BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS, TERRORISM AND WARFARE:

are such weapons truly a terrorist threat? &, are the conventions which ban it signs of a more humane world and prototypes for a nuclear weapons convention or simply a cover for continuing state activity camouflaged as ‘defensive’ research?

BLANKETS FOR THE INDIANS

On 16 July 1763 during the Pontiac rebellion British General Lord Jeffrey Amherst wrote to Colonel Henry Bouquet with charming instructions about giving the Indians smallpox-infected blankets as a way “to Extirpate this Execrable Race”. The next recorded lethal biological warfare event in North America was the distribution of anthrax-contaminated letters by unknown persons 240 years later in the wake of the 9-11 events. The anthrax strain employed seems to have been derived from a US "anti" biological warfare research laboratory. Despite the salience of the events and the attention given to it both by government and NGOs (Barbara Rosenberg of FAS has made it a major subject of study, cf. Nature (6/Dec/2001) 414, 570), no suspect has been identified.

WHAT ARE BIOWEAPONS?

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention  (BTWC, see below) does not define biological weapons. According to the SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) Fact Sheet November 2001 on 'Biotechnology And The Future Of The Biological And Toxin Weapons Convention':

"Biological warfare is the intentional use of disease-causing microorganisms or other entities that can replicate themselves (e.g., viruses, infectious nucleic acids and prions) against humans, animals or plants for hostile purposes. It may also involve the use of toxins: poisonous substances produced by living organisms,  including micro-organisms (e.g., botulinum toxin), plants (e.g., ricin derived from castor beans) and animals (e.g., snake venom). If they are utilised for warfare purposes, the synthetically manufactured counterparts of these toxins are biological weapons."

INTERNATIONAL LAW AND PUBLIC ATTITUDES

I. THE GENEVA PROTOCOL

In a War Office memo (1919) Churchill said: "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected." And some kinds of chemical devices were employed against the Kurds and Iraqis in the early 20’s by the RAF. From the ‘left’ J. B. S. Haldane (1925), in his little book Callinicus, agreed, defending chemical warfare as more humane than the 'conventional' kind. That was before nerve gases had been discovered. But 1925 also saw the signing at Geneva of the "Protocol For The Prohibition Of The Use In War Of Asphyxiating, Poisonous Or Other Gases, And Of Bacteriological Methods Of Warfare". Some states, including the UK and USA but not France, have added a codicil to the effect that the protocol shall cease to be binding on them with respect to use in war of poison gas and analogous materials in regard to any enemy state if such state fails to respect the protocol's prohibitions. Seemingly this reservation did not apply to BW although BW preparations continued in both the UK and US until after WWII, with the final decision to abandon BW programmes in the US made under Richard Nixon's instructions in 1968. The Geneva protocol was ratified in 1928.

II. THE BIOLOGICAL AND TOXIN WEAPONS  CONVENTION (BTWC)

The Geneva Protocol said nothing about development or possession of BW. This was covered by the Convention, signed in 1972 and ratified in 1975, termed the "Convention On The Prohibition Of The Development, Production And Stockpiling Of Bacteriological (Biological) And Toxin Weapons And On Their Destruction". The BTWC prohibits development, production and stockpiling of chemical and bacteriological (biological) weapons and proposes their elimination. Curiously it says nothing about use of such weapons which therefore remains covered by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. It also contains no enforcement procedures or criminal sanctions (see below).

THE LIMITS OF THE PROTOCOL AND CONVENTION

The unresolved problem is the definition of BW and the impossibility of clearly distinguishing aggressive and defensive research short of actual weaponisation. And weaponisation of BW has common features with other forms of weapons development. The Swiss therefore added a reservation codicil to their signature: “Owing to the fact that the Convention also applies to weapons, equipment or means of delivery designed to use biological agents or toxins, the delimitation of its scope of application can cause difficulties since there are scarcely any weapons, equipment or means of delivery peculiar to such use; therefore, Switzerland reserves the right to decide for itself what auxiliary means fall within that definition.”

THE SVERDLOVSK INCIDENT

(cf. Meselson, M. et al. (1994) Science 266, 1202-1208; Guillemin, J. (2002) Proc. Amer. Philos. Society 146 (1) 18-36; and Guillemin, J. (2005) “Biological Weapons: from the invention of state-sponsored programs to contemporary bioterrorism” Columbia University Press).

