Biological And Chemical Weapons Essay, Research Paper

The Development and Control of Chemical and Biological Warfare

The twelvemonth, 600 BC. Solon, the legislator of the Athenians, contaminated the River Pleisthenes with hellebores ( skunk chou ) to give the guardians of Kirrha violent diarrhoea taking to their licking. This is the first recorded usage of workss as a beginning of chemicals for warfare.

Although non really good known, chemical and biological warfare has been used for over 2000 old ages. Chemical and Biological warfare has made a huge alteration since 600 BC and has evolved into one of the most beforehand and destructive types of warfare known to adult male ( Russell 1998 ) .

There are many grounds why chemical and biological warfare is so effectual. Throughout the medieval times, Cadavers were catapulted over palace and fortress walls. Disease would distribute within the enclosed walls. Cadavers were besides placed up watercourse and the dwellers of the fortress would imbibe the lifelessly, micro-organism infested H2O. Biological and Chemical arms are really cheap. It does non take a really sophisticated industrial base to bring forth deadly chemicals. This makes it a feasible agency of warfare for Third World states. The usage of chemical arms by Iraq and Libya in 1988 reinforces the danger that these arms will distribute ( Cass 1996 ) .

Not merely are these arms cheap, but they are really effectual. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen held up a five-pound bag of sugar on national telecasting last month to demo how, with an tantamount sum of splenic fever, Iraq could extinguish at least half the population of Washington. The US Law Enforcement Assistance Administration reported in March 1977 that a individual ounce of splenic fever introduced into the air-conditioning system of a vaulted bowl could infect 70-80,000 witnesss within an hr ( Hardy 1998 ) . In January 1998, the Center for Disease Control declared that an epidemic hit Miami, Florida. Doctors have non yet diagnosed the specific cause of the disease, but the unwellness ab initio resembled a thorax cold that progresses into pneumonia-like symptoms. It so progressed quickly into febrility and shortness of breath. What is particularly curious about this epidemic is that all the patients who have sought medical attending attended the Orange Bowl football game on New Year & # 8217 ; s Day. This could be an illustration of a terrorist onslaught on a dome bowl. And a 1972 survey by the Advanced Concepts Research Corporation of Santa Barbara, California, postulated that an aerosol onslaught with splenic fever spores on the New York City country would ensue in more than 600,000 deceases ( Hardy 1998 ) .

Biological warfare agents include both populating micro-organisms ( bacteriums, Protozoa, viruses, and Fungi ) , and toxins ( chemicals ) produced by micro-organisms, workss, or animate beings. Writers on the topic have produced a long list of biological warfare agents that terrorists could potentially utilize. Among those mentioned have been: splenic fever, escherichia coli, haemophilus influenzae, undulant fever ( undulatory febrility ) , parrot disease ( parrot febrility ) , yersina plague ( the Black Death of the fourteenth Century ) , tularaemia ( rabbit fever ) , malaria, cholera, enteric fever, bubonic pestilence, cobra venom, shellfish toxin, botulinal toxin, saxitoxin, ricin, variola, shigella flexneri, s. dysenteriae ( Shiga B ) , salmonella, staphylococci enterotoxin B, hemorrhagic febrility, Venezuelan equine phrenitis, histoplasma capsulatum, pneumonic pestilence, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, dandy fever febrility, Rift Valley febrility, diphtheria, melioidosis, glanders, TB, infective hepatitis, phrenitiss, blastomycosis, nocardiosis, xanthous febrility, typhus, tricothecene mycotoxin, aflatoxin, and Q febrility ( Hardy 1998 ) . As you can really good see, the list is eternal, and this is one ground that biological warfare is so unsafe. Some of these agents are extremely deadly ; others would function chiefly in an crippling function. Some writers have besides speculated about the possible terrorist usage of new, genetically engineered agents. These agents are designed to take out certain people such as a certain race for illustration.

World War 1 marked the first clip that there was a large-scale usage of gas in warfare. The Germans dispersed 168 dozenss of Chlorine gas from cylinders against the Gallic Salient at Ypres. Entire surprise was achieved, but the success of this onslaught was non really good ( Graham 1998 ) . This onslaught resulted in over 5,000 allied casualties, the loss or 60 guns and immense measures of supplies. The Germans attacked the northeast portion of the Ypres Slient where the Gallic and British lines met. The Gallic country to the right was held by a group of Algerians while the Canadians held the British country to the left. An first-class eyewitness history of this onslaught was documented in Maj. Gen. Amos Fries book, Chemical Warfare:

& # 8220 ; Try to conceive of the feelings and the status of the coloured military personnels as they saw the huge cloud of greenish-yellow gas spring out of the land and easy travel down air current towards them, the vapour cleaving to the Earth, seeking out every hole and hollow and make fulling the trenches and shell holes as it came. First admiration, so fright ; so, as the first peripheries of the cloud enveloped them and left them choking and

agonized in the battle for breath-panic. Those who could travel broke and ran, by and large in vain, to surpass the cloud which followed inexorably after them ( French friess 55 ) .”

