Clouds of secrecy, p.21
Clouds of Secrecy, page 21
After Senator Sasser brought the issue to the public’s attention, several scientists made clear their doubts that such a sophisticated laboratory would be needed to conduct purely defensive biological research. The president-elect of the American Society for Microbiology and professor at Tufts University, Moselio Schaechter, noted that whatever the army’s intention, the stakes would be raised. The capacity of the laboratory would allow for either defensive or offensive work, he said. “By and large, there is no way to tell the difference. They are exactly the same.”10
In May 1985, the immediate fate of the project became uncertain when a federal judge ruled that the army could not proceed with construction because it had not produced a proper environmental impact statement. But no one doubted that the army would continue with its expansion plans for the overall biological warfare program.
Who ls Responsible?
When the public learned in the 1970s about the army’s secret tests, the reaction was indignation and anger. “Incredible,” “reckless,” “unconscionable,” said public officials and newspaper editorials.11 Norman Cousins called for punishment of the people in charge: “It is necessary to bring to trial all those responsible for illness or deaths caused in the aerosol poisoning experiments or in any other scientific activities carried on outside the law. Criminality is criminality and murder is murder and must be deprived of their shelters.”12
All this assumes that behind the program has been a cadre of dark characters engaging in criminal activity. I have not found this to be the case. The program was wrong from the start, never should have been carried on, and most emphatically should not be taking place now. But the driving force derives not from demented or malicious individuals, but from a reflexive mind-set grounded in fear of an enemy.
The fear has generated ill-conceived responses in the biological warfare area as elsewhere. A fixation with national security can warp essential values of the nation’s political culture. Whether labeled “McCarthyism,” “cold-war mentality” or, more recently, the “evil empire” syndrome, such a fixation cannot be in the nation’s interest. Instead of protecting the public, it encourages an ethos that permits suspension of safety and ethical considerations by government officials.
As for would-be “culprits,” they can be found all along the way. They start perhaps with scientists during World War II, like Fildes and Sarles, who misjudged the ability of anthrax to remain a threat for generations. These scientists have left a legacy of forbidden areas of continuing infectivity in Britain and the United States. Or perhaps “guilt” begins with the American biological warfare officials, like Hill and Victor, who after the war connived to protect their Japanese counterparts. In return for information about the germ warfare experiments in which thousands of prisoners were murdered, the Japanese perpetrators were never brought to trial.
In consideration of the earlier germ warfare testing over American cities, there are names aplenty. Phillips, Wolpert, and Creasy ran many of the tests, as they acknowledged in the Nevin trial. Documents indicate that they and other named officials knew about possible risks to the public as far back as the early 1950s. Carlton Brown, at a conference in 1960 attended by germ warfare experts, made light of a scientist’s worries about the safety of testing with an army simulant. Whoever has been in charge of the chemical and biological warfare programs in any era has known about the tests. Army spokesmen have been cited throughout the book who have denied that the tests caused harm before, or would cause harm now.
This does not make any of these people criminals. Rather they may be described more aptly as cogs in a bureaucratic machine that operates according to a skewed belief system. These beliefs are typified by a scientist now at Fort Detrick who condones the tests and observes that in order to protect the country, “we have to do some things that are possibly not the nicest things.”
Fear of Soviet germ warfare activities prompted the earlier tests, and a revived fear of Soviet activities has encouraged their resumption. One question of grave importance is whether these fears are warranted. Another is whether spraying people with germs is justifiable in any case. To the first question, based on available evidence, the answer is doubtful. To the second, no matter what the evidence, the answer is no.
A Dangerous Mind-Set
In recent years thousands of army veterans and civilians have made claims against the government relating to its testing programs. Most sought compensation for damages resulting from atomic tests in the 1950s and 1960s. Until 1984 none had won a court decision. In May of that year, however, for the first time, a federal judge found the government negligent in the way it had conducted above-ground atomic tests in Nevada, and ruled that radioactive fallout had caused nine people to die of cancer. They were among a group chosen in a test case to represent 1,192 alleged victims.13
Relatives of other people who died of leukemia claim that the victims had lived downwind from an underground atomic test site in Utah from which radiation leaked in 1962. A government study indicates a child leukemia rate in that area as ten times the national average.14 The long-term consequences of the atomic tests should also serve as a lesson about open air testing with biological agents. No one knows how many people may have been harmed by the previous biological warfare tests, and no one knows how many might be harmed by tests now and in the future. Does the army want to take the chance again?
In view of the unpleasant image the army has created for itself on the Dugway issue and its problems with the atomic claimants, all the more should it wish to clarify its vulnerability testing policies. At the least, the army should reverse its position that humans in the target area of germ warfare tests are not considered experimental subjects. Call these people what you like, but they should not have to breathe in “nontoxic simulants” without their consent, no matter how harmless the army thinks its tests are.
