Life Sciences and Related Fields
During the last decade, national and international scientific organizations have become increasingly engaged in considering how to respond to the biosecurity implications of developments in the life sciences and in assessing trends in science and technology (S&T) relevant to biological and chemical weapons nonproliferation. The latest example is an international workshop, Trends in Science and Technology Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention, held October 31 - November 3, 2010 at the Ins...
The Army's ability to meet public and congressional demands to destroy expeditiously all of the U.S. declared chemical weapons would be enhanced by the selection and acquisition of appropriate explosive destruction technologies (EDTs) to augment the main technologies to be used to destroy the chemical weapons currently at the Blue Grass Army Depot (BGAD) in Kentucky and the Pueblo Chemical Depot (PCD) in Colorado. The Army is considering four EDTs for the destruction of chemical weapons: three f...
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Weapons of Mass Destruction provides an objective analysis of a subject easily distorted by fear. It begins with a history of the ancient and medieval use in warfare of biological weapons, and how governments and terrorist factions have refined this practice to include biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons as a means of coercion or as a deterrent. The book examines past and current U.S. policies regarding WMD including the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan during World War II and how an...
Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Risk Assessments
by Governmentq Accountability Office
Mutant Ecologies traces the spinning of new synthetic threads into the web of life. It is a critical cartography of the shifting landscapes of capital accumulation conjured by recent developments in genomic science, genome editing and the biotech industry. CRISPR crops, fast-growing salmons, heat-resistant Slick™ cows, Friendly™ Mosquitoes, humanised mice, pigs growing human organs – these are but a few of the dazzling new life-forms that have recently emerged from corporate and university labo...
Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat
by Milton Leitenberg and Strategic Studies Institute
It is nearly 15 years since biological weapons (BW) have become a signifi cant national security preoccupation. This occurred primarily due to four circumstances, all of which occurred within a short span of years. The fi rst, beginning around 1990 and repeated many times in the years that followed, was the offi cial U.S. Government suggestion that proliferation of offensive BW programs among states and even "nonstate actors"-terrorist groups-was an increasing trend. The second was the discovery...
Effects of Chemical Warfare (Routledge Library Editions: Historical Security)
by Andy Thomas and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Originally published in 1985, this book is the result of an exploration of the state papers of the United Kingdom undertaken with the aim of discovering information about the past use of chemical warfare. This information may serve as a point of historical reference in speculation upon the possible nature and consequences of large-scale chemical warfare recurring in Europe. Part I of the monograph concentrates primarily on material documenting the use of chemical weapons in the First and Second...
Living Weapons (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)
by Gregory D. Koblentz
"Biological weapons are widely feared, yet rarely used. Biological weapons were the first weapon prohibited by an international treaty, yet the proliferation of these weapons increased after they were banned in 1972. Biological weapons are frequently called 'the poor man's atomic bomb,' yet they cannot provide the same deterrent capability as nuclear weapons. One of my goals in this book is to explain the underlying principles of these apparent paradoxes."—from Living Weapons Biological weapon...
Iran's Weapons of Mass Destruction (Significant Issues)
by Anthony H. Cordesman and Khalid R. Al-Rodhan
Chemical and Biological Weapons: Agents of War and Terror (Science and Society)
by Daniel E Harmon
“Staggeringly good.” —Counterpunch A major new work, a hybrid of history, journalism, and memoir, about the modern Freedom of Information Act—FOIA—and the horrifying, decades-old government misdeeds that it is unable to demystify, from one of America's most celebrated writers Eight years ago, while investigating the possibility that the United States had used biological weapons in the Korean War, Nicholson Baker requested a series of Air Force documents from the early 1950s under the provision...
As innovations in military technologies race toward ever-greater levels of automation and autonomy, debates over the ethics of violent technologies tread water. Death Machines reframes these debates, arguing that the way we conceive of the ethics of contemporary warfare is itself imbued with a set of bio-technological rationalities that work as limits. The task for critical thought must therefore be to unpack, engage, and challenge these limits. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, the book off...
In Cathedrals of Science, Patrick Coffey describes how chemistry got its modern footing-how thirteen brilliant men and one woman struggled with the laws of the universe and with each other. They wanted to discover how the world worked, but they also wanted credit for making those discoveries, and their personalities often affected how that credit was assigned. Gilbert Lewis, for example, could be reclusive and resentful, and his enmity with Walther Nernst may have cost him the Nobel Prize; Irvi...
'A remarkably human book . . . arresting, and sometimes even unforgettable.' Desmond McCarthy, Sunday Times 'A fascinating book . . . It is not easy to do justice to Lord Moran's discursive brilliancy . . . a masterly piece of work.' Times Literary Supplement'I set out to find how courage is born and how it is sustained in a modern army of a free people. The soldier is alone in his war with terror and we have to recognise the first signs of his defeat, that we may come in time to his rescue.' L...
"Assessing the Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction" is a collection of papers delivered at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop of the same name, which examined the role of independent scientists in assessing WMD threat. Such threat assessment has a profound impact on the policies of governments and international organizations. It raises numerous questions: What exactly is an independent scientist and what threatens their independence? What role do cultural dependencies play within assessments?...
This book examines the murky history of biological warfare, the whole basis of which is one of the most prominent intelligence failures in the history of modern warfare. It describes in narrative fashion the worldwide development of biological weapons from the start of the First World War up until the time of the covert experiments conducted by Porton Down scientists in the late 1950s using the population of much of southern England as guinea-pigs. All major developments in every country with a...