Biological Weapons: Coronavirus, Weapon of Mass Destruction?

Preface

Biological warfare, from a military perspective, is the intentional use of harmful biological agents to affect an adversary’s armed forces, population, crops, or livestock. Biological agents are many times more deadly than chemical warfare agents in terms of their scope and span of impact. For instance, ten grams of anthrax spores could kill as many people as a ton of the nerve agent sarin. It is, therefore, highly likely that biological agents will become the preferred choice of weapon for terrorists in future. The pertinent question is–Are there norms to curb and control the use of biological agents in warfare?

The 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), which established norms against the weaponization of pathogens, provided hope that States would commit themselves to ensuring a world free of biological weapons. However, the BTWC had certain congenital defects which provided loopholes for misuse and diversion of pathogens. It was expected that in due course the world community would reach a consensus in overcoming these defects by establishing a verification regime under the Convention. However, the States are yet to achieve this. Fortunately, after the 2001 anthrax attack in the United States, there has not been recorded or established incident of the use of biological weapons around the world.

Currently, SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic is now reshaping the world and has stirred a lot of discussion. In spite of the advanced healthcare facilities in the developed countries, the death toll has reached a new milestone. The pandemic is the worst global health emergency being faced by the world as per World Health Organization (WHO). In a matter of nine months or so, the world has been transformed. As of 30 September 2020, there were about 33.44 million cases of COVID-19, including more than one million deaths, in 216 countries and territories, and on every continent other than Antarctica. These figures are likely to be great underestimations of the true numbers of infections and deaths. A number of countries have had to deploy their armed forces to supplement medical resources. The pandemic has caused widespread loss of jobs the world over and has seriously impacted every sphere of life. Governments, economies, markets and individuals are facing a global crisis situation. The International Monetary Fund predicts that over the next two years, cumulative output losses from the pandemic could reach US $9 trillion.

There have been allegations that the virus responsible for the pandemic was released accidently from a laboratory in China.¹ Whether this is true or otherwise, keeping in view the extent of its impact, the possibility of it or similar potent biological agent, becoming a weapon of the future cannot be ruled out. As the world community is fighting hard to bring the situation under control, rogue actors may take advantage of the pandemic and may use biological weapons to similar effect. Such terrorist attacks would be widespread and indiscriminate, affecting every State.

New technologies for gene-editing, such as CRISPR and 3-D laboratory printing equipment have added a new dimension to it by making it possible to produce militarily significant quantities of pathogens and toxins in a make-shift laboratory or garage. In contrast to nuclear or chemical weapons, no specialized starting materials are required for the production of biological and toxin agents except for a small seed stock of a disease-producing organism, which is easy to procure due to possibility of dual-use. This calls for greater cooperation amongst the States, biologists, doctors and international organizations to thwart every such attempt. It would involve the sharing of information and effective mitigation strategies against bioterrorism.

The deciphering of the human genome sequence and the rapidly increasing domain of bioengineering offers unprecedented opportunities to use biological science to counter threats from pathogens. However, these same developments also allow biotechnology to be misused to create new agents of mass destruction. The UN and the Council of Europe have

warned against such bioterrorism attacks. There are reports that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other terrorist organizations have shown a keen interest in the use of biological weapons during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ISIS is understood to be re-examining its experiments on using bubonic plague as a weapon and there are concerns that the extremist group will try to attack a high-security biosafety laboratory.

Any biosecurity threat or epidemic could easily become a global concern. Pathogens do not recognize borders and will spread indiscriminately, once released, along with its intrinsic ability to mutate as it spreads. Scientists are afraid that a new disease as destructive as COVID-19 could paralyse humanity in the future. The post-pandemic period can provide an opportunity to think about the future of BTWC and the subsequent challenges that we may face from biological weapons. We must focus on cooperation and global unity of the kind exhibited by scientists sharing information related to the development of an effective vaccine against COVID-19 virus.

