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STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 © (415) 321-1200

Stranrorp University ScHOOL OF MEDICINE

Department of Genetics MAR 3 1971

To the Editor

New York Times

229 West 43rd Street

New York, New York 10036

{ was disappointed that your editorial "Sideshow at
Geneva" (Feb. 25) should be so [mperceptive about the
potential dangers of hiological weaponry, that you should
think thelr effective control would be a merely cosmetic
adornment. One can argue, ft Is true, that these are
“weapons nobody expects to use anyway", because "such agents
pose as much of a threat to the potential user as to the
potential enemy." [tt is also true that President Nixon's
untlateral renunciation of U.S. efforts in biological
warfare was an important step towards the control of these
perils.

But thts is only half the story, The unilateral
moratorium by the U.S. has elicited no similar initiative
from the Soviet hloc, no commitments, no information
concerning any efforts they may be continuing [tn this field,
without the benefit of the public ventilation that has moved
U.S. policies. Instead, they have proposed a bland, really
meaningless avowal to han the production of "a11 chemical
and biclosical weapons", In this form, the proposal cannot
even be defined, much less verified, since many potential
chemical warfare agents are common articles of commerce --~
for example, chlorine pas, widely used to sanitize city
water supplies, was used in the first major chemical attack
by the Germans in World War I. Such vague proposals = can
hardly be regarded as a serious basis for repulating
national behavior; and together with the curtain of silence
about biolorical warfare research outside the Western bloc,
they bode i11 for the seriousness of purpose of some of the
participants at the Geneva conference.

Your nonchalance ahout biolozical weapons never being
used presupposes a rationality about decisions made under
military stress that is denied by all of history, and almost
dally in your news columns and editorials. Recall that it
took 30 years for U.S. policy to reach the point of the
current moratorium! ;

LT. J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LANORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED 10 RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION

MOLECULAR MOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE