Product Code Database
Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of or Pathogen such as bacteria, , insects, and Fungus with the intent to kill, harm or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. (2026). 9780123850157, Academic Cell. ISBN 9780123850157 Biological agent (often termed "bio-weapons", "biological threat agents", or "bio-agents") are living or replicating entities (i.e. , which are not universally considered "alive"). Entomological (insect) warfare is a subtype of biological warfare.
Biological warfare is subject to a forceful Social norm prohibition. Offensive biological warfare in international armed conflicts is a war crime under the 1925 Geneva Protocol and several international humanitarian law Treaty. Rule 73. The use of biological weapons is prohibited. , Customary IHL Database, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)/Cambridge University Press. Customary Internal Humanitarian Law, Vol. II: Practice, Part 1 (eds. Jean-Marie Henckaerts & Louise Doswald-Beck: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 1607–10. In particular, the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) bans the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological weapons.Alexander Schwarz, "War Crimes" in The Law of Armed Conflict and the Use of Force: The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law () (eds. Frauke Lachenmann & Rüdiger Wolfrum: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 1317. In contrast, Biodefense for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes is not prohibited by the BWC.Article I, Biological Weapons Convention. .
Biological warfare is distinct from warfare involving other types of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including nuclear warfare, chemical warfare, and radiological warfare. None of these are considered conventional weapons, which are deployed primarily for their explosion, kinetic energy, or incendiary potential.
Biological weapons may be employed in various ways to gain a strategic or tactical advantage over the enemy, either by threats or by actual deployments. Like some , biological weapons may also be useful as area denial weapons. These agents may be lethal or non-lethal, and may be targeted against a single individual, a group of people, or even an entire population. They may be developed, acquired, stockpiled or deployed by or by non-national groups. In the latter case, or if a nation-state uses it clandestinely, it may also be considered bioterrorism. (2026). 9780674016996, Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674016996
Biological warfare and chemical warfare overlap to an extent, as the use of produced by some living organisms is considered under the provisions of both the BWC and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Toxins and psychochemical weapons are often referred to as midspectrum agents. Unlike bioweapons, these midspectrum agents do not reproduce in their host and are typically characterized by shorter incubation periods.
A nation or group that can pose a credible threat of mass casualty has the ability to alter the terms under which other nations or groups interact with it. When indexed to weapon mass and cost of development and storage, biological weapons possess destructive potential and loss of life far in excess of nuclear, chemical or conventional weapons. Accordingly, biological agents are potentially useful as strategic deterrents, in addition to their utility as offensive weapons on the battlefield.[3]
As a tactical weapon for military use, a significant problem with biological warfare is that it would take days to be effective, and therefore might not immediately stop an opposing force. Some biological agents (smallpox, pneumonic plague) have the capability of person-to-person transmission via Bioaerosol 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. Worse still, such a weapon could "escape" the laboratory where it was developed, even if there was no intent to use it – for example by infecting a researcher who then transmits it to the outside world before realizing that they were infected. Several cases are known of researchers becoming infected and dying of Ebola,Akinfeyeva.] which they had been working with in the lab (though nobody else was infected in those cases) – while there is no evidence that their work was directed towards biological warfare, it demonstrates the potential for accidental infection even of careful researchers fully aware of the dangers. While containment of biological warfare 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.
Biological agents were extensively used in many parts of Africa from the sixteenth century AD, most of the time in the form of poisoned arrows, or powder spread on the war front as well as poisoning of horses and water supply of the enemy forces. In Borgu, there were specific mixtures to kill, hypnosis, make the enemy bold, and to act as an antidote against the poison of the enemy as well. The creation of biologicals was reserved for a specific and professional class of medicine-men.
When the United States entered the war, Allied resources were pooled at the request of the British. The US then established a large research program and industrial complex at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in 1942 under the direction of George W. Merck. The biological and chemical weapons developed during that period were tested at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Soon there were facilities for the mass production of anthrax spores, brucellosis, and botulism toxins, although the war was over before these weapons could be of much operational use.
