Evening star., 1949-10-24
Germs and the Bomb

DR.. Brook Chisholm, director general OF
the United Nations World Health Organ
ization has offered a pointed reminder in
declaring that the atom is not the only
destruction weapon that needs to
be worried about. As matter of fact,
in his opinion, "know-how" in the field
of germ warfare has reached such an
advanced stage that the A-bomb has been
rendered "obsolete"
1t may be- of course, that DR.. Chisholm
has resorted to a bit of exaggeration for
dramatic effect. Nevertheless, considering
what other experts have said from time
to time in the past on the same subject,
his comment deserves serious attention.
At any rate-at least in theory-there
is good reason to believe that bacteriologi-
cal developments, If they have not done
so already, will on some near-future to-
morrow equal, and perhaps overshadow,
the atom as menace to the survival of
mankind.
In this connection, it seems worth re-
calling that in September of 1946 the Army
Chemical Corps indicated that there was
considerable truth in a scientists state
ment that the United States had developed
a toxic substance so fantastically deadly
that an ounce of it could destroy 10000
900 human beings. Though the chief of the
Corps-the recently retired General Watt
suggested at the time that the poison
might be only scientific curiosity" he
by no means pooh-poohed the idea that
something very much like it could be de-
veloped for use in warfare.
Actually and UNDERSTANDABLE - there
has been no official public accounting Of
what the United States has been doing
in the military biological field. The near
est thing to such an accounting has been
the Rosebury-Kabat report, published two
years ago. That report, however, covers
work done only up to 1912, 1t has nothing
to say about developments in the seven
years since then, but it is full of enough
between the-lines horror to suggest that
things like General Watts scientific
curiosity" may really exist today as
practical weapons.
1t need hardly be added, moreover, that
other nations have not been inactive in
the meteorological field. Germ ornaments
as deadly as ours, or deadlier, are within
test tubes and scientific brains. The size
of a country does not matter in this
respect Conceivably, for example, there
may even now be some small European
land possessing biological weapon every
bit as devastating as the A-bomb, perhaps
more so.
Thus, as DR.. Chisholm has observed, the
balance of power involves much more than
nuclear armaments. Although he has
used language loosely in describing the
A-bomb as "obsolete," he is undoubtedly
on sound ground in emphasizing the awful
potentialities of germ warfare. From our
own national standpoint, those potentiali-
ties are real enough, for one thing, to lend
strength to the Navy's warning-if this is
what the Navy was talking about-against
putting all our military eggs in oAe basket
by relying on the single-weapon strategy
of the atomic blitz.
Beyond that, in a world sense, because
the production of meteorological weapons
is extremely hard to detect and hence
virtually impossible to control, nobody can
feel safe as long as war is possible. Even
if they are not yet quite so advanced as
he has said. Dr. Chisholm has not exag-
gerated in declaring that germ arma-
ments, coupled with the atomic bomb,
point the way to the total destruction of
the human race. The only sure protection
against that is the establishment of a
literally permanent peace. Remote as
such peace may seem nothing less will
be good enough.