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The United States biological weapons program officially began in spring 1943 on orders from U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.Research continued following World War II as the U.S. built up a large stockpile of biological agents and weapons.
The Soviet Union covertly operated the world's largest, longest, and most sophisticated biological weapons program, thereby violating its obligations as a party to the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972. [1] The Soviet program began in the 1920s and lasted until at least September 1992 but has possibly been continued by Russian Federation ...
After World War II, and with the onset of Cold War tensions, the US continued its clandestine wartime bio-weapons program. The Korean War (1950–53) added justification for continuing the program, when the possible entry of the Soviet Union into the war was feared.
The USBWL was created after Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson requested the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1941 to review the feasibility of biological warfare (BW). The following year, the NAS reported that BW might be feasible and recommended that steps be taken to reduce U.S. vulnerability to BW attacks.
Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi with the intent to kill, harm or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. [1] Biological weapons (often termed "bio-weapons", "biological threat agents", or "bio-agents") are living ...
However, the issues surrounding the test program were not resolved by the passage of the law and "the Pentagon was accused of continuing to withhold documents on Cold War chemical and biological weapons tests that used unsuspecting veterans as "human samplers" after reporting to Congress it had released all medically relevant information." [25]
Many of the vaccines that protect against biowarfare agents were first tested on humans in Operation Whitecoat. [4]According to USAMRIID, the Whitecoat operation contributed to vaccines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for yellow fever and hepatitis, and investigational drugs for Q fever, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, and tularemia.
The use of bees as guided biological weapons was described in Byzantine written sources, such as Tactica of Emperor Leo VI the Wise in the chapter On Naval Warfare. [9] There are numerous other instances of the use of plant toxins, venoms, and other poisonous substances to create biological weapons in antiquity. [10]