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Science Friday > Archives > 1997 > November > November 21, 1997

Hour One: Biological and Chemical Warfare:
The "poor man's weapons of mass destruction."

Iraq's expulsion of Americans on a United Nations weapons inspection team has focussed world attention once again on Iraq's supposed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. An all-out chemical or biological attack, a constant threat during the last Gulf War, never materialized. However, there is some evidence that Iraq used chemical weapons against the Kurds, and that U.S. troops may have been exposed to chemical and biological weapons during the conflict. After the war, Iraq claimed that they had destroyed the weapons and their means of production - but U.N. inspectors now strongly suspect that those claims were not true.

Chemical and biological weapons are often grouped together with nuclear munitions in the category of "weapons of mass destruction." Unlike nuclear weapons, however, they are relatively easy to produce, hide, and use - some have called them "the poor man's nuclear bomb." Chemical weapons are, as the name implies, chemicals. Biological weapons are typically an infectious agent, such as a bacterium or a virus. A third, borderline category, "biotoxins," consists of chemicals produced by living things.

Chemical weaponry began its life with techniques as simple as burning materials that would produce acrid smoke to blind enemies, attempting to foul the enemy water supply with waste, and tossing clothing from plague-infected people into the keeps of castles under siege. World War I brought more modern chemical warfare techniques into play with the use of chlorine gas and mustard gas. And while those agents are still a threat today, a larger concern comes from other even deadlier chemical and biological agents.

In 1995, an attack by the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo on Japan's subway system showed the deadly power of today's chemical weapons. The group released Sarin, a chemical that causes paralysis and rapid death from suffocation, into a subway car, killing a dozen people. Iraq is thought to have made at least some of the nerve gas VX, which works in a similar fashion to Sarin. VX is even more dangerous to troops in the field than Sarin because it leaves an oily coating on everything it touches - a coating that can kill if a fraction of a drop is inhaled or gets on exposed skin. Iraq is also suspected of having stockpiles of anthrax spores, a gram of which are theoretically capable of killing millions of people, and of botulinum toxin, one of the deadliest substances known to science. Botulinum toxin, or "botox," is considered 100,000 times more powerful than Sarin. It can cause respiratory failure in 2-12 hours.

Today, Science Friday focuses on the science of biological and chemical warfare. On Monday, Talk of the Nation will continue the discussion, looking at the history of chemical and biological warfare, and at the philosophy surrounding its development and use.

Listen to this program in RealAudio!

Guests:
Raymond Zilinskas
Associate Professor
University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute
College Park, MD

Matthew Neselson
Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Natural Sciences
Faculty Chair, Program on Chemical and Biological Studies
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

Books/Articles Discussed:

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Related Links:

International administration of the chemical weapons convention

Chemical and Biological Defense Information Analysis Center

Pacific Northwest National Labs Pathogen Detection

Medical Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Information Server

Biological Warfare Defense

Sarin attack in Japan
CNN.com: "Japan Cult Leader Hears Tales of Terror"

Gulf War Syndrome
Gulflink (U.S. military site)

Weapons of mass destruction in popular culture:
The movie "Broken Arrow" (missing nuclear weapons)
The book "Cobra Event," about biological terrorism (by Richard Preston, author of "The Hot Zone")