US Biological Warfare Program

PENTAGON BIOWARFARE RESEARCH CONDUCTED IN UNIVERSITY LABORATORIES
 
 Overshadowed by Star Wars and overlooked by the media, the push
 toward biowarfare has been one of the 's best
 kept secrets. The research budget for infectious diseases and toxins
 has increased tenfold since fiscal '81 and most of the '86 budget of
 $42 million went to 24 U.S. university campuses where the world's most
 deadly organisms are being cultured in campus labs.
 
 The amount of military money available for biotechnology research
 is a powerful attraction for scientists whose civilian funding
 resources dried up. Scientists formerly working on widespread killers
 like cancer now use their talents developing strains of such rare
 pathogens as anthrax, dengue, Rift Valley fever, Japanes encephalitis,
 tularemia, shigella, botulin, Q fever, and mycotoxins.
 
 Many members of the academic community find the trend alarming,
 but when MIT's biology department voted to refuse Pentagon funds for
 biotech research, the administration forced it to reverse its
 decision. And, in 1987, the University of Wisconsin hired Philip
 Sobocinski, a retired Army colonel, to help professors tailor their
 research to attract Pentagon-funded biowarfare research to the school.
 Richard Jannaccio, a former science writer at UW, was dismissed from
 his job on August 25, 1987, the day after the student newspaper, THE
 DAILY CARDINAL, published his story disclosing the details of Colonel
 Sobicinski's mission at the University.
 
 Since the U.S. is a signatory to the 1972 Biological and Toxic
 Weapons Convention which bans "development, production, stockpiling
 and use of microbes or their poisonous products except in amounts
 necessary for protective and peaceful research," the university-based
 work is being pursued under the guise of defensive projects aimed at
 developing vaccines and protective gear. Scientists who oppose the
 program insist that germ-warfare defense is clearly impractical; every
 person would have to be vaccinated for every known harmful biological
 agent. Since vaccinating the entire population would be virtually
 impossible, the only application of a defensive development is in
 conjunction with offensive use. Troops could be effectively vaccinated
 for a single agent prior to launching an attack with that agent.
 Colonel David Huxsoll, commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research
 Institute of Infectious Diseases admits that offensive research is
 indistinguishable from defensive research even for those doing it.
 
 Each of the sources for this synopsis raised ethical questions
 about the perversion of academia by military money and about the U.S.
 engaging in a biological arms race that could rival the nuclear
 threat, yet none mentioned the safety or the security of the labs
 involved. The failure to investigate this aspect of the issue is a
 striking omission. Release of pathogens, either by accident or
 design, would prove tragic at any of the following schools: [[Brigham
 Young]], California Institute of Technology, Colorado State University,
 Emory, Illinois Institute of Technology, Iowa University, M.I.T.,
 Purdue, State University of N.Y. at Albany, Texas A&M, and the
 Universities of California, California at Davis, Cincinnati,
 Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland,
 Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Utah.
 
 SOURCES: ISTHMUS, 10/9/87, "Biowarfare and the UW," by Richard
 Jannaccio, pp 1, 9, 10; THE PROGRESSIVE, 11/16/87, "Poisons from the
 Pentagon," by Seth Shulman, pp 16-20; WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9/17/86,
 "Military Science," by Bill Richards and Tim Carrington, pp 1, 23.
 
category:United States
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category:Bush administration
Category:US Biological Warfare Program