Arsenal of Death: A Microbe in Every Cauldron?

The Signal
Posted: Dec 15, 2006

Biochemical warfare is as old as creation. It is nature's gift to the weak and the vulnerable against threats, real or perceived. Millions of years of evolution have armed legions of plants, insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates with the means to neutralize enemies with vile-smelling, bad-tasting, paralyzing or lethal substances. This is survival of the fittest at its Darwinian best.

Nature, however, pales in comparison to human ingenuity. Man-made potions can spread disease, foul the air and seed clouds with substances that turn rain into liquid death. Scientists have bred mosquitoes that carry yellow fever, malaria and Dengue; produced fleas infected with bubonic plague; spawned ticks bloating with tularemia and Colorado spotted fever; and sired houseflies ready to spread cholera, anthrax and dysentery.

"And we've only just begun," says Jack McGeorge, head of a security research agency. "The face of war is changing in a manner unimaginable even 10 years ago. The next two decades are likely to witness the global use of biochemical weapons in conflicts of all sizes." Use of such weapons, says McGeorge, a munitions expert and former Secret Service technical specialist, "may not win a war but will prevent the user from losing it."

Equally frightening is the ease with which biochemical weapons can be acquired. These scourges are available not only to major powers, but also to developing nations with a demonstrated flair for apocalypse.

In 1996, 14 countries were known to possess them - 10 more than had been anticipated. The number now exceeds 40. Fifteen to 20 other nations are shopping around for raw materials. Some may already be stockpiling these weapons of mass destruction.

Biomedicine is also lending a helping hand. The same technology that led to dramatic cures is helping produce new horrors that can be easily piggy-backed on conventional delivery systems, whereas genetic engineering is refining the art of killing by developing "designer diseases" for which there is no cure.

No one knows how early humans waged biochemical war. One can safely speculate that flinging excrement - a strategy still observed among primates - might have satisfied our ancestors' aggressive drive, not to mention their need for self-expression. Homo sapiens have since refined the art of mudslinging but the message is the same.

During the Siege of Kaffa in 1347, the Mongols hurled the cadavers of plague victims over the walls of the Genoese defenders. Genoese ships then carried the disease back to Europe where the Black Death promptly erupted.

In 18th century North America, British soldiers offered blankets infected with smallpox to native Americans. This act of benevolence cost thousands of lives.

In 1925, seven years after the end of the Great War - during which chemical weapons were indiscriminately used by all sides - an international agreement known as the Geneva Protocol banned the use of chemical and bacteriological weapons. The Protocol did not prevent the French from dropping mustard-filled bombs in Morocco, or the Italians from using mustard gas in their 1935-36 war against Ethiopia.

In the 1930s, the Japanese used biological weapons to spread plague and famine among Chinese civilians.

In 1939, in search of deadlier, swifter poisons, the Germans invented Tabun and Sarin, colorless, almost odorless gases that penetrate the skin and kill in less than two minutes. Deterred because the Allies also possessed chemical weapons, the Germans did not use theirs against Allied forces in World War II. Instead, they used Zyklon-B in their extermination camps.

Sarin was last used in the 1995 deadly Tokyo subway attack.

During the 1950s and '60s, military research produced still meaner nerve agents, including the "V" series, produced by both the U.S. and the Soviets and dreaded because of their supertoxicity. The '50s also witnessed the development of mentally incapacitating chemicals.

Tear gases and herbicides (defoliants) were widely used by the U.S. in Vietnam. Arguably, these were "nonlethal" and authorized under the Geneva Protocol.

Of all the chemicals used to strip the tropical forest bare, the one that is most bitterly remembered is the dioxin-laced Agent Orange, which sent vegetation on a self-destructive binge. Plants literally exploded, carving a surreal landscape out of a rotting, foul-smelling jungle. The debate over the effect of Agent Orange, a known carcinogen, continues.

There are no effective safeguards against biological weapons. Modern technology produces so large and disparate a variety of agents that a uniform defense cannot be achieved. As genetic engineering research continues, so grows the capability of biochemical weapons to become more fearsome, less detectable and nearly invincible. Virtually all developed nations are now funding research in areas that can readily be tailored to the production of biochemical weapons.

"How do you know what's going on in a lab?" asks McGeorge. "Most nations have dozens of them. It's impossible to know whether a lab is working on a cure or packaging a disease. Such research is invariably tied to 'national security' or justified as 'medical science.'"

This conundrum has thwarted attempts to reach a comprehensive ban on biochemical weapons. So research goes on. "Designer" genes are spliced to alter harmless organisms by making them lethal, to increase the lethality of certain organisms or to produce organisms resistant to disease.

At first, we used our teeth. Then we picked up a rock, a bough, a bone. We felt a power surging through our fists, and the carnage began. We have come a long way. And to keep the momentum, we sow new killing fields with fresh seeds of folly.