This book makes an attempt to take a fresh look at biological weapons and explore the possibility of the use of the COVID-19 virus or its genetically modified version as a biological weapon. It examines the impact of modern biotechnology, artificial intelligence and cyber capabilities on biological warfare agents. It looks into the weaknesses of the international legal regime which controls biological weapons and suggests measures which need to be considered by the States on priority. The challenge should not be limited to ensuring global compliance with the BTWC, but to control the business of biotechnology to prevent its misuse by wrong hands. This would require strong foreign policy and building trust among the States to facilitate the sharing of information in various domains. The States would need to work together proactively to develop collective strategies to overcome any future pandemic. At the same time, they would have to strengthen the international legal regime to stop the proliferation of pathogens for sinister activities and establish an effective legal system to punish wrongdoers. The international community must work together to prevent the use of biological weapons to ensure national and international safety.

Although it was not possible to cover every aspect of biological weapons and bioterrorism in this volume, we are hopeful that readers will gain significant understanding of the historical context and the present concerns about the proliferation and use of biological agents, some of the potent biological agents, covert biological weapons programmes of different countries and ways to curb the same. The chapter on Coronavirus will provide them with details about the new pathogen which may be developed as weapon of future warfare by rogue States and non-State actors. Readers will also be able to understand the status of the current legal regime relating to biological weapons, its shortcomings and the expectations from the world community in preventing future biological warfare. The BTWC’s Ninth Review Conference in 2021 will provide an opportunity to address these issues.

U.C. Jha

K. Ratnabali

1The three corona-viruses that cause severe disease — SARS-CoV (the cause of SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 — all came from bats. The origin of SARS-CoV-2 is still not known, but the virus shares 96% of its genetic material with a virus found in a bat in a cave in Yunnan, China. Cyranoski David, Profile of a Killer Virus, Nature , Vol. 581, 7 May 2020, pp. 22-26. The US President Trump has dubbed COVID-19 the China virus and Wuhan virus. The Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has stated that there was enormous evidence the virus had escaped from Shi’s lab in the city. Charlie Campbell, Yuxi Yunnan and Alice Park, Inside the Global Quest to Trace the Origins of COVID-19—and Predict Where It Will Go Next, Time , 3 August 2020.

Chapter - I

Biological Weapons: An Introduction

Biological warfare¹ dates back to antiquity and the history of warfare and the history of human’s understanding of disease are intertwined. Military leaders, without knowledge about microbial pathogens, understood that a cause and effect relationship existed between certain activities, locations, or exposures to victims of disease that resulted in the spread of infections that ultimately provided a military advantage.² The early use of biological weapons included the contamination of water with animal carcasses and filth. Militaries also used another ancient tactic of allowing an enemy to take sanctuary in an area endemic for an infectious agent in anticipation that the enemy force would become infected.³ It has been claimed by a few authors that biological warfare had already started 14 centuries before Christ, when the Hittites sent infected rams to their enemies. It is difficult to say with certainty that such acts were a part of natural epidemic or planned biological attacks. The reason being, before the advent of modern microbiology at the end of the 19th century, little was known about the pathogens and truth might have been manipulated for political reasons.⁴

Before discussing further on biological agents and the history of the biological warfare, a few basic terms need to be defined:

Biological Agents: The 1969 United Nations study for the Secretary-General states, Bacteriological (biological) agents of warfare are living organisms, whatever their nature, or infective material derived from them, which are intended to cause disease or death in man, animals or plants, and which depend for their effects on their ability to multiply in the person, animal or plant attacked.⁵ This definition does not include toxins in the term biological agents.

Biological Weapons: Biological weapons refer to munitions, equipment or other means of delivery including bombs, aircraft spray tanks and other devices, intended for use in the dissemination of biological agents and toxins for hostile purposes. The principal means of dissemination are as an aerosol to be inhaled by a target population or as a spray to be deposited on crop plants. An aerosol is a suspension in air of particles so small that they travel with air currents instead of settling to the ground.

Biological Warfare: Biological warfare is a planned and deliberate military employment of pathogenic strains of microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses,⁶ or their toxins to produce death, temporary incapacitation, or permanent harm in humans or to kill or damage animals or plants for a military objective.

