Weapons of Mass Destruction (“WMD”) have been labelled Chemical, Biological, Radiologic, and Nuclear (“CBRN”). They are cheap ways to kill and maim large numbers of people quickly.
To prevent their development and use, international treaties were created. The first was the Geneva Protocol of 1925, banning the use of biological and chemical weapons in war. Many nations signed it, but it took 50 years for the USA to ratify it, and during those 50 years, the US asserted it was not bound by the treaty. The US used both biological and chemical weapons during those 50 years.
President Nixon announced to the world in November 1969 that the US was going to end its biowarfare program – but not the chemical program. In February 1970 Nixon announced we would also get rid of the USA’s toxin weapons, which included snake, snail, frog, fish, bacterial and fungal toxins that could be used for assassinations and other purposes.
Nixon told the world that the US would initiate an international treaty to prevent the use of these weapons ever again. In 1975, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, or Biological Weapons Convention (“BWC”) for short, entered into force.
But in 1973, Americans Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen discovered genetic engineering (recombinant DNA). This discovery changed the biological warfare calculus.
It has taken over 40 years, but in 2022 all declared stocks of chemical weapons were destroyed by the USA, Russia, and the other 193 member nation signatories.
It is now 2023, and during the 48 years the Biological Weapons Convention has been in force the wall it was supposed to build against the development, production, and use of biological weapons has been steadily eroded.
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