Gen. Rothschild:

My opening presentation will be quite short as indicated just in an
attempt to establish a common basis for our discussion, I'll first deal
with chemical and biological warfare and then talk a little bit about
considerations of humanity and morality. Can you hear me alright in back?
Toxic warfare is the use of chemical substances or biological material$
intentionally disseminated to reduce the military effectiveness of man.

It also includes the defense against these things. The materials may be
used directly against man or they may be ,sued indirectly through attacks
against animals or crops to reduce man's food supply. Let me elaborate
first just a little bit on the anti-food warfare as it's the simplest to
explain and get over. It could include the use of agents such as 2,4D
245T both herbicides destroy crops. These would normally be disseminated
from plants. But also include the use of biological material such as stem-
rust of wheat or rice pdasts. In the case of the chemicals the material is
effective only where the agent lands. With the biologicals it is possible
to start or an epitoric may start normally through design.to effect areas
much larger in area in extent than those initially hit.

An attack on animals which would be through biological agents would not
only reduce the food supply but would also result in the reduction i
available industrial materials such as leather, pharmaceuticals and others.
and the reduction of a form of transport which is still very important in
many parts of the world.

Now toxic chemical agents may be gas, liquid or solid. “Gas warfare ~
is still in common usage but it's really a misnomer. Chemical agents may
be lethal or they may be incapacitating. Probably the outstanding example

of the lethal type is the anticholinesterase series which we call the G-agents.
2
Thye're also known as the nerve gases. GB is our standard agent called
sarin by the Germans who first discovered it is a volatile liquid with
an LDsg of 1 milligram. VX is a nonvolatile anticholinesterase agent and
is highly effective through the skin as well as through the lungs.
Incapacitating agents are chemicals whose physiological action is reversible
or mostly reversible. They may be developed to effect any of the physical
capabilities or the mind, and one type which Wg cect the mind is an
LSD-type, this general area. Mustard gas is a chemical agent which does
not exactly fit this definition of an incapacitating agent but I so
classified it in my book because it causes relatively few deathes and
relatively few permanent disabilities. Here too, abainGs¥Ord £88 is a
misnomer: mustard gas is a liquid at room temperature, slowly volatilizing.
Either the liquid or the vapor will cause burns on contact with the skin,
severe irritation on contact with the eye, or damage to the lung when
inhaled.

Chemical agents may enter the body through the lungs, the eyes, or the
skin. Now the eyes aren't a very important portal of entry because they're
too easy to protect , speaking militarily of course. It is possible to
gain entry through the skin by mechanical mechanical puncturing as with darts
or shell fragments or bullets, or through absorption or penetration of the
unbroken skin. The penetration may result in systemic effects as when nerve
gases are absorbed through the skin or in local effects as come about after
contact with mustard gas. Incidentally, a heavy attack with mustard gas w
when inhaled can result in systemic effects as well as local burns on the
skin.

“Biological agents may be viruses, rickettsiae, bacteria or fungi.or their
toxic products, An example of a virus might be that which causes Venezualan

opus. fFyng encephalomyelitis, an incapacitating disease.with quite low
3

mortality. Or the virus of dengue, breakbone fever, one of the most
disabeling diseases knownto man but practically never kills anyone.
Examples of rickettsiae might be Cocciella burnettiae which causes Q

—_—
fever, or Rickettsia rickettsiae causing Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
Anttax or tularemia are diseases of possible biological warfare interest
caused by bacteria. Fungal diseases are probably not of too great
interest from a biological warfare viewpoint but a possibility eould be

Oo
Cryptococcuses. An example of ,toxic product which might be used would

A o
be botulinem or possibly staphylococcus enterotoxin.

As indicated by the examples above, the biological agents may also be
either lethal or incapacitating. As is inherent in the nature of infectivity
and the course of disease ther’s a dfinite difference in the meaning of
lethality between chemical agents and biological agents.