The most notorious program of the period was run by the secret Imperial Japanese Army Unit 731 during the war, based at Pingfang in Manchuria and commanded by Lieutenant General Shirō Ishii. This biological warfare research unit conducted often fatal human experiments on prisoners, and produced biological weapons for combat use. (1989). 9780029353011, Free Press. ISBN 9780029353011 Although the Japanese effort lacked the technological sophistication of the American or British programs, it far outstripped them in its widespread application and indiscriminate brutality. Biological weapons were used against Chinese soldiers and civilians in several military campaigns. In 1940, the Japanese Army Air Force bombed Ningbo with ceramic bombs full of fleas carrying the bubonic plague. Many of these operations were ineffective due to inefficient delivery systems, although up to 200,000 people may have died. During the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign in 1942, around 1,700 Japanese troops died out of a total 10,000 Japanese soldiers who fell ill with disease when their own biological weapons attack rebounded on their own forces. (2004). 9781402020964, Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 9781402020964 (2026). 9781851094905, ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781851094905
During the final months of World War II, Japan planned to use plague as a biological weapon against US civilians in San Diego, California, during Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. The plan was set to launch on 22 September 1945, but it was not executed because of Japan's surrender on 15 August 1945.
Some British soldiers were also poisoned: causing the event to gain international attention.
In 1969, US President Richard Nixon decided to unilaterally terminate the offensive biological weapons program of the US, allowing only scientific research for defensive measures.Richard Nixon (1969), Statement on Chemical and Biological Defense Policies and Programs. . This decision increased the momentum of the negotiations for a ban on biological warfare, which took place from 1969 to 1972 in the United Nation's Conference of the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva. These negotiations resulted in the Biological Weapons Convention, which was opened for signature on 10 April 1972 and entered into force on 26 March 1975 after its ratification by 22 states.
Despite being a party and depositary to the BWC, the Soviet Union continued and expanded its massive offensive biological weapons program, under the leadership of the allegedly civilian institution Biopreparat. The Soviet Union attracted international suspicion after the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak killed approximately 65 to 100 people.
International restrictions on biological warfare began with the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits the use but not the possession or development of biological and chemical weapons in international armed conflicts. Upon ratification of the Geneva Protocol, several countries made reservations regarding its applicability and use in retaliation. Due to these reservations, it was in practice a "no-first-use" agreement only.
The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) supplements the Geneva Protocol by prohibiting the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological weapons. Having entered into force on 26 March 1975, the BWC was the first multilateral disarmament treaty to ban the production of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction. As of March 2021, 183 states have become party to the treaty. The BWC is considered to have established a strong global norm against biological weapons, which is reflected in the treaty's preamble, stating that the use of biological weapons would be "repugnant to the conscience of mankind". The BWC's effectiveness has been limited due to insufficient institutional support and the absence of any formal verification regime to monitor compliance.
In 1985, the Australia Group was established, a multilateral export control regime of 43 countries aiming to prevent the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons.
In 2004, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1540, which obligates all UN Member States to develop and enforce appropriate legal and regulatory measures against the proliferation of Chemical weapon, biological, radiological, and and their means of delivery, in particular, to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction to .
A technique called Clustered, Regularly Interspaced, Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR-Cas9) is now so cheap and widely available that scientists fear that amateurs will start experimenting with them. In this technique, a DNA sequence is cut off and replaced with a new sequence, e.g. one that codes for a particular protein, with the intent of modifying an organism's traits. Concerns have emerged regarding do-it-yourself biology research organizations due to their associated risk that a rogue amateur DIY researcher could attempt to develop dangerous bioweapons using genome editing technology.Millet, P., Kuiken, T., & Grushkin, D. (18 March 2014). Seven Myths and Realities about Do-It-Yourself Biology. Retrieved from http://www.synbioproject.org/publications/6676/
In 2002, when CNN went through Al-Qaeda's (AQ's) experiments with crude poisons, they found out that AQ had begun planning ricin and cyanide attacks with the help of a loose association of terrorist cells. The associates had infiltrated many countries like Turkey, Italy, Spain, France and others. In 2015, to combat the threat of bioterrorism, a National Blueprint for Biodefense was issued by the Blue-Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense. Also, 233 potential exposures of select biological agents outside of the primary barriers of the biocontainment in the US were described by the annual report of the Federal Select Agent Program.
Though a verification system can reduce bioterrorism, an employee, or a lone terrorist having adequate knowledge of a bio-technology company's facilities, can cause potential danger by using, without proper oversight and supervision, that company's resources. Moreover, it has been found that about 95% of accidents that have occurred due to low security have been done by employees or those who had a security clearance.
