Chemical–Biological Weaponry

Report Outline
Current Interest in Gas-Germ Weapons
C-B Weapons in and After World War I
New Debate on International Control

Current Interest in Gas-Germ Weapons

Risk in Spread of Silent and Secret Weapons

The weapons of chemical and biological warfare are being exposed to public view, a glimpse at a time. Some viewers, here and abroad, are deeply troubled by what they see. U.N. Secretary General U Thant told the General Assembly in July 1968 that such weapons pose a greater threat to world peace than nuclear arms “because they are easily accessible to poor nations as well as superpowers.” A multinational committee of experts established by the General Assembly last December, at the request of the Geneva Disarmament Conference, is scheduled to report to the Secretary General by July 1 on the global dangers of gas and germ warfare.

Perhaps anticipating the report, Britain's Lord Ritchie Calder has theorized that biological—or germ—warfare might be waged for years with only the secret aggressor aware of what was happening. “Then,” he added, “successive crop failures, devastation of herds by disease, unexplained human epidemics and a catastrophic fall in the birthrate would reveal the disease.” This specter raises broad moral and political questions for scientists and their governments.

A view now being expressed in Western science journals and in other forums is that such weapons are essentially genocidal and that research on them violates the ethical code of the scientist and the Hippocratic oath of the doctor. Another view, held especially by scientists engaged in making or testing materials for chemical or biological warfare, is that their first duty is to defend their country. They argue that possession of these weapons inhibits an enemy from using similar ones. And even if used, according to the same reasoning, gas or germ warfare is preferable to atomic warfare and might substitute for it.