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Secured Area Tests 
Even though World War II had ended -- and the atomic bomb had been added into the U.S. military arsenal -- America's biological warfare program continued. Granite Peak Installation / Dugway Proving Ground, Utah 1945 Biological Agent: VKA (vegetable killer acid) The Army established a massive chemical weapons testing facility in the Utah desert in 1942. In January 1945 after spending $1.3 million, they converted an area of the site for biological weapons testing. One weapon tested was a 91-pound bomb containing vegetable killer acid that could be used to destroy Japanese rice crops. The facility was shut down at the close of World War II.
Biological Agent: Brucella suis Army scientists from Camp Detrick field tested 4-pound bombs filled with Brucella suis in this remote Canadian test site, jointly established by Canada and Britain in 1941 for chemical weapons testing and later adapted for biological tests.
ublic Airborne Tests In October 1948, Ira Baldwin -- the chairman of the United States' Committee on Biological Warfare -- issued a report detailing the threat of covert biological threats on American soil. In May 1949, the Army established their own covert group at Camp Detrick -- the Special Operations Division -- to test the vulnerability of American targets and the effectiveness of biological warfare.
Biological Agent: Serratia marcescens John Schwab -- chief of Camp Detrick's Special Operations Division -- persuaded Pentagon officials to allow his group to conduct a covert test of the building's defense against biological attack. Small groups of operatives set up fake "air pollution tests" in the hallways spraying Serratia marcescens, a harmless bacteria. The ventilation system distributed the bacteria efficiently throughout the building.
Biological Agents: Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii Camp Detrick's Special Operations Division coordinated the large scale spraying of microbe spores from the decks of the USS Coral Sea and the USS K. D. Bailey. The clouds of spores -- chosen for their similarity to the anthrax spore -- blew in from the ocean into the cities of Hampton, Norfolk and Newport News.
Biological Agents: Serratia marcescens & Bacillus globigii Camp Detrick's Special Operations Division repeated their offshore tests later the same year off the coast of San Francisco. This time, they added clouds of fluorescent particles to the mix which would appear visible when exposed to ultraviolet light. The entire population of the city was exposed to the simulants and traces of the sprayed particles were found 23 miles inland.
Biological Agent: Bacillus globigii In the early 1950s, the Army established the St Jo Munitions Expenditure Panel to test the effectiveness of biological aerosol attacks on urban environments. Camp Detrick scientists dispersed simulants from the top of automobiles in St. Louis, Minneapolis and Winnipeg -- all selected based on their similarities to particular Soviet cities.
Seeking to incorporate meteorological understanding of "large air masses" that regularly swept over the continent into their distribution tests, the Army embarked on large scale airborne biological tests in 1957. Operation Large Area Coverage / South Dakota to Minnesota; Ohio to Texas; Michigan to Kansas via Illinois December 1957 Agent: Zinc Cadmium Sulfide Building on the airborne tests conducted off the coasts of Virginia and California, the Army tested the dispersal of particles over huge swaths of the Country. Using planes loaned from the Air Force, 3 separate tests dumped large clouds of simulant over the continental United States with some particles traveling over 1,000 miles. These tests proved that a single plane equipped with biological weapons could devastate an entire continent.
iological Weapons production and Testing In the early 1950s, the Army's biological weapons program began developing and testing actual weapons to be deployed.
Biological Agents: Pasteurella tularensis, Brucella suis, Bacillus anthracis. Herbert G. Tanner -- the head of Camp Detrick's Munitions division -- envisioned an enclosed environment where biological tests could be conducted on site, rather than at remote places like Dugway and Horn Island. The result was the "8-ball" -- a 4-story high, 131-ton other-worldly sphere that could withstand the internal detonation of "hot" biological bombs without risk to outsiders. Live animals were inserted into the ball along with biowarfare bombs for exposure tests.
Biological Agent: Brucella suis Having perfected a true biological weapon with the aid of the "8-ball", the Army set about conducting a field test. In 1952, scientists constructed a mock city at the Dugway Proving Ground with plywood houses and over 3,000 guinea pigs set up in cages. On August 9, an Air Force B-50 bomber flying from Florida dropped several cluster bombs -- each containing over 100 biological bombs -- on a well-marked bullseye in the center of "town". The official report concluded that atomic bombs were much more devastating, deadly, and efficient than the Brucella bombs.
Biological Agents: Bacillus anthracis, Francisella tularensis, Brucella suis, Coxiella burnetii, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Clostridium botulinum, Staphylococcal enterotoxin B In 1953 the Army converted an arsenal -- originally built in 1941 to store chemical weapons -- to manufacture and stockpile biological weapons. The Army continued to produce and store biological agents at Pine Bluff until President Richard Nixon discontinued America's biological weapons program in 1969. The Army's cleanup effort took over 2½ years at a cost of over $10 million.
Biological Agent: Coxiella burnetii (Q fever) In the mid-1950s, the Army began testing biological weapons on live human test subjects: Seventh Day Adventist Army volunteers. 30 volunteers participated in the first test of Project CD-22 (also known as "Project Whitecoat") along with dozens of rhesus monkeys and guinea pigs. Instead of a cluster bomb drop, the Army sprayed microbes upwind from the test subjects. Some of the subjects did contract Q fever. They were effectively treated with antibiotics.
pecial Ops team In the early 1950s, the Army's biological weapons program began developing and testing actual weapons to be deployed.