Bioterrorism: The US Centre for Disease Control has defined bioterrorism as the deliberate release of viruses, bacteria or other agents used to cause illness or death in people, and also in animals or plants by non-state actors. Bioterrorism aims to create casualties, terror, societal disruption, or economic loss, inspired by ideological, religious or political beliefs. However, bioterrorism might also be used to cause significant economic losses by infecting livestock or crops, or contaminating buildings.

Bioterrorist: A bioterrorist can include any non-state actor who uses or threatens to use biological agents on behalf of a political, religious, ecological, or other ideological cause without reference to its moral or political justice. This includes non-state actors who operate with support of military establishment of a rogue state and biological agent was procured and disseminated with covert, improvised delivery means.

Biocrime: Biocrime implies the use of a biological agent to kill or make ill a single individual or a small group of individuals, motivated by revenge or monetary gain through extortion, rather by than political, ideological, religious or other beliefs. For example, Dr. Taranath Bhatacharyna was a physician with training in bacteriology. He and Benoyendra Chandra Pandey murdered 20-year-old Amarendra Pandey (half brother of Benoyendra) with a lethal dose of Y. pestis after a feud over the division of their father’s estate.⁷Other examples are the use of, for example, ricin to get rid of a partner, or the murder of the Hungarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978 with a ricin-containing pellet injected with an umbrella.

Biohazard: A biohazard is defined as any microorganism (including, but not limited to, bacteria, viruses, fungi, rickettsiae, or protozoa, parasite, vector, biological toxin, infectious substance, or any naturally occurring, bioengineered, or synthesized component of any such microorganism or infectious substance that is capable of causing the following: (i) death, disease, or other biological malfunctionin humans, animals, plants, or other living organisms; (ii) deleterious alteration of the environment; or (iii) an adverse impact on commerce or trade agreements.⁸

Biosecurity: Biosecurity aims to minimize the risk of theft, loss, intentional exposures and releases of pathogens or toxins. It covers a broad spectrum of potential risks and threats ranging from criminal activities, such as sabotage and isolated acts of aggression, to bioterrorism and espionage. Safeguarding infectious agents is also a national legal obligation under the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) and the UN Security Council Resolution 1540. Applied biosecurity has a number of important components like, employee accountability; material control; development of standard operating procedures; compliance with biosecurity procedures; physical security; access control; information security; transport security; proper routines for security-incident reporting and response; maintaining continuous evaluation and revision; and providing training and education.

Biosafety: Biological safety or biosafety is application of combinations of laboratory practice and procedures, laboratory facilities, and safety equipment when working with potentially bio-hazardous agents. A fundamental objective of any biosafety programme is the containment of potentially harmful biological agents. The purpose of containment is to reduce or eliminate exposure of laboratory workers, other persons, and the outside environment to potentially hazardous agents. Biosafety is dependent on three elements: standard microbiological laboratory practices and techniques, safety equipment and facility design. Biological safety, or biosafety, is the application of concepts pertaining to risk assessment, engineering technology, personal protective equipment (PPE), policies, training, and preventive medicine to promote safe laboratory practices, procedures, and the proper use of containment equipment and facilities.⁹

Biosafety protects people from germs, whereas biosecurity protects germs from people--- and there are large areas of overlap between them. Biosecurity and biosafety are both different approaches to ensure containment, and they both share an end goal of minimizing the risk of accidental or intentional exposures and releases of pathogens or toxins. Other commonalities include inventory control, access restriction, accountability and compliance, incident reporting, evaluation and revision, and education and training.

Black biology: Black biology is the use of genetic engineering to enhance the virulence of a pathogen or the targeting of a specific genetic code for use in terrorism. This new area of biology could create a designer virus. For example, a virus could be designed with secondary effects inducing the neurodegenerative, fatal by-products of botulinum toxin and the DNA sequence engineered for attacking any particular individual, say the President of a country.

