Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi with the intent to kill, harm or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. Biological weapons are living organisms or replicating entities. Entomological (insect) warfare is a subtype of biological warfare.
Biodefense refers to measures to counter biological threats, reduce biological risks, and prepare for, respond to, and recover from bioincidents, whether naturally occurring, accidental, or deliberate in origin and whether impacting human, animal, plant, or environmental health. Biodefense measures often aim to improve biosecurity or biosafety. Biodefense is frequently discussed in the context of biological warfare or bioterrorism, and is generally considered a military or emergency response term.
Fort Detrick is a United States Army Futures Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland. Fort Detrick was the center of the U.S. biological weapons program from 1943 to 1969. Since the discontinuation of that program, it has hosted most elements of the United States biological defense program.
Frank Rudolph Emmanuel Olson was an American bacteriologist, biological warfare scientist, and an employee of the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories (USBWL) who worked at Camp Detrick in Maryland. At a meeting in rural Maryland, he was covertly dosed with LSD by his colleague Sidney Gottlieb and, nine days later, plunged to his death from the window of the Hotel Statler in New York. The U.S. government first described his death as a suicide, and then as misadventure, while others allege murder. The Rockefeller Commission report on the CIA in 1975 acknowledged their having conducted covert drug studies on fellow agents. Olson's death is one of the most mysterious outcomes of the CIA mind control project MKUltra.
Herbicidal warfare is the use of substances primarily designed to destroy the plant-based ecosystem of an area. Although herbicidal warfare use chemical substances, its main purpose is to disrupt agricultural food production and/or to destroy plants which provide cover or concealment to the enemy, not to asphyxiate or poison humans and/or destroy human-made structures. Herbicidal warfare has been forbidden by the Environmental Modification Convention since 1978, which bans "any technique for changing the composition or structure of the Earth's biota".
The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases is the U.S Army's main institution and facility for defensive research into countermeasures against biological warfare. It is located on Fort Detrick, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., and is a subordinate lab of the United States Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC), headquartered on the same installation.
William C. Patrick III was an influential microbiologist and bioweaponeer for the U.S. Army during the Cold War.
Fort Terry was a coastal fortification on Plum Island, a small island just off Orient Point, New York, United States. This strategic position afforded it a commanding view over the Atlantic entrance to the commercially vital Long Island Sound. It was established in 1897 and used intermittently through the end of World War II. In 1952, it became a military animal and biological warfare (BW) research facility, moving to civilian control in 1954 as the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. Despite the new civilian control, the biological warfare mission continued until 1969, when the US officially ended offensive BW research. The island is now being considered for sale or conversion to a wildlife refuge. Fort Terry was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
The National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) is a government biodefense research laboratory created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and located at the sprawling biodefense campus at Fort Detrick in Frederick, MD, USA. The NBACC is the principal U.S. biodefense research institution engaged in laboratory-based threat assessment and bioforensics. NBACC is an important part of the National Interagency Biodefense Campus (NIBC) also located at Fort Detrick for the US Army, National Institutes of Health and the US Department of Agriculture.
The One-Million-Liter Test Sphere—also known as the Test Sphere, the Horton Test Sphere, the Cloud Study Chamber, Building 527, and the "Eight Ball" —is a decommissioned biological warfare (BW) chamber and testing facility located on Fort Detrick, Maryland, US. It was constructed and utilized by the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories as part of its BW research program from 1951 to 1969. It is the largest aerobiology chamber ever constructed and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
The United States biological weapons program officially began in spring 1943 on orders from U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Research continued following World War II as the U.S. built up a large stockpile of biological agents and weapons. Over the course of its 27-year history, the program weaponized and stockpiled seven bio-agents — Bacillus anthracis (anthrax), Francisella tularensis (tularemia), Brucella spp (brucellosis), Coxiella burnetii (Q-fever), Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Botulinum toxin (botulism), and Staphylococcal enterotoxin B. The US also pursued basic research on many more bio-agents. Throughout its history, the U.S. bioweapons program was secret. It was later revealed that laboratory and field testing had been common. The official policy of the United States was first to deter the use of bio-weapons against U.S. forces and secondarily to retaliate if deterrence failed.
Building 470 — also called the Pilot Plant, or sometimes “the Tower”, or “Anthrax Tower” — was a seven-story steel and brick building at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, United States, used in the small-scale production of biological warfare (BW) agents. The building, a Cold War era structure, was transferred from the Department of Defense to the National Cancer Institute-Frederick in 1988, to which it belonged until 2003 when it was demolished.
Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) began an extensive biological weapons (BW) program in Iraq in the early 1980s, despite having signed the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972. Details of the BW program and a chemical weapons program surfaced after the Gulf War (1990–91) during the disarmament of Iraq under the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM). By the end of the war, program scientists had investigated the BW potential of five bacterial strains, one fungal strain, five types of virus, and four toxins. Of these, three—anthrax, botulinum and aflatoxin—had proceeded to weaponization for deployment. Because of the UN disarmament program that followed the war, more is known today about the once-secret bioweapons program in Iraq than that of any other nation.
The Vigo Ordnance Plant, also known as the Vigo Chemical Plant or simply Vigo Plant, was a United States Army facility built in 1942 to produce conventional weapons. In 1944 it was converted to produce biological agents for the U.S. bio-weapons program. Although the plant never actually produced bio-weapons before the end of World War II, it did produce 8000 pounds of an anthrax simulant. After the war, the plant was transferred to Pfizer, who operated it until the plants closure in 2008.
The Granite Peak Installation (GPI) — also known as Granite Peak Range — was a U.S. biological weapons testing facility located on 250 square miles (650 km2) of Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. The GPI was a sub-installation of Dugway but had its own facilities, including utilities. Established in 1943, GPI was deactivated with the end of World War II.
Horn Island Chemical Warfare Service Quarantine Station, also known as the Horn Island Testing Station, was a U.S. biological weapons testing site during World War II. It was located on Mississippi's Horn Island and opened in 1943. When the war ended, the facility was closed.
The United States Biological Defense Program—in recent years also called the National Biodefense Strategy—refers to the collective effort by all levels of government, along with private enterprise and other stakeholders, in the United States to carry out biodefense activities.
Herbicidal warfare research conducted by the U.S. military began during the Second World War with additional research during the Korean War. Interest among military strategists waned before a budgetary increase allowed further research during the early Vietnam War. The U.S. research culminated in the U.S. military defoliation program during the Vietnam war known as Operation Ranch Hand.
Riley D. Housewright was an American microbiologist who conducted research on germ warfare. Having been assigned to the Fort Detrick laboratory in the mid-1940s and appointed scientific director in 1956, Housewright played a major role in the development of bioweapons for a proposed attack on Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1966, he was appointed president of the American Society for Microbiology. He left Fort Detrick in 1970 following President Nixon's moratorium on US bioweapons research, and later published several books on water safety for the National Academy of Sciences. In the 1980s, Housewright became executive director of the American Society for Microbiology. He died in Frederick, Maryland, in 2003.
