BW/ Genetic Engineering and BW

The up’s and down’s of scientific advance

Whenever new findings are presented to the world, people come up with positive and negative usages of this new finding.

This is also the case for genetic engineering. One the one hand it can be used to “cure”some serious diseases  (see Steffi's blog form information ) on the other hand it also opens up new possibilities for the field of biological warfare. Below some of those possibilities are listed. It is however not confirmed that such biological weapons really exist. It really is a mere description of possibilities.

For one, it may possible to create a biological weapon which targets a specific person’s genome. This agent may spread through populations showing minimal or no symptoms, yet it would be fatal to the intended target.Just imagine how this could be used to intimidate people. I guess the furniture emerging from such a period of intimidation would make Biedermeier furniture look dull.

Also viruses which until now only used animals as their hosts could be genetically modified and developed to infect humans. The Ebola Virus would be a candidate for such a genetic modification.

As my heading also includes the up’s: genetic manipulation of viruses could also be used to create vaccines that provide immunity against multiple diseases with a single treatment. Although it needs to be added that "provoking" immunity be being infected with a "weak" modification of a disease is not universely perceived as being positive.

In this sence I can only recommend you to live fast and die young ;)
No I am just kidding: I wanna stress this again, these scientific findings aim to raise awareness and are not in progress!

BW/ Japan's dark chapters

Japan's dark chapters

Of course when war is waging, terrible things happen. But what happened in Japan between 1930 and the end WWII can, if at all, only be described as inhumane cruelty.

Ever heard of Unit 731, or of people being dissected alive?  In this blog post I want to talk about something which should carry the same slogan as the Holocaust : NEVER AGAIN!

The dark chapters of Japan start with a man called Shiro Ishii.

He grew up as a son of a privileged family and soon developed an arrogance which led him to the belief that people below him were worth less. His major goal in life was to become the father of biological warfare. After obtaining a high rank in the Japanese military he started his research at the Tokyo Medical School and later became head of Japan’s bioweapon programme during WWII. When Japanese forces occupied parts of China he saw his chance for creating an institution, in which he could conduct his experiments. This institution, which later become known as Unit 731, was built in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and carried the official name Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department. He chose the area and name to keep the public attention away from his laboratory.

In his laboratory Shiro Ishii and a large team of medical researchers experimented with biological warfare agents. They experimented on humans. Prisoners, which were kept in the middle and most secret part of the building, were injected with viruses. Then the medical researchers opened them up alive to see how their body reacted. The researchers referred to their prisoners as maturas which could be loosely translated into log. This shows that those prisoners were no longer perceived as humans.

The aim of Shiro Ishii’s programme was to attack Japan's counterparts, especially the US, with weapons they had never seen before.

Along with experiments on biological warfare agents Shiro Ishii was also searching for an effective delivery system – and he found it in fleas. A large quantity of rats was kept at Unit 731 as a flee factory. Then nearby villages were infected and again Japanese researchers went to those villages and performed vivisections on the victims. They even distributed chocolate with plague-infected fleas to little children! Also wells were poisoned to study the effects of typhus and cholera outbreaks.

Epidemics persisted for years and continued to kill more than 30,000 people until 1947, long after the Japanese had surrendered.

But what happened to Shiro Ishii and his team after the surrender? Were they found guilty for their warfare crimes?

No. They cleverly managed to get the US to grant them immunity of prosecution in exchange of information about their research on humans. The US believed, especially with the prospect of the Cold War, that they could profit from this information. Shiro Ishii died, well above his sixties, due to natural causes. His successor, Masaji Kitano, even published some research articles where he simply exchanged the term humans with monkeys. Actually most of Ishii’s team went on to hold high academic and political positions after the WWII and were far from receiving punishment.

today Unit 731 is a museum

Until this day the Japanese government  refused to apologize for the events in Unit 731. The problem is  that unlike Nazi human experimentation ,which is extremely well documented, the activities of Unit 731 are known only from the testimonies which apparently can not be used to verify the happenings. However, in October 2003, the Prime Minister stated that, while the current Japanese government does not possess any records related to Unit 731, they recognize the gravity of the matter and will publicize any records that are located in the future.