In order for an agent or an organism to be useful as a military agent
it must be able to withstand a number of stresses. These include the
r¢igors of artificial growth, concentration of the agent possibly drying,
relatively long periods of storage, dissemination from a munition some-
times explosive, and the disruptive effects of the abrupt humidity changes,
temperature changes, and of course sunlight. It's possible through mutation
to make an organism more resistant to these stresses within limits. It is
also possible to develop organisms which are resistant to drugs of course.
The most efficient means of infecting man is through the lungs, even with
organisms that do not in nature enter the body that way, as with Pasturella

ee ee mel

tularensis. However, it is possible to attack through the skin. either
—_——_

with agents that normally enter that way or by using vectors such ticks or

_..mosquitoes, In disseminating biological agents the size of the particlesz

is of extreme importance. -A particle of from 1 to 5 microns in diameter is
most effective in reaching the alveolar bed of the lungs. Larger particles

are removed in the nasal passages in the respiratory tract; smaller
then,

 

4
particles tend to be exhaled. Infectious agents reaching the alveoli are
just about as effective in causing an infection as they would be if they
would be if injected into tissue, 0

One of the major areas of differences between chemical and biological
agents from the military viewpoint, is the time of onset of symptoms and
the duration of affects. At present, chemical agents generally have a
relatively short time of onset and a short period of affect, and this is
for the incapacitating agents of course, The biological agents with their
incubation periods have a longer period for symptoms to appear although for some of
the toxins are quite short for example, and a longer period of disability.
The military use of toxic materials depends on the nature of the particular
agent involved. Of course, as a generality, the weight of biological
material required to perform a certain mission is much less than the amount
of chemical material would be because the organisms propagate. A single
attack with biological agents could blanket an area of hundreds of
thousands of square miles, whereas when we're talking about such an attack
with chemical agents we're talking about tens of square miles.

Selection of an agent for a particlular military task would depend upon
the nature of the target and the personnel watched by that target. Ss, ou
an-agent-for-a-partie Cormwwnrendien were ,
attacking an enemy fortification occupied by enemy soldiers only he would
want to use a quick acting lethal agent. He would want to kill as many
of those soldiers as possible as quickly as possible so that he'd save his
own men from any unnecessary casualities. He probably use an agent such

as a nerve gas GB, If the target were a logistical area such as a rail head
a

soldiers and civilians, possibly even friendly civilians, he would select
an incapacitating agent which would knock out the defenders, and the

people of course, and immobilize the logistic operation until he could)
5
overrun it. and take control of it. Circumstances would dictate whether
a chemical agent with a shorter time of onset and shorter duration of
effects would be used or whether he would use a biological agent wkirkx
with it's longer incubation period and period of disability.

I'd like to emphasize one thing at this point. There's no question
of the ability to infect men with biological agents which are released
miles away from them. The only question which has not been determined by

large scale tests is what proportion of the target personnel would be
infected. On the defensive side there are adequate ways of protecting
an individual or a group of individuals if you know the attack is underway.
This is the difficult part, of course. Masks, when worn properly, protect,
give excellent protection against both chemical and biological agents.
Protective clothing, decontaminating methods, and other measures of
protection are available. Methods of treating casualties are known or
are being developed. Immunization techniques are available for many of the
organisms of which we are taiking, or of course, however, you don't have
solid protection from most of your immunization techniques.

Going to the discussion of the humanitarian aspects of these weapons
it is very difficult for me to see how anyone who has made any study of
these weapons compared to what you get from other weapons can feel that
the toxic weapons are inhumane-~course no weapons are humane, they were'nt
designed to be humane--but when we're talking about comparative humanity
it is very difficult for me to see how anyone can say that these weapons
are inhumane. We evidently don't flinch too much about blowing off a
couple of arms or half of a man's face or leaving a mimed mindless or many
of these common damages that you get from other weapons. Whereas we start
crying bloody murder when a man is” temporarily hurt. Generally this is

true. For example, in the last large scale use of chemical agents, which
6
is WW I where we have a good picture, about 25% of the casualties the
American expeditionary force suffered in WW I was from chemical agents.
But only about 2% of these died. Now, the casualities from all other
weapons ( bullets, shells, bonmbs, and so forth) about 25% died. Going
a little bit further, of those who became casualties from chemical weapons
about 4% were disabeled 6 years after the war, which is an indication of
a long tim disability, whixhxsuxrsxxeundxxgaad Whereas about 25% of those
again who were casualties from the other weapons were permanently disabeled.
So here on one hand for the chemical weapons we have 2% deaths against
25% deaths for the other weapons, on the other hand we have 4% long term
disability against 25% for the other weapons. It is very difficult to
see how you cen compare these two and say that one of them is humane and
one isnot. General Gilchrist, a medical officer in the Army Medical Corps
made a quite comprehemsive comparison of casualities from various weapons
after WW I, and based on three criteria, the proportion of deaths to
those affected, the suffering at the time of injury and during convalescence,
and the proportion of permanent disabilities, on these three bases, he made
the statement after his study that gas is not only one of the most defective
weapons ever applied on the battlefield but it was also the most humane.
And just as a item of current interest I saw in this morning's Chronicle
an article which started on the front page about the nation's police being
urged to consider a wider range of supplementary weapons of whichxkm the main
one is a chemical weapon which you've probably heard of is Mace, a report by
the Instituteof Defensive Analysis advocating that the police go much
into the use of these nonlethal agents. And at one point they say"
"The report says that "the overall reason for considering use of nonlethal _
weapons is "th® law enforcement officer is neitherp permitted nor encouraged

to use more force than is necessary to achieve his lawful objectives,"
7

Now it is very difficult for me to see why the same general humanitarian
approach shouldn't be true in war. I don't see why you should have to go
out and kill and maime people when you have other means of accomplishing
your mission without necessary killing.

