!! spellx done
182  Biological Warfare and the Extinction of Man
    
     Statement by Professor Joshua Lederberg of Stanford
     University before the Subcommittee on National Security
     Policy and Scientific Developments, of the House Committee
     on Foreign Affairs; Rep. Clement J. Zablocki, Chmn.

     December 2, 1969.    91st Congress, First Session.

     I am grateful for this opportunity to express my profound concern
about the continued involvement of this and other nations in the 
development of biological warfare.

     This process puts the very future of human life on earth in
serious peril.

     It is all the more tragic because the great powers who should be
hastening to institute international control have very little to gain
and much to lose in relation to the present balance of nuclear 
deterrence. Except for incidental contagion, chemical warfare presents
many similar issues; but I cannot speak to them with the same 
immediacy of personal expert knowledge.

     Our ratification of the Geneva Protocol would represent only the
first small step towards the negotiation of international controls.
However, so long as we have isolated ourselves as the only major power
to refuse to enter into its commitment, this stands as an immediate 
distraction to further negotiation.  It leaves on the record a very
low and unconvincing reading, indeed, about our earnestness as a
nation in seeking a world order for the management of this problem.

     My own research career has centered on the genetics of bacteria.
With Dr. E.L. Tatum, then at Yale, I had the thrill of discovering 
genetic recombination in bacteria.  Later at the University of Wisconsin
with my then graduate student Norton Zinder (like E.L. Tatum now a
professor at Rockefeller University) I was again privileged to help
unearth genetic transduction (the use of viruses to convey information
from cell to cell). I have also studied bacterial mutation, for example
to resistance against the action of antibiotic drugs, in work that
complemented the pioneering studies of Drs. S.E. Luria and Max 
Delbrueck (named for the 1969 Nobel price in medicine).

     Basic scientists who have worked in the genetics of bacteria and
viruses believe that these discoveries have ever growing importance
for the prevention and healing of serious human diseases.  We live, in
the present era, in an incompletely justified optimism about having
"conquered infectious bacterial disease" as the fruit of the development
of the antibiotics.  However, viruses are in general still beyond
the reach of antibiotic therapy.  Even bacteria, believed to be under
firm control with antibiotics, are continuing their own evolution and
continue their assaults upon human health with renewed vigor.  In the
long run, only our continued vigilance over bacterial evolution can
justify our hope of maintaining a decisive lead in this life and death
race.

     However, whatever pride I might wish to take in the eventual
human benefits that may arise from my own research is turned into
ashes by the application of this kind of scientific insight for the
engineering of biological warfare agents.  In this respect we are in
somewhat the same position as the nuclear physicists who foresaw the
development of atomic weapons.

     There is, however, a crucial difference.  Nuclear weaponry 
depends on the most advanced industrial technology.  It has then been 
monopolized by the great powers long enough to sustain a de facto
balance of deterrence and to build a security system based on 
non-proliferation.  Nuclear power has thus, ironically, become a 
stabilizing factor tending to reinforce the status quo in parallel with
established levels of economic and industrial development.  Germ 
power will work just the other way.

     The United Nations Study Report on chemical and biological weaponry
has summarized some infectious agents that have served as points of
departure for the development of biological weapons. Any knowledgeable
virologist could suggest many more.  I will not repeat these technical
details, nor will I bludgeon you with the horrible diseases that some
of these agents provoke.  I will also leave to your own conscience the
burden of moral judgements about using these kinds of weapons. Most
Americans would be repelled by the thought, but perhaps no less 
exposure to the human realities of any other form of warfare. Overriding
such comparisons should be the grave moral issue in a policy that
risks lives of a world of innocent bystanders.  Fortunately, these
concerns actually converge with our self-interest in calling for a
halt to BW before it becomes established in the arms-traffic of the
world.

     My main fears about BW have to do with the side-effects of its
proliferation 1) as a technique of aggression by smaller nations and
insurgent groups and 2) by the inadvertent spread of disease.

     If the great powers could actually protect the secrecy of their
BW work I would be much less alarmed. The chance of BW ever being used
in a major strategic attack is essentially negligible in the face of
the nuclear deterrent. The suggestion that we need BW or CW weapons
for specific retaliatory purposes in order to deter their use aims at
a ridiculous kind of precision.  Will our deterrent missiles have to 
follow the same trajectories as those that might potentially attack
us? Will they have to be launched at the same time of day?  Will they
have the same mix of explosive energy and radio active fallout? If we
are attacked with anthrax strain B27 must we reply with anthrax B27.

     On the other hand, if I were a Machiavellian adviser to a 
would-be Hitler I might indeed advocate a considerable investment in 
biological weaponry as a desperate approach to the cheap acquisition of
great power even if at a very great risk. And, of course, the first
thing I would do would be to plant my intelligence agents in the 
existing BW establishments of the high budget powers in order to get the
necessary scientific information at the lowest possible cost.

     However, if I were patient I would not bother to do even that.  No
security system, no counter-intelligence system in the world expects 
more than a delay of 5 to 10 years in the leakage of vital information.
We do not have, and I presume do not contemplate, a security 
reservation like war-time Los Alamos for the containment of BW
research.  If a high level activity is to be maintained there will be
frequent turnover of personnel.  It is unreasonable to expect a tighter
security barrier here than has prevailed any other area, given the
problems of reconciling security with a free society.  Besides these
channels for diffusion of information, there are also bound to be 
Pueblo-like incidents, and finally calculated leaks in the budget 
competition of the services.  The American people might be the last to
know.  But we can hardly rely on more than a ten year delay between
many important discoveries in BW research laboratories and their
availability to hostile and irresponsible forces outside.

