Biological Warfare
and the Extinction of Man

A Nobel Prize-winning geneticist calls a ban
of biological weapons only a first step in measures needed
to assure man’s life and health on earth.

by Josoua LEDERBERG, Ph.D.

A: A SCIENTisT I am profoundly concerned about the
continued involvement of the United States 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 controls
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 repre-
sent only the first small step toward 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 immedi-
ate 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 bac-
teria. 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
prize 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 ther-
apy. Even bacteria, believed to be under firm control

with antibiotics, are continuing their own evolution and
continue their assaults upon human health with re-
newed vigor. In the long run, only our continued vigil-
ance 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 bio-
logical warfare agents. In this respect we are in some-
what the same position as the nuclear physicist who
foresaw the development of atomic weapons, with one
crucial difference. Nuclear weaponry depends on the
most advanced industrial technology. It has then been
monopolized by the great powers long enough to sus-
tain 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 develop-
ment. 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 knowledge-
able 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 pro-
voke. I will also leave to your own conscience the bur-
den of moral judgments about using these kinds of
weapons. Most Americans would be repelled by the
thought, but perhaps no less by 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 the lives of a world of innocent bystanders.
Fortunately, these concerns actually converge with our
self-interest in calling for a halt to bacterial warfare
before it becomes established in the arms-traffic of the
world,

IVI Y 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

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Reprinted from Stanford M.D., Fall 1969, Val. 8, No. 4. @ 1969 by the Stanford Medical Alumni Association.
Josuua LEDERBERG, a Nobel Prize winner, is Joseph D.
Grant professor of genetics and biology, and chairman of
the Department of Genetics of the Stanford University
School of Medicine. Dr. Lederberg also writes a syndicated
column titled “Science and Man” in the Washington Post,
and several other newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. Dr.
Lederberg’s article was written just before President Nixon’s
announcement pledging not to make use of bacteriological
weapons, It was presented December 2 before the Subcom-
mittee on National Security Policy and Scientific Develop-
ment of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “I am
confident,” Dr. Lederberg said after the President’s an-
nouncement, “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.”

high-budget powers in order to get the necessary scien-
tific 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 wartime Los Alamos for the contain-
ment of BW research. If a high level activity is to be
maintained, there will be frequent turnover of person-
nel. It is unreasonable to expect a tighter security
barrier here than has prevailed in any other area, given
the problems of reconciling security with a free society.
Besides these channels for diffusion of information,
and 2) by the inadvertent spread of disease. If the great there are also bound to be Pueblo-like incidents, and

 

powers could actually protect the secrecy of their bac- finally calculated leaks in the budget competition of the
terial warfare work, I would be much less alarmed. The services, The American people might be the last to
chance of BW ever being used in a major strategic know. But we can hardly rely on more than a 10-year
attack is essentially negligible in the face of the nuclear delay between many important discoveries in BW re-
deterrent. The suggestion that we need BW or CW search laboratories and their availability to hostile and
weapons for specific retaliatory purposes in order to irresponsible forces outside.
deter their use aims at a ridiculous kind of precision. As a matter of prudent self-protection, bacterial war-
Will our deterrent missiles have to follow the same fare research laboratories in the U.S. and the U.K.
trajectories as those that might potentially attack us? have pioneered in the technology of containing dan-
Will they have to be launched at the same time of day? gerous microbes. I have great respect for the technical
Will they have to have the same mix of explosive energy capabilities of the senior civilian management of these
and radioactive fallout? If we are attacked with anthrax laboratories. They should be credited with the utmost
strain B27, must we reply with anthrax B27? diligence in protecting both their personnel and the
On the other hand, if I were a Machiavellian adviser surrounding community. They have also published a
to a would-be Hitler, I might indeed advocate a con- great deal of their work in the engineering of such pro-
siderable investment in biological weaponry as a des- tective facilities and this experience is unquestionably
perate approach to the cheap acquisition of great power of great value in public health work. For example, the
even if at a very great risk, And, of course, the first thing British laboratories, at Porton, were acclaimed for the
I would do would be to plant my intelligence agents in safe handling of the very dangerous Marburg virus
the existing bacterial warfare establishments of the upon its first outbreak in Europe two years ago.

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In spite of these precautions, 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 convention-
al antibiotics obviously worsens the problem. We simply
have no way of assuring ourselves that a bacterial war-
fare 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 de-
fense 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 in-
surgents 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 in-
surgent from dabbling in bacterial warfare.

The problem of containing infectious agents being
manufactured and stockpiled in large quantities, or
tested in the open air, is a much more difficult techno-
logical 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 cor-
rectly implemented.

ACTERIAL WARFARE 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 bac-
terial warfare agents. For this reason again the United
States and other nuclear powers have absolutely noth-
ing to lose in disavowing their use in war. Our con-
tinued participation in BW development is akin to our
arranging to make hydrogen bombs available at the
supermarket.

Microbiological research must be expanded in pro-
grams 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 spon-
taneous 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 the 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 Americans and human be-
ings urgently calls for the institution of improved mea-
sures of world public health and of international con-
trols on the development and use of bacterial warfare
agents. Research related to the 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 to mutual escalation of anti-human de-
velopments.

It is difficult at this stage to detail the texture of new
agreements subsequent to our ratification of the Gene-
va Protocol. We cannot suddenly impose unilateral de-
cisions on the international community; but no other
issue can evoke such a unanimity of world opinion. New
agreements probably should include:

* public legal commitments against secret bacterial
warfare research.

¢ the establishment of central, international labora-
tories to monitor the occurrence of threatening organ-
isms and to help develop generally available means of
protection against them.

* a legal system to protect the freedom of information
and communication of data on disease organisms to
such central authorities.

* a general acceleration of research and health ser-
vices 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.

* treaty commitments on bacterial warfare analogous
to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

* pre-agreed sanctions by the civilized world against
the release or development of BW agents, clearly in-
voking international law against such “offenses against
mankind” as akin to war crimes.

Some of the expectations that 1 have outlined are
speculations which I fervently hope will be proven
false. Unfortunately, they already have a proven his-
torical precedent. As many of you may already know,
the Black Death—the epidemic of the Bubonic Plague
in Europe between 1346 and 1350—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 as-
saulted with the corpses from the attacking Tartar
hordes who had been infested with the disease. This
epidemic subsided only after killing approximately one-
third 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 en-
emies of all mankind, we are foolish and arrogant to
doubt that history will record “Black Death II,” and
more.

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