Most of the biosecurity concerns in synthetic biology are focused on the role of DNA synthesis and the risk of producing genetic material of lethal viruses (e.g. 1918 Spanish flu, polio) in the lab. Recently, the CRISPR/Cas system has emerged as a promising technique for gene editing. It was hailed by The Washington Post as "the most important innovation in the synthetic biology space in nearly 30 years." While other methods take months or years to edit gene sequences, CRISPR speeds that time up to weeks. Due to its ease of use and accessibility, it has raised a number of ethical concerns, especially surrounding its use in the biohacking space.
Synthetic biology provides the technical capacity to fundamentally alter the bioweapons landscape by enabling the reconstitution of an eradicated or extinct human pathogen. Reports highlight the immediate security concern of "re-creating known pathogen viruses". This capability drastically lowers the barrier to entry for acquiring highly dangerous agents. The deliberate synthesis of the Horsepox virus, an Orthopoxvirus, from commercially acquired DNA segments, stands as a critical academic demonstration of this dual-use capability. This experiment proved that highly complex pox viruses could be engineered.
The primary difficulty is not the production of the biological agent, as many biological agents used in weapons can be manufactured relatively quickly, cheaply and easily. Rather, it is the weaponization, storage, and delivery in an effective vehicle to a vulnerable target that pose significant problems.
For example, Bacillus anthracis is considered an effective agent for several reasons. First, it forms hardy , perfect for dispersal aerosols. Second, this organism is not considered transmissible from person to person, and thus rarely if ever causes secondary infections. A pulmonary anthrax infection starts with ordinary influenza-like symptoms and progresses to a lethal hemorrhagic mediastinitis within 3–7 days, with a fatality rate that is 90% or higher in untreated patients. Finally, friendly personnel and civilians can be protected with suitable .
Agents considered for weaponization, or known to be weaponized, include bacteria such as Bacillus anthracis, Brucella spp., Burkholderia mallei, Burkholderia pseudomallei, Chlamydophila psittaci, Coxiella burnetii, Francisella tularensis, some of the Rickettsiaceae (especially Rickettsia prowazekii and Rickettsia rickettsii), Shigella spp., Vibrio cholerae, and Yersinia pestis. Many viral agents have been studied and weaponized, including some of the Bunyaviridae (especially Rift Valley fever virus), , many of the Flaviviridae (especially Japanese encephalitis virus), Machupo virus, Coronaviruses, Marburg virus, Variola virus, and Yellow fever. Fungal agents that have been studied include Coccidioides spp.
Toxins that can be used as weapons include ricin, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, botulinum toxin, saxitoxin, and many . These toxins and the organisms that produce them are sometimes referred to as . In the United States, their possession, use, and transfer are regulated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Select Agent Program.
The former US biological warfare program categorized its weaponized anti-personnel bio-agents as either Lethal Agents ( Bacillus anthracis, Francisella tularensis, Botulinum toxin) or Incapacitating Agents ( Brucella suis, Coxiella burnetii, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Staphylococcal enterotoxin B).
Though herbicides are chemicals, they are often grouped with biological warfare and chemical warfare because they may work in a similar manner as or bioregulators. The Army Biological Laboratory tested each agent and the Army's Technical Escort Unit was responsible for the transport of all chemical, biological, radiological (nuclear) materials.
Biological warfare can also specifically target plants to destroy crops or defoliate vegetation. The United States and Britain discovered plant growth regulators (i.e., ) during the Second World War, which were then used by the UK in the counterinsurgency operations of the Malayan Emergency. Inspired by the use in Malaysia, the US military effort in the Vietnam War included a mass dispersal of a variety of herbicides, famously Agent Orange, with the aim of destroying farmland and defoliating forests used as cover by the Viet Cong. Sri Lanka deployed military defoliants in its prosecution of the Eelam War against Tamil insurgents.
During World War II, the US and Canada secretly investigated the use of rinderpest, a highly lethal disease of cattle, as a bioweapon.
In the 1980s Soviet Ministry of Agriculture had successfully developed variants of foot-and-mouth disease, and rinderpest against cows, African swine fever for pigs, and psittacosis for chickens. These agents were prepared to spray them down from tanks attached to airplanes over hundreds of miles. The secret program was code-named "Ecology".
