lit conference room, the delegations discussed, line by line, exactly what should be in the RevCon text, in the most passive-aggressive public edit of all time. Countries went back and forth on word selection, striking this or seeking to add that — respectively, of course — until slowly all the add-ons and enhancements to the BWC fell away.

But, in the end, there was some progress, or as the line went: “ modest success .” The hopes for adopting those ethical guidelines for scientists or even bare-bones verification measures failed. But the states-parties at the BWC agreed to establish a working group — meeting for about two weeks or so — to examine a long list of priorities, like advances in science and technology, and a possible road map for bioweapons verification.

“Issues like verification, it’s now formally in the agenda or the work plan of the intersessional program, the first time in two decades,” said Izumi Nakamitsu, the United Nations high representative for disarmament affairs.

This is what counts for progress in the world of bioweapons governance: no substantive changes yet, but at least everyone is talking. The group will meet this August for the first time, after setting its agenda last month, with the goal of transforming the BWC by the time of the next RevCon about five years from now. Which is better than nothing when it comes to weapons of mass destruction.

In the meantime, the threats to the BWC are accelerating. The world is a more dangerous and tense place. Disinformation around bioweapons is also eroding the taboo against the use. This includes Russia’s playbook of continued accusations about bioweapons in Ukraine and elsewhere. But a top Republican recently claimed, with zero evidence, that the Chinese spy balloon shot down over the Atlantic Ocean in February was equipped with bioweapons .

And maybe it doesn’t sound so crazy, as science speeds ahead. ChatGPT has amplified concerns around artificial intelligence and what it is capable of. Ekins’s software designed VX and thousands of other molecules in six hours, after all. “We’re just a small piece of the pie,” Ekins said, of the VX experiment. “But what else is happening out there?”

This reporting was made possible by a grant from Founders Pledge .

Correction, May 1, 11:11am: This story originally misidentified the affiliation for Saskia Popescu. She is affiliated with George Mason University.

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Weapons Of Mass Destruction — Chemical and Biological Warfare

Chemical and Biological Warfare

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Published: Feb 13, 2024

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• Miller Center. “George W. Bush - Administration.” Miller Center, 23 Feb. 2017
• History. “Bush Learns of Attack on World Trade Center.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 16 Nov. 2009
• U.S. Department of Defense. “Bush: No Distinction Between Attackers and Those Who Harbor Them.” United States Department of Defense, 11 Sept. 2001
• Gallup. “Bush Job Approval Highest in Gallup History.” Gallup.com, 24 Sept. 2001
• Richelson, Jeffery. “Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction, 11 Feb. 2004
• The White House. “State of the Union Address 2002.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, 29 Jan. 2002
• NY Times. “Timeline of Major Events in the Iraq War.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 31 Aug. 2010

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