Killing 'without the distressing preliminaries': Scientists' defence of the british biological warfare programme

Minerva

Volumn 40, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 57-75

  Balmer, Brian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0345456224     PISSN: 00264695     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1015009613250     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Georg Simmel, 'The Secret and the Secret Society', in K.W. Wolf (ed.), The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York: Free Press, 1950), 330.
2. Nicholas A. Sims, 'Morality and Biological Warfare', Arms Control, 8 (1), (1987), 5-23;
3. John J. Haldane, 'Ethics and Biological Warfare', Arms Control, 8 (1), (1987), 24- 35;
4. Valerie Adams, 'Chemical and Biological Warfare', in B. Paskins (ed.), Ethics and European Security (London: Croom Helm, 1986).
5. Another argument which exists but is only now starting to be articulated in the literature contends that biological warfare should be construed in global terms as a potential threat to the species. See The Royal Society, Measures for Controlling the Threat from Biological Weapons (London: The Royal Society, 2000).
6. Douglas MacLean, 'Ethics and Biological Defence Research', in The Microbiologist and Biological Defence Research: Ethics, Politics and International Security, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 666 (1992), 100-112;
7. Robert L. Sinsheimer, 'The Responsibility of Scientists', in Susan Wright (ed.), Preventing A Biological Arms Race (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1990), 71-77;
8. Marc Lappé, 'Ethics in Biological Warfare Research', in Susan Wright (ed.), Preventing a Biological Arms Race (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1990), 78-99.
9. An alternative strand of analysis, that has been applied rigorously to the chemical warfare taboo, argues that it is mistaken to seek out the roots of the moral status of chemical or biological weapons in any of their essential characteristics. The moral status of these weapons at any particular time must, according to this argument, be regarded as the contingent outcome of power struggles between competing political discourses. At stake in the competition is what will count as the 'truth' about the morality of chemical and biological warfare. While these two approaches - essentialist and contextualist - differ on the universality of the chemical and biological weapons taboos, neither analysis denies that they can possess force or reality. Richard Price, 'A Genealogy of the Chemical Weapons Taboo', International Organisation, 49 (1), 73-103;
10. Richard Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1997).
11. Rita R. Colwell and Raymond A. Zilinskas, 'Bioethics and the Prevention of Biological Warfare', in Raymond A. Zilinskas (ed.), Biological Warfare: Modern Offense and Defense(London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), 225-245.
12. The normative structure of science has been much debated within the sociology of science. Briefly, two schools of thought prevail. In the classical view, norms such as universality, communality, disinterestedness and organized scepticism describe an empirical reality, with rewards and sanctions in place to ensure conformity. However, sociologists have argued that norms are not related to the scientific reward system. Scientists who apparently flout the norms may still receive recognition for their science. Norms instead function as part of a professional ideology and moral vocabulary that paints a positive image of science. This image can be used internally, to defend or condemn colleagues' behaviour, or externally, to help secure popularity or resources for the profession. See Robert K. Merton, 'The Normative Structure of Science', in Norman Storer (ed.), The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 267-278;
13. Michael Mulkay, 'Norms and Ideology in Science', Social Science Information, 15 (1976), 637-656.
14. Leonard A. Cole, The Eleventh Plague: The Politics of Biological and Chemical Warfare (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1996), 217-219.
15. Roslynn D. Haynes, From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of Scientists in Western Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 246-267.
16. Hugh Gusterson, Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 42.
17. Kohler has adapted the term 'moral economy' to describe how, in laboratories, the 'unstated moral rules define the mutual expectations and obligations of the various participants in the production process'. For Kohler, moral economies are localized, rather than global across the whole of science, and are tied to particular material and social arrangements. Robert E. Kohler, Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 11-13.
18. Gradon B. Carter and Graham S. Pearson, 'British Biological Warfare and Biological Defence, 1925-45', in Erhard Geissler and John E. van Courtland Moon (eds.), Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 168-189.
19. Brian Balmer, Britain and Biological Warfare: Expert Advice and Science Policy, 1930-65 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, Global Publishing, 2001).
20. Gradon B. Carter, 'Biological Warfare and Biological Defence in the United Kingdom 1940-1979', RUSI Journal, 136 (6), (1992), 67-74;