Seven years after signing the BTWC and four years after its ratification an outbreak of anthrax with numerous fatalities occurred in the Sverdlovsk region of the USSR. Attributed to the sale of contaminated meat by the Soviet authorities the truth took years of investigation to appear. The contaminated meat proposal even deceived Matthew Meselson, the US biowar authority, antiwar activist, and current 2004 Lasker award winner, for a number of years. Eventually it became clear that the outbreak was due to the accidental release of weaponised anthrax from a biowarfare weapons facility. This was perhaps the most egregious example of treaty violation by the USSR which had had the reputation of being difficult to persuade to sign treaties but honestly adherent once a treaty had been signed. Even under Gorbachev in the era of glasnost the truth was persistently denied by the KGB and it is unclear whether the Politburo were fully aware of what was going on.

Why did they do this? After all, the USSR was one of the world's only two real superpowers and the possessor of the largest number of nuclear weapons in the world. NW are militarily potentially decisive devices. Biological weapons are of uncertain overall effect, delayed in their action (and thus permit drastic retaliation by the victim state before their full effects are expressed), and capable of affecting the user as well as the recipient. They are also inevitably supremely disgusting in character as recognised by warriors down the ages and obvious and known to the makers as well as onlookers. Even Hitler apparently forbade development of BW. Why then did the Soviet Union engage in this enterprise, in breach of their treaty obligations, in defiance of public opinion everywhere, and then lie persistently about the accident itself despite the need for medical understanding (inhalation anthrax may well demand different treatment from ingestion anthrax) even when the evidence was piling up against them?

Was it just a matter of the uncontrollable driving forces behind military science, in which aggressive defensive measures spill over into aggressive measures? Was it really ignorance or fear of potential US intentions? Was it an early sign of the weakness of the Soviet system before its visible decline and death? (see the confession of Victor Israelyan (2002) Washington Quarterly 25 (2) 17-19).

SOUTH AFRICA

The horrible truth is that they were not alone. For example, another more obviously beleaguered state adopted a BW programme. That was the Republic of South Africa. And although we have little information about the South African NW programme, some of their biowarfare specialists have confessed to their past actions (see Track Two, 10 (3) December 2001: esp. the confession of Mike Odendaal).

THE NEED FOR A MORE  EFFECTIVE CONVENTION

What are the defects of the present arrangements? The difficulty of detection and the lack of effective sanctions are evident. Matthew Meselson (M. Meselson & J. Robinson (2004) Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 28 (1) 57-72 see also M. Meselson (2002) “Bioterror: what can be done?” Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation, and New York Review of Books) has therefore proposed a wide-ranging convention with embedded criminal sanctions, inspections and whistle-blowing components. The prospects for such a broad convention are however remote in current political circumstances in which agreement and even discussion of a BTWC enforcement system is stalled.

THE STALLING OF BTWC DISCUSSIONS

After a number of years' work by the Ad Hoc group of the BTWC to develop an inspection process the US arbitrarily and suddenly announced in mid-2001 (prior to 9/11) that it did not support and would not participate in this work (see Henrietta Wilson (2001) “The Biological Weapons Convention Protocol: Politics, Science and Industry” Vertic Research Reports 2). Later that year it decided against any general discussion of such proposals and limited participation to modest features of the convention and the problems of its enforcement. The 2002 BTWC review conference was effectively neutered. The next opportunity for discussion will be the 2006 conference. Its effectiveness will obviously depend in part upon the attitude of the US administration.

In recent reviews Tucker has called for a new process to restart the BTWC programme (Tucker, J. B. (2004) “Strengthening the BTWC: a way forward.” Disarmament Diplomacy 78, 24-30 and (2004) The Nonproliferation Review 11(1)26-39). But it is not clear whether this is politically feasible.

THE TERROR OPTION

While state development and potential usage of BW seems unlikely the possible use as a terrorism device seems more plausible - see the CIA unclassified document “The darker bioweapons future”(was there ever a brighter one?) November 2003. The probably decisive military drawbacks of BW - uncertain effect, delayed effect, "blow back", disastrous effect upon public opinion - are not drawbacks to terrorist usage. They may even be advantageous. Concern has therefore surfaced within the scientific community (cf. several articles in The Biochemist (2004) 26, no. 2, April 2004; & Nature (7/Oct/2004) 431, 624-626) that modern bioengineering methods may permit development of even more effective pathogens - more virulent, more persistent and less defensible by vaccination. The results of this concern are mixed. On the one hand there is concern that legitimate bioengineering studies will be hamstrung by security regulations. On the other hand the biowarfare agencies are being given a new lease of life supposedly developing defences against bioweaponry.