Pandemic: A pandemic (from Greek pan meaning ‘all’ and demos meaning ‘people’) is an epidemic of infectious disease that spreads through human populations across a large region; for instance, a continent, or even worldwide. A pandemic, in contrast to an endemic, is not limited in time or place. Further, flu pandemics exclude seasonal flu, unless the flu of the season is a pandemic. Throughout history there have been a number of pandemics, such as smallpox and tuberculosis. In the 20th century three pandemic outbreaks were observed: the 1918 Spanish flu (death cases: approx. 50 million), the 1957 Asian flu (death cases: approx. 2 million) and the 1968 Hong Kong flu (death cases: approx. 1 million). More recent pandemics include the HIV pandemic, the 2009 flu pandemic, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pathogens: The vast majorities of microorganisms do not cause disease, but are instead beneficial to humankind in that they contribute decidedly to our health and general well-being in many cases. A few microorganisms can, however, cause infectious diseases and these are designated as pathogens. The pathogenicity of a microorganism is sometimes difficult to define, but the term generally means the ability to inflict damage, or the ability to cause disease. Potential biological weapons can be found among these pathogenic microorganisms.

Toxin: Toxin is a poison of plant or animal origin, especially one produced by or derived from microorganisms and acting as an antigen in the body.

Biological Warfare Agents

As defined earlier, biological warfare is the deliberate spreading of disease by the armed forces amongst humans, plant and animals resources of the enemy. Diseases are caused when small numbers of living microorganisms enter into the target population of humans, animals, or plants.

The microorganisms are essential for human and environment, yet disease outbreaks due to pathogenic microorganisms have killed large number of people. These micro-organisms multiply, and, after an incubation period, the symptoms of the disease become apparent. In some cases, micro-organisms produce toxins; non-living toxic chemicals, that cause symptoms. Depending upon the biological agent chosen, the resulting disease may cause incapacitation or death of the target population. There are hundreds of pathogens which can cause diseases in human, plant and animals population and the list is ever increasing.

The United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has composed a pathogen priority list, which contains the most likely biological warfare agents. For this, it has divided the emerging infectious diseases into three categories: A, B and C. The biological agents placed in Category ‘A’ can be easily disseminated or transmitted person to person. They cause high mortality, with the potential for major public health impact. They might cause public panic and social disruption, and require special action for public health preparedness. The CDC has labeled six biological agents as category A, namely:

Bacillus anthracis (anthrax)

Clostridium botulinum toxin (botulism)

Yersinia pestis (plague)

Variola major (smallpox) and other related poxviruses

Francisella tularensis (tularemia)

Viral hemorrhagic fevers, such as Ebola

Biological agents placed in Category ‘B’ are moderately easy to disseminate. They can cause moderate morbidity and low mortality. They require specific enhancements of CDC’s diagnostic capacity and enhanced disease surveillance. Category ‘B’ agents include:

Coxiella burnetti (Q fever)

Burkholderia mallei (glanders)

Staphylococcus enterotoxin B

Epsilon toxin of Clostridium perfringens

Ricin toxin (from castor beans)

Brucella species (brucellosis)

Encephalitis viruses

Category ‘C’ biological agents could be engineered for mass dissemination in the future because of their availability. They are easy to produce and disseminate. They are potentially linked to high morbidity and mortality and major health impact. Category ‘C’ agents include:

Nipah virus (encephalitis with high mortality)

Hantavirus (pulmonary syndrome)

Yellow fever virus

Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis

A table showing major biological agents that could be used as bioweapons is as follows.¹⁰

Table 1: The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention: Microbiological Agents

According to NATO guidelines, biological agents (included those used as biological weapons) can be further classified according to certain characteristics that define the hazard to health.¹¹ These are: (i) Infectivity--the aptitude of an agent to penetrate and multiply in the host; (ii) Pathogenicity--the ability of the agent to cause a disease after penetrating into the body; (iii) Transmissibility--the ability of the agent to be transmitted from an infected individual to a healthy one; and (iv) Ability to neutralize--having preventive tools and / or therapeutic purposes. NATO Handbook on the medical aspects of NBC defensive operations has listed 31 pathogens and 8 toxins as potential biological warfare agents. These are shown in the Table 2 as follows.