Biological Agent: Bacillus globigii Special Operations agents entered these high volume transportation hubs armed with specially outfitted briefcases to spray an anthrax simulant. Other agents -- armed with briefcases containing vacuum pumps -- took samples from various points within the locations.
Biological Agent: Unknown simulant Teams from Detrick's Special Operations division descended into the New York City subway system with a new delivery mechanism -- a light bulb filled with powdered simulant. Agents dropped the light bulbs between moving cars, creating a cloud of simulant that was pushed through the tunnels by each succeeding train. Other agents equipped with quiet "Mighty Mite" vacuum samplers tested the effectiveness of the transmission at various points throughout the subway system.
roject 112 In 1961, Secretary-of-Defense Robert McNamara created Project 112 -- one of dozens of projects -- to test the effectiveness of biological and chemical weapons in warfare. Under this directive, the Army began conducting larger scale tests in remote locations outside of the continental United States.
In May 1962, the Army established a new center for biological warfare studies at Fort Douglas, Utah named the Deseret Test Center. The facility was used to organize and deploy dozens of large scale remote tests in areas including Alaska, Panama, Hawaii, remote areas of Canada and the Pacific Ocean. The Army closed the Deseret Test Center in 1973. Project SHAD Project SHAD ("Shipboard Hazard and Defense") was a group of tests conducted in remote waters, most in the Pacific Ocean. In some tests, biological agents or simulants were released from the decks of warships and their spread was monitored from other ships. In other tests, aircraft sprayed materials over animals on ships or islands. Diseases As Weapons Glossary Disease -- A distressed condition of a biological system in reaction to external stimuli -- such as infection by bacteria or virus -- and characterized by a set of identifiable symptoms. Bacteria -- One-celled organisms that can replicate themselves. Virus -- Genetic material that needs to invade a cell in order to replicate. Bacterium vs. Virus -- A single bacterium can be grown to the desired amounts whereas a virus requires a host organism to be grown to large quantities. Both bacteria and viruses are considered "agents" of a disease. Weaponize -- Creating an aerosol or other form that would spread and infect people easily through ingestion, inhalation, or skin contact. Reservoirs -- Organisms that host the agent in nature -- the natural environment of the germ, which often causes no harm to its host. The reservoir determines whether a disease could ever be fully controlled and in the case of viruses, suggests the medium required to make more of the agent. Natural reservoirs could also be used to spread a disease -- dropping a rat infected with plague into a city, for example. Categories for Bioweapons Agents (as defined by the Center for Disease Control) Category A - Agents that spread easily and have a high mortality rate. Category B - Agents that spread moderately and have lower death rates. Category C - New, possibly genetically engineered diseases. Anthrax
T See a photograph of a victim of anthrax (i.e, not caused by weaponry. Be advised -- it is a graphic image. Anthrax is quite rare in the U.S. with only a handful of cases over one 21 period. Inhalation anthrax in particular has typically been limited to industries that handle dead animal wool or skin. Its occurrence is more common in developing countries. Anthrax spores can be extremely difficult to eradicate, lingering in soil for up to 70 years. They are also heat resistant, another factor that made them attractive to wartime scientists. During World War II, Paul Fildes supervised the making of 5 million linseed cakes contaminated with anthrax bacterial spores for possible use against German livestock. When the War ended, the U.S. was beginning work on the production of a million anthrax bombs. The actual application of anthrax bacterial spores for weapons use has been quite rare -- one tragic case being the attacks during the fall of 2001 that utilized envelopes containing anthrax bacterial spores which infected 22 people in the U.S. and caused 5 deaths. Botulism
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See a photograph of a wound complicated by botulism (i.e, not caused by weaponry. Be advised -- it is a graphic image. otulinum toxin -- among the most deadly substances in the World -- was one of the first agents considered for use as a biological weapon. An ounce has the potential to kill everyone on Earth. The toxin causes botulism, which is today quite rare with about 110 cases reported annually in the United States. The vast majority arise from the consumption of contaminated home-canned foods like green beans and corn. Infants are also susceptible to botulism if they eat honey. Left unchecked, botulism presents with muscle paralysis and respiratory failure. Treatment is often the administration of an antitoxin and -- in severe cases -- use of a breathing machine until the patient's lungs can function once more. (The muscle paralysis is exploited when botox -- a form of the toxin -- is used for cosmetic applications.) Current death rates from botulism are under 10%. But in the World War II era, more than half of patients died. That made it appear attractive for weapons use to scientists like Paul Fildes. But botulinum toxin (called "Agent X" by the Allies) was difficult to produce in the large quantities. And the aerosol form necessary for widespread use is unstable. Although the first production order placed by the British for Camp Detrick was 7 pounds of dried botulinum toxin, field tests conducted by the Americans at Horn Island were a notable failure and the Army concluded that botulinum toxin would likely not be a good bioweapon agent. Brucellosis
