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prepared for use in intercontinental missiles. By WWII, the United States, the United Kingdom,
Canada, Germany, Japan, and the USSR all had active biological weapons programs.
The Iraqi bioterrorist program, initiated in 1974, has been of recent interest. Although much is
still unknown about this program, the United Nations Special Commission has information from
Iraq that this program studied the use of botulinum toxin, B. anthracis, influenza virus, aflatoxin,
trichothecene mycotoxins, and ricin. During the Gulf War, Iraq reportedly prepared missiles and
bombs that contained aflatoxin, botulinum toxin, and B. anthracis, although they were never
used.
Disarmament and legislation. In 1969, the United Kingdom and the USSR began to call for
bioweapons disarmament. That same year, the U.S. offensive bioterrorist program was
dismantled, although the biodefense program continued. In 1971, the U.S. Army Medical
Research Institute of Infectious Diseases was opened to research biological protective measures,
diagnostic procedures, and therapeutics. By 1973, the United States had destroyed its entire
arsenal of bioterrorist agents.
The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of
Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, also called the
Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), was opened for signature in 1972 and became effective
in 1975. It was the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning an entire category of weapons.
Although the BWC is an international agreement, there is no monitoring mechanism to ensure
each party’s adherence.
In 1979, a few years after the signing of BWC, there was a massive accidental release of
aerosolized B. anthracis spores in Sverdlovsk, Russia; 79 people became ill and 69 died. The
Soviets maintained that this outbreak was due to the ingestion of contaminated meat sold on the
black market. However, President Yeltsin acknowledged in 1992 that in 1979 there had been an
accidental release of an unspecified biological agent from a military facility. This is an important
event in world history because it was the first major evidence that a nation was in direct violation
of the BWC.
In the United States in 1995, a member of a white supremacist group attempted to buy Y. pestis
from an Ohio laboratory supply company and later attempted to purchase anthrax from a Nevada
company. This resulted in the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of
1996, commonly referred to as the “Select Agent Rule” (42 CFR Part 72.6, Fed Reg Oct. 24,
1996).
In June 2002, the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of
2002 was signed into law (PL 107-188). This Act updated the existing Select Agent Rule by
requiring facilities to register if they possessed select agents. Previously, only facilities that
wanted to transfer select agents needed to register with the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC). See also http://www.fda.gov/oc/bioterrorism/PL107-188.html.
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