Legal Constraints on Biological Weapons - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 348

scientific meaning the term 'bacteriological' is narrower than the term
'biological,' it has always been accepted that in the legal context of the
Protocol the two words are exact synonyms. In most texts the matter is
taken for granted and the question not even raised.” 15
BWC
Most of the outstanding legal issues in the BWC have to do with the scope
of definitions; and most of the definitional issues that have complicated
interpretation of the BWC have arisen from Article I. Here they will
be formulated as questions, to which answers are offered. The answers
are necessarily tentative where no authoritative interpretation has been
handed down; and this section ends, indeed, with a plea for the BWC
States Parties to correct this situation by installing a mechanism for the
resolution of such legal issues.
1. How comprehensive, in respect of developments in science and technology, is the
formulation “microbial or other biological agents or toxins”?
Successive Review Conferences have tried to answer this question, but
how they have answered it has varied according to the prevalent anxi-
eties of the time.
In 1980 the First Review Conference simply declared: “The Confer-
ence believes that Article I has proved sufficiently comprehensive to have
covered recent scientific and technological developments relevant to the
Convention,” 16 without specifying whether this very general expression
of confidence referred to the causative agents of four newly identified
(between 1967 and 1976) diseases—Ebola virus, Lassa virus, Legionella,
and Marburg virus—or to the “revolution in genetics” that had likewise
been reported to the conference.
In 1986 the Second Review Conference declared: “The Conference
reaffirms that the Convention unequivocally applies to all natural or arti-
ficially created microbial or other biological agents or toxins whatever
their origin or method of production. Consequently, toxins (both pro-
teinaceous and non-proteinaceous) of a microbial, animal or vegetable
nature and their synthetically produced analogues are covered.” 17
In 1991 the Third Review Conference declared that the scope of the
definition embraced “microbial or other biological agents or toxins harm-