As far as morality is concerned, I'd just like to say on the legal
side that the United States is not signatory to any treaty prohibiting
the use of chemical or biological weapons. .

This has been a very once-over-lightly treatment but after Dr. Lederberg
is through I'm sure we'll take up all the rest of the points that anybody

has in the discussion period.
Dr. Lederberg:
part

Well I will confess that the first of my colleagues presentation did
appear llike a chamber of horse s and I'm sure none of us can have escaped
that reaction. Like him 1 ean also point out that a graphic description
of the results of bullets plow into your brain and—heve been Rees from
the machine gun would have an equal impact. I want to say from the outset
that I don't disagree with him in the least with respect to attempts to
compare the humanity and morality of one method of destroying compared to
another. If the justified and politically founded objective of warfare w

ance
to destroy the enemy, the more expeditious techniques of the disposal of
the force we stand behindg if we do stand behind it,presumably the better.
Nevertheless both chemical and biological warfare do arouse a moral
revulsion inmost people, and while I believe I share this to a lesser
extent than most and have said so, I think we should undersand why life~
science professionals will be expecially sensitive about inhumane applications
of their own studyes. Most of us did not go into science with the
expectation of supporting munitions activities and of course are not con-
sulted about that point, but I think bhis is a very important base and
I think one we ought to face realistically as to why so many biologists are
raisng such a furor. They feel that they had not elected to go into a line
of work that would contribute to the destruction of other people, whether
it is less or more humane than other techniques. that's why most of us
are not working on munitions, We should not be too deeply swayed by these
irrational considerations, and they are irrational, but on the other hand it
would be a great mistake to dismiss their importance to other people because
a great part of the political significance of our involvement in chemical
and biological warfare is what other people think about it and to the extent
Wrerary nrckignad

that our involvement in thése programs arouse a few rational anxieties on

the parts of our friends as well as neutrals as well as potential enemies
9
I think that we have to consider that as part of the package, as part of the
price that is paid by our being involved in these developments. These
reactions may be irrational but they're there. One might approach that by
attempts at public education but as Gen. Rothschild has indicated in the
long run it would be the most humane to use chemical weapons. This might
be demonstrated sometime as in for a little effective demonstration of
this point in the field.

I mainly don't want to talk about chemical warfare since I feel
particularly that lumping it together with biological warfare is a strategic
error of very great significance. In fact my interest in this subject
was aroused when Dr. Meselson asked me to sign a petition that was
being circulated starting about a year ago, a good part of which was
discussed in Science January 20, and I'1] just quote one point.

"The employment of any one CB weapon weakens the barriers to the use of
others. No lasting distinction seems possible between incapacitating
and lethal weapons or between chemical and biological warfare. If the

on the use
restraints of one kind of CB weapon are broken down the use of others

A
will be encouraged." I think thet there is justzas much truth in that
as our willingness to distinguish or unwillingness to distinguish these
mechanisms of warfare will permit. That is, if we insiston our own
propaganda on the question and lumping them together then a policy which
validates the use of chemical warfare will weaken the restraints on the
use of biological warfare. For reasons I will go into I would like to
encourage you to adopt exactly the opposite point of view, to regard
biological warfare as a very special kind of hazard to the species.and

just on those grounds alone ought to be carefully distinguished from use

of chemical agents.
10

Among other points on the issue of political strategy I point out that
the President of the United States is already committed to the use of
chemical agents in warfarebecause in fact we are useing them in theform
of tear gas and so on, and it would be very much more difficult to achieve
a policy reversal with respect to a set of actions which the country

rrcns hoo

whe the President" already committed than it would be to excerise some
restraints with respect to the proliferation of other kinds of weapons.
Here again our reasons to try to create whatever distinctions are possible
between these classes of weapons.