Table 2: NATO: Potential Biological Warfare Agents

In China, Pathogenic microbiology laboratory biosafety regulations, which were published by the State Council in 2004, divided pathogenic microorganisms into four groups, with group 1 defined as the highest risk. The Chinese Ministry of Health published the List of human transmission of pathogenic microorganisms in 2006, which identified harmful levels of each pathogenic microorganism and the laboratory BSL at which they should be handled.¹²

The categorization and listing of biological agents by various agencies are not conclusive. Various types of modified biological agents could potentially be produced through genetic engineering methodologies today.¹³ Each of these techniques, as listed below, seeks to capitalize on the extreme lethality, virulence, or infectivity of biological agents and exploit this potential by developing methods to deliver agents more efficiently and to gain control of the agent during warfare.¹⁴

Benign microorganisms genetically altered to produce a toxin or bioregulator (naturally occurring organic compounds that regulate diverse cellular processes in multiple organ systems, such as heart rate).

Microorganisms resistant to antibiotics, standard vaccines, antivirals, and therapeutics.

Microorganisms with enhanced aerosol and environmental stability.

Immunologically altered microorganisms able to defeat standard detection, identification, and diagnostic methods.

Combinations of the above four types with improved delivery systems.

Characteristics of Biological Warfare Agents

The desirable characteristics of a microbial agent developed for military use include: (i) the ability to infect in small doses; (ii) high virulence, or the capacity to cause acute illness resulting in incapacitation or death, without necessitating an undue loss of potency during production, storage and transport; (iii) a short incubation period between infection and the onset of symptoms; (iv) minimal contagiousness of the disease to avoid triggering an uncontrolled epidemic that could boomerang against the attacker’s population; (v) the absence of widespread immunity, either natural or acquired, to the disease in the population to be attacked; (vi) lack of susceptibility to common medical treatments, such as generally available antibiotics; (vii) suitability for economic production in militarily significant quantities from available raw materials; (viii) ease of transport, and stability under wartime field conditions of storage and delivery; (ix) ease of dissemination; and (x) availability of protection against the agent for the attacking troops, such as a vaccine, antibiotics, and/or protective clothing and respirators. In addition, environmental conditions also affect the viability of biological warfare agent or toxin. These conditions include: solar (ultraviolet) radiation, relative humidity, wind speed, and temperature gradient. Ultraviolet light decreases the viability of most aerosol disseminated biological agents. However, encapsulation through man-made processes, natural sporulation, or arthropod vectors may protect biological agents from the impacts of the environment and increase agent viability.¹⁵

Biological agents can be transmitted through one or more ways. The transmission modes could be the following: (i) Parenteral: Agents that are transmitted through body fluids or blood; (ii) Airway (by droplets): Agents that are emitted by infected people, which can then be inhaled by surrounding people; (iii) Contact: Through which the agents present on the surface of the infected organism can infect another organism; and (iv) Oral-faecal route: Through objects, foods or other items contaminated with the faeces of infected patients, or through sexual contact. However, these criteria cannot be applied rigidly in case of every biological warfare agents. For instance, COVID-19, a new airborne and highly lethal virus has caused a deadly pandemic in 2019-2020. Initially, it was reported that COVID-19 virus is primarily transmitted between people through respiratory droplets and contact routes. Therefore, transmission of the COVID-19 virus can occur by direct contact with infected people and indirect contact with surfaces in the immediate environment or with objects used on the infected person (e.g., stethoscope or thermometer). However, in July 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged that the evidence of airborne spread of COVID-19 virus is emerging and possibility of airborne transmission in specific conditions, crowded and closed poorly ventilated settings cannot be ruled out.¹⁶

In general, agents dispersed as dry powder are more viable than those dispersed as wet aerosols. Biological agents can also be transmitted directly by arthropod¹⁷ vectors or by an infected individual. Infected arthropod vectors are useful for penetrating the skin.

Environmental Impacts of Biological Weapons

Humans are not the only target of biological weapons. These weapons might be used to attack herds of animals, crops or even a material supply that is vital for revenue. For example, if purposely introduced into a cattle farm, a bio-weapon could kill all the animals. This attack could be carried out with relative ease and virtually no immediately visible signature. The usual method of controlling such widespread disease is mass slaughter of the infected animals, but this could be economically or militarily devastating for many countries. For instance, in a number of countries militaries are dependent on mules for transportation. A population dependent on a staple crop such as rice could be rendered helpless by the introduction of a specific disease that devastated its unprotected rice crop.¹⁸