T Unlike anthrax, brucellosis has a very low mortality rate -- around 2 percent. It can, nonetheless, incapacitate its victims with waves of flu-like symptoms for months. See a photograph of a victim of brucellosis (i.e, not caused by weaponry. Today brucellosis strikes from 100-200 people a year in America and is treated with antibiotics. But it remains a much more widespread problem elsewhere in the World. Though not readily passed from human-to-human, brucellosis is very infectious. A high percentage of people exposed to its bacteria are likely to come down with the disease. The Brucella bacteria are fairly easy to grow. To U.S. planners in the early Cold War years, Brucella bacteria therefore appeared an effective yet "humane" biological weapon. In 1952, the first large-scale field tests began at Utah's Dugway Proving Ground. That summer, thousands of guinea pigs in mock enemy cities were exposed to Brucella bacteria bombing runs, leading one general to remark, "Now we know what to do if we ever go to war against guinea pigs." Results were favorable enough to officially add Brucella bacteria to the U.S. arsenal. But there was a key production problem. The bacteria decayed completely in a few months. So empty bomb casings had to be prepared and a facility made ready to produce large quantities of the agent at a moment's notice. Such a facility was completed in December 1953 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and the Army eventually assembled more than 2.5 million empty bomb casings. Q Fever
Q Fever -- named for its discovery in Queensland, Australia in the 1930s -- makes victims very sick with flu-like symptoms (fever, sort throat, headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea among others). Only fif50ty percent of those infected with the C. burnetii bacteria show any symptoms. And of those who do, the fatality rate is about 4%. The bacteria lives in domestic livestock and can be transmitted to humans through inhalation of barnyard dust. Q  fever can be treated with antibiotics and an effective vaccine has been developed, primarily for people who work with animals. The ability to treat Q fever and its low morbidity are 2 reasons why the U.S. made it a staple of the human testing conducted in Operation Whitecoat.
Smallpox
S Rashes appear on the skin of smallpox victims, the bumps become pustules -- they feel like there is a small object under the skin -- and then the pustules scab and fall off. Direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected persons or their infected clothing is necessary for transmission. However, smallpox has been known to spread in enclosed environments where the air is re-circulated. See a photograph of a victim of smallpox (i.e., not caused by weaponry). Be advised -- it is a graphic image. Smallpox was weaponized by the secret Soviet bioweapons program. Unlike most other bioweapons agents, smallpox viruses are easily spread from person-to-person and this -- combined with a mortality rate of about 10% to 30% -- meant it could devastate a target community. But smallpox can be prevented by vaccination. In fact, a global public health campaign completely eliminated smallpox -- a disease that had affected human beings for millennia -- in the United States by 1949. Because human beings are the only natural reservoir for smallpox, after the last known case of the disease in Somalia in 1977, the disease has been considered eradicated. Regular vaccination for smallpox is no longer required. Stores of smallpox viruses remain in U.S. and Russian laboratories, however. And bioterrorism fears have led to recent vaccination campaigns and the stockpiling of vaccine for potential future use. Yellow Fever
O See a photograph of a victim of yellow fever (i.e., not caused by weaponry). ne of the most historically deadly viral hemorrhagic fevers is yellow fever which killed thousands of Americans in epidemics that terrified the Nation. The fatality rate of this disease is around 10-20%. But because light cases tend to go undetected, the mortality rate is perceived to be much higher. Victims of this viral hemorrhagic fever have their liver attacked (leading to a yellow complexion) and their clotting mechanisms destroyed. Victims produce black vomit -- the result of bleeding into their stomachs -- before dying. Many believed that the fluids produced in death were the carriers of this virus until Walter Reed and a U.S. Army team proved that mosquitoes were the source of infections. In the 1930s, Japanese agents had tried to purchase strains of the yellow fever virus from the laboratories of Rockefeller University where a vaccine was being developed. They were unsuccessful. An American attempt to weaponize yellow fever involved raising hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes a month at Fort Detrick. Tests included dropping uninfected mosquitoes on Savannah, Georgia in 1956 to see how far the insects would spread. Technical difficulties in infecting and maintaining the insects -- and then the development of an effective yellow fever vaccine -- made the weapons program irrelevant. "Fortunately, this never got beyond the research stage," says Dr. Thomas Monath, a leading yellow fever researcher. The last outbreak of yellow fever in the United States occurred in New Orleans in 1905. Recent American deaths from the disease have involved travelers to tropical Africa or South America -- regions where yellow fever is still present. Other viral hemorraghic fevers include Ebola and Marburg viruses which are deadlier because they can be spread directly from person-to-person without the need for an animal host. Others A number of other diseases were considered as part of various bioweapons programs. During World War II, the Japanese dropped plague-infested fleas from airplanes and caused disease outbreaks in China. The South African government allegedly released cholera into the water sources of particular villages. Other diseases that the CDC is keeping a watch on include tularemia and genetically-altered diseases. Other biological weapons that would infect food supplies have also been researched.  
See 2 photographs of victims of plague (i.e., not caused by weaponry). See a photographs of a victim of cholora (i.e., not caused by weaponry). 