Actually the main complaint that I would make about our present posture
in this area is not so much what we are doing in our research and development
programs in chemical war~and- biological warfare in the present world climate,
the present political climate, I can see the sens vey to the argument that
it is very difficult to do otherwise. My complaint is what we're not doing.
My complaint is that we're not aggresively pursuing the means for inter-
national control of those kinds of weapons which represent most significant
threatg to the species. I think no microbiologist need use his imagination
for very long to see why I regard biological warfare in that category.

If in the present arena and atmosphere of complete lack of testraint 1t is
necessary for this nation to pursue BW-development, that fact in itself

q&
makes it necessary for others and we have all the groundwork for continuous

A
process of escalation, There's just no way that can be stopped in the present
atmosphere and every increase in our expenditure, in our defensive actions
with respect to biological warfare in this country, and the conditions of
secrecy which operate where it is not possible to disclose exactly what

- we're doing where the general magnitude of our effort is obvious can have

no other consequence but to provoke similar defensive escalation on the

part of other nations. I think we can take it for granted this is exactly
 

11

what has happened. I don't know the figures for the research budget in
biological warfare of the Soviet Union or of Communist China.

The essential point that I'd like to bring to your criticism is that
the calculated growth of the capacity for biological warfare is inherently
a suicidal activity on the part of human beings. _Exactly in opposition
to what so much of our scientific and technical human effort has been for

; : in which teaw

the control of pestilence, to try to bring to bring about ways, to be
systematically disseminated . I'm going to say something about secrecy
and I'm going to take a rather paradoxical position. There's a sense
in which if were possible for the defense department to explore the research
and development of biological agents and in fact Ajintain utter and complete
security with respect to its development I would not feel terribly uncomfortable.
I would not feel that the possession simply in the hands of this country of
this kind of power is the Ayrst thing that I can imagine happening in the
world, What I am concerned is that no security system is perfect, not in
tended to be perfect, if for no other reason than to achieve budgetary
support in Congress there will be constant dissemination of information
about what biological warfare programs are up to and any escalation on
their own developmental and research efforts is going to provide some of the
necessary material for other countries to do exactly the same, athe effort
that we put into any large scale development of techniques for the
development of more potent biological agents for their dissemination
whether it's in one year or ten or twenty, is gradually going to become
part of the art of the whole world. This is exactly in nuclear energy and
it's bound to be the same if there is a large scale expansion of what we're
doing in biological warfare. It is not our posséssion of dangerous infor-
mation of dangerous technical insights but it is the dissemination

throughout the world that represents a very obvious threat. The larger
@ thar

industrial powers do not have to rely on biological warfare to achieve its
major strategic objectives. They are very well possessed of a wide variety

of other kihnds of weapons and even for defensive purposes while it is
important that we have some notion of what kind of biological attack might
be posed against us, it is not at all obvious why the strategic deterrent
against biological warfare has to be another biological weapon, and we have
plenty of strategic deterrent weapons. My concern is that biological
warfare is a technique of extermination which is available to nations
with much smaller industrial potential than our own, which would politically
much less responsible, which would be a much more situation of temptation

to take desperate measures in order to achieve very parochial pélitical
aims. I do not think we can expect the same level of responsibility for

the future of the rest of the planet on the part of the Egyptien Department
of Defense than we do from our own, “the

These are the essential concerns, behind then, are also that the security

system prevents the details of development and dissemination of microbial
weapons from being accessible to the professional and medical scientific
criticism of the rest of the community. I can easily visualize a very eager
and very enthusiastic investigator in the chemical corps deciding on a
rather limited initiative and subject to a rather limited degree of scrutiny
and control because of the security system of performing experiments which
would be hazardous to the entire country, and in fact to the world. The
degree of review, control and criticism in a secure system cannot possibly
compare to that which operates in a system of open science, I am really
very much concerned that someone willtake in his head to decide that some
ee strain of anthrax ought to be tried out in the field without having

the kind of control that the public consequences of such dissemination are

going to be. I think this is one of the inevitable hazards of a system af
13

# very tight or attempted tight security in military services. In fact
you might make the same argument about the whole complexion of the program.
That the military objectives are going to be paramount)that the human
objectives of the development of weapons of this kind will never achieve the
kind of review that they deserve in relation to the potential gravity
of such developments for us as a species.

