Biological weapons spread infectious agents or toxins to kill humans, animals or plants or contaminate a country’s food and/or water supply. They can be deadly and highly dangerous and spread beyond a country’s borders, making them difficult to control.
While infectious agents have long been used in wartime there are concerns that scientific advances – such as CRISPR gene editing tools and gain-of-function research – could be used by malign actors to modify pathogens to make them even more deadly and transmissible.
The toxin or infectious agent needs to be “weaponised” to be delivered to the target population. According to the United Nations previous bio-weapons programmes have seen the construction of missiles, bombs and hand grenades as a dirty bomb delivery method. Spray tanks have also been designed for vehicles and there have even been efforts to contaminate clothing.
While there are concerns about what could happen if terror groups get hold of bioweapons, many security experts believe that producing them requires a level of sophistication only available to national governments and state-sponsored groups.
Perhaps their greatest power lies in the power they hold in the collective imagination – in a letter to the BMJ in 2001 in the wake of anthrax attacks in the United States psychiatrists from the UK, US and Australia said the (understandable) panic the weapons evoke could cause more harm than the actual weapons themselves.
“The purpose of these weapons is to wreak destruction via psychological means – by inducing fear, confusion and uncertainty in everyday life,” they wrote.
The United Nations Biological Weapons Convention came into force in 1975 and it forbids states from developing, producing, stockpiling, or sharing biological agents, toxins and equipment that have no justification for peaceful or defence purposes.
Some 184 countries have fully signed up to the treaty – however, in 2024 the United States government State Department raised concerns about the compliance of China, Iran, Russia and North Korea, all of which are full signatories.
Under the treaty countries can lodge a complaint with the UN Security Council if they believe other member states are violating the convention. The Security Council can investigate complaints, but this power has never been invoked.
The use of biological weapons is as old as warfare itself with reports of armies poisoning wells as far back as 600 BC. During the siege of Caffa (a town in modern-day Ukraine) in the 14th century the attacking Tartar forces experienced an outbreak of plague and threw the bodies of their dead comrades over the walls of the town to spread the disease. In 1797 Napoleon flooded the plains around the Italian town of Mantua to start a malaria epidemic.
During the First World War the Germans denied shipping cattle infected with anthrax to the United States and other countries, although its use of chemical weapons in the form of mustard gas is well documented. This led to the first international chemical and biological weapons treaty in 1925. However, during the Second World War many countries, including Britain, conducted bioweapon experiments.
Eventually a bioweapons treaty was signed in 1975, although western governments believe the Soviet Union continued a research programme for many years. In 1979 reports emerged of an anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk, near a military facility. The official version of events was that people had died after eating infected meat, however in 1992 the Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, admitted that the outbreak was caused by an accidental release of anthrax spores from a bioweapons facility.
In the 1990s the Aum Shinrikyo cult attacked the Tokyo subway with sarin gas, killing 13 people. Before this they had made three unsuccessful attempts at attacks with anthrax and botulinum toxin. Members had also tried to get hold of Ebola virus.
In 2001 – a week after the 9/11 terrorist attack – letters containing anthrax spores were sent to media organisations and two senators, killing five people. After a long investigation a scientist at the US government biodefence lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland, became the prime suspect but he committed suicide before he could be charged.
who.int/health-topics/biological-weapons
disarmament.unoda.org/biological-weapons
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