Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Night, to use kamikaze pilots to infest California
with the plague [28]. A submarine was sched-
uled to carry the pilots off of Southern California,
from which they were to fly to San Diego and
release plague-infected fleas. The target date was to
be September 22, 1945. Fortunately Japan signed
the act of unconditional surrender on September 2
[23,30].
ment between the France and Germany, which
banned the use of poison bullets. The sole known
German tactical use of biological warfare was
the pollution of a large reservoir in northwestern
Bohemia with sewage in May 1945. Ironically,
two Polish physicians used a combination of a
vaccine and a serologic test as a biological defense
against the Nazis. The German army avoided
areas of epidemic typhus by using the Weil-Felix
reaction as a diagnostic test. Consequently, Drs.
Eugene Lazowski and StanislawMatulewicz vacci-
nated about 8000 individuals with formalin-killed
Proteus
OX-19 in order to induce biological false-
positive tests for typhus in an area of occupied
Poland, thereby protecting residents from deporta-
tion to concentration camps [35].
2.10 World War II—Germany
There are claims that Germany continued biolog-
ical weapons research between the Wars. In the
early 1930s, German agents may have used the
biological warfare simulant
Serratia marcescens
(then known as
Micrococcus prodigiosus
) to study
airflow in ventilating shafts in the London tube rail-
ways and Paris Metro. The basis for these studies
was to be able to effectively release a biological
agent into an area where a large population of
the city would take refuge during an air attack
[31,32].
Hitler reportedly issued orders prohibiting
biological weapons development in Germany.
However, supported by high-ranking Nazi offi-
cials, German scientists began biological weapons
research. At the Raubkammer Proving Ground in
Lüneberger Heath, scientists performed research
into foot and mouth disease, plague, rinder-
pest, typhus, yellow fever, potato beetle, and
potato blight as biological warfare agents. Their
results lagged behind those of other countries,
and Nazi offensive biological weapons were never
developed [33].
Nazi concentration camp prisoners were
purposefully infected with
Rickettsia prowazekii,
Rickettsia mooseri
, hepatitis A virus,
Plasmodia
spp, and treated with investigational vaccines and
drugs. These inhumane experiments may have
been done to study pathogenesis, to develop
vaccines against rickettsiae, and to develop antimi-
crobial sulfa drugs rather than to develop biolog-
ical weapons. As previously mentioned, German
researchers attempted to create poison bullets from
aconitine, and poison bullets were used on concen-
tration camp prisoners [34]. This work was in
direct violation of the 1675 Strasbourg agree-
2.11 World War II—United States
In 1941, in response to reports indicating that
Germany and Japan might utilize biological
weapons, Secretary of War Henry Stimson
requested that the National Academy of Sciences
appoint a committee to conduct a biological
weapon feasibility study. In 1942, this committee
concluded that biological weapons might be
feasible and recommended US vulnerability to
such weapons be reduced. The War Reserve
Service was formed under George Merck, of the
Merck pharmaceutical company, which concluded
that large-scale developmental operations were
required. In 1942, an offensive biological weapons
research and development program began at Camp
Detrick in Frederick, MD [36].
In 1943, Camp Detrick became the parent
research and pilot plant center with about 4000
Army, Navy, and civilian personnel. Field-testing
facilities were initially established in Mississippi,
and then moved to Dugway Proving Grounds in
Utah in 1944. A production plant was constructed
in Terre Haute, Indiana was never used, since,
subsequent to fermentation and processing of
the biological agent simulant,
Bacillus globigii
,
high levels of spores were found throughout the
plant [36].
