Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
sions, went into hibernation. Their governments, and the outside world
as well, viewed them as a monolithic “Soviet bloc.”
Hungary
The first known BW program in the region was in Hungary.
1
In 1936 the
Hungarian Highest Defense Council authorized the Headquarters of the
Hungarian Royal Defense Forces to establish a BW R&D project in 1936.
This decision was said to be a response to reconnaissance information
indicating that neighboring states had already started similar activities.
A team including a medical bacteriologist, a veterinary parasitologist, a
chemical engineer, and two laboratory technicians was organized and led
by Colonel Dezso Bartos, a medical bacteriologist/epidemiologist. All em-
ployees were unmarried males who lived within the institute.
The institute was properly named the Health Control Station of the
Hungarian Royal Defense Forces, and it was situated in an artillery equip-
ment warehouse in Budapest. Surrounded by a high rampart equipped
with a wire fence, it housed eight microbiological and one chemical labo-
ratories, a library, an animal house, and storage. Research started in Au-
gust 1938. The project involved explicitly offensive goals. Colonel Bartos
viewed military personnel, civilian populations, agricultural crops, and
livestock as potentially vulnerable targets of biowarfare. His team investi-
gated three types of biological attack: by means of bombs and artillery
shells, by means of secret agents working behind the front lines, and by
contamination of territory before a strategic retreat.
The Hungarians developed and field-tested a number of technologies
to be applied in such situations. Glass bombs ranging from 1 to 50 kilo-
grams were used to produce wet and dry aerosols. Studies were focused
on the influence of meteorological conditions and on the effective num-
ber of germs per unit area.
Bacillus anthracis
(anthrax),
Clostridium per-
fringens
(gangrene),
Salmonella paratyphi
(diarrheal disease), and
Shigella
dysenteriae
(dysentery) were cultured as biological agents.
They also tested the viability of pathogens transmitted by infected proj-
ectiles from pistols and guns. Pathogens could survive the heat and me-
chanical shock of firing, causing infections through bullet wounds. At-
tempts were made to increase the virulence of
Salmonella paratyphi
by
serial passage in laboratory animals.
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