If a country’s agricultural lands are attacked with biological weapons, serious economic consequences could follow.¹⁹ Modern agricultural methods dictate that large areas can be planted with genetically identical crops. This genetic homogeneity leaves entire regions susceptible to attack with an anti-plant agent to which the crop is not resistant. Entire crops could thus be wiped out during a single harvest season.²⁰ For instance, in 1944 and 1945, serious consideration was given to destroying the Japanese rice crop using a variety of fungus. Anti-material biological warfare might be attempted by an adversary because biological agents are hard to detect and identify and are readily concealed, and their use can plausibly be denied.²¹A purposely introduced organism that degrades specific metals and renders them useless could be devastating for a small country’s economy. As technology continues to develop further, specific anti-material agents could be designed and create enormous problems.

A supply of standard biological agents for covert sabotage or attacks against broad-area targets would be relatively easy to produce and disseminate using commercially available equipment, such as agricultural sprayers. The environmental harm caused by biological weapons exceeds the damage caused by most explosive munitions.²² The environmental harm caused by these weapons is measured by their capability to contaminate soil and water, and hence despoil an ecosystem for a prolonged period. Despite the legal ban on biological weapons, biological warfare will always be an attractive option for adversaries in future conflicts and biotechnology will continue to have a profound impact on biological weapons.

The development and use of biological weapons is clear cut – as weapons of mass destruction, can have regional, if not global, impact and destabilizing effects. Biological weapons can have a primary, secondary or tertiary environmental impact.²³ In other words, they can directly degrade the environment, or their use can have an unintentional impact, or the response to an incident related to a biological weapon can have a negative environmental impact. In addition to those weapons that could intentionally target aspects of the environment, it is possible that biological weapons designed to target humans could have an indirect environmental impact. Open-air release of biological agents may require the removal of large amounts of topsoil, which could have serious consequences for the local ecosystem. In the case of an anti-animal attack, it may be necessary to carry out large-scale culling to control the spread of disease. Disposing of the large number of carcasses can pose significant environmental problems.²⁴ The biological agent might seep into the water supply, contaminating rivers and streams, and lead to additional infections. For example, the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK in 2001, resulted in the death of over 6.5 million animals, of which approximately 4.2 million were culled as part of disease control and 2.3 million animals were culled and paid upon for welfare reasons or under the light lambs scheme. The above figure of 6.5 million does not include many slaughtered new born lambs and calves, which were not counted in the Department’s database maintained for compensation purposes, as their value were included in the valuation assigned to their mother. Disposing of these carcasses caused a series of environmental concerns. At first, the bodies were buried, but concerns were raised that the virus might seep into the water supply, contaminating rivers and streams, and lead to additional infections.²⁵ The mass grave for sheep caused another problem as blood began to bubble up through the topsoil. This led to a change in policy and burning of carcasses. Therefore, virtually every all activity associated with biological weapons, from their development and production through their use to even the measures designed to respond to them and mitigate their effects, could have a significant environmental impact.

Out of weapons of mass destruction, biological ones are those which dread people the most. In fact, most biological weapons have a unique quality that other non-conventional weapons (such as chemical and nuclear) do not have; biological agents are able to multiply in the host organism and be transmitted in turn to new hosts, generating in this way with unpredictable effects on the population, both in terms of number of victims and geographical spread. This has been witnessed in the case of spread of COVID-19 virus across the world during 2019-2020, infecting more than 33.4 million and killing nearly over one million individuals across the world.²⁶

Outline of the book

Human activities and capabilities today have its foundation in the past in some form or the other. So, looking back at the past, tracing the evolution in the use of the biological agents, and contextualizing the norms that have been developed are essential for better understanding the issues pertaining to it. Chapter II of this book covers in the first part few instances of the historical use of biological agents, as well as their use by certain countries in the First and the Second World War. The second part of the chapter discusses the various steps taken by states to control the use of biological weapons in the past up to the signing of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons (BTWC) Treaty which came into force in 1975. This chapter also highlights the fact that multiple nations have pursued clandestine biological weapons programmes even after being a state party to the BTWC Treaty which prohibited the development, production, stockpiling, acquisition and retention of biological weapons unless required for prophylactic or other peaceful purposes. The third part of this chapter includes discussion on the biological weapons programme in various countries which are party to the treaty.