     As a matter of prudent self-protection BW research laboratories in
the U.S. and the U.K. have pioneered in the technology of containing 
dangerous microbes.  I have great respect for the technical capabilities
of the senior civilian management of these laboratories.  They 
should be credited with the upmost diligence in protecting both their
personnel and the surrounding community.  They have also published a
great deal of their work in the engineering of such protective 
facilities and this experience is unquestionably of great value in 
public health work.  For example, the British laboratories, at Porton,  
were acclaimed for the safe handling of the very dangerous Marburg virus
upon its first outbreak in Europe two years ago.

     In spite of the speculations, disease organisms have nevertheless
escaped from time to time and inevitably will do so in the future.  
Such escapes already constitute a breach of security.  They also 
compromise public health, which is further complicated by keeping
civilian physicians in ignorance of potential agents that might 
fulminate into large scale epidemics.  The intentional development of 
virulent strains resistant to conventional antibiotics obviously worsens
the problem.  We simply have no way of assuring ourselves that a BW
development activity will not eventually seed a catastrophic world
wide epidemic that ignores national boundaries.

     On the immediate horizon are modern developments in molecular
genetics.  These undoubtedly point to the development of agents
against which no reasonable defense can be mounted.  Because of the
uncertain danger of retroaction, such agents are hardly likely to be
used in consequence of any rational military decision, but would  
obviously play into the hands of aggressive insurgence and blackmail.

     Finally, even the publication, albeit as a positive contribution
to humanity, of the technology of safe containment insidiously helps
solve a problem that might have hindered a potential insurgent from
dabbling in BW.

     The problem of containing infectious agents being manufactured and
stockpiled in large quantities, or tested in the open air, is a much
more difficult technological challenge; and it is encumbered with even
more official secrecy than the laboratory work.  We have little better
information than the Skull Valley incident to help judge the competence
with which such matters are handled.  The main effect of security
has not been to deny information to an enemy but to protect an
establishment from both destructive and constructive criticism at
home. In this case, more open constructive criticism would be crucial
for assurance that procedures for containing microbes are well 
conceived and correctly implemented.

     BW agents for use against man can be expected to be far more
capricious than any other form of weapon.  For any strategic purpose
they are essentially untestable since large populations would have to
be held to an uncertain risk.  With nuclear weapons we can at least be
confident of the laws of scaling.  The destruction of targets can be 
calculated from simple physical measures like the energy released.  
Nothing comparable to this can possibly apply to BW agents.  For this
reason again the United States and other nuclear powers have 
absolutely nothing to lose disavowing their use in war.  Our continued 
participation in BW development is akin to our arranging to make 
hydrogen bombs available at the supermarket.

     Microbiological research must be expanded in programs of public
health research for defense against our natural enemies.  In fact, the
public health bureaucracy has refused to give prudent thought to the 
recurrence of major pandemics of human disease, be they of spontaneous
or human-intelligent origin.  Perhaps this is simply a consequence of
their sense of futility about mobilizing the necessary measures of
global health needed to protect the species.  If we add to already 
urgent concerns the spread of dangerous diseases from large foci of
infection established by BW attack, the prospects become even
gloomier.

     Our self-interest both as American and human beings urgently
calls for the institution of improved measures of world public health
and international controls on the development and use of BW agents.
Research related to BW perhaps should continue; but it is of the first
importance that this be fear-reducing rather than fear-generating, for
the latter can only lead a mutual escalation of anti-human 
developments.

     It is difficult at this stage to detail the texture of new 
agreements subsequent to our ratifications of the Geneva protocol.  We
cannot suddenly impose unilateral decisions on the international 
community; but no other issue can evoke such a unanimity of world
opinion.  New agreements probably should include 1) public legal 
commitments against secret  BW research; 2)the establishment of central,
international laboratories to monitor the occurrence of threatening
organisms and to help develop generally available means of protection
against them; 3) a legal system to protect the freedom of information
and communication of data on disease organisms to such central 
authorities; 4) a general acceleration of research and health services 
to minimize the incidence of infectious disease, particularly in 
underdeveloped countries.  No situation could be better designed for the
evolution of serious new viruses than the existence of crowded,
underfed human populations in which foci could develop and spread with
a minimum of medical control; 5) treaty commitments on BW analogous to
the nuclear non-proliferation treaty; pre-agreed sanctions by the
civilized world against the release or development of BW agents,
clearly invoking international law against such "offenses against 
mankind" as akin to war crimes.

     Some of the expectations that I have outlined are speculations 
which I fervently hope will be proven false.  Unfortunately, they
already have a proven historical precedent.  As many of you may
already know, the Black Death - the epidemic of the Bubonic Plague in
Europe between 1340 and 1346 - was the immediate consequence of a 
primitive form of bacteriological warfare.  Genoese colonists in the
Crimea brought the plague back to Italy with them when they retreated
from the fortress of Fyodosia after having been assaulted with the
corpses from the attacking Tartar hordes who had been infested with
the disease.  This epidemic subsided only after killing approximately
1/3 of the population in Europe, as well. Presumably as an equal toll
in Asia and India.  Unless we learn to apply our common energies
against the common enemies of all mankind, we are foolish and arrogant
to doubt that history will record "Black Death II" and more.

     This testimony was prepared just prior to President Nixon's
heartening announcement of new U.S. initiatives towards the regulation
of BW.  I am confident that the  Senate will now promptly ratify the
Geneva Protocol as a basis for the further measures needed to assure
man's life and health on this planet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------