The Role of Scientific Discovery in the Establishment of the First Biological Weapons Programmes

Abstract

This report addresses the scientific and technological discoveries in the biological sciences that enabled the early interest in biological warfare to move from hurling infected corpses into enemy cities in ancient times, through use of small cultures of animal pathogens to sabotage enemy livestock in World War I, to the origins of organised military biological weapons (BW) programmes directed at humans, animals, and plants in the inter-war period. It builds on Dando¿s 1999 paper: The Impact of the Development of Modern Biology and Medicine on the Evolution of Offensive Biological Warfare Programs in the Twentieth Century.1 For the historical aspects of biological warfare programmes this report primarily draws from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute volume: Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945.2