See 2 photographs of a victim of tularemia (i.e., not caused by weaponry). Be advised -- it is a graphic image! People and Events Paul Fields (1882-1971) 
Knight and germ warrior, Sir Paul Fildes ran the biology department at Britain's secret Porton Down facility and oversaw his country's first attempts to develop biological weapons. Becoming a Bacteriologist 
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on of a noted painter who had illustrated books by Charles Dickens, Fildes was born in 1882 in London. As a young schoolboy, he already displayed a scientific bent -- even drafting a paper on "The passage of food to the stomach". Although he entered medical school in 1904 with the intent of focusing on surgery, Fildes soon moved into bacteriology. After working in a Royal Navy hospital, he joined Great Britain's Medical Research Council and became head of its Bacterial Chemistry Unit, editing a 9-volume treatise on the field. I  n 1940 with Britain at war with Nazi Germany, a new biology department was established at Porton Down -- a secret British facility near Salisbury that had been established in 1916 to deal with the threat of chemical weapons. Fildes became the head of this department and began conducting research into offensive biological weapons. One early project dubbed "Operation Vegetarian" investigated the practicality of dropping linseed cakes containing anthrax bacterial spores over Germany that would kill any cattle that ate them. Although Fildes ordered the production of 5 million of these cakes, they were never used.
F Reinhard Heydrick on a visit to Paris ildes would later claim he participated in another biological warfare project that did go forward, however. The May 1942 assassination by the British Secret Service of high-ranking Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich near Prague. Heydrich was ambushed and later died of what had appeared to be minor wounds. Although his claims could not be substantiated, Fildes later said he "had a hand" in Heydrich's death -- possibly by supplying the assassins with grenades containing botulinum toxin that were used in the attack. Anthrax Island I I Gruinard -- the island used by British scientists during WWII to test a series of anthrax bombs n the summer of 1942, Fildes and his colleagues settled on Gruinard Island -- a remote 522-acre island off Scotland's northwest coast -- as a field test site. After the military had bought the island and declared it off-limits, Fildes' team prepared it to become Great Britain's first outdoor biological weapons test site. On July 15, they dropped a bomb filled with anthrax bacterial spores from a 1-foot wooden gallows about a hundred yards upwind from a group of 15 sheep, each of whom had been placed in crates with openings for their necks. The sheep began to present with symptoms of anthrax three days after the test. 13 of the animals eventually perished. Another similar test was successfully conducted on July 24. Some months later on September 26, an airplane dropped a bomb filled with anthrax bacterial spores onto the island. But the bomb became lodged in a bog and thus none of its payload was released. Fildes' team then repeated that experiment a month later on a beach in Wales and this time it went off without a hitch. The British now became convinced that they could make anthrax bombs work but realized they needed help with the large-scale production of anthrax bacteria. For this, they sought America's help. Turning to America 
The Americans had been slower to investigate biological weapons than the British. But in terms of industrial capacity, they had no peer. I researcher works in one of several size aerobiology chambers at Camp Detrick for work on microbial aerosols and the spread of disease n November 1942, Fildes and a colleague arrived in Washington where they requested that the United States set up production facilities sufficient to produce large amounts of anthrax bacterial spores (called "Agent N") and botulinum toxin ("Agent X"). Their initial order was for 7 pounds of Agent X, and an American team overseen by Ira Baldwin at Camp Detrick began working on this in June 1943. They were able to fulfill this order within a couple of months. Anthrax Bombs Not everyone on the British side approved of the mass production of biological weapons. For example, when they learned of Fildes' activities, 2 members of the Biological Warfare Committee that oversaw Porton Down raised strenuous objections. But they were overruled by Prime Minister Winston Churchill who in March 1944 ordered 500,000 anthrax bombs from America. That summer, Fildes drew up plans for massive anthrax bombing raids of Germany, including the resumption of Operation Vegetarian. Although Allied military victory ended the war in Europe before any of these operations were conducted, Fildes continued his research and development program and was rewarded for his services with knighthood in 1946. He carried out open-sea testing of weapons during the winter of 1948-49 near the British colony of Antigua. 