Without at this moment wishing to impair the existing defensive and
developmental activities of the Defense Department in Biological warfare,
I would submit that a problem of much higher priority is how to develop
the kind of contro that will keep such activities both in this nation and
in other nations under some kind of rational limitations. The one direction
that I can see to this is a demand for the removal of secrecy hy whatever
expedient we can devise in such work. I think there are grounds
for continuing various kinds of efforts that are related to biological
warfare because there are also very much the same things that related to
public health, But I can see very little reason even from a military
standpoint why these must be blanketed in the kind of secrecy that now
enclose them. Biological warfare is not a major strategic weapon in the
United States, I don't believe anyone would sustain the proposition
that the national security of this country really depends crucially on the
secrecy of our activities in biological warfare, They might, politically
embarassing, but I don't know enough about what would be released by
such information to have a clear insight into this point but it is obvious
that the most tender aspect of biological warfare is just the fact that it
is being done and the kind of anxieties that are aroused in the minds of
people, I've seen very little to suggest really cogent reasons for

Maintaining any important degree of secrecy with respect. to these

operations. In fact, the kind of proposal 9 might be prepared tomake
14

is that we enlarge our program in this area but we make it public. And
we have it large enough that it can cover all the bases that we might
otherwise think we might have massed. Mis way biological warfare research
will in fact be nothing else than public health research, We are faced
by constant attack by microbial invaders of all kinds. We need to know
about them by the natural dissemination how to protect ourselves against
them much the same thing as involved in their artificial dissemination.
The basis of proposal of the abolition of secrecy,isthat it is a step
towards the control of weapons that the race cannot afford to have developéd:
in secret without some kind of rational control {a uwhet to ulimit objectives
are, Unlike other weapons we can afford to take some risks with respect
to what the other side may be doing in biological warfare. We have other
deterrents that could discourage unexpected attacks, We're not in the
same position in trying to open up Bw anual, nuclear warfare. This
could be the first area in which we could attempt to negotiate for the
international control of weapons precisely because they are af weapons af
knxexnaxionai whose deployment has not been established and whose critical
nature for our national security is already open to doubt. When biological
warfare is developed as a utilitarian military tool tothe extent that
technologically less advanced countries can make full advantage of it
we will have lost that advantage and may have indeed suffered a very
important military disadvantage by being subject to attack on a much
broader level from a much wider variety of countries than is now the case.
One particular approach that I think we might consider, although I
realize how unrealistic it may sound , but I think if we could get SNSUEN
our colleagues in ehough countries started on this point some beginning
might be made, would be a demand that no microbiological research could be

classified. That this be part of the internal law of every country which

i
~ @S.a participant in this. kind of arrangement... One might-argue that the-~
15
Soviet Union although a party to such a law could still afford to main-
tain clandestine research in microbiology. This would be exactly the
texture of the concern about how you inspect a treaty of this kind. That is
a hazard. I'm not sure there would be enough merit in the Soviet Union
continuing to do such research with the risk of discovery that it was
violating one of its own treaties embodied in its own internal law to
warrant its doing so. I think to the extent that we can maintain communication
with our scientific colleagues through the abolition of classification
controls in other countries we've also reached an avenue of communication
that goes far beyond the immediacy of the situation. I'11 be glad to
develop this thesis a little further, perhaps in some further discussion,
But the particular proposal I have in mind is that even for a relatively
closedsociety such as the Soviet Union it would be very difficult for it
to maintain a public posture that makes it a matter of public policy of
its own published law that work of this kind is not to be classified.and
for this to remain secret. It is very easy to keep things secret when
thers a law that says they must be secret when there's a law that says
they must not, there are very severe administrative difficulties to say
the least that would involve maintaining really a very close enclosure
of entire populations in order to maintain that kind of security. This
sort of approach has never been tried as far as I know except in the sense

in the United States because we have such an aggressive newspaper industry
that it achieves many of the same purposes as an explicit law for the
publication of agwide a variety of subjects as possible. that keeps us

: these
an open society. I haven't expressed xke notions as clear as I might

like, but I've done the best that I can with my voice and the limitations

of time.
16
Gen. Rothchild:

I might comment on a couple of points that Professor Lederberg has
brought out. These are sort of scattered as I wrote them down as they came.

One is, Dr. Lederberg mentioned that there is no demonstration of the
use of CW weapons as. humanitarian weapons in the field, This isn't quite
right. CS, which is an incapacitating agent, chemical agent, it is an
irritant agent, a type of tear gas, has been used very extensively in
South Vietnam and one of the basic reasons it was started and one of the
things it has been used for is to repel attacks when the Viet Cong have
used women and children as shifelds. In fact I think there is an item in
the paper just a couple of days age where this,was another attack, launched
but this has been quite general its rather than just having to shoot to
protect yourselves you can break up on attack with this tear gas.

