Biological warfare agents

Biological warfare is distinct from nuclear warfare, chemical warfare and radiological warfare, which together with biological warfare make up CBRN, the military acronym for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear, warfare using weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). None of these are considered conventional weapons.

Biological Warfare (BW), also known as germ warfare, is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses and fungii with intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. Biological weapons (often termed bio-weapons, biological agents or bio-agents) are living organisms or replicating entities (viruses are not universally considered "alive", neither are prions), that reproduce or replicate within their host victims, or toxins derived from living organisms. Entomological (insect) warfare is also considered a type of biological weapon, however insects are far more likely to be used as vectors of biological agents, than as weapons themselves, they might also be used to attack crops. There is an overlap between BW and chemical warfare, as the use of toxins produced by living organisms is considered under the provisions of both the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention.

A country or a terrorist group that can pose a credible threat of mass casualties has the ability to alter the terms on which other nations or groups interact with it. Biological weapons allow for the potential to create a level of destruction and loss of life far in excess of nuclear, chemical or conventional weapons, relative to their mass and cost of development and storage. Therefore, biological agents may be useful as strategic deterrents in addition to their utility as offensive weapons on the battlefield. The effects of such a weapon are now more evident, perhaps than any time previously, because of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Whole nations had their manufacturing capacity reduced to virtually nothing for many weeks, international travel virtually came to a halt, and the financial impact is still unknown but, in the case of the USA alone estimates range from runs into 10 to 22 trillion US dollars.

As a tactical weapon for military use, a significant problem with a BW attack is that it would take days, weeks or even months to be effective, and therefore might not immediately stop an opposing force. Some biological agents have the capability of person-to-person transmission via aerosolised respiratory droplets. This feature can be undesirable, as the agent(s) may be transmitted by this mechanism to unintended populations, including neutral or even friendly forces. While containment of BW is less of a concern for certain criminal or terrorist organizations, it remains a significant concern for the military and civilian populations of virtually all nations.

It has been suggested that rational state actors would never use biological weapons. The argument is that biological weapons cannot be controlled, meaning that the weapon could harm the offensive forces. An agent like smallpox or other airborne viruses would almost certainly spread worldwide and ultimately infect the user's home country.

It has also been suggested that the development of BW agents requires a degree of sophisticated science and technology. However, this argument does not necessarily apply to bacteria. For example, an anthrax agent can easily be produced and controlled in a high school laboratory at a very small cost. Also, using standard microbiological methods, bacteria can be suitably modified to be effective in only a narrow environmental range, and be rendered antibiotic resistant.

A biological weapon may be further used to bog down an advancing army making them more vulnerable to counterattack by the defending force. Note that these concerns generally do not apply to biologically derived toxins, which while classified as biological weapons, the organism that produces them is not used on the battlefield, so they present concerns similar to chemical weapons.

History

As early as 400 BC, Scythian archers infected their arrows by dipping them in decomposing bodies or in blood mixed with manure. Greek, Persian and Roman authors from 300 BC quote examples of the use of animal bodies to contaminate wells and other sources of water.

In the 12th century AD, during the Siege of Tortona, Barbarossa used the bodies of dead soldiers to poison wells. They also used primitive chemical warfare agents including sulfur dioxide. In the 14th century AD, during the Siege of Kaffa (1346), the attacking Tarter force hurled the bodies of plague victims into the city to attempt to inflict a plague epidemic upon the enemy.

During the French and Indian War (1754-1763) the British gave blankets from smallpox patients to the Native Americans to transmit the disease to the native tribes who would have had no immunological defence as the disease was unknown in North America.

During the American Civil War, a Confederate surgeon was arrested and charged with attempting to import yellow fever-infected clothes into the northern parts of the United States, again as a crude attempt at biological warfare. During World War I, the Germans developed anthrax, glanders, cholera, and the wheat fungus Claviceps spp. for use as biological weapons. They used Burkholderia mallei (the cause of glanders in horses) to infect horses being shipped from neutral countries to the UK and to France. They allegedly spread plague in St. Petersburg, Russia, Despite the fact that the Geneva Protocol of 1925 forbad the use of biological warfare agents the Germans, Japanese, UK, USSR and USA all experimented with a variety of germ warfare agents during WWII. Anthrax and botulinum toxin initially were investigated by the USA for use as weapons, and sufficient quantities of botulinum toxin and anthrax cattle cakes were stockpiled by June 1944 to allow limited retaliation if the Germans first used biological agents. The USSR developed Francisella tularensis as a weapon and used it in 1942 against German troops during the Battle for Stalingrad, there were over 100,000 victims, significantly extremely large numbers of Soviet troops were also infected. Unit 731 operated Japan's secret germ warfare program. Rumours of the unit's activities in northern China had been circulating in Russia and the West since the late 1930s, but the details finally emerged through captured documents and the testimony of Japanese prisoners of war, when the unit was captured by the Soviets in 1945. The unit, commanded by Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii, experimented with anthrax, dysentery, cholera, and plague on as many as 3,000 U.S., British, and Commonwealth POWs. The Japanese had used crude BW weapons against the Chinese when they invaded Manchuria, causing some 6,00 deaths. They also attempted to attack the US mainland using balloons carrying fleas infected Yersinia pestis. It was not until 1988 that the Japanese acknowledged what had happened.

