Biological weapons that can wipe out entire populations pose one of the biggest threats to the world today, yet remain almost completely uncontrolled according to the British Medical Association.
Offering a controversial justification, the Bush administration is planning to perform certain biological defense activities that some arms control experts say could violate the Biological Weapons Convention and potentially render its restrictions meaningless.
Arms control advocates contend that research planned for a new Department of Homeland Security laboratory at Fort Detrick would violate the international ban on biological weapons and could touch off a global biological arms race.
The U.S. government?s efforts to combat bioterrorism are sparking concerns over the dangers enhanced biodefense programs might pose to the nonproliferation regime.
The Sunshine Project has revealed that the U.S. Army has developed and patented a new grenade that it says can be used to wage biowarfare. They argue that this is in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention, which explicitly prohibits development of bioweapons delivery devices.
The authors accuse the U.S. of rejecting a recent bioweapons protocol because it is committed to continuing and expanding its secret bioweapons research programs.
Facing no prospect that Biological Weapons Convention states will approve an inspections mechanism for verifying compliance any time soon, a group of organizations here today announced the launch of a nongovernmental network for gathering information and reporting on biotechnological activities worldwide.
The authors analyze the recent Russian use of chemical weapons to resolve a hostage crisis and conclude that "not only is it apparent that the use of the opiate gas was legitimate given the circumstances, the decision to do so appears in the end to have been morally justified from the perspective of the Russians."
The Bush administration has abandoned an international effort to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention against germ warfare, advising its allies that the United States wants to delay further discussions until 2006.
Jonathan Tucker argues that the U.S. position on the Biological Weapons Convention is untenable and he urges the Bush administration to "join with other nations in taking urgent and meaningful steps to reinforce the BWC." The article also contains a sidebar on the need for better self-regulation within the scientific community on "dangerous research" such as the Mousepox experiments.