If you want to get further information I recommend you watch this documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgtIyNRv3g8

here is the transcript: http://www.targeted-individuals-europe.com/?q=node/7

BW/ What is out there?

What is out there?

So far the biological warfare agents I talked about were all kind of ”there“. They were not created for the specific purpose to spread an epidemic. At the dawn of the 20^th century, as science was making huge leaps forward, also biological weapons became more dangerous.

The idea of actually creating microorganisms that can be weaponized first arose.

Agents are commonly selected because they:

• ·         are highly toxic
• ·         are easily obtainable
• ·         are inexpensive to produce
• ·         are easily transferable from person to person
• ·         can be dispersed in aerosol form
• ·         have no known vaccine

So here are two tables, which give you kind of an idea what we are dealing with.

	Microbe	Natural Environment	Target Host	Mode of Contraction	Diseases/Symptoms
	AnthraxBacillus anthracis	Soil	Humans, Domestic Animals	Open Wounds, Inhalation	Pulmonary Anthrax Septicemia, Flu-like symptoms
	Clostridium botulinum	Soil	Humans	Contaminated Food or Water,	Inhalation
	Clostridium perfringens	Intestines of humans and other animals, Soil	Humans, Domestic Animals	Open Wounds	Gas gangrene, Severe Abdominal Cramps, Diarrhea
	RICINProtein Toxin	Extracted from Castor Bean Plants	Humans	Contaminated Food or Water, Inhalation, Injection	Severe Abdominal Pain, Watery and Bloody Diarrhea, Vomiting, Weakness, Fever, Cough, and Pulmonary Edema
	Smallpox	Eradicated from Nature, Now Obtained from Laboratory Stockpiles	Humans	Direct Contact with Bodily Fluids or Contaminated Objects, Inhalation	Persistent Fever, Vomiting, Rash on Tongue and in Mouth, Rash and Bumps on Skin

source: http://biology.about.com/od/biotechnologycloning/a/biological-weapons.htm

Crucial biological agents (Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia, USA)

Disease	Pathogen	Abused1
Category A (major public health hazards)
Anthrax	Bacillus antracis (B)	First World War
		Second World War
		Soviet Union, 1979
		Japan, 1995
		USA, 2001
Botulism	Clostridium botulinum (T)	–
Haemorrhagic fever	Marburg virus (V)	Soviet bioweapons programme
	Ebola virus (V)	–
	Arenaviruses (V)	–
Plague	Yersinia pestis (B)	Fourteenth-century Europe
		Second World War
Smallpox	Variola major (V)	Eighteenth-century N. America
Tularemia	Francisella tularensis (B)	Second World War
Category B (public health hazards)
Brucellosis	Brucella (B)	–
Cholera	Vibrio cholerae (B)	Second World War
Encephalitis	Alphaviruses (V)	Second World War
Food poisoning	Salmonella, Shigella (B)	Second World War
		USA, 1990s
Glanders	Burkholderia mallei (B)	First World War
		Second World War
Psittacosis	Chlamydia psittaci (B)	–
Q fever	Coxiella burnetti (B)	–
Typhus	Rickettsia prowazekii (B)	Second World War
Various toxic syndromes	Various bacteria	Second World War

source:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1326439/

The biological agent most prevalent in people's minds is Anthrax. Because of that I will go into a bit more detail about this particular agent.

Anthrax, which is caused by the Bacillus anthracis, is very lethal and can affect animals and humans. The disease is spread via spores. And these spores are actually what make it so dangerous. They are able to survive in harsh conditions for decades or even centuries. They can even be found on Antarctica! When those spores are inhaled, indigested or come into contact with our skin they can be reactivated and cause infections in our lungs, our bowles or our skin. It is most lethal when the infection occurs in the lung. Although it can be treated with antiobiotics most people die within 3 to 6 days. The disease is said to be more frequent in areas with poor hygiene. This doesn't reduce the occurence of this disease to countires which typically come to our mind when we think of poor hygiene: 7 people died of this disease in Germany in 2010. Having said that it must be added that those people got the disease via infected heroin.