Responsibility for greater clarity lies as well with the scientific experts who have been making policy recommendations. This applies to scientists at both ends of the policy spectrum. The scientists who wrote the 1984 report recommending that simulants be used in outdoor testing seem oblivious to the risks that such tests present to the exposed population. Those who oppose the use of highly toxic germs at the proposed Dugway facility are equally careless. By urging that simulants be used there instead of pathogens, they permit an inference that simulants are harmless and may safely be used in more populated areas. Experts in both camps should defer to the wisdom that simulant testing is risky. This should be among the principal considerations of any proposal concerning further testing.
At present, the way the Defense Department interprets federal legislation dealing with human subjects can only raise concerns. A mind-set for open air tests, but with little concern about their effects on the exposed population — as appears in the several recent government reports cited in chapter 11 — is also worrisome. Finally, the army’s apparent lack of respect for congressional oversight of its expanding biological warfare research, as expressed by Senators Sasser and Hatfield, prompts even more skepticism.
Upon learning of the recommendations for outdoor testing and about the Dugway episode, former Congressman Andrew Maguire urged a “full congressional investigation,” saying that “there appears to be activity underway or planned which has not been fully explained by the army and is not clearly understood by the Congress.” Maguire, who served on the Health and Environment Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is now vice-president of the World Resources Institute. Addressing the question of open air testing with biological agents, Maguire condemned “loopholes in current law which could be exploited by those who wish to test.”15
If the public is as little protected from biological weapons testing as seems to be the case, corrective legislation should be enacted. Protection should not depend exclusively on the good will of the army or the scientific community. Whether through legislation intended to protect the environment, human subjects, or both, explicit safeguards are called for.
A few years ago Jeremy Rifkin testified before Congress and the National Institutes of Health, anticipating the army’s use of genetic engineering in its biological warfare program. “They said it would never be used for this,” he recalls, but now it is. “They’re going to want to do open air testing too; I have no doubt about it.” Some people view Rifkin as intrusive. But he can hardly be faulted for having said “we need some discussion this time before it happens.”16
Saul Hormats, who had been director of development for the Army Chemical Corps until 197 I, is troubled by recent U.S. policies. He was familiar with the earlier germ warfare tests while they were being conducted, and at the time did not feel uncomfortable about them. “Our whole attitude in matters of this kind was different then,” Hormats says, “but today I would say this sort of thing would be reprehensible.” He emphasizes, however, that ‘Tm speaking of me today. You have a lot of people in the Pentagon who just don’t give a damn, and that bothers me.” Although Hormats is no longer in government service, he follows events closely in the chemical and biological warfare areas. He is convinced that there are people in the Pentagon who “are planning for some damn reason to reinstitute BW, and are quite likely to reinstitute” testing over heavily populated areas. “I think these are irresponsible actions,” he says, “and I can’t understand why the Pentagon is up to this sort of thing.”17
A policy option that allows germs to be sprayed on unsuspecting citizens is a remnant of a discredited ethos. It is no more justifiable than a policy that would allow exposure of people to “harmless” levels of radiation after nuclear detonations, in order to simulate realistic conditions. The issue of vulnerability testing raises a fundamental question about the values of this society — whether the citizenry should ever be appropriately considered as experimental guinea pigs.
To the extent that testing with simulant bacteria and chemicals involves inhalation, ingestion, or other contact by humans, calling such activity harmless or innocuous is illusory. One of the lessons of the past tests should have been the demonstrated uncertainty of the effects of supposedly harmless agents on the exposed population.
The army continues to claim that the agents it used in past tests were and are harmless. It therefore uses the same ones in current tests. Even if different simulants are used, on what basis can anyone be sure they are harmless? In any case, what moral right permits the government to treat citizens as unwitting subjects?
In considering the nation’s expanding defensive biological warfare research, including the outdoor testing program, a Pentagon official said: “There’s no need to restrain us from doing the best job we can.” Another was more succinct: “Trust us.”18 As we have learned from experience, such assurances are not enough.
Notes
1. Ken Ringle, “Army Sprayed Germs on Unsuspecting Travelers,” Washington Post, December 5, 1984, p. B–1.
2. David Leigh and Paul Lashmar, “British Germ Bomb Sprayed Trawler,” The Observer (London), July 21, 1985, p. 1.
3. “Miscellaneous Publication 7,” Study US65SP (U), United States Army Biological Laboratories, Fort Detrick, July 1965, pp. 57, 62. A copy of the report was provided by the Church of Scientology, which had obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request.
4. Ibid., and Ringle, “Army Sprayed Germs,” p. B–8.
5. Ringle, “Army Sprayed Germs,” p. B–8.
6. U.S. Department of Defense. “Biological Defense Program,” Report to the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., May 1986, chap. 1, p. 10 (mimeographed).
