A History Of Biological Warfare From 300 B.C.E. To The Present

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A History of Biological Warfare from 300 B.C.E. to the Present

Thomas J. Johnson

 

 

Associate Professor of Respiratory Care and Health Sciences

Division Director, Respiratory Care, School of Health Professions

 

 

In Sophocles' play Philoctetes (404 B.C.E.), he describes the main

character Philoctetes as wounded by a poisoned arrow on his way to

the Trojan War. This is the stuff of legend and myth but maybe legend

has its origins in reality. We get our English word for poison or

toxin form the Greek word toxikon, which in turn is derived from the

Greek word for arrow, toxon. Herodotus, a Greek historian of the

fifth century B.C.E. describes the Scythians archers of the Black Sea

as employing poison-tipped arrows. According to Herodotus, Scythians

used the decomposed bodies of several venomous adders indigenous to

their region, mixed human blood and dung into sealed vessels and

buried this mixture until it was sufficiently putrefied. This poison

would certainly contain the bacteria of gangrene and tetanus

(Clostridium perfringins and Clostridium tetani) while the venom

would attack red blood cells, nervous system and could even induce

respiratory paralysis. A Scythian archer had a range of over 1,600

feet and could launch about twenty arrows per minute.1

 

What is biological or bio-warfare? It is the use of biological

pathogens (bacteria, viruses, fungi, and toxins derived from living

organisms to kill or incapacitate one's enemies. So, from poisoned

arrows (Scythians, and later the Viet Cong guerrillas) to poisoned

wells (Sparta, Persia, Rome and others) to bombs with deadly bacteria

(Japan, United States, Soviet Union and Iraq), the intentional use of

biowarfare has been around for centuries.

 

During the siege of the city-state of Athens by the Spartans in the

Peloponnesian War a devastating epidemic broke out which killed

thousands of Athenians. The famous historian Thucydides, writing

between 431 B.C. and 404 B.C. reported, " it was supposed that Sparta

poisoned the wells. " 2 Even though Sparta won the Peloponnesian War,

its reputation was destroyed. This may be the first reason that

biowarfare agents have not been employed except in isolation and then

by rogue states. Excellent propaganda then and now casts a shadow of

guilt that can obscure the science. Interest in the Peloponnesian War

persists until this day. A New York Times article (Sunday, August 18,

1996) suggested that the " plague of Athens " during the Peloponnesian

War was Ebola.3 The article suggests that Athenian reinforcements

from Africa carried the virus to the city-state. Even this is

unlikely given the slow transportation from Africa and the incubation

period of the Ebola virus. Of course the reinforcements may have

brought a regimental pet, an African Green Monkey. The Green Monkey

is the reservoir for the Marlburg virus, a close relative of the

Ebola virus. It may never be known what the causative organism of the

epidemic was.

 

Most people remember Hannibal as the great leader of the Cathagian

Army. His employment of war elephants that crossed the Alps to attack

Rome is an example of leadership, logistics and strategic

generalship. Very few even know that he fought naval engagements.

However in 190 B.C., he demonstrated both naval leadership and

effective bio-warfare. In that year he won a great naval battle over

Eumenes II of Pergomon using bio-warfare. Hannibal had earthen jars

filled with venomous snakes, covered and taken on board his ships.

When the enemy ships came within range, the earthen jars with the

snakes were hurled at the enemy vessels where they broke discharging

their terrifying occupants among the enemy sailors. The resulting

chaos was effective and Hannibal won easily.4

 

One may debate whether or not even Hannibal's use of war elephants

constituted bio-warfare. The Romans had horses that may have been

made skittish by the size, smell and trumpeting noise of Hannibal's

elephants. Hannibal may have heard how the Persian king Cyrus

defeated the cavalry of King Croesus in 548 B.C. by placing a rank of

camels in front of his infantry. Croesus's cavalry horses were

panicked by the smell and sight of the unfamiliar animal.5

 

Later, in the 14th Century, the Tartar army besieging the city of

Kaffa (present day Feodosia in the Ukraine) used a combination of

psychological warfare and bio-warfare.6 The ubiquitous rat and an

outbreak of the bubonic plague among their own troops worked for the

Tartar army besieging Kaffa in 1346. Tartars catapulted bodies of

plague victims over the walls of Kaffa in an attempt to initiate an

epidemic upon the residents.5 The bubonic plague is primarily a

disease of rats and other rodents. Only when they become very

numerous in close contact with humans does the plague arise in man.

