Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
based institute].” 113 Whether these threats are real or imagined, Goosen's
action indicates that there may be former BW scientists who are con-
cerned enough about their position in society to undertake dangerous
deals. It is not clear how actively involved the other scientists were in the
plan.
This incident points to some of the difficulties a country may face when
it closes down a biological warfare program as a result of a major political
transition. When RRL was closed down, South Africa was undergoing
a transition to democracy, and the managers of the program were ap-
parently not concerned with ensuring that the destruction of the docu-
mentation and culture collection was verifiably undertaken. The official
South African government position was that there was no official, autho-
rized offensive BW program; a verifiable procedure to close the program
would have contradicted that position.
There is a political incentive for governments to hide small-scale offen-
sive BW programs that are of little or no strategic military value and,
therefore, to take inadequate steps to oversee their closure. The same po-
litical incentive undermines the value of statements meant to serve as
confidence-building measures about past programs.
The South African authorities should have undertaken an audit of the
RRL culture collection at the appropriate time. Other countries might
have offered advice on this issue.
The South African program also raises the difficult question of what
should be done to ensure that scientists who were formerly involved in
offensive BW work do not seek to sell their knowledge or services. Scien-
tists from the former Soviet CBW programs received financial help to
keep them in gainful employment in the countries that made up the So-
viet Union. While something similar might have been considered for the
South African scientists, given the political conditions under which the
program was closed down, it is likely that such an action would have
been viewed as inappropriate and unacceptable by most South Africans.
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