Another point he mentioned which is a camel nose under the tent kind o
of thing, in other words this was not Dr. Lederberg's approach. This was
the approach of the petition he mentioned. I sort of get into an ambivalent
situation when I start talking about this because on the side of nuclear
weapons I'm very much in favor of Ye Let's not get the thing started at
all then you can't ever build up to a WW III where you are having an all
out nuclear war. But we have weapons, conventional weapons now, that can
destroy huge numbers of péople over large areas. We've had demonstrations
in WW II we had coventn ees Rotterdam. Both completely leveled with
high explosive bombs and Tokyo which was completely leveled with incéndiaries.
So what we call conventional weapons now can destroy practically any numbers
of people you want to destroy. I think the thing that is involved here is
the philosophy of the nation that is using the weapons, They don't need the

biological weapons, for example, to destroy large numbers of people or the

chemical weapons. They have the weapons now. So I'm not sure this camel's
17

nose under the tent has too much validity when you have a weapon that
also gives you the possibility of a much more humane approach than you've
had in the past. There are many other aspects of this that I won't
take up particularly with regard to biological weapons but I wanted to
get the general point.c

When we talk about scientists working in the field of munitions,
as long as we have wars and we haven't stopped the wars you must be
--prepared to fight wars, There's just no two ways of getting around “thus,
I think it is the duty of scientists as well as any other citizens to help
their ccuntry be prepared to protect themselves and where their talents
dictate this is the field they work in. If we ever get restraints on war
this would be fine. Then we could stop this. We don't have restraints
at the present time.

I would question the possibility of experiments in biological weapons
being dangerous to the country and to the world as being very likely.
There is a great deal of review over most of the approaches to our small-
scale, large-scale experiments, there are an extreme degree of restrictions
Lim using human volunteers. It's very difficult when you are using human
volunteers your efforts of what you are going to do must be very carefully

Nenu

spelled out and it hie by a great many people right up to the
Secretary of Defense personal responsibility. We also have got a great
deal of review by our civilian advisors. This includes the Committee
from the American Society for Microbiology. Any type of experiment such as
this is approached with great care. When you come right down to it, the
secrecy in the field of biological. weapons is relatively snore About every
month or two I get a stack of reprints from Detrick. “They publish in

practically every area in which they work. All basic information is public.
18

The areas khak in which secrecy is maintained comes down mostly to an agent
which is considered a candidate agent and one which is developed to the
stock piles and what is in our stockpiles. This is where secrecy exists.
But most of the other work we do is published. We publish a great deal
of ax#a material as I say on all basic abstxeaets and in the protected
areas both in laboratory protection, protection of laboratory personnel
and in the protection of the personnel in the field. So there is
relatively little secrecy in this area. It is minor except for the
points that I have mentioned, Rxiuiagixax | |

Biological weapons are not only a deterrent though. There is again the
possibility of these weapons being very effective militarily particularly
in the field of incapacitating agents which is mesE suited to biological
agents where you can find incapacitating agents, and to a reaomolhe Bgrae
control the damage you are goin to do, The damage of course is mostly
to people. It is not to material things. The same is true in the
chemical field, I think you must consider whether you want to give up
a weapon voluntarily, unilaterally which might be of great value to you
again from the humanitarian aspect.

There are problems with respect to biological warfare which are not
true in the case of chemical warfare. In chemical warfare as I say you
can only cover smallrareas, you can control your results to a closer
degree. However you can do the same thing in the biological weapons
field too. For example, the hardiness of the organism is going to have a
great deal to do with how far that organism is going to travel. As -you
all know most organisms are killed when they are in the air in a few minutes
in sunlight. They're just not going to exist long. So if you want ©
cover a very large area, you will probably disseminate the organism ax_such

hes
r,

7 tas teed te fo bac
and get the whole night which it can travel. ws Ler Lave KOWIN
19

However, if you want to cover a small area or a limited area you can
put munitions down right on the area which disperse generally their
small rotating Leambitin, dropped from a height so that they randomly
distribute themselves when they hit the ground pressure will put out a
small amount of biological material. You can put this down right on
the area which you are specifically trying to affect and do it in the
daytime. Those organisms are going to come out and they're going to
be dead in an extremely short period of time. There is more control
here. This isn't an uncontrolled proposition.

One of the things that I'm disturbed about is that there hasn't been
more discussion in the field of biological weapons, agents, as to the

Writs

possibility of establishing new hopes which haven't been exposed as other
species. and, therefore, possibly have a continuing spread of this over
a longer period of time, I'm not sure this a serious problem. I don't
know enough about.it. But there's been no discussion of this out in the
public and I think it is an area that should be discussed and discussed
thoroughly. We know, for example, that the normal host for plague is
the rat. Plague happens to be one of your lethal agents. Whether you
would use it or not I don't know but if you did would you establish new
hosts in new species which would do damage to human people.