21. Gradon B. Carter, Porton Down: 75 Years of Chemical and Biological Research (London: HMSO, 1992).
22. Ibid.
23. Gradon B. Carter and Brian Balmer, 'Chemical and Biological Warfare and Defence, 1945-90', in Robert Bud and Philip Gummett (eds.), Cold War, Hot Science: Applied Research in Britain's Defence Laboratories 1945-1990 (London: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999).
24. Brian Balmer, 'The Drift of Biological Weapons Policy in the UK, 1945-1965', Journal of Strategic Studies, 20 (4), (1997), 115-145.
25. Quote from Public Record Office (Kew) (hereafter, PRO). DEFE 10/26. DRP (50) 3. DRPC. BW Policy. Note by the Chairman, BW Sub-Committee (11 May 1950).
26. The July 1956 decision was, more specifically, to abandon the large scale production of nerve gas and the development of nerve gas weapons and to destroy the residue of the Second World War stockpile of other chemical agents and weapons. A later decision was taken in 1957 to abandon the entire stockpile of chemical agents. Prior to the 1956 decision the Admiralty had expressed its hope that this decision would cover biological warfare, and by October 1956 the Defence Research Policy Committee staff reported their similar interpretation of events. See Balmer, op. cit. note 12.
27. PRO, WO 188/648. Appended to CBW2. Committee of Imperial Defence Sub-Committee on Bacteriological Warfare. Note by the Joint Secretaries (4 November 1936). Memorandum on bacteriological warfare (13 April 1934).
28. PRO, WO 188/648. Committee of Imperial Defence Sub-Committee on Bacteriological Warfare. 1st Meeting (17 November 1936).
29. PRO, WO 188/648. Appended to CBW2. Committee of Imperial Defence Sub-Committee on Bacteriological Warfare. Note by the Joint Secretaries (4 November 1936). Memorandum on bacteriological warfare (13 April 1934).
30. PRO, WO 188/648. Committee of Imperial Defence Sub-Committee on Bacteriological Warfare. 1st Meeting (17 November 1936).
31. PRO, WO 188/653. BW (40), 1st Meeting. War Cabinet. Bacteriological Warfare Committee (7 February 1940).
32. Robert E. Kohler, 'Bacterial Physiology: The Medical Context', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 59 (1985), 54-74.
33. PRO, WO 188/654. Letter Fildes to Allen (27 November 1943).
34. PRO, WO 188/654. Review of the Most Available BW Agents Developed in Canada By C.1. Committee (31 July 1944). Appended Review of BW. GS Comments.
35. PRO, WO 188/654. BIO/5293. Notes on Professor Murray's Memorandum (by Fildes) (7 September 1944). Goforth had also written his comments as a response to this memo outlining the state of BW research in Canada.
36. PRO, WO 188/654. Draft. Post War BW Organisation. P. Fildes (3 October 1944). 00 PRO, WO 188/654. BIO/5198. Post War Work on BW. P. Fildes (22 August 1944). 9 PRO, WO 188/655. Fildes to Professor J.E. Lennard Jones (Ministry of Supply) (13 November 1945).
37. Anon. 'Bacterial Warfare', The Lancet (5 March 1949), 401-402. The article makes no reference to the Nuremberg trials but the language suggests that these may have influenced the writer.
38. PRO, WO 188/663. BW (49) 16. BW Sub-Committee. Discussion with US and Canadian Representatives (28 April 1949).
39. Indeed, at Chief of Staff level, the three nations had been co-ordinating their information policies for some time.
40. PRO, WO 188/663. BW (49), 3rd Meeting. BW Sub-Committee (6 May 1949).
41. At this time, the DRPC had the responsibility of deciding priorities across all non-nuclear defence research. See Jon Agar and Brian Balmer, 'British Scientists and the Cold War: The Defence Research Policy Committee and Information Networks, 1947-1963', Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 28 (2), (1998), 209-252.
42. PRO, WO 188/663. BW (49) 21. BW Sub-Committee. Biological Warfare - Publicity (14 June 1949).
43. PRO, WO 188/664. BW (50) 3, (Final). BW Sub-Committee. Public Announcement on Biological Warfare. Report to the Chiefs of Staff (14 February 1950).
44. PRO, WO 188/664. BW (50) 3, (Final). BW Sub-Committee. Public Announcement on Biological Warfare. Report to the Chiefs of Staff (14 February 1950). Appended.
45. PRO, WO 188/664. BW (50) 8. BW Sub-Committee. Public Announcement of Biological Warfare (22 March 1950).
46. PRO, WO 188/664. BW (50) 32. BW Sub-Committee. Public Announcement on Biological Warfare (16 November 1950).
47. PRO, WO 188/665. BW (51) 10. BW Sub-Committee. Public Announcement on Biological Warfare (15 March 1951).
48. PRO, WO 188/668. AC11427/BRB88. BRAB. Memorandum on the Recruitment of Staff for Research in BW by Sir Paul Fildes (3 May 1951).
49. PRO, WO 188/665. BW (51) 38. BW Sub-Committee. Draft Press Release on Microbiological Research Department. Porton (24 November 1951).
50. PRO, WO 188/665. BW (51), 5th Meeting. BW Sub-Committee (29 November 1951). 00 PRO, WO 188/665. BW (51), 5th Meeting. BW Sub-Committee (29 November 1951). 00 PRO, PREM 11/756. Letter from Sir Norman Brook to Prime Minister (23 February 1952).
51. PRO, PREM 11/756. Letter to Brigadier Eubank (26 February 1952).
52. PRO, WO 188/668. AC11872/BRBM25. BRAB 25th Meeting (14 May 1952). 00 PRO, WO 188/668. AC11872/BRBM25. BRAB 25th Meeting (14 May 1952). 00 PRO, WO 188/668. AC11950/BRBM26. BRAB 26th Meeting (12 July 1952).
53. That retaliation had to be 'in kind' was not challenged at the time in any of the open records.
54. Balmer, op. cit. note 12.
55. Gusterson, op. cit. note 9.
56. Including those quoted from Caldwell and Zilinskas, op. cit. note 5.