Another religious cult, in Japan, proved both the ease and the difficulties of using biological weapons. In 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo cult used sarin gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 12 train passengers and injuring more than 5,000. Before these attacks, the sect had also tried, on several occasions, to distribute (non-infectious) anthrax within the city with no success.
It was obviously easy for the sect members to produce the spores but much harder to disseminate them.
The still-unidentified culprits of the 2001 anthrax attacks in the USA were more successful, sending contaminated letters that eventually killed five people and, potentially even more seriously, caused an upsurge in demand for antibiotics, resulting in over-use and thus contributing to drug resistance.
One interesting aspect of biological warfare is the accusations made by the parties involved, either as excuses for their actions or to justify their political aims. Cuba frequently accused the USA of using biological-warfare goals. Many of these allegations, although later shown to be wrong, have been exploited either as propaganda or as a pretext for war, as recently seen in the case of Iraq. It is clearly essential to draw the line between fiction and reality, particularly if, on the basis of such evidence, politicians call for a 'pre-emptive' war or allocate billions of dollars to research projects.
Examples of such incorrect allegations include a British report before the Second World War that German secret agents were experimenting with bacteria in the Paris and London subways, using harmless species to test their dissemination through the transport system.
Although this claim was never substantiated, it might have had a role in promoting British research on anthrax in Porton Down and on Gruinard Island. During the Korean War, the Chinese, North Koreans and Soviets accused the USA of deploying biological weapons of various kinds.
This is now seen as wartime propaganda, but the secret deal between the USA and Japanese bioweapons researchers did not help to diffuse these allegations.
Later, the USA accused the Vietnamese of dropping fungal toxins on the US Hmong allies in Laos. However, it was found that the yellow rain associated with the reported variety of syndromes was simply bee faeces.
The problem with such allegations is that they develop a life of their own, no matter how unbelievable they are.
For example, the conspiracy theory that HIV is a biological weapon is still alive in some people's minds. Depending on whom one asks, KGB or CIA scientists developed HIV to damage the USA or to destabilize Cuba, respectively.
Conversely, in 1997, Cuba was the first country to officially file a complaint under Article 5 of the BTWC, accusing the USA of releasing a plant pathogen (Leitenberg, 2001). Although this was never proven, the USA did indeed look into biological agents to kill Fidel Castro and Frederik Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Hmong refugees from Laos, who collaborated with the American armed forces during the Vietnam War, accused the Soviet Union of attacking them with biological or chemical weapons. However, the alleged toxin warfare agent known as yellow rain matches perfectly the yellow spots of bee faeces on leaves in the forest of the Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.
We are witnessing a renewed interest in biological warfare and terrorism owing to several factors, including the discovery that Iraq has been developing biological weapons, several bestselling novels describing biological attacks, and the anthrax letters after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. As history tells us, virtually no nation with the ability to develop weapons of mass destruction has abstained from doing so. And the Soviet project shows that international treaties are basically useless unless an effective verification procedure is in place.
Unfortunately, the same knowledge that is needed to develop drugs and vaccines against pathogens has the potential to be abused for the development of biological weapons.
Thus, some critics have suggested that information about potentially harmful pathogens should not be made public but rather put into the hands of 'appropriate representatives'. A recent report on anti-crop agents was already self-censored before publication, and journal editors now recommend special scrutiny for sensitive papers.
Whether or not such measures are useful deterrents might be questionable, because the application of available knowledge is clearly enough to kill. An opposing view calls for the imperative publication of information about the development of biological weapons to give scientists, politicians and the interested public all the necessary information to determine a potential threat and devise countermeasures.
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