The bites of the fleas (in this case the Oriental rat flea,

Xenopsylla cheopsis) transmit the disease to humans. Most probably,

the fleas on the rats scavenging in the Tartar camp probably traveled

on their hosts into the city Kaffa before the first Tartar died of

the plague.

 

The defenders subsequently contracted the bubonic plague and

abandoned the city to the Tartars. Merchants from Genoa had been

trading in the Crimean port when the Tartars attacked. The surviving

Genoese returned to Italy via their ships and most likely brought the

plague to Europe. In October of 1347, the merchant ships docked in

Genoa.7 The Genoese ships must have had stowaways -- rats. The rats

with their fleas disembarked and proceeded to change the face of

Europe forever.8

 

Chroniclers of the period report that the plague had spread from

Italy to Spain and northward to France. By 1350, the plague was in

Scandinavia. In more densely populated areas or cities such as Paris,

Oxford and London almost 66% of the population was killed. Other,

more isolated regions such as Bohemia were virtually unscathed since

traders rarely ventured into them.

 

Medieval Europe responded with many reactions. A few people decided

that since life was short, indulging in pleasures while you could was

the order of the day. Others saw the plague as the Christian God's

punishment for sin. The power of the Catholic Church increased in the

face of imminent death. Some Christians believed that self-

desecration would make up for past sins. One movement, the

Flagellants believed that whipping themselves and others would atone

for sins. Besides self-abuse, they scapegoat others, specifically the

Jews. This led to mass persecutions. Of course, none of these actions

altered the course of the epidemics of the plague.

 

The result of the introduction of the bubonic plague into Europe was

devastating. There were too few people to work the land, estates lost

financial power that, in turn, provided an opportunity for kings to

centralize power. Teachers and tutors in universities died and, with

them, learning. Hence the term Dark Ages.

 

Without an idea of what caused the disease or how it spread, people

were helpless. The University of Paris Faculty of Medicine reported

in March of 1345 that the alignment of planets caused the plague.

Others proposed that the night air, swamps, or the burning of bodies

during war poisoned the air. As a result, the plague would wreak

havoc on Europe for the next four hundred years.9

 

After an incubation period of 2 to 10 days, there is an abrupt onset

of symptoms. These range from high fevers, headaches, muscle pain to

nausea and vomiting. The bubo develops in the groin as the legs are

the most commonly flea bitten part of the body. Dark skin eruptions

often encircle the neck. The plague victim develops shock or low

blood pressure with an ashen pallor. As the disease progresses limbs

become black from gangrene. The plague is not transmissible from

person-to-person unless the microorganism invades the victim's lungs

in late stages of the disease where it becomes the pulmonic form of

the disease. Untreated, the plague has a mortality rate of

approximately 60%. The pulmonic plague has a mortality rate of nearly

100%.10

 

In both story and song the bubonic plague is present in Western

literature. Robert Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamlien is one better-

known story.11 Consider too this familiar children's rhyme:

 

 

Ring around the rosy

(The feverous face encircled with pustules)

A pocket full of posies

(Flowers placed on the foul smelling victim)

Ashes, ashes

(Septic shock that precedes death, wearing of mourning ashes, or

burning of the corpses of the plague victims?)

All fall down

(The victim dies)

 

This seemingly innocuous childhood rhyme comes to us from the

children of 17th century London England. It is a folk memory of the

plague.12

 

This was not the last time that the bodies of plague victims were

used in warfare. Again in 1710, the Russian Army besieging the Swedes

holding Reval in Estonia tried the catapulting of corpses of those

who died of the plague. Again the success of the tactic was due in no

small way to the panic and hysteria that the plague induced in

people.13

 

The first recoded " weaponized " biological agent in North America

occurred during the French and Indian Wars (1754 to 1767). The agent

was smallpox. The method of delivery was blankets not bombs. Sir

Jeffrey Amherst who was the commander of British forces in North

America formulated a plan to " reduce, " as he so clinically expressed

it, the size of the Native American tribes that were hostile to the

crown.