BW/ Smallpox blankets for Native Americans

Smallpox blankets for Native Americans 

After the French and Indian War (1754-62), today Ohio became British territory which the local Native Americans were not happy about at all. Before that they were under French rule but while the French tried to make alliences with the Native Americans the British mostly conducted a repression policy. This is why several local tribes formed an alliance which rebelled against the British rule. The rebellion was lead by a man called Pontiac and therefore become known as Pontiac’s Rebellion.

The biological warfare assault is said to have occurred at Fort Pitt. After the rebellion had begun many of the settlers fled to the safety of Fort Pitt. The fort was attacked in July 1973 and although it was too strong to be taken the Native Americans held under siege for more than a month. The situation inside the crowded fort was getting worse by the day. So, unlike a famous Commander called Amherst had anticipated, the Native Americans started to pose a serious threat to the British rule. This is why he started to look for more drastic ways to fight the enemy party. In a well-documented correspondence with a Colonel called Bouquet he suggested distributing blankets infected with smallpox to the Native Americans in order to defeat them.

Amherst wrote on about June 29, 1763: "Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them."

Bouquet agreed, replying to Amherst on July 13: "I will try to inoculate the bastards with some blankets that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself."

Amherst responded on July 16:"You will do well to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as wellas every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race."

Apparently officers at Fort Pitt, on their own initiatives, tried to give two blankets and a handkerchief infected with smallpox two Native American representatives.

It is know for a fact that during the Pontiac rebellion many Native Americans died from smallpox.

But even though there are two cases in which the British intentions of using biological warfare can be clearly deduced from, historians argue whether the attempt was carried out and whether it was carried out successfully. The reasoning behind this is that firstly many of the Native Americans were infected with smallpox before the Fort Pitt incident took place. Eyewitnesses reported that Native American soldiers were infected by the disease after having attacked white settlements. The effectiveness of the disease can also be traced back to the relative novelty of the smallpox virus for the Native population. While people in Europe had already developed some kind of immune defense the immune system of a Native American was more vulnerable in this respect.

Whether the British succeeded in carrying out their plan or not, the idea itself is cruel enough to not leave them with a clean slate.

BW/ The Beginnings

The beginnings

Cheeeeerss!!  

What could be more relaxing than having a beer with your friends? After the day is done you can finally lean back, clink glasses and enjoy your company.

However, if I stuck you into a time machine and catapulted you back to the Middle Ages you probably wouldn’t feel as relaxed. Back in the Dark Ages it was quite common to poison people you wanted to get rid of. It was an easy exercise to slip poison into your drinking buddy’s cup. This is where the habit of clinking glasses comes from. As people were anxious about getting poisoned they knocked there cups together as forcefully as possible so the beer would spill over into all the other cups as well. So much for a relaxing glass of beer.

The beginnings of biological warfare though date back even further! In ancient times the common practice of biological warfare included poisoning arrow tips, tainting water supplies with herbs, fungus and - well, let’s just say it – shit. This way entire cities suffered horrible diarrhea and hallucinations.

The first most big scale event in the history of biological warfare occurred in the 14^th and caused an epidemic which wiped out half of Europe. The epidemic I am talking about is the most severe, deadly and horrifying human history had to see: The  plague! Apparently the disease had its origin in North East Asia and entered Europe through the city of Caffa which lies on the Crimean peninsula. (today’s Ukraine) In the 13^th century Caffa was purchased by the Republic of Genoa and becoming a major trading point. The city was flourishing until it gave refuge to other Italians from the nearby city of Tana who had a dispute with Muslim Mongolians. Following this event the Mongolians, under Janibeg, besieged the city. The besiegers were already partly infected with the plague and so they resorted to catapulting infected bodies over the walls of Caffa.  The Genoese Gabriele de’ Mussi, a contemporary, describes the event as follows:

“The dying Tartars, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease, and realizing that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege. But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults1 and lobbed into the city in the hope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside.2 What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city, and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could in the sea. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the Tartar army. Moreover one infected man could carry the poison to others, and infect people and places with the disease by look alone. No one knew, or could discover, a means of defense.”