With the rise of British nuclear capacity during the 1950s, interest in offensive biological weapons lessened and eventually Fildes left Porton Down. He died a year before the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention that banned offensive biological weapons came into being. Gruinard Island remained contaminated until 1986 when British scientists finally found a way to kill the bacterial spores that had been infesting "Anthrax Island" since Fildes' tests more than 40 years earlier. Malcolm Broster --of the Ministry of Defence Chemical Defence Establishment at Porton Down -- alongside one of the warning signs at Gruinard Island which has been sealed off from the public for almost 45 years (1986) Ira Baldwin (1895-1999) An Indiana farm boy, World War I veteran, and part-time preacher, Ira Baldwin became a noted agricultural bacteriologist at the University of Wisconsin and the civilian science director of the United States biological weapons research program at Camp Detrick. Roots 
Baldwin was born on a 40-acre farm in 1895 and spent the summers of his youth husking corn and selling ducks to earn money for college. Deeply religious with Quaker grandparents, Baldwin also preached in local churches that lacked regular ministers. I researcher works in one of several size aerobiology chambers at Camp Detrick for work on microbial aerosols and the spread of disease n World War I, he served state-side as a second lieutenant in an artillery unit, commanding a burial detail during the 1918 influenza epidemic. And although Baldwin attended college at Purdue, he sought his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in Madison -- a place he remembered fondly from a summer spent cultivating cucumbers there for the Heinz Company. Baldwin began his graduate work at University of Wisconsin in the mid-1920s and by the time the United States entered World War II, he had become chair of the bacteriology department. Then in November 1942, Baldwin got a call from Colonel William Kabrich of the Army's Chemical Warfare Service, requesting his presence at a top secret meeting in Washington. The War Effort At first it was just speculative talk. But after announcing that Germany and Japan were supporting biological warfare programs, Kabrich asked Baldwin and other assembled scientists whether they thought the U.S. could produce tons of its own bacteriological agents. Absolutely, Baldwin replied. "If you could do it in a test tube, you could do it in a 10,000-gallon tank" and "if you get enough tanks, I'm sure you will get tons." A  month later, Kabrich was on the phone again, asking Baldwin to lead the effort to do just that. Baldwin considered the moral implications of this request. But it only took him 24 hours to decide.
"You start out with the idea in war of killing people," he would later say. "And that to me is the immoral part of it. It doesn't make much difference how you kill them." Armed with this rationalization, Baldwin again headed East -- this time in charge of the science and administration of America's biological weapons research program.
A  Red Tie
Baldwin remained a civilian and found certain advantages to that; he would later say. "As long as I wore a red tie, I could say no to anybody." B a Fort Detrick researcher using a Class III safety hood ut the absence of military rank did not mean Baldwin lacked responsibility. He first undertook to find a home for the program, eventually settling on a little-used National Guard airfield in Frederick, Maryland known as Camp Detrick. Baldwin recruited scientists for his facility, later observing that unless the person was also needed by the Manhattan Project, he usually got the men he requested. And aided by a production manual written by British bacteriologist Paul Fildes, Baldwin's team began work on the production of botulinum toxin and anthrax bacterial spores. In 1943, he scouted locations for outdoor biological weapons testing, eventually settling on Horn Island off the Mississippi coast. As the War dragged on, Camp Detrick expanded, employing more than 2,000 people at its height and conducting tests responsible for the death of 658,039 animals. Faced with requests for a million anthrax bombs from the U.S. and British governments, Baldwin helped set up a large-scale manufacturing facility in Vigo, Indiana. But the War ended before any biological weapons were actually produced by the Vigo plant. Back to Wisconsin 
After World War II ended, Baldwin returned to University of Wisconsin, becoming vice president of academic affairs in 1948 and special assistant to the university's president a decade later. He continued to advise the United States on biological weapons, evaluating the threat posed by Cold War adversaries and suggesting a series of tests on U.S. cities with supposedly harmless bacteria in order to evaluate how pathogens might spread if released by enemy agents. He officially retired from University of Wisconsin in 1966 but continued working in the field of international agriculture for a number of years. Baldwin died in 1999, just a couple of weeks before he would have turned 104. Shiro Ishii (1892-1959) 
Both the United States and Great Britain tested biological weapons during World War II. But for ethical reasons such tests were limited to animal subjects. Japanese medical officer Shiro Ishii had no such scruples and he unleashed some of nature's deadliest pathogens on helpless humans with horrifying results. Purification Ishii was born in Japan in 1892 and became a doctor in 1920, graduating from Kyoto Imperial University. He had a reputation for being thoughtless towards colleagues but obsequious to superiors. Ishii married the daughter of the university's president and joined the Army Medical Corps. 
When the 1925 Geneva Protocol banned the use of bacteriological and chemical weapons in war, he began to urge the creation of a Japanese bacteriological weapons program. Ishii reasoned that such weapons must be very effective; otherwise they wouldn't have been prohibited. Ishii traveled through Europe and the United States for several years with an interest in the bacteriological weapons used in World War I. U First building for 'Unite 731' pon his return he was appointed professor of immunology at the Tokyo Army Medical School and given the rank of major. While there Ishii quickly made a name for himself, inventing an effective water purification filter that he allegedly demonstrated before the Emperor. But the fame and riches that this invention brought were not enough for Ishii. He continued advocating that the Japanese army develop biological weapons. In 1932, the government put him in charge of a testing and production facility in the Chinese province of Manchuria which the Japanese had invaded the previous year. As head of what would be euphemistically named the "Anti-Epidemic Water Supply and Purification Bureau", Ishii eagerly got to work. Unit 731 Ishii's first facility was in the city of Harbin. However, the need for secrecy made it necessary for Ishii to relocate his group to a prison camp 60 miles away. After this camp was blown up by escapees, an installation called 'Ping Fan' was constructed about 14 miles from Harbin. When completed in 1940, what became known as 'Unit 731' housed some 3,000 personnel. 