 

In late Spring 1763 there was an outbreak of smallpox in the garrison

of Fort Pitt. This produced a bacterial delivery system that the

medical world would now refer to as a " fomite, " an inanimate object

capable of naturally containing or transporting an infectious agent.

Blankets and a handkerchief laden with the pus or dried scabs from

the smallpox sores of the infected British troops were collected in

Fort Pitt's infirmary. These blankets and handkerchiefs were usually

burned. This time they were collected and saved.14

 

On June 24, 1763, one of Amherst's subordinates a Captain Ecuyer

ceremoniously gave the blankets and one handkerchief to the Indians

invited to confer at the Fort. History does repeat itself. This is

uncannily similar to the Trojan Horse, the " infection " which brought

down Troy. Captain Ecuyer recorded rather chillingly in his diary, " I

hope it will have the desired effect. " 15 This " gift " may have had its

intended effect. Native American tribes in the Ohio Valley suffered a

smallpox epidemic. It must be noted that the immunologically naive

people are most vulnerable to diseases not indigenous to their

region. Native American tribes across America experienced serious

losses due to their contact with Europeans and their African slaves.

Additionally, the use of fomites to transmit smallpox is inefficient

compared to respirable aerosolized particles. Imagine how effective

Amherst and Ecuyer would have been if they could have sprayed the

Native American villages.

 

When we consider the dearth of knowledge regarding diseases and

disease transmission, the biowarfare (BW) of Amherst and Ecuyer is

ahead of its time. In one of those remarkable ironies of history, it

was an English physician, Edward Jenner who discovered the smallpox

vaccine in 1796. What is also remarkable is the fact that science did

not discover the germ theory and how diseases are transmitted until

the late 1870's. With the work of Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) and

Robert Koch (1843-1910) and the subsequent development of

microbiology in the late 19th century, it was finally possible to

isolate, produce and weaponized biological agents.16

 

Germany may be credited with opening of the modern biological warfare

program during World War I. Covert operations in Romania infected

sheep destined for export to Russia with anthrax. The German Legation

in Romania had laboratory vessels containing cultures confiscated.

Subsequently, the Bucharest institute of Bacteriology and Pathology

identified Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) and Bacillus mallei

(Glanders, a respiratory tract infection of horses and mules).

Meanwhile, German saboteurs in France infected horses and mules. Even

before the American entry in to the war, covert German bacteria

warfare was attempted in the United States with the contamination of

animal feed and infection of horses intended for export.17

 

In the period between the World Wars, there was an attempt to

regulate warfare. This well-intentioned but ineffectual effort

resulted in the Geneva Protocol. Thus the first attempt to limit the

use of biologicals in warfare was the 1925 Geneva Protocol for the

Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other

Gases and Bacteriological Methods of Warfare.18 While prohibiting the

use of bio-weapons, the treaty did not seek to prevent the research,

production, or possession. There was no provision for inspection.

Many countries that ratified the protocol stipulated the right for

retaliation. An interesting footnote to history, the United States

did not ratify the Geneva Protocol until 1975.19

 

Little known and yet remarkable in its scope is Japan's biological

warfare program during World War II. Probably, the most extensive and

most horrorific biological weapons research and deployment occurred

in Manchuria from 1932 until the end of the war.20 This program,

innocuously entitled as Unit 731 was located in Pingfan Manchuria.

Under the direction of Dr. Shiro Ishii from 1932 to 1942 and then

Kitano Misaji from 1942 until 1945, Unit 731 employed a staff of over

3,000 scientists and technicians. Unit 731, sprawled over 150

building and five satellite camps. Additional sub-units were located

in Mukden, Changchun and Nanking.

 

Experimentation on prisoners using Shigella (bacterial dysentery*),

Vibrio cholerae (cholera) and Yersinia pestis (the bubonic plague)

was part of the Unit 731 program. At least 10, 000 prisoners died.