When we switch to aniincapacitating agent, let's say the virus of

QAM,

Venezualean,encephalomeilitis. Is this a danger or is this an unreal
danger? This isn't a very dangerous agent in the first place. But then
again going through these hosts is there a danger of increased toxicity,
lethality. These are questions I think that deserve a lot more discussion

and they are just getting silenced. This is not because of military

secrecy, This is because of apathy more than anything else.
20
Dr. Lederberg:

‘I think it is exactly your last point that I'd like to respond to
since I don’t think we are in very great disagreement on most of the
other issues and I'm not sure in disagreement on this one except for the
kind of response we ought to pay. My kind of concern is that a skilled
researcher in biological warfare will develop a strain of dengue virus
that he tests out on ten volunteers and says "Oh, this is perfect.’ “It
will give a 36 hour incapacitation, they all recover beautifully. We'll
produce a very large stockpile on it.2* On the basis of what will
necessarily be extremely inadequate evidence for the safety of its
application may then sometime be used in a very large scale. As long
as such work is developed within the framework of military security I
don't see how it can come out any other way. It will be rather as if
Fort Detrick had hhd the responsibility Df the development of the Sabin
vaccine, And the question of the safety of the vaccine was itself a
‘subject of military security. It was an agent disseminated on a very
large scale for a humanitarian purpose, But we wouldn't dream of doing
that because we know that in order to get a workable result we have
to subject our efforts in an area that is subject to as much confusion
and uncertainty as virology to the widest possible range of scientific
criticism. And that criticism hasn't died down yet. I don't know any nzuflisy
important reason why candidate agents for military purposes can't be
publicized along with the other 99% of the research that you are talking
about and let the question of their safety and their humanity “and~ all
the rest of this be subject to a general scientific scrutiny before we
commit ourselves as a nation to the use of these kinds of agents. One of

the main reasons I day that is in the long run, the operation of military

security is going to keep the scientists of this country from knowing about

it and being able to apply their judgment. And it isn't going to be kept
21
a secret from the Soviet Union and Communist China. Their military
intelligence is going to get at it as they have gotten every other really
important major development that has come along. Meantime we will not
be able to apply our criteria of scientific judgment on a sufficiently

broad basis.

Gen. Rothschild?

I might just mention a couple of points on that. I don't think
we're quite working on assmall a scale as you mention, Dr. Lederberg,
on the candidate agents. When you mention 10 people, I think we go
larger than that. But don't forget we do have our civilian scientists
who advise us on this, And we have a fiar number. We certainly try
to select well qualified ones. I admit that with no organic material
TAC use
you're-not going to know what you're going to do until you put in an
awful lot of people. But in wartime you don't quite have this choice.
If we, for example, had selected, three agents that we are going to
stockpile and told everyone in the world what they were, normally you'll
pick an agent which is not endemic to the area in which you might us. it,

the chances are that your opponent could definitely develop protective

measures against and it would'not be useful as an agent.

Dr, Lederberg:

You might have gotten the greatest a effectiveness
out of doing exactly that, you know, and a ‘few plants with respett to
the kinds of agents you pretend to stockpile can wiles of to the

emnomic cost of the enem make it justify the whole program. I'd be

SA Plas Gd Lek bee ncn .

\ 1 WER ot a y in _ . ; ; tp cb

more content to know whether there was an extra gXlanad ang Uuh any
nN _. La

e

=)

weit hens SO hace -
civilians review committee, for example the Public Health Serviec, that

has the authority to inquire about the xaf&#ex safety aspects of the
22
dissemination of agents and their development and it could really assure
itself with regard to the point that you make. When you say there is a
most careful review by an advisory group, an advisory group is usually
told what the people who want the advice want it to be told. That isn't

the exactly the kind of level of criticism that I'm thinking of.

Gen, Rothschild:

I think that the quality of people that we have...
Dr. Lederberg:
] It isn't a question of the quality of the people, it is a question
of what they are told.
Gen. Rothschild:

They get complete disclosure of everything we have. You mention
the Public Hdalth Service, we always have someone from the Public Health

C omy tee Muar
Service on our Advisory ksaxd, Dr. Alex Languer was on it for a long time

and may still be, I -don't~know, I haven't been in close contact with the a
ark Boia bos Acne wdc Te Ot (s wo
people., We have people, many of whom you oe I think we get adequate arg

advisors and it seems to me that this is a place in which the ASM Vetere otto ND

is very interested in seeing that we get good advice. So it$-committee
should be stocked with the best possible people you have and the most
conservative and insure that the approach is proper.