At a ceremony honoring the event, the now General Ishii made the facility's purpose crystal clear. A doctor's "god-given mission," Ishii said, was to block and treat disease. But the work "upon which we are now about to embark is the complete opposite of these principles." In the name of defeating Japan's enemies, Ishii and his staff spent the next 5 years mixing witch's brews of pathogens that cause some of the World's most horrific diseases: anthrax, plague, gas gangrene, smallpox, and botulism, among others. They then used Chinese prisoners (dismissively termed maruta or "logs") as guinea pigs, forcing them to breathe, eat, and receive injections of deadly pathogens. Allied POWs were also allegedly targeted. Reign of Horror 
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ictims were often killed before the diseases had run their course so autopsies could show their progress through the body. Ishii's men also supplied the Japanese Army with typhoid, cholera, plague, and dysentery bacteria for battlefield use. In addition, they contaminated water sources, released disease-carrying fleas, and dropped contaminated wheat from airplanes. Although dissolution of Unit 731 in 1945 led to the destruction of many of its records, there is no doubt that Ishii and his men had caused the death of many thousands of Chinese and possibly hundreds of Russian and Allied prisoners of war. Immunity N At first, Ishii denied any human testing had taken place but -- aware that the Soviets also wanted to talk to him and their methods might not be so mild -- he later offered to reveal all the details of his program in exchange for immunity from war crimes prosecution. Anxious to learn the results of experiments that they themselves had been unable to perform, the American military accepted Ishii's offer and approval was then given by the highest level of government. Ultimately Ishii's materials proved to be of little value, but the United States kept its end of this dubious bargain. Biological weapons were never mentioned in the Japanese war crimes trials and Ishii died a free man in 1959. Operation Whitecoat A  lthough they had experimented on animals during and after World War II, Camp Detrick scientists were still unsure of the effects of biological agents on human beings.
Operation Whitecoat aimed to solve that problem by providing volunteers to enable the military to test the effects of a range of disease agents on human subjects. Group of Biological Warfare technical advisers at Camp Detrick. Ira Baldwin is on the left. Ideal Test Subjects T  he first task for the scientists was to find people willing to be infected by pathogens that could make them very sick. They found them in the followers of the Seventh-day Adventist faith. Although willing to serve their country when drafted, the Adventists refused to bear arms. As a result, many of them became medics. Now the U.S. was offering recruits an opportunity to help in a different manner: to volunteer for biological tests as a way of satisfying their military obligations.
W  hen contacted in late 1954, the Adventist hierarchy readily agreed to this plan. For Camp Detrick scientists, church members were a model test population since most of them were in excellent health and they neither drank, smoked, nor used caffeine. From the perspective of the volunteers, the tests gave them a way to fulfill their patriotic duty while remaining true to their beliefs.
A Fort Detrick in late-50s or 60s. Whitecoats and staff. nd there was another factor: participation in these tests meant avoiding possibly more hazardous service abroad. For example, one participant -- Carl Walker -- had orders for his deployment to Laos reversed when he volunteered for Operation Whitecoat. An officer told him, "You guys are worth a lot more to your country as guinea pigs than as cannon fodder." The "8-Ball" M  any of the Adventists were recruited at Fort Sam Houston, Texas -- a training center for medics. The first volunteers were sent to Camp Detrick where biological tests began in late January 1955.
The site for these experiments was a million-liter sphere called "the 8-Ball" that looked to one recruit like an enormous grapefruit. A Workers perform a test on the 1-million liter sphere the "8-Ball" -- the largest aerobiology chamber constructed fter having entered the '8-Ball', subjects were placed in structures resembling telephone booths that contained rubber hoses leading to face masks. They put the masks on and then breathed in the current contents of the '8-Ball'. Perhaps air or another harmless substance, or perhaps aerosols that contained pathogens that caused such diseases as tularemia or Q fever. Many tests involved Q fever -- a disease first observed in the 1930s that caused intense fever but was rarely fatal. One recruit recalled that he had "never been any sicker"; another's temperature reached 106° F; and a third's gums swelled to the point he "could no longer see my teeth". Once the disease appeared, recruits were given antibiotics and almost all made a quick and complete recovery. Dugway and Beyond After the success of its first experiments, the decision was made to attempt an outdoor release of Q fever bacteria. 30 recruits traveled to the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. On the evening of July 12, 1955, they were lined up across a ½-mile of desert next to cages of monkeys and guinea pigs. L  ocated slightly more than 3,000 feet away, several generators filled with pathogens began spraying an infectious mist into the night air. The volunteers were told to breathe normally and within a few minutes, the mist was upon them.
