Quote:
Originally Posted by Targan
Yes indeed, and the Soviets' weaponised anthrax production is now widely known of too. Literally dozens of TONS of it right up to the end of the Soviet Union. I'd like to point the finger and say 'evil, evil bastards' but I suspect all of the major powers during the Cold War had active biological weapons programs, and may well still have.
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Also of note to Targan and our Australian friends is that fact that Australia had a biological weapons programme and intended to use it.
Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet who was the Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research, and won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1960 stated that...
"Specifically to the Australian situation, the most effective counter-offensive to threatened invasion by overpopulated Asiatic countries would be directed towards the destruction by biological or chemical means of tropical food crops and the dissemination of infectious disease capable of spreading in tropical but not under Australian conditions."
In 1951 it recommended that chemical and biological warfare research should be authorised to report on the offensive potentiality of biological agents likely to be effective against the local food supplies of South-East Asia and Indonesia.
Australia signed the BWC in 1972 and ended all Australian research into offensive biological weapons. However it should be noted that Australia has advanced research programs in immunology, microbiology and genetic engineering that support an industry providing world class vaccines for domestic use and export. It produces microorganisms on an industrial scale to support industries including agriculture, food technology and brewing. The dual-use nature of these facilities mean that Australia could easily produce biological warfare agents. Some disease research laboratories in Australia own strains of the Ebola virus. The Australian Microbial Resources Research Network lists 37 culture collections, many of which hold samples of pathogenic organisms for legitimate research purposes.