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The great mystery of biological warfare,
in the end, was why it had never been used.' This sentence
is near the end of The Biology of Doom, where the
author gives us a series of explanations for this
affirmation: boomerang effect, irreproducibility of combat
visions, moral repugnance... And he demonstrates that none
of these hold true. Unfortunately, it is known—and the
author indeed reports it—that biological warfare using
plague and smallpox has been used not only in the past,
but also more recently by the Japanese army in World War
II.
Ed Regis seems to consider biological
weapons as an advance rather than a threat as he writes:
"Why was it worse to die from a disease (which people did
continually in the normal course of events) than from
bullets, bombs or nuclear radiation? [...] Indeed the case
could be made that biological weapons were less morally
objectionable than other types since they were in an
obvious way far more 'natural' than high explosives or
nuclear bombs, neither of which existed in nature.
Pathogens were component parts of planet Earth, items that
contributed to, expanded, and enlarged the sum total of
planet Earth's biodiversity. Biological warfare was in
effect 'green' warfare (sic)...."
But precisely because it is so 'natural', it is difficult
to tell whether it has been used on many more unpublicized
occasions. This is the greatest danger of biological
warfare: it can be started unobtrusively, it can be a war
without a name, without a declaration of war, and without
any means to stop it. But the author repeatedly alludes to
the 'natural' aspect of biological warfare as if to find
excuses for this most dangerous type of weapon. People are
always more afraid of artifice than of nature, while the
latter can be the most dangerous, because it is
pre-adapted to life. Regis uses the code words
'biodiversity' and 'green' to tame the idea of deadly
nature.
In fact, this book, written in the
lively style of an American investigative journalist, does
not convey the horror it pretends to feel against the
biology of doom, but tends to display it as a milder form
of war. It is a book that is a pleasure to read,
unfortunately. The Japanese effort is depicted as an evil
deed of the same type as Mengele's atrocities. The
American effort, however, while considered morally
objectionable, is mainly displayed as a technical
undertaking, which would fit very well in a Spielberg
movie. The reader is fascinated by the accounts of the
extraordinary 8-ball sphere at Fort Detrick in Maryland
where real scale experiments were made with animals and
even human volunteers. In spite of vivid descriptions of
the tests and the effects of bacterial diseases (mostly
anthrax), plenty of anecdotes make the account easy to
read... as a fiction. The reader is entertained by stories
of the CIA, illegal drugs, a suicide, stolen documents,
code names, American spies saving horrible Japanese agents
to get their hand on their secrets all the elements of a
Graham Greene novel.
No real horror in Regis's book, but it is common that
books are written with sales in mind rather than for the
sake of their intellectual content. However, the subject
of biological warfare is a serious one, and I would have
expected the author to have taken a more objective view
with a real discussion of ethical issues. What should or
can be done when we face a situation where biological
warfare becomes increasingly easier to carry out? What
role does the scientist play in helping to develop
biological weapons? These moral questions are not even
mentioned.
The book is limited to the Japanese and
American bio-warfare programs on bacteria not viruses and
even so the author is at pains to demonstrate that the
pathogens can be used in a controlled way. But the book
also demonstrates the irreproducibility of the results
obtained. Living organisms, in contrast to chemicals or
radioactive materials, multiply and it is extremely
difficult to keep them at bay. At Gruinard island, which
had been used as a test site for Bacillus anthracis,
spores survived for more than 40 years. The soil had to be
decontaminated with extremely reactive sporicidal
chemicals, thus demonstrating that biological warfare is,
in fact, not such a 'green' type of war after all.
Finally, bio-weapons recombine and change their
properties, which could render them uncontrollable even
for their creators.
The story told is from the past as if
nothing went on after President Nixon killed the American
bio-warfare program and signed the biological weapons
treaty in early 1975. But the reader is left unsatisfied,
with many open questions. Why were scientists at Fort
Detrick still working with B. anthracis until as
late as 1988? Where are the viruses in this story? What
about the Russian and the Iraqi programs? And what about
the consequences of publishing the sequence of the
smallpox virus genome on the world-wide-web, making it
readily available to everybody interested in developing
bio-weapons? the last was again excused with arguments
including the preservation of biodiversity. It is this
attitude of being righteous the same that we find in The
Biology of Doom that is leading to disaster. The
road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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