The British certainly experimented with Bacillus anthracis the cause of anthrax, most famously with anthrax spore bombs on Gruinard Island off the coast of Scotland in 1942. They exploded bombs containing B. anthracis on the island near restrained sheep, the sheep started to die after three days. This demonstrated the effectiveness of the weapon, unfortunately the island was then heavily contaminated with anthrax spores and couldn't be used for nearly 50 years, in fact it took several years to decontaminate the soil using formaldehyde (formalin diluted in seawater to give a 4% formaldehyde) solution. At the same time the Ministry of Agriculture were making large volumes of anthrax vaccine at the Central Veterinary Laboratory at Weybridge in Surrey (in C-Block, framed in red, this is a recent picture and most of the buildings shown did not exist at that time, the webmaster actually worked in this building in the late sixties, but on animal health issues, not BW.

The UK also experimented with several other agents during WWII, including glanders. The work on glanders had been ongoing since the 1st World War, and was primarily concerned with the development of diagnostic tests and vaccines, and was conducted mainly at the Central Veterinary Laboratory, under the leadership of Norman H. Hole, in the Pathology Department.

Gruinard Island Anthrax Experiment (1942)

Cold War

The development of BW agents continued into the Cold War in the UK, USSR, USA, and certainly other countries. The UK unilaterally stopped biological weapon development in 1956, but continued work of a defensive nature at the Microbiological Research Establishment, Porton Down.

Operation Cauldron (1952)

Operation Cauldron was a series of secret biological warfare trials undertaken by the British government in 1952, in collaboration with the US. Scientists from Porton Down and the Royal Navy were involved in releasing biological agents, including pneumonic and bubonic plague, brucellosis and tularaemia and testing the effects of the agents on caged monkeys and guinea pigs. While the tests were carried out by Britain, the tests were a joint Anglo-US-Canadian operation, with a US Navy Lieutenant Commander taking part. US documents showed that the operation was not purely defensive, as later claimed; at a joint 1958 conference in Canada the US chemical corps minuted "it was agreed ... studies should be continued on aerosols ... all three countries should concentrate on the search for incapacitating and new-type lethal agents". During the trial a Fleetwood trawler, "Carella" ignored the exclusion order and was contaminated with Yersinia pestis the cause of plague.

Operation Harness was a series of three-month secret biological warfare trials carried out by the government of the United Kingdom in the Caribbean, off The Bahamas, in December 1948 - February 1949, again in collaboration with the US. Animals were exposed to Bacillus anthracis, Francisella tularensis, and Brucella spp. bacteria on inflatable dinghies offshore but the results were found meaningless. Bacillus subtilis was used as a non hazardous tracer organism.

The operation did not go well, for several reasons. The sea was rougher than expected, making it impossible for the dinghies with animal crates to be picked up by craft converted for the operation. This meant the tests were carried out just off the shore of an island, endangering inhabitants. Protective suits were found to be so heavy that those using them had to undergo a lengthy acclimatisation process to avoid heat exhaustion.

Sampling equipment was accidentally activated by local radio signals and conditions at sea made it impossible to accurately measure the amount of bacteria in the atmosphere.

500 of 600 sheep were found to be unsuitable and were shot. Guinea pigs were found to be "disastrous". 234 rhesus macaques had to be treated for pneumonia before being used.

The official report found that the techniques used were over complicated, and said that it was "uncommonly lucky" that only one of the staff was infected.

Operation Ozone (1954)

It is important to recognise that this film of the Operation OZONE Biological Warfare experiments should be watched together with the film Operation CAULDRON 1952, as CAULDRON shows the experimental procedure used in OZONE in greater detail. Again this was a collaboration with the US.

Dragonfly helicopter spraying BW simulant zinc cadmium sulphide on Lulworth Range August 1957

As well as using actual micro-organisms, experiments were done using particulate tracer chemicals, in this case zinc cadmium sulphide. Zinc cadmium sulfide (ZnCdS) fluoresces strongly under UV-light, and the particle size was similar to some bacteria. While generally considered insoluble and stable in the atmosphere, it contains cadmium, which can accumulate in the body, particularly the kidneys, and is toxic it is classified as a carcinogen, potentially causing harm if inhaled or ingested in significant amounts.

The Lyme Bay Trials

The Lyme Bay Trials were conducted in the south Dorset area between 1963-75. They took place under the control of the Microbiological Research Establishment (MRE), Porton Down, Wiltshire. Numbering scores of individual trials, where both live and dead bacteria, and simulants were sprayed from ships and aircraft off the coast and from the air onto large sections of the surrounding countryside. Monitored by mobile detection sites at over 60 designated sites. Four types of bacteria were used: Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis [B. atrophaeus var. globigii], Klebsiella aerogenes and Serratia marcescens. In latter years clusters of health abnormalities downwind from the test sites have been reported. .