Biological Warfare A Historical Perspective

The deliberate use of microorganisms and toxins as weapons has been at-tempted throughout history. Biological warfare has evolved from the crude use of cadavers to contaminate water supplies to the development of specialized mu-nitions for battlefield and covert use. The modern development of biological agents as weapons has paralleled advances in basic and applied microbiology. These include the identification of virulent pathogens suitable for aerosol delivery and industrial-scale fermentation processes to produce large quantities of patho-gens and toxins. The history of biological warfare is difficult to assess because of a number of confounding factors. These include difficulties in verification of allegedorattemptedbiologicalattacks, theuseofallegationsofbiologicalattacks for propaganda purposes, the paucity of pertinent microbiological or epidemio-logic data, and the incidence of naturally occurring endemic or epidemic diseases during hostilities. Biological warfare has been renounced by 140 nations, primar-ily for strategic and other pragmatic reasons. International diplomatic efforts, including the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, have not been entirel