S Whitecoat test group heading out to Dugway ome had been vaccinated against Q fever and never got sick. Others became ill and ended up in bed for days. From the military's perspective, the Dugway field test proved that under the right meteorological conditions, biological weapons would work. The human experiments continued for almost 20 years, ending in 1973. All told, about 2,200 Adventists participated in Operation Whitecoat. And to this day, many remain proud of their service which resulted in the development of several vaccines and, presumably, the generation of much information on how biological weapons work in the field. For its part, the Army holds up Operation Whitecoat as a model of "informed consent" in testing on humans. The Army also maintains there were almost "no adverse health effects" for the recruits -- a view disputed by some volunteers. The truth may never be known. Ffollow-up questionnaires were sent to fewer than half of the participants in Operation Whitecoat. Secret Testing in the United States The start of the Cold War brought new foes and new fears for the officials running America's biological weapons program. Determined to anticipate possible Soviet attacks, the U.S. staged more than 200 domestic tests aimed at assessing national vulnerabilities to biological warfare. From the Pentagon to the Pacific Ira Baldwin -- Camp Detrick's scientific director during World War II -- left his position after the Allied victory in 1945 and returned to teaching at the University of Wisconsin. He continued to advise the government on issues concerning biological weapons, however -- particularly the threat that might be posed by enemy spies releasing biological agents in American cities. I  n an October 1948 report, Baldwin posited that the U.S. was "particularly vulnerable to this type of attack." But in order to determine the precise nature of these vulnerabilities, secret field tests would have to be done to ascertain the vulnerability of targets of potential interest to the enemy. The Army's Chemical Corps -- which ran Camp Detrick -- agreed with Baldwin's assessment and set up a Special Operations Division at Camp Detrick to carry out the tests. Its first target was to be the Pentagon.
In August 1949, the Special Operations Division operatives infiltrated the World's largest office building and sprayed bacteria into the Pentagon's air handling system which then spread them throughout the structure. T  he operatives moved to larger scale testing, releasing clouds containing supposedly harmless bacteria from Navy ships off Norfolk, Virginia in April 1950 and the San Francisco coast in September 1950.
T USS Coral Sea -- one of the ships involved in the spraying of bacteria off Norfolk, Virginia in April, 1950. he San Francisco experiments showed exposure among almost all of the city's 800,000 residents. Had the bacteria released been anthrax bacteria or some other virulent pathogen, the number of casualties would have been immense. The St Jo Program and Large Area Concept The success of the first field tests only increased demand for more experiments. In response to an Air Force request, in 1953 the Chemical Corps created the St Jo Program and operatives staged mock anthrax attacks on St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Winnipeg. The bacteria were released from generators placed on top of cars, and local governments were told that "invisible smokescreens" were being deployed "to mask the city on enemy radar". The next stage was to increase dispersal patterns, dispensing particles from airplanes to find out how wide of an area they would affect. The first Large Area Concept experiment in 1957 involved dispersing microorganisms over a swath from South Dakota to Minnesota. Monitoring revealed that some of the particles eventually traveled some 1200 miles away. Further tests covered areas from Ohio-to-Texas and Michigan-to-Kansas. In the Army's words, these experiments "proved the feasibility of covering large areas of the country with [biological weapons] agents." Airports and Subways O President Nixon's 1969 termination of the United States offensive biological weapons program brought an end to the open-air testing. But the American public did not learn of this testing until 1977. Relatives of one elderly man Edward Nevin -- who had died of a nosocomial infection 6 months after the San Francisco tests -- sued the Government in 1981, arguing that the supposedly harmless Serratia marcescens bacteria used in that test had in fact caused his death. In the event the courts ruled against them, the main reason being that the plaintiffs could not prove that the bacteria used in the test were the same as those that killed Mr. Nevin. Nixon Ends U.S. Biological Weapons Program In November 1969, President Richard Nixon surprised the American public and the World by ordering the United States to unilaterally discontinue its biological weapons program, thus ending further research into their development. Though this decision came as a shock to many who operated the offensive biological warfare program at Fort Detrick, Pine Bluff Arsenal, Dugway Proving Ground, and elsewhere, its seeds had been planted years earlier. Growing Pressure O Napalm bombs explode on Viet Cong structures south of Saigon in the republic of Vietnam, 1965 n the surface, the U.S. biological weapons program appeared to be going swimmingly in the 1960s. frequent tests of simulated pathogens proved the efficacy of biological weapons and in 1967, the Fort Detrick scientists developed a bacteriological missile warhead. B  ut opposition was growing to the U.S. use of unconventional weapons like napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam. And biological weapons began to be tarred with the same broad brush. Matters weren't helped by a March 1968 accident in which the Air Force mistakenly dropped VX nerve agent outside the Dugway Proving Ground, apparently resulting in the death of over 3,000 sheep (some estimates claim that over 6,000 sheep were killed) in Skull Valley, Utah.
That same year Seymour Hersh published a book called Chemical and Biological Warfare: America's Secret Arsenal and news arose of the large-scale tests the military had conducted in the Pacific with biological agents. A plan to sink ships filled with old chemical weapons in the ocean off Long Island met with furious public protest. Congressional representatives began to demand more scrutiny of what had been heretofore a largely secret program. T Matthew Meselson in Vietnam where he was studying the effects of chemical weapons, 1969-70 he scientific community was also raising alarms. Harvard biology professor Matthew Meselson had already circulated a petition in 1966 signed by 5,000 scientists asking the U.S. to halt the use of chemical weapons in Vietnam and conduct a top-to-bottom review of American biological and chemical weapons policy. Working Together Against this backdrop, word came from Great Britain and Canada that it might be possible to get an international convention passed banning biological weapons if the U.S. made some gesture of good faith in the area. Newly-inaugurated President Nixon decided that the time was right to look into the matter. Kissinger's Review and Nixon's Decision Nixon's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger headed up the review process which began in late spring 1969. A chance encounter with Meselson at an airport led Kissinger to ask his old Harvard colleague to submit a position paper on the subject of biological weapons. Meselson's conclusion was that biological weapons were both dangerous because the technology could readily fall into the hands of enemy groups or nations and unnecessary because of the U.S.'s massive nuclear arsenal. H  is arguments were reinforced by other submissions. In fact, when the National Security Council met with Nixon on November 18, only the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for the retention of biological weapons. One week later, Nixon made his announcement. "I have decided that the United States will renounce the use of any form of deadly biological weapons that either kill or incapacitate," the president said. "Our bacteriological programs in the future will be confined to research in biological defense, on techniques of immunization, and on measures on controlling and preventing the spread of disease."