Most from " experimental infection " and the remaining were executed

after experiments for autopsy. 21

 

Under interrogation, scientists and technicians admitted to 12 " field

trials " of weaponized biologicals. Eleven Chinese cities were

attacked with biological agents. These attacks ranged from water

supply contamination to food contamination with cholera, anthrax,

Salmonella and the plague. Cultures of these agents were sprayed from

aircraft.

 

Unit 731 weaponized the plague in an interesting way. Plague infected

rats were fed upon by laboratory bred fleas. The Japanese then

collected the now infected fleas, containerized them and released

them over Chinese cities from low flying aircraft. It was reported

that up to 15 million fleas were released in each attack. Although

the Chinese National Health Administration attributes wartime plague

epidemics on these attacks by the Japanese of Unit 731 conditions in

China during the war precluded rigorous epidemiological and

bacteriological data collection.

 

Bio-warfare is a two-edged sword. Unit 731 was so secret and the

Japanese troops in China were so under-trained and unequipped to deal

with biological weapons that Japanese casualties resulted from these

attacks. In 1941, the attack on Changteh ostensibly resulted in

nearly 10,000 cholera cases and 1,700 deaths among the Japanese

troops. This may be the second disadvantage of BW: the difficulty in

protecting one's own troops. Kitano Misaji terminated these " field

trials " in 1942. Both the United States and the Soviet Union's

Biological Warfare program owe their germination to the work of Unit

731. The Soviets captured Unit 731. US forces captured Shiro Ishii

and Kitano Misaji and granted them immunity from war crimes if they

divulged their BW secrets. US had no research in either offensive or

defensive BW early in World War II. Only when the intelligence agents

of the Office for Strategic Services (OSS) discovered the activities

of Unit 731 did the US initiate its own offensive germ warfare

program at Camp Detrick, Maryland in late 1942.22

 

The British secretly developed their own biological warfare program

focused on anthrax. To test the effectiveness of weaponized anthrax

delivered by a conventional bomb the British chose Gruinard Island

off the coast of Scotland. The island was bombed in experiments to

determine the best dispersal. Then in 1943, there was an outbreak of

anthrax in sheep and cattle on the coast of Scotland that faced

Gruinard Island. Attempts at decontamination by starting brushfires

failed as spores of anthrax had been embedded in the island's soil

thus making total decontamination impossible to this day. This

creates the third disadvantage of BW use by a nation; the difficulty

in decontamination may preclude the use of acquired territory.23,24

 

It is interesting to note that the Nazi offensive BW program limited

itself to inhuman experiments not unlike Japan's Unit 731. Prisoners

in Nazi concentration camps were forcibly infected with a wide

variety of bacteria, protozoa and even a virus, Hepatitis A. These

horrors were ostensibly experiments done to study pathogenesis and to

develop vaccines and sulfa drugs rather than to develop weaponized

versions of these pathogens. There is a positive note to this

inhumanity; it was used against the Germans in an area of occupied

Poland. Polish physicians in the region used a vaccine (formalin-

killed Proteus OX-19) to produce a false-positive test for typhus.

German troops were not dispatched to the area to round up its

residents for deportation to concentration camps, thus saving an

unknown number of people.25

 

Meanwhile the US offensive biological warfare program was begun in

1942, under the Direction of the War Reserve Service, a civilian

agency. It had research and development facilities at Camp Detrick,

MD with production in Terre Haute, IN and testing in Mississippi and

Utah. The Terre Haute production facility had inadequate engineering

safety measures. This precluded large-scale biological weapons

production. However the Camp Detrick " pilot plant " produced 5000

bombs of anthrax.26

 

During the Korean War (1950 - 1953) new production facility at Pine

Bluff, AR was constructed incorporating adequate biosafety measures.

These safety systems are to protect the staff and the people and

livestock in the vicinity. Additionally, a program to protect troops

in the field with vaccines, anti-sera and therapeutic agents was

initiated in 1953. Weaponization of microorganisms was begun in 1954.

 

The Cold War between the US and the USSR intensified with propaganda

and an arms race unlike any the world has seen. At the United Nations

General Assembly, the Soviet Union accused the United States of using

germ warfare in Korea. It was this accusation that changed the focus

of the US program. It also resulted in secret and controversial

experiments.