7. Jack Anderson, “Soviets Push Biological-Weapons Work,” Washington Post, December 4, 1984, p. B–15.
8. Wayne Biddle, “Fund for Army Biological Warfare Unit Approved,” New York Times, December 7, 1984, p. A–23.
9. Letter from Senator James Sasser to Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, October 31, 1984.
10. R. Jeffrey Smith, “New Army Biowarfare Lab Raises Concerns, Science 226, no. 4679 (December 7, 1984): p. 1178.
11. See editorials and news items in the San Francisco Chronicle, December 24 and 26, 1976, and September 18, 1979.
12. Norman Cousins, “How the U.S. Used Its Citizens as Guinea Pigs,” Saturday Review, November 10, 1979, p. 10.
13. Ivor Peterson, “U.S. Ruled Negligent in A–Tests Followed by Nine Cancer Deaths,” New York Times, May 11, 1984, p. A–1.
14. New York Times, May 16, 1984, p. A–7.
15. Interview, May 15, 1985.
16. Interview, March 25, 1985.
17. Interview, September 13, 1985.
18. Cited in John Hubner, “The Hidden Arms Race,” West (Sunday Magazine of the San Jose Mercury News), April 15, 1984, p. 37.
APPENDICES
Appendix 1
The following passages are from a document furnished by the Office, Chief of Legislative Liaison, Department of the Army, Office of the Secretary of the Army, Washington, D.C., March 8, 1977.
Information for Members of Congress: U.S. Army
in the U.S. Biological Warfare (BW) Program
Testing
The policy of the United States regarding biological warfare between 1941 and 1969 was to first deter its use against the United States and its Allies, and secondly to retaliate if deterrence failed. The US BW policy required the development of a retaliatory capability utilizing pathogenic agents. Fundamental to the development of a deterrent strategy was the need for a thorough study and analysis of our vulnerability to both an overt and covert attack while concomitantly examining the full range of retaliatory options. This required extensive research and development to determine precisely our vulnerability, the efficacy of our protective measures, and the tactical and strategic capability of various delivery systems and agents.
The testing program consisted of two phases. Phase one involved the use of simulants; phase two involved the use of pathogens and included volunteers.
Both biological and non-biological simulants were used. The biological simulants were Serratia Marcescen.s, Aspergillus Fumigatus, and Bacillus Globigii. Non-biological simulants included such items as fluorescent particles, sulphur dioxide, and soap bubbles. In the biological and non-biological simulant tests, public safety was a major item of consideration. Agents and material were selected that were considered by the scientific community to be totally safe.
To date, research has shown that a total of 160 tests [sic]* utilizing simulants were conducted at 66 locations within the continental United
*Another report by the army listed 239 field tests with “anti-personnel biological simulants involving public domain.” See Department of the Army, “U.S. Army Activity in the U.S. Biological Warfare Programs,” Vol. 2, February 24, 1977 mimeograph.
The documents reproduced in these Appendices contain spelling and syntactical errors that appear in the original copies.
States, Alaska and Hawaii. The specific dates, locations, and substances used are contained in a comprehensive report which is available on request.
The simulant, Serratia Marcescens (SM), has been discussed extensively in the media as contributing to an increased incidence of pneumonia in Calhoun County, Alabama, and to the death of an individual following the vulnerability test conducted at San Francisco in September 1950. At the time the tests were conducted, SM was believed by the medical community to be harmless and totally suitable for use in the ongoing vulnerability test program. The first suspected relationship between SM and increased incidents of disease was reported in an article “Infection Due to Chromobacteria,” published in the Archives of Internal Medicine (VOL. 88, 1951).
In 1951, Dr. Richard P. Wheat, M.D., et al., reported on eleven cases seen in a San Francisco hospital from September 1950 to February 1951. The following is extracted from the “Comment” section of the referenced article:
“Instrumentation of the urinary tract had been performed in every case, and the Chromobacterium probably was introduced by these procedures. An epidemiological study failed to reveal the route of infection in detail.
That so many cases of urinary-tract infection by this unusual organism should have been observed was not surprising, since the obstructed and instrumented urinary passages are fertile soil for the multiplication of bacteria that are not commonly the cause of disease elsewhere. A contributing factor was the use of multiple antibiotics, which eliminated all the usual organisms that are responsible for infection of these organs and permitted the ready implantation of the highly antibiotic- and sulfonamide-resistant Chromobacterium.
Similar invasion of various organs by bacteria resistant to one or more antibiotics, and not usually the cause of disease in the involved system, has become commonplace in patients treated with these agents. Such invasion has been most frequently observed in cases of superinfection of the urinary tract by members of the Pseudomonas and Proteus group. It is evident that the ever-widening use of antimicrobial agents will be associated with the discovery of infectious disease caused by a wide variety of unusual micro-organisms.”
Therefore, it is concluded that the association of SM infections with the San Francisco test appeared coincidental since, (1) no other hospitals reported similar infections, and (2) all the other patients reported in the Wheat article had urinary tract infections, a well recognized complication of urinary catherization.
Because of apparent concern over a possible link between its San Francisco test in 1950 and the incidence of Serratia Marcescens infections in the Stanford Hospital in 1952, the Army requested a group of eminent scientists to review the available information and provide recommendations on the future use of SM. The four civilian consultants from Communicable Disease Center, USPHS; Department of Health, City of New York; Graduate School, Ohio State University; and Microbiological Institute, National Institutes of Health, USPHS analysis and recommendations were:
