This new work offers a clear and thorough account of the threats posed by bioterrorism from the perspective of biologists. The authors examine thirteen disease-causing agents, including those responsible for anthrax, the plague, smallpox, influenza, and SARS. Each chapter considers a particular pathogen from the standpoint of its history, molecular biology, pathology, clinical presentation, diagnosis, weaponization, and defenses. The book also examines strategies for making vaccines and protecting the population in a bioterror attack.

GRIPPING, MOVING AND INSPIRING: the remarkable life of a world-leading expert in chemical weapons defence. "His work has saved lives and given hope." - Professor David Nott, bestselling author of War Doctor For thirty years, Hamish has served and volunteered in conflict zones around the world. As the army's foremost chemical weapons expert, he built a unique first-hand understanding of how to prevent attacks and train doctors on the frontline - saving countless lives in the process. After suffering near-death experiences time and again, Hamish discovered he had a ticking time bomb in his own chest: a heart condition called Sudden Death Syndrome that could kill him at any time. But with a new awareness for the fragility of life, he fought harder to make his count. Despite facing extraordinary personal danger, Hamish has unearthed evidence of multiple chemical attacks in Syria and continues to advise the government at the highest level, including after the 2018 Novichok poisoning in Salisbury. Lifting the lid on Hamish's unique world of battlefield expertise and humanitarian work, Chemical Warrior is a thrilling story of bravery and compassion.

This book analyses the Syria crisis and the role of chemical weapons in relation to US foreign policy. The Syrian government's use of such weapons and their subsequent elimination has dominated the US response to the conflict, where these are viewed as particularly horrific arms - a repulsion known as the chemical taboo. On the surface, this would seem to be an appropriate reaction: these are nasty weapons and eradicating them would ostensibly comprise a 'good' move. But this book reveals two new aspects of the taboo that challenge this prevailing view. First, actors use the taboo strategically to advance their own self-interested policy objectives. Second, that applying the taboo to Syria has actually exacerbated the crisis. As such, this book not only provides a timely analysis of Syria, but also a major and original rethink of the chemical taboo, as well as international norms more widely. -- .

In Behind the Gas Mask, Thomas Faith offers an institutional history of the Chemical Warfare Service, the department tasked with improving the Army's ability to use and defend against chemical weapons during and after World War One. Taking the CWS's story from the trenches to peacetime, he explores how the CWS's work on chemical warfare continued through the 1920s despite deep opposition to the weapons in both military and civilian circles.
As Faith shows, the believers in chemical weapons staffing the CWS allied with supporters in the military, government, and private industry to lobby to add chemical warfare to the country's permanent arsenal. Their argument: poison gas represented an advanced and even humane tool in modern war, while its applications for pest control and crowd control made a chemical capacity relevant in peacetime. But conflict with those aligned against chemical warfare forced the CWS to fight for its institutional life--and ultimately led to the U.S. military's rejection of battlefield chemical weapons.

Recovering amphibious forces can be complicated if ashore forces come under attack from enemy weapons, particularly chemical, biological, or radiological weapons. This report assesses current policies and capabilities pertaining to the recovery and decontamination of ashore forces and identifies policy options the Navy could pursue to better perform this mission.

"Biological weapons are widely feared, yet rarely used. Biological weapons were the first weapon prohibited by an international treaty, yet the proliferation of these weapons increased after they were banned in 1972. Biological weapons are frequently called 'the poor man's atomic bomb, ' yet they cannot provide the same deterrent capability as nuclear weapons. One of my goals in this book is to explain the underlying principles of these apparent paradoxes." from Living Weapons

Biological weapons are the least well understood of the so-called weapons of mass destruction. Unlike nuclear and chemical weapons, biological weapons are composed of, or derived from, living organisms. In Living Weapons, Gregory D. Koblentz provides a comprehensive analysis of the unique challenges that biological weapons pose for international security. At a time when the United States enjoys overwhelming conventional military superiority, biological weapons have emerged as an attractive means for less powerful states and terrorist groups to wage asymmetric warfare.

Koblentz also warns that advances in the life sciences have the potential to heighten the lethality and variety of biological weapons. The considerable overlap between the equipment, materials and knowledge required to develop biological weapons, conduct civilian biomedical research, and develop biological defenses creates a multiuse dilemma that limits the effectiveness of verification, hinders civilian oversight, and complicates threat assessments.

Living Weapons draws on the American, Soviet, Russian, South African, and Iraqi biological weapons programs to enhance our understanding of the special challenges posed by these weapons for arms control, deterrence, civilian-military relations, and intelligence. Koblentz also examines the aspirations of terrorist groups to develop these weapons and the obstacles they have faced. Biological weapons, Koblentz argues, will continue to threaten international security until defenses against such weapons are improved, governments can reliably detect biological weapon activities, the proliferation of materials and expertise is limited, and international norms against the possession and use of biological weapons are strengthened."

Of late, bioterrorism has been a subject of great concern and some misunderstanding. With these fears and uncertainties in mind, the authors in Agents of Bioterrorism offer a clear and thorough account of the threats posed by bioterrorism and how to prepare for and respond to an attack. The contributors consider thirteen disease-causing agents, including those responsible for anthrax, encephalitis, botulism, ebola, tularemia, salmonella, the plague, smallpox, influenza, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Each chapter considers a particular pathogen from the standpoint of its history, molecular biology, pathology, clinical presentation, diagnosis, weaponization, and defenses. Four appendices cover rapid drug discovery, strategies for making vaccines, protection of the population in a bioterror attack, and sources of information on bioterrorism.

Scientific advances have resulted in a greater understanding of how pathogens produce their toxins and how they can be used to produce a wide range of bioweapons. These advances have also led to new defenses against disease-causing agents. The contributors demonstrate that by understanding the pathogens used in bioterrorism, scientists can help minimize fear and encourage constructive responses to this threat.

Assesses the vulnerabilities of the agricultural sector and the food chain to a deliberate act of biological terrorism and explores the likely outcomes of a successful attack. Over the past decade, the United States has endeavoured to increase its ability to detect, prevent and respond to terrorist threats and incidents. The agriculture sector and the food industry in general, however, have received comparatively little attention with respect to protection against terrorist incidents. This study aims to expand the current debate on domestic homeland security by assessing the vulnerabilities of the agricultural sector and the food chain to a deliberate act of biological terrorism and exploring the likely outcomes of a successful attack.

In the 1970s Americans learned for the first time that they had been used for decades as unsuspecting guinea pigs in a series of astonishing experiments conducted by the US Army. Military researchers had been secretly spraying clouds of bacteria over populated areas in order to study America's vulnerability to biological weapons. Many civilians have suffered illness, even death, as a consequence.

They were sometimes the butt of jokes, the "comical chemical corporals." Officially they were the British Special Brigade, sent to retaliate against German chemical warfare, selected, as one of their members said, almost willy-nilly. "They wanted chemists," a young recruit later recalled, ." . . so I looked up the formula for water and told them it was H2O and I was in."

Although the Brigade itself has received little attention since its disbandment following the war, chemical warfare in World War I has been mythologized, sentimentalized, and vilified. Its image has been distorted by legends and sensationalized by half-truths.

Taking a new look at the reality of poison gas warfare in World War I and the role of the Brigade, Donald Richter exposes the myths perpetuated over the years by novelists and misinformed sentimentalists and challenges prevailing views. He weaves data from official military records with personal anecdotes from diaries, letters, and memoirs to create a real-life account of the formation of the Brigade and the frustration, fear, boredom, pain, and day-to-day life that followed.

Richter presents new information about the details of all the varied methods of gas warfare, from airborne discharges by cylinders and projectors to flame-throwers, smoke screens, and "Beam" attacks. He also explores the ethical and moral scruples of gas soldiers concerning their novel methods of warfare.

To make the story complete, Richter takes a critical look at the Brigade's leader, Charles Foulkes, revealing a forceful and capable but stubbornly obstinate commander.

This is the first book on the Brigade since the 1934 publication of Foulkes's own Gas The Story of the Special Brigade, a biased and self-justifying account of chemical warfare in which Foulkes exaggerated the unit's successes and ignored its failures.

This source book presents the essential technical, political, legal, and historical background needed for informed judgments about the recent expansion of military interest in the life sciences - particularly in the weapons potential of the new biotechnology. Preventing a Biological Arms Race develops the case for strengthening national and international commitments to biological disarmament and proposes courses of action to achieve this goal."In theory," Susan Wright observes, "the menace of biological warfare should no longer be with us." Developing, producing, and stockpiling biological weapons are unconditionally banned by international treaty. East-West military rivalry and confrontations in the Middle East have eroded confidence in the treaty regime, however. The advent of genetic engineering and other new biotechnologies has revived military interest in biological weaponry, generating concern about the potential weapons applications of biological research.The 15 contributions by experts from a wide range of disciplines include a history of U.S. biological warfare policy, analyses of the ethical issues posed by defensive biological warfare research, case studies of alleged violations of the international legal regime prohibiting biological weapons, reviews of that regime, and proposals for strengthening the barriers to biological warfare. A series of 14 appendixes collect important data and documents related to biological weapons."Contributors: Barton J. Bernstein, Gordon Burck, Leonard A. Cole, Richard Falk, Jeanne Guillemin, John Isaacs, Stuart Ketcham, Jonathan King, Marc Lappe, Matthew Meselson, Richard Novick, Charles Piller, Julian Perry Robinson, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, Seth Shulman, Nicholas A. Sims, Robert L. Sinsheimer, Harlee Strauss, Susan Wright, Keith R. Yamamoto."

Mustard gas is typically associated with the horrors of World War I battlefields and trenches, where chemical weapons were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Few realize, however, that mustard gas had a resurgence during the Second World War, when its uses and effects were widespread and insidious. Toxic Exposures tells the shocking story of how the United States and its allies intentionally subjected thousands of their own servicemen to poison gas as part of their preparation for chemical warfare. In addition, it reveals the racialized dimension of these mustard gas experiments, as scientists tested whether the effects of toxic exposure might vary between Asian, Hispanic, black, and white Americans. Drawing from once-classified American and Canadian government records, military reports, scientists' papers, and veterans' testimony, historian Susan L. Smith explores not only the human cost of this research, but also the environmental degradation caused by ocean dumping of unwanted mustard gas. As she assesses the poisonous legacy of these chemical warfare experiments, Smith also considers their surprising impact on the origins of chemotherapy as cancer treatment and the development of veterans' rights movements. Toxic Exposures thus traces the scars left when the interests of national security and scientific curiosity battled with medical ethics and human rights.

Mustard gas is typically associated with the horrors of World War I battlefields and trenches, where chemical weapons were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Few realize, however, that mustard gas had a resurgence during the Second World War, when its uses and effects were widespread and insidious. Toxic Exposures tells the shocking story of how the United States and its allies intentionally subjected thousands of their own servicemen to poison gas as part of their preparation for chemical warfare. In addition, it reveals the racialized dimension of these mustard gas experiments, as scientists tested whether the effects of toxic exposure might vary between Asian, Hispanic, black, and white Americans. Drawing from once-classified American and Canadian government records, military reports, scientists' papers, and veterans' testimony, historian Susan L. Smith explores not only the human cost of this research, but also the environmental degradation caused by ocean dumping of unwanted mustard gas. As she assesses the poisonous legacy of these chemical warfare experiments, Smith also considers their surprising impact on the origins of chemotherapy as cancer treatment and the development of veterans' rights movements. Toxic Exposures thus traces the scars left when the interests of national security and scientific curiosity battled with medical ethics and human rights.

A framework for assessing the security risks of emerging dual-use technologies and devising tailored governance strategies is proposed and applied to contemporary case studies. Recent advances in disciplines such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, and neuropharmacology entail a "dual-use dilemma" because they promise benefits for human health and welfare yet pose the risk of misuse for hostile purposes. The emerging field of synthetic genomics, for example, can produce custom DNA molecules for life-saving drugs but also makes possible the creation of deadly viral agents for biological warfare or terrorism. The challenge for policymakers is to prevent the misuse of these new technologies without forgoing their benefits. Innovation, Dual Use, and Security offers a systematic approach for managing the dual-use dilemma. The book presents a "decision framework" for assessing the security risks of emerging technologies and fashioning governance strategies to manage those risks. This framework is applied to fourteen contemporary case studies, including synthetic genomics, DNA shuffling and directed evolution, combinatorial chemistry, protein engineering, immunological modulation, and aerosol vaccines. The book also draws useful lessons from two historical cases: the development of the V-series nerve agents in Britain and the use and misuse of LSD by the U.S. Army and the CIA. Innovation, Dual Use, and Security offers a comprehensive, multifaceted introduction to the challenges of governing dual-use technologies in an era of rapid innovation. The book will be of interest to government officials and other practitioners as well as to students and scholars in security studies, science and technology studies, biology, and chemistry.

In the wake of the 2003 Iraq War, the term 'intelligence failure' became synonymous with the Blair Government and how it had used intelligence to construct a case for war. This book examines British secret intelligence over the thirty years preceding its very public failings. From the Soviet Union to South Africa and Libya, Mark Wilkinson provides a detailed analysis and vivid account of the development and functioning of Britain's intelligence agencies in the struggle against the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons. Based on archival research and interviews with key players in the intelligence establishment, he shows how a handful of chemical and biological weapons experts battled to make their voices heard. They had evidence that illegal weapons development was taking place but were continually rebuffed by adversaries in Whitehall. Fascinating, surprising and sometimes shocking, Before Intelligence Failed is a compelling account of what was known about chemical and biological weapons proliferation before the Iraq War.

A science-based text, New Developments in Biological and Chemical Terrorism Countermeasures presents research that addresses the growing threat of chemical and biological terrorism as well as the need for improvements in the implementation of countermeasures. This new textbook building upon Advances in Biological and Chemical Terrorism Countermeasures is the product of more than a decade of synthesizing newly acquired information through extensive research and development supported by the United States Army through Texas Tech University's Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. National Program for Countermeasures to Biological and Chemical Threats. The book describes and expands upon threats, vulnerabilities, and pathogenic and toxic effects associated with agents used in biological and chemical terrorism. Among the discussions of agents is an exceptionally thorough examination of ricin history, toxicity, adsorption, and mobility. It also gives an overview of protective gear and in-depth perspectives on future research needs, including identifying challenges and paths forward in predicting risks. Effective countermeasures to biological and chemical threats are becoming increasingly necessary. New Developments in Biological and Chemical Terrorism Countermeasures provides a cutting-edge source addressing and advancing this need. It offers strategies and expert viewpoints toward improving defenses against threats in the United States as well as other nations.