 

The American program elected to use so-called " Surrogate Biological

Agents " that were ostensibly non- pathologic to humans. These

surrogates were used to simulate the employment of more deadly

organisms. In a highly classified program bacterium such as Serratia

macescens and Bacillus subtilis (the classic college microbiology lab

bacteria) were sprayed in US cities. The program was shut down in

1969.

 

In the San Francisco experiment with Serratia marcescens 5,000

particles per minute were sprayed from the coast inward. One man died

and ten others were hospitalized by an infection that was never

followed up. Declassified information indicates that during the test

there was five to ten times the normal infection rate in San

Francisco areas that were sprayed.

 

More alarming were the tests to determine the vulnerability of the

New York City subway system to biowarfare. In 1966, Bacillus subtilis

was released into the subways. The results of this experiment showed

that the release of an organism in just one station would infect the

entire underground subway system due to winds and vacuum created by

the passing subway trains.27 The declassified information was

published in Leonard Cole's 1988 book, Clouds of Secrecy. One wonders

if it was read by the cult Aum Shinrikyo for its planning of a nerve

gas (sarin) attack on the Tokyo subway in March of 1995. The cult was

weaponizing anthrax, botulinum and had even attempted to obtain the

Ebola virus for a weapon.28

 

Meanwhile in Southeast Asia, the spread of war created one clear use

of biological warfare and several accusations. In Vietnam, the

Communist Viet Cong guerrillas dug pits and implanted spikes of

bamboo and other woods that were contaminated with human feces. These

were called punji pits.29 The unwitting combatant or non-combatant

who stepped into the pit was impaled upon the spikes and were

inoculated with material that would produce a rapid and virulent

infection.20 The Soviet Union was accused of using mycotoxins

as " yellow rain " in support of communists armies in Cambodia and

Laos. However there was no confirming evidence.

 

President Nixon signed National Security Decisions 35 and 44 in

November of 1969 and February of 1970 terminating the United States

offensive BW weapons program. This mandated the cessation of

offensive BW research and the destruction of the BW arsenal. The only

permitted research was defensive, such as diagnostic tests, vaccines

and chemotherapies. As a direct result of the termination of the

offensive BW program, the US Army Medical Research Institute for

Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) was established at Ft. Detrick, MD.30

None of USAMRIID's research is classified. Nearly simultaneously in

1969 Great Britain submitted a proposal to the United Nations

Committee on Disarmament. It includes a prohibition on the

development, production and stockpiling of biological weapons. By

1972, the United Nations Convention on the Prohibition of the

Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin

Weapons and Their Destruction (BWC)31 was ratified by member nations.

There were some notable violations.

 

The Soviet Union continued offensive biological warfare program after

signing the 1972 BWC under the title of Biopreparat. Under the

Ministry of Defense, Biopreparat ran a minimum of 6 research

laboratories with 5 weapons production facilities. At least 55,000

scientists and technicians worked for Biopreparat. Even with these

resources there was a terrible failure of Biopreparat's biosafety

systems.

 

Western intelligence agencies long suspected that the military

facilities in the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk, now Ekaterinburg, Russia

was a biological warfare research facility. In April 2, 1979, an

outbreak of a disease that affected 94 people and killed at least 64

occurred in the city of Sverdlovsk located nearly 850 miles east of

Moscow. The first victims died after 4 days and the last died 6 weeks

later. People and animals in a narrow zone down wind of the facility

were infected. Livestock as far away as 50 km from the facility died.

The Soviet government reported that the deaths were caused by tainted

meat, intestinal anthrax.32 Then 13 years later, President Boris

Yeltsin admitted that the anthrax outbreak was the result of an

unintentional release of anthrax.33

 

The dispersal of the anthrax spores with the prevailing wind and the

meteorological conditions was a classic plume. Considering that this

was an accidental release and the effects were felt for 50 km, one

must consider the range and causalities that would have resulted if

this were a deliberate attack. Russia permitted a Western team of

scientists that included Prof. Matt Meselson to visit Sverdlovsk in

June 1992 and again in August 1993.34 Despite KGB confiscation of

medical documents, the scientists were able to document that the

victims were clustered in a straight line downwind of the facility.