Due to the enorme infectiousness of the disease many of the inhabitants of Caffa fell ill. As Caffa was a port city it is believed that some Genoese could flee back to Italy and brought the plague into Europa. This is possible. Still it is not the siege of Caffa which has to account for the epidemic in Europe. It is rather a time correlation than a cause and effect relationship. The plague would have spread anyway, as trade ships were frequently commuting between the Black Sea and Europe’s harbors. Aboard on those ships were rats, which are one of the most essential disease transmitters. This being said the siege of Caffa still accounts for biological warfare.

BW/ What is biological warfare?

What is biological warfare?

This post will explain the concept of biological warfare and look at some of its terminology.

Fear of the unknown. Of the uncontrollable. Of the silent creeping death. Upon all the other strains biological and chemical warfare also have tremendous physiological impact. Although equal in the horror they can cause, from a scientific point of view, the distinction between biological and chemical warfare is quite obvious.

A chemical weapon is any weapon that uses a manufactured chemical to kill people.

A biological weapon either contains a living microorganism like the plague bacteria, or a toxin, which are the naturally occurring poisons that microorganisms produce. Toxins can also be synthesized. The microorganism or toxin used in manufacturing a biological weapon is commonly referred to as agent. Biological agents are targeted at humans, animals or crop. Widespread illness and death, food shortages or an environmental catastrophe are realistic scenarios in the world of biological or germ warfare.

Biological weapons have been referred to as the poor man’s nuclear bomb. And apparently it is true; producing an effective agent can be quite cheap. However, a biological weapon generally consists of two parts – an agent and a delivery mechanism. The manufacture of the delivery mechanism poses a greater difficulty. 

BW/ Introduction

BIOLOGICAL WARFARE

Do we still have to worry about it? How likely is it that a deadly virus will endager the human species?

Well, I don't want to advertise personal bunkers here but I do feel a bit uneasy after having done some reserach on this topic.


I will start off bluntly and in all honesty. Upon trying to find a good and befitting introduction into the topic of biological warfare I discovered a site with quotes. First I was going to pick a quote about war to start off. Classic- I know. But how go from there? Why is there such a thing as war? Why do people fight people? Don’t worry I am not going to indulge in a philosophical discussion on humanity. Well, oddly enough I found that the topic page of the brainyquote site sums up those reasons quite nicely.

So, after accepting the fact that fighting and warfare is just something that has accompanied human development from its humble beginnings right up to the 21^st century, we can look at the how of warfare in greater detail.

There are basically two types of warfare: symmetric and asymmetric warfare. Symmetric warfare means that the involved opponents are close to equal in power, resources and weaponry. Every opponent knows, more or less, what he can expect from his counterparts. Your “Game of Thrones” swordfights are symmetric warfare.  The term asymmetric warfare is used when opponents have unequal military resources and the “weaker” opponent uses unconventional weapons and tactics to fight the enemy. The term is frequently used to describe guerilla warfare, terrorism and biological warfare.

Throughout this page I want to give you an insight into the topic of biological warfare. First of all the term itself will be explained in more detail. Then we will take a walk through the negative aspects of scientific inventiveness and look at the dirty beginnings of biological warfare up to the 20^th century. Following that we will look at common biological weapons like smallpox, anthrax and typhus and see how they affect their victims. After that we will –just for a few minutes- stand in the shoes of a terrorist, look at the wanted properties of biological weapons, and choose the most dangerous one. Next we will look at biological warfare incidents that have occurred between the 20^th century and now. Then we will try to find out how serious the threat of biological warfare is today and what protection measurements governments have undertaken. Last but not least there will be one entry discussing the theory that AIDS was initially invented as a biological weapon.

I hope it will be interesting and thrilling for you to learn about biological warfare on this site.

Other blogs that relate to my topic and might therefore be interesting to have a look at are:
Military technology by Flavius LeahuStem cells  by Stefanie Edlbauer

Cheers,

Anna

Audio Abstract

Abstract for the paper entitled 

Biological Weapons: A National Security Problem that Requires a Public Health Response

Link:   http://opr.princeton.edu/papers/opr0104.pdf

Audio Abstract