During the Mau Mau Uprising in 1952, the poisonous latex of the African milk bush was used to kill cattle.
Many countries require their active-duty military personnel to get vaccinated for certain diseases that may potentially be used as a bioweapon such as anthrax, smallpox, and various other vaccines depending on the Area of Operations of the individual military units and commands.
In the largest biological weapons accident known—the anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in the Soviet Union in 1979—sheep became ill with anthrax as far as from the release point of the organism from a military facility in the southeastern portion of the city and still off-limits to visitors today, (see Sverdlovsk Anthrax leak).
Thus, a robust surveillance system involving human clinicians and veterinarians may identify a bioweapons attack early in the course of an epidemic, permitting the prophylaxis of disease in the vast majority of people (and animals) exposed but not yet ill.
For example, in the case of anthrax, it is likely that by 24–36 hours after an attack, some small percentage of individuals (those with the compromised immune system or who had received a large dose of the organism due to proximity to the release point) will become ill with classical symptoms and signs (including a virtually unique chest X-ray finding, often recognized by public health officials if they receive timely reports). The incubation period for humans is estimated to be about 11.8 days to 12.1 days. This suggested period is the first model that is independently consistent with data from the largest known human outbreak. These projections refine previous estimates of the distribution of early-onset cases after a release and support a recommended 60-day course of prophylactic antibiotic treatment for individuals exposed to low doses of anthrax. By making these data available to local public health officials in real time, most models of anthrax epidemics indicate that more than 80% of an exposed population can receive antibiotic treatment before becoming symptomatic, and thus avoid the moderately high mortality of the disease.
The traditional approach toward protecting agriculture, food, and water: focusing on the natural or unintentional introduction of a disease is being strengthened by focused efforts to address current and anticipated future biological weapons threats that may be deliberate, multiple, and repetitive.
The growing threat of biowarfare agents and bioterrorism has led to the development of specific field tools that perform on-the-spot analysis and identification of encountered suspect materials. One such technology, being developed by researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), employs a "sandwich immunoassay", in which fluorescent dye-labeled antibodies aimed at specific are attached to silver and gold nanowires.
In the Netherlands, the company TNO has designed BiosparQ (BiosparQ). This system would be implemented into the national response plan for bioweapon attacks in the Netherlands.
Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Israel are developing a different device called the BioPen, essentially a "Lab-in-a-Pen", which can detect known biological agents in under 20 minutes using an adaptation of the ELISA, a similar widely employed immunological technique, that in this case incorporates fiber optics.
Writers and activists:
(2026). 9780385334969, Delta. ISBN 9780385334969
Defensive operations
Medical countermeasures
In 2010 at The Meeting of the States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and Their Destruction in Geneva
the sanitary epidemiological reconnaissance was suggested as well-tested means for enhancing the monitoring of infections and parasitic agents, for the practical implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005). The aim was to prevent and minimize the consequences of natural outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases as well as the threat of alleged use of biological weapons against BTWC States Parties.
Public health and disease surveillance
Most classical and modern biological weapons' pathogens can be obtained from a plant or an animal which is naturally infected.Ouagrham-Gormley S. Dissuading Biological Weapons Proliferation. Contemporary Security Policy serial. December 2013;34(3):473–500. Available from: Humanities International Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed 28 January 2015.
Common epidemiological warnings
From most specific to least specific:
Bioweapon identification
The goal of biodefense is to integrate the sustained efforts of the national and homeland security, medical, public health, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement communities. Health care providers and public health officers are among the first lines of defense. In some countries private, local, and provincial (state) capabilities are being augmented by and coordinated with federal assets, to provide layered defenses against biological weapon attacks. During the Gulf War the United Nations activated a biological and chemical response team, Task Force Scorpio, to respond to any potential use of weapons of mass destruction on civilians.
List of programs, projects and sites by country
United States
United Kingdom
Soviet Union and Russia
Japan
Iraq
South Africa
Rhodesia
Canada
List of associated people
Bioweaponeers:
In popular culture
See also
Further reading
W. Seth Carus (2026). 9780160941481, US Defense Dept., National Defense University, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction. ISBN 9780160941481
((National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine)) (2026). 9780309465182, National Academies Press. ISBN 9780309465182
External links
|
|