But we may wonder whether this kind of work is part of a solution or part of a problem. Before carrying out research - even putatively defensive - on potential bioweapons (BW), the question must be asked: is that research justified? Will it diminish or increase the threat?

There are in fact immense difficulties in developing effective bioweapons, even at state level, let alone in a terrorist backroom milieu. Iraq tried to make them but never used them and evidently destroyed them after 1991. The Aum Shinriko cult in Japan tried and failed. We need rational and informed thought to avoid succumbing to a climate of fear which allows authoritarian governments to restrict civil liberties in the name of a war on terrorism. Recent reports have described terrorist "factories" producing or developing CBW including ricin and osmic acid. There is therefore an educational role for scientists - to explain. We need to say that ricin is an assassin's weapon, not a WMD, that osmic acid, which many of us have used for staining electron microscope samples, is neither explosive nor a practical poison and costs £100/gm; we can explain the differences between anthrax (which exists and is highly dangerous when weaponised but is not contagious) and smallpox (the ultimate suicide weapon - but which does not exist anywhere in the world outside a couple of high security laboratories in the US and Russia - so where would the virus be made?). Yet smallpox has been identified as a potential terror weapon, large quantities of vaccines ordered and possibly in some cases employed and an atmosphere of fear heightened by the development of a disseminated computer package modelled along the lines of SETI to discover (how?) inhibitors of key smallpox enzymes under the rather obvious name of “Patriotgrid” by Accelrys and associated computer software companies in the USA.

The role of Porton Down in the UK (major contributors to the UK scientific discussion) in these matters is inevitably an ambiguous one. It is for ever morally weakened by its origins as Britain's interwar years' CBW factory. Today, can offensive and defensive research be distinguished? Even if they can, jobs at Porton Down depend upon the existence of a real threat. We may note that the amateurish though randomly fatal US anthrax attacks in late 2001 apparently involved an anthrax strain developed in a US BW "defence" laboratory, presumably stolen by a mentally unhinged ex-member of that laboratory. In some matters, innocence is best - the adage "resist not evil" has a strong resonance. Certainly we must not develop virulent strains in order to seek "cures".

WHEN THE BTWC STALLED WE OBTAINED THE BWPP

But countervailing forces are always there and may find alternative routes. The stalling of the BTWC negotiations and abandonment of the Ad Hoc group’s plans for enforcement have led to the establishment of the NGO but governmentally funded BioWeapons Prevention Project (BWPP). Discussions that ought to have proceeded in the BTWC meetings are now taking place outside the official venues but in a similar way and with similar modest but continuing impact. See http://www.bwpp.org.

ANALOGY WITH THE NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY (NPT)

There is some analogy to the NPT. The latter, of course, is less comprehensive than the BTWC. But the IAEA has more investigatory teeth than any BTWC agency. We still lack a OPBW analogous to the CTBTO and OPCW. And BW, like NW, are now a target for counter-proliferation action rather than abolition. The US and Russia retain their smallpox stocks despite the earlier understanding with the WHO that they would be destroyed. Just as they retain their NW despite the ICJ judgment and NPT article VI that nuclear abolition should be the objective. Is the NPT doomed to stall in a similar fashion? With the failure of the 2005 review conference there is strong pressure to move by other paths – either with the UN in an “Ottawa” process analogous to the one that saw the (partial) banning of anti-personnel land mines or outside the formal international framework altogether but with a respected and well-funded international NGO like the BWPP.

The use of the WMD concept, including the creation and sustaining of fears about BW, is convenient for the eight known nuclear weapons states, conflating as it does the dangers of biological, chemical & nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are the only true WMD. Nuclear weapons are also the only ones not subject to an international prohibitory convention and the only ones that could destroy our world. But nonetheless we need, if we wish to abolish the dangers of BW, to ensure openness of all research laboratories (something that the US refused to accept when it withdrew its support for the development of Biological Weapons Convention enforcement procedures in 2001). We need to support, extend and give effective teeth to the BTWC, including inspection protocols, and enact appropriate national criminal laws against all BW development and research. And we should plan to argue hard and long for these things at the upcoming BTWC preparatory conference in Geneva in December 2005 and the next Review Conference in 2006.

Peter Nicholls, Dept. of Biological Sciences, University of Essex, Email pnicholl@essex.ac.uk Abolition 2000 UK. August 2005.