Legal Constraints on Biological Weapons - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 349

ful to plants and animals, as well as humans,” and that “all microbial or
other biological agents or toxins, naturally or artificially created or al-
tered,” were unequivocally covered. 18
The words “or altered” extended the 1986 reaffirmation (“all natural
or artificially created”) to keep up with emerging concerns about genetic
manipulation of bacteria, viruses, and toxins.
The same paragraph of the 1991 declaration included a more general
response to some of the anxieties then current, in a sentence that empha-
sized the comprehensiveness of the formulation in Article I: “The Con-
ference, conscious of apprehensions arising from relevant scientific and
technological developments, inter alia, in the fields of microbiology, ge-
netic engineering and biotechnology, and the possibilities of their use for
purposes inconsistent with the objectives and the provisions of the Con-
vention, reaffirms that the undertaking given by the States Parties in Ar-
ticle I applies to all such developments.” 19
In 1996 the Fourth Review Conference reaffirmed all the above-men-
tioned interpretative paragraphs of 1986 and 1991 and carried them for-
ward in its declaration, together with new references to areas of scientific
development that had acquired even greater salience since those earlier
conferences: “molecular biology” and “any applications resulting from
genome studies” were added to the 1991 trio of “microbiology, genetic
engineering and biotechnology.” 20
In responding to new challenges from science and technology, which
might, if not named and confronted, threaten the credibility of the BWC
or alter the balance of incentives to compliance, Review Conferences are
performing one of their essential functions, found in Article XII of the
Convention itself: to “take into account any new scientific and techno-
logical developments relevant to the Convention.”
Authoritative interpretation of the BWC proceeds by drawing out and
making explicit the latent implications of the text. Its comprehensiveness
was already signaled by the words “whatever their origin or method of
production” in Article I. What States Parties were doing in the declara-
tions of successive conferences from 1980 to 1996 was recording and ex-
tending, in a cumulative process, their shared understanding of these im-
plications. The 1986 word “consequently” was well chosen. The States
Parties were building up an authoritative but nonexhaustive list of exam-
ples that they specifically affirmed to be covered by Article I, without at