Of course they were not able to determine what exactly caused the

release or what specific activities were being conducted at the

Sverdlovsk military facility. This incident demonstrates the

effectiveness of the first route of infection, inhalation.

 

The Cold War is responsible for the first documented modern

assassination using a biological agent. In an operation out of the

pages of an Ian Fleming's James Bond spy novel, the KGB and the

Bulgarian secret police executed a flawless and as yet unsolved

murder. Yuri Andropov, the chairman of the Soviet KGB reportedly

authorized technical assistance and training for the operation.35

 

On September 7, 1978 Georgi Markov a Bulgarian writer and journalist

who worked for the BBC and for Radio Free Europe left home for work

at the BBC. It was his habit to take the Waterloo Bridge bus to the

BBC headquarters. As Markov neared the queue of people waiting for

the bus, he suddenly felt a stinging pain in the back of his right

thigh. He turned and saw a heavyset man in his 40's stooping over to

pick up a dropped umbrella. The man hailed a taxi and disappeared.

 

Unconcerned, Markov continued to work where he told his colleagues

what happened. He showed one BBC friend a red pimple-like swelling on

his thigh. That evening Markov developed a high fever and he was

taken to a London hospital and treated for a non-specific type of

blood poisoning. Three days later he was dead.36

 

On autopsy a tiny pellet was found in the wound in Markov's thigh.

This pellet had an empty X-shaped cavity with two 0.34 mm holes.

Toxicology results determined that Markov had been murdered by a

poison, ricin. The ricin was encapsulated in a waxy base designed to

melt at body temperature thus releasing into the tissues the ricin

toxin. Ricin is a toxin that is derived from a plant source, a

biological agent.

 

Ricin, the untreatable toxin of the Markov umbrella murder can be

weaponized as an aerosol. With an average lethal dose of 1/5,000th of

a gram it remains a potent BW agent. Under the 1972 Convention, it is

defined as a " schedule one " controlled substance. Unfortunately, the

worldwide processing of over 100,000,000 metric tons of castor beans

results in a 5% waste mash. This waste mash is ricin toxin.37

 

While there were numerous claims that the Soviet Union employed

mycotoxins, a.k.a. " yellow rain " in Cambodia, Laos and Afghanistan,

there was no conclusive proof. Meteorological conditions, background

fungal infections, and even bee pollen were confounding the findings

of investigators. Then in September 1984 in Wasco county east of

Portland, Oregon a cult called the Rashneeshee successfully

contaminated the salad bars of 10 restaurants in the county. This

second route of infection by a BW agent, the oral intake of

contaminated food or water, resulted in 751 cases of salmonella

poisoning. This was the first known bio-terrorist attack.38

 

It may not have been the last by a long shot. The Aum Shinrikyo cult

that was responsible for the Tokyo subway gas attack had sent members

to Africa to collect samples of the virus Ebola and had even

experimented unsuccessfully with aerosolizing anthrax.39 Fortunately

for Japan their efforts were unsuccessful.

 

The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) was marked by numerous documented use

of chemical weapons by Iraq. The UN Secretary General dispatched a

team of specialists that conclusively verified allegations of Iraqi

use of chemical agents to induce over 2,200 casualties. Despite

numerous allegations of BW use by Iraq, the United Nations could not

verify the reports.40

 

As we have seen Biowarfare in its many forms is not new. From

poisoning well water to poisoning salad bars in restaurants, from

poisoned arrows of 300 BC to poisoned punji stakes of 1960's, from

catapulting plague victims to dissemination of the plague by

aircraft, warfare has included biological agents. The weaponization

of these agents despite prohibitions will continue. The defense will

run a parallel course. Will they be used again? It is only a question

of when.

 

* A Japanese physician, Shiga during the 1898 epidemic in Japan,

discovered the bacterium that causes dysentery, Shigella dysenteriae.

Other species of the bacilli have been discovered in the Philippines,

the US and Europe. There are four main groups of bacilli but for

purposes of treatment this is unnecessary. This pathogen differs from

the protozoan or amebic form of the disease.

 

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