Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
The Aum emphasized salvation, a notion found in several Japanese
Buddhist sects, in order to reduce the number of victims of an imminent
Armageddon, the divine purification of bad karma accumulated by hu-
mans. Asahara conceived of two strategies for facilitating widespread sal-
vation. One was to form a majority in the Diet (parliament) and take con-
trol of the Japanese political system. The Aum's practices could then be
implemented nationally. The second strategy was to destroy Japan by
forceful means for the purpose of purification. Asahara had argued for
the morality of salvation-promoting destructive acts since at least 1989:
“If there is a man accumulating bad karma, transforming his life to help
his soul reincarnate in a higher level is a righteous act.” 17
Asahara attempted the legitimate route first, and established his politi-
cal party (Shinrito) to run for the lower Diet election campaign in Febru-
ary 1990. Confident of victory, he was shocked when all 25 Shinrito can-
didates, including himself, were defeated. He blamed a conspiracy of the
Liberal Democratic Party and the Japanese government for the defeat.
Soon after the election campaign, Asahara secretly told senior followers
that in the light of the desperate results of the election campaign, it would
be no longer be possible to save Japan through legitimate means, and an-
nounced the campaign for salvation through force.
Bioterrorism Plots of the Aum
The Aum was interested in a variety of weapons to implement its apoca-
lyptic plans, but the only progress it made involved CBW. 18 The Aum's
use of CW in Matsumoto and Tokyo is well known; its extensive efforts
to develop BW is less familiar, because all the attempts failed. Efforts
were made to develop two agents as BW (botulinum toxin and Bacillus
anthracis ), and there were numerous attempts to disseminate them (ta-
ble 14.1).
BOTULINUM TOXIN Asahara first became interested in botulinum
toxin as a weapon, having learned about its extreme toxicity from
Tomomasa Nakagawa, a physician and senior follower of the Aum.
Asahara named Sei-ichi Endo leader of the Aum's biological and toxin
weapons program. Endo was a microbiologist who had dropped his doc-
toral work at the Institute of Virus Research of Kyoto University to follow
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