Dr. Lederberg:

I have the greatest admiration for Dr. Baldwin and I've known him
for a very long time and I know that in the context of the professor at
the University of Wisconsin he is a very competent advisor indeed because
he can consult with a great many other people on questions where his
own iahe Teas will be limited. You are dealing with a very broad
range of questions and inevitably there will be. I think that to talk

about the competence of an advisor in the context of his own information
23

when he is precluded from making further inquiry in getting further advice
himself is really cake quite differently. As a matter of fact I'd like
to press you on this point. Are these civilian advisors kin fact informed
with respect to every detail of the program in the areas we are talking
about? Do they really have the whole picture available to them?
Gen. Rothschild:

Yes, the answer is yes. There is nothing they don't have available
to them.
Question: 4). Chr le

Are they themselves sworn to secrecy.
Dr. Lederberg and Gen. Rothschild:

Yes, of course,
Gen. Rothschild:

But you see again the secrecy only applies to the area in which are
kept secret, which are relatively minor areas.
Dr. Lederberg:

Well I believe might make a start on the policy that I've indicated.
I think it is going to take a while to get a treaty that says we keep
no secrets. But I think a formal statement and a committment with respect
to what activities are fully published and what activities are kept secret
might itself be a good idea. I don't know ‘Rwat the guidelines are to the
classification officers in this respect, and I imagine there would be a
few documents about which there might be some marginal discomfort about
whether to open it or not. That is just the point thought you see. I

Wel ox .

think if there were a policy that the area of biological is’ so touchy that
this must receive special consideration. Maybe the burdem of proof ought

to be on the other side,

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24

Gen. Rothschild:

This was a matter of government policy, and this is one thing I
have protested against ever since I got out and I can do it quite publicly.
I can talk about our policy which says that we won't talk about chemical
weapons, we won't talk about biological weapons freely. We don't even |
talk about them enough in the government to determine on a sound basis
whether we should use them or not. I think that this is wrong arid I say
so now, So the two policies of restriction, military secrecy for example,
still binds me if I know any secrets which I don't really...I've been

out too long, But the restrictions through government policy don't affect

~me-at all once I retired. These are the two areas that I was speaking

about. There is no doubt that these hamper people in the service but in
the biological field we have less restrictions, for example, than we have
inthe chemical field. The reason is because it is new. The chemical weapon
field went through this from WWI, They got beat down so often 6n trying
to put information out that they finally just gave up. They don't publish
hardly anything. In the biological field, however, starting much more
recently they have kept fighting to publish and they do publish quite freely.
As I say I get an awful lot of papers, a constatn’ outflow of papers from
Detrick published in all the normal journals.
Dr. Lederberg:

That statement is often made but it doesn't really answer the point.

It is the papers that don't get published that we're concerned about and

Vax

which represent what is bétng classified and presumably the most sensitive
4 |

aspect of the program, Again a statement with respect to the proportion

of work is published is also pretty meaningless too, From this point of

view, It is very hard to form judgments of policy based on what has been

published when you know that the most sensitive areas aren't.
25

Ge. Rothschild:

By putting your top people on your committee advising Detrick you can
insure that the best possible approach is made to the subject.
Dr. Lederberg: best

I feel myself that better than no ventilation at all, With respect
to the issues immediately on the table, my only question is thether it
is worth the fuss to have the Qociety as an official body involved in this.
You can get at those same top people just as well, and since their judgments
are kept top secret it is impossible for the rest of the Society to know
whether it has any particular role in endorsing or not endorsing what they
have to say. That capsules my own general reaction to whether there should
be an official advisory committee of the ASM. I think the Services sould
be applauded for their efforts to get that kind of civisian advisory
support. I guess I only feel it ought to be greatly enlarged, in fact
ought to include everybody.and as close to everybody as you can manage
to have,
Ge. Rothschild:

I think you bring in a great aspect of safety from the standpoint
of the country.when you will have a society such as the ASM designate who

advise
$$ going to daxixe the Rheanixaix€axpx Detrick rather than let them select

their own advisors. Because there is a danger in this their selecting
advisors that they work with and who they feel are going to tell them what
they want to hear.
Dr. -Lederberg:

I think the much more important restraint is to publish the list of
your civilian advisors and let the country judge whether they are a

reputable group or not, you'll hear enough about it if they are not.

You don't need the Society to do this and there is no mechanism of selection