After the onslaught at Ypres, the Germans used chemical and biological arms many other times. At the Battle of Loos, the British foremost used the 4 & # 8243 ; Stokes howitzer to present fume and gas. The Stokes Mortar was a smoothbore, muzzle-loaded arm capable of firing 20 unit of ammunitions per minute for short explosions or a sustained rate of 5 unit of ammunitions per minute. It had a high angle of fire with a maximal scope of 1,075 paces and a minimal scope of 200 paces ( Russell 1998 ) .

In April 1917 the Germans unveiled their Livens projector. The first large-scale usage of the Livens projector took topographic point at the Battle of Arras. Cylinders were projected at the enemy so they would split and put up a high concentration of gas. The Livens projector lacked mobility, truth and scope but the capacity of its missiles was four times that of the Stokes howitzer. During the war projectors were supplied in two sizes: one 2 ft. 9 in. in length, weighing 100 pound. and holding a maximal scope of 1,375 yd. : and the other 4 ft. in length, weighing 150 lbs. , and holding a scope of 1,700 yd ( Graham 1998 ) . Both sizes used the same base home base and the shells were indistinguishable. Projectors were installed in the land and fired electrically in batteries of 25, any figure of batteries being fired together. The largest coincident discharge took topographic point Mar. 21, 1918, when the British Special Brigade ( Gas Troops ) fired 3,730 shells into Lens and its outskirts.

After World War 1 and up to today at that place have been some major progresss in chemical and biological warfare. Recently, there have been many efforts of terrorist act that use biological and chemical warfare. The apprehension in 1972 in Chicago of members of a group known as the & # 8220 ; Order of the Rising Sun, & # 8221 ; dedicated to making a new maestro race, who possessed 30 to 40 kgs of typhoid bacteriums civilizations for usage against H2O supplies in Chicago, St. Louis, and other Midwestern metropoliss ( Hardy 1998 ) . Harmonizing to one beginning, the two work forces, charged with confederacy to perpetrate slaying, were college pupils, one of whom, a 19-year-old had seemingly developed the civilization in a school research lab, where a measure was found. The two arrested members of this neo-Nazi organisation, one of whom was a local infirmary worker, had in their ownership detailed programs for dumping the deathly sources into the H2O supplies. The two had recruited six or seven members who were to be assisting them with the disease, but two of the recruits panicked and tipped off the constabulary. Many other terrorist efforts were made in the late twentieth century. Most of these terrorists were caught before they could transport out their program.

Biological and Chemical warfare started to go a primary method of war, and there were many efforts to cut back on the usage of Biological Weapons. The Hague Conference of 1899 made an effort to criminalize arms transporting toxicant gases ; the understanding to this lasted merely until World War I. In Geneva in 1925 a League of Nations understanding against chemical and biological war was signed ; it was non, nevertheless, ratified by the United States until 1975 ( Cass 1996 ) . The pact outlaws the first usage of such arms in warfare, but states by and large reserve the right to utilize them in revenge. Agreements wholly censoring chemical warfare have proved hard to accomplish.

A pact wholly censoring biological warfare was drawn up by the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1971 and approved by the United Nations General Assembly. Some 80 states signed the Biological Weapons Convention, which the United States ratified in 1974. This pact is alone because it outlaws a whole category of arms by most of the universe. Its effectivity, nevertheless, is still questionable ; advancement in familial technology has besides complicated this issue. At the Bush-Gorbachev meeting in June 1990, a pact was signed providing for both the United States and USSR to cut down supplies of chemical arms. In May 1991, 19 industrial states including the United States committed to follow controls on the export of 50 common chemicals used to fabricate these arms ( Cass 1996 ) .

Chemical and Biological arms have changed our modern society. With their great power, and their low cost, Biological and Chemical arms are really effectual and lifelessly. The development of these arms has had a long permanent consequence on today s society.

Plants Cited

Cole, Leonard A. The Spector of Biological Weapons. Scientific American. December

1996: Pg. 60-5

Cass, Edward C. Chemical and Biological Warfare. Microsoft Encarta 98. [ Electronic

Reference ] Seattle: Microsoft Corporation, 1993-97.

French friess, Amos G. Chemical Warfare. Chicago: Green Tree Press, 1960.

Hardy, Edward Henry. Biological Weapons FAQ [ Online ] Available

hypertext transfer protocol: //www.ocean.ic.net/ftp/doc/disaster/bio/biowfaq.html

Russell, Bob and Paul V. Graham. Early History of Chemical, Smoke, Flame, and

Biological Weapons [ Online ] Available

hypertext transfer protocol: //www.sanctum.com/realty/remax/hd/Early.html