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Biological Weapons

Biological weapons are infectious agents, such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, parasites, biochemical toxins, and biomolecules (e.g., potentially prions) that can cause extreme morbidity and mortality in plants, animals, and humans when they are intentionally disseminated to induce terror (bioterrorism) and/or related mass casualties under conditions of civil unrest or military campaigns. Biological agents can also be a threat for the environment. This is an important issue for global public health that should be considered in the new perspectives of a more ecological green world in which such environmental threats should be significantly reduced or eliminated.

Historical Development

The development of biological weapons and bioterrorism is not new. In the last 50 years, they have increased in importance as threats to global public health, particularly after the anthrax bioterrorism events following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in the United States.

It is difficult to identify the origin of biological warfare, but at least one deliberate contamination of water supplies occurred in approximately 600 B.C.E. using the fungi Calviceps purpurea. During the siege of Kaffa (now Feodosia, Ukraine) in the 14th century, the attacking Tatar force experienced an epidemic of plague, an infectious disease produced by the bacterium Yersinia (pseudotuberculosis) pestis that probably was originally recognized as disease in the sixth century when the Justinian plague occurred in Egypt, Turkey, and parts of Europe. At that time, the biological threat was used as a weapon by catapulting contaminated cadavers of deceased Tatars affected by the plague into the city to cause an outbreak, which led to a retreat of the defending forces and the conquest of Kaffa. In the 14th century, the plague pandemic, also called the Black Death, probably affected 100 million people, with an estimated case fatality rate of 25 to 30 percent. After that, other cities in Europe probably experienced outbreaks, with contaminated humans, rats, and other animals infected with Y. pestis intentionally shipped and sailed to Constantinople (Istanbul today), Genoa, Venice, and other Mediterranean ports. Even with this history, it would be an oversimplification to implicate the biological attack as the sole cause of the plague epidemic in Kaffa and other cities in that century. Multiple factors probably played a significant role in those outbreaks, including environmental variables. In history, there are many other examples of bioterrorism and biological weapons used up until the 20th century, when significant advances in microbiology and war industry led to the posing of this threat at a global level. The possibility of this hypothesis places those biological threats in other conventional weapons (e.g., long-range missiles) that can reach other countries in a few minutes or hours, as was suspected with Iraq during the conflicts in the Persian Gulf in the early 1990s.

Contemporary Use in Warfare

The military setting has been one the first arenas involved in planning, developing, and using biological weapons, currently implementing that knowledge in what is called biodefense—complex elements used to prevent and respond to bioterrorist threats and acts. However, in the past, military groups were linked to outbreaks of anthrax and meliodosis that have been recognized as products of biological warfare during World War I (1914–1918). In 1925, the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, prohibited the use of biological weapons—although not their research, production, study, or possession. Before and during World War II (1939–1945), biological weapon activities were intensified, and as a consequence of this, other pathogens, including Y. pestis, Bacillus anthracis, and Burkholderia (Pseudomonas) mallei, were used as the bacteriological weapon agents Neisseria meningitides (an etiology of meningitis), Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., and Vibrio cholerae (etiological agents of diarrhea and dysenteric syndromes). Throughout history, and especially during the mid-1970s, the list of biological weapons increased in number and included Clostridium botulinum (etiological agent of botulism, a form of food intoxication), Francisella tularensis (etiological agent of tularemia), Brucella suis, Coxiella burnetti, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, and Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) virus. Since the 1990s, many countries have developed the capacities to create many of the biological weapon agents included in all categories of microorganisms that represent a global public health threat. The intentional delivery of letters with B. anthracis (anthrax) following the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States highlighted these capacities and vulnerabilities and the risk of nations to these biological threats.

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