In taking this step, Nixon cited the "massive, unpredictable, and potentially uncontrollable consequences" of biological weapons. He added, "By the examples that we set today, we hope to contribute to an atmosphere of peace and understanding between all nations." Privately, Nixon showed more realpolitik. America had no need for biological weapons, he declared. If an enemy used them on the U.S., we would retaliate with nuclear bombs. The Biological Weapons Convention Whatever Nixon's motivations, his decision had the desired international effect. Negotiations on a treaty banning all biological weapons intensified and -- after the Soviet Union dropped its opposition -- in April 1972, the Biological Weapons Convention was completed and became open for signature by the nations of the World. The U.S. Senate ratified the convention in December 1974 and it went into effect in March 1975 -- the same year the Senate also finally ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the wartime use of bacteriological weapons. The Biological Weapons Convention was a historic accomplishment -- not merely restricting biological weapons, but pledging their complete elimination. Unfortunately, one of its key signatories -- the Soviet Union -- continued a secret biological weapons program in direct violation of the treaty's terms, a fact that would only become known years later. Primary Sources: Charts These 2 charts were prepared for a briefing called "USAF Operational concepts for BW [biological weapons] and CW [chemical weapons]" in November 1952. This occurred in the period in the early 1950s when weapons of mass destruction research was pursued aggressively. Although the Army Chemical Corps developed the biological and chemical weapons, the Air Force was responsible for delivering the ordnance; these charts show how the weapons would be used in a battle situation. Specifically, the scenario envisioned a Soviet invasion of Western Europe and required some method of slowing the advance until American troops could reinforce Allied positions in Europe. In 1952, the atomic arsenal was still limited and to be kept in reserve for major Soviet positions or retaliation in kind for attacks on American cities. Chemical and biological weapons presented a way to retard the enemy. Martin Furmanski -- an expert on WMD policies -- writes: "Ultimately, the 1952 Air Force 'crash program' was a failure because the Army Chemical Corps could not produce a useful biological weapon, Britain would not allow biological weapons to be stockpiled on her soil, and the CW nerve gas production plants did not become operational for several more years. By the mid-1950s, the atomic arsenal had greatly expanded and hydrogen bombs had been developed. The Eisenhower administration decided to rely entirely upon nuclear weapons for the 'retardation' operation." These charts then, represent a hypothetical response that remained a possibility for only a few years before other factors rendered it moot.  
More Information 1. Experts Q & A Martin Furmanski and Raymond Zilinskas answer questions about biological weaponry. 2. Behind the Scenes Follow filmmaker John Rubin into the Nevada desert where scenes of "Operation Whitecoat" were filmed. 3. More About Biowarfare Learn more on other PBS sites about how bioweapons work and the history of the Soviet program. 4. Declassified Films Watch recently declassified military films on biowarfare. 5. Timeline of Biological Weapons if on the Internet, Press |
he cycle of anthrax transmission typically begins when grazing animals eat infected soil. It can then be passed on to humans who consume meat contaminated with Bacillus antracis, inhale dust while rendering hides, or come in skin contact. Cutaneous (skin) anthrax first appears as a bump on the skin that soon ulcerates. Inhalation anthrax is typically flu-like at first, but rapidly progresses into difficult breathing and shock. Mortality rates for untreated cases range from 20% for skin anthrax to nearly 100% for inhalation. While early treatment with antibiotics can work, the shock late-stage anthrax cases are usually fatal.
his lesser-known disease agent became a staple of the United States biological weapons program in the 1950s. Like anthrax bacteria, Brucella bacteria are spread to humans by infected animals or animal products -- often through the ingestion of unpasteurized milk and cheese.
mallpox was the first biological weapon used in America when British soldiers gave infected blankets to Native Americans.
ndividual grenades were one thing. But llarge-scale biological weapons another. As Fildes' anthrax experiments continued, he sensed the need for testing beyond that which could be conducted near a populated area like Salisbury.
o doubt aware that his activities constituted war crimes of the highest order, Ishii faked his own death in late 1945 and went into hiding. When American occupation forces learned that Ishii was still alive, they ordered the Japanese to hand him over and investigators from Camp Detrick began interrogations.
pen-air testing continued through the 1960s with the Special Operations Division operatives simulating even more audacious assaults. In 1965, they spread bacteria throughout Washington's National Airport. A year later, agents dropped light bulbs filled with organisms onto the tracks in New York's subway system. I think it spread pretty good," participant Wally Pannier later said, "because you had a natural aerosol developed every few minutes from every train that went past."