Biological weapons contain some form of bacteria, virus, or other agents that cause serious diseases in human beings like cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever, etc. Some biological weapons contain toxins, which are dead substances made from living organisms. Examples include the botulism toxin and shellfish poison. Biological warfare agents are inherently indiscriminate and uncontrollable. Almost every biological agent deliberately used against humans, plants, or animals has the capability of causing widespread panic and adversely affecting a nation’s perception of its national security. Chapter III, analyses the Category ‘A’ biological warfare agents which includes, Anthrax, Ebola, Marburg and Lassa, Smallpox, Plague, Tularemia, and Toxins.

An interconnected world increases the opportunity for biological agents to emerge and spread so that a disease threat anywhere is a disease threat everywhere. The spread of COVID-19 world over in less than three months has exhibited that infectious diseases travel without visas and cross borders indiscriminately. Infected travelers in large number of cases did not manifest any symptoms of the virus responsible for COVID-19 pandemic. There are few reports which also allege that it was an experimental germ that accidently escaped from a Chinese laboratory. In chapter IV, a detailed account of COVID-19 virus has been undertaken. It also examines whether COVID-19 virus or its mutated versions could be used as biological weapon by terrorists or non-state actors in the near future.

The biotechnology revolution has generated a range of methodologies that have been exploited for the control and prevention of infectious disease, development of diagnostics, antimicrobials and vaccines. In particular, the availability of full genome sequences for most recognized pathogens has provided the tools to design diagnostic reagents as well as new generation vaccines.²⁷ Molecular biology techniques allow us to detect, amplify, and express virtually any gene in a matter of days. Such techniques have rapidly accelerated our ability to study the virulence of bacterial and viral pathogens and have even resulted in the identification of many new agents of disease. However, just as these techniques have proven invaluable in the control and prevention of infectious disease, the same powerful techniques could be used for the development of enhanced biological weapons. Creating pathogens with increased virulence, multidrug resistance or strains that are not targeted by standard vaccines, are now possible.²⁸ Chapter V of the book evaluates the impact of these technologies including the dual-use ones on the future of biological warfare agents.

The biological weapons are considered weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Currently, two international agreements provide the existing framework for transnational regulation of biological warfare: the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. In addition, the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court makes their use in armed conflicts, both international and non-international, a war crime. The United Nations, through its Security Council Resolution 1540 has attempted to combat non-state actor involvement in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Chapter VI of the book critically analyses international legal regime, including its inadequacy in prohibiting the use of biological weapons by states or non-states actors.

Unlike chemical or nuclear weapons, the components of biological warfare are found in nature. Thus, the presence of any quantity of these organisms in the environment does not necessarily connote a sinister motive. This is the main drawback, as biological warfare can always be carried out under the pretext that such traumatic occurrences are the result of natural circumstances that lead to outbreaks of diseases and disasters of either endemic or epidemic proportions.²⁹ Today, almost every country has the capability, if not necessarily the intent, to develop at least crude biological weapons based on standard microbial and toxin agents. As an increasing number of developing countries become involved in commercial biotechnology, they may be tempted to explore its military potential. The devastation that could be brought about by the military use of biological agents can be gauged from the fact that throughout history, the inadvertent spread of infectious disease during war has caused far more casualties than actual combat.³⁰ Even though biological warfare arouses general repugnance, it has never been conducted on a large scale, and is banned by international treaty systems. Biological and toxin warfare agents were stockpiled during both the World Wars and continue to be developed as strategic weapons—the poor man’s atomic bomb—by a small but growing number of countries.³¹

1Biological warfare is the intentional use of living organisms or their toxic products, to cause death, disability or damage in man, animals, or plants. The target is man, either by causing his sickness or death, or through limitation of his food supplies or other agricultural resources. Biological weapons may be defined as living organisms that infect their victims, causing incapacitation and often death; some can spread to other living entities, even those not initially attacked. Barry Kellman, Bridging the International Trade of Catastrophic Weaponry, vol. 43, Am.