-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- Medical students getting a clue ? from msJAMA, "Medical Student Journal of the American Medical Association Dave Hartley http://www.asheville-computer.com/dave http://www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs/msjama/articles/vol_283/no_3/pask.htm MSJAMA — Review March 1, 2000 White Coats and War Crimes The American Biological Warfare Program Daniel Paskowitz, University of California San Francisco School of Medicine The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets From the Early Cold War and Korea, by by Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, 304 pp, $29.95, ISBN 0-253-33472-1, Bloomington, Ind, Indiana University Press, 1999 The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets From the Early Cold War and Korea, by Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, offers a careful look at the US biological warfare program from the beginning of World War II to the end of the Korean War. The authors ask whether the United States actually used biological weapons during the Korean War, as the Chinese and North Korean governments alleged in February 1952. While Endicott and Hagerman cannot quite prove these allegations, their study shows in great detail how the federal government, the military establishment, the pharmaceutical industry, and institutions of medical research worked together during an extended period to create biological weapons and to prepare them for use in war. Their findings should prompt members of the health professions to ask whether, and how easily, their efforts to preserve human life might be perverted for use in the killing of innocents for military and government purposes. The first chapter features an extensive discussion of classified Chinese documents that describe a series of mysterious outbreaks of disease in Northeast China in the winter and spring of 1952, while the Korean War raged not far away. These include eyewitness accounts of US planes dropping mysterious containers, found to contain insects carrying pathogens that had not been present in the region for a long time. This highly effective opening to the book forces even the skeptical reader to consider seriously the possibility of biological warfare and gives a more humanistic perspective to the issue by describing Chinese civilians whose lives were cut short by infectious diseases, which occurred under suspicious circumstances. The next several chapters trace the US military and government establishments and the development of the US biological warfare program, whose existence is no longer secret or controversial. The most chilling part of this section describes the post-World War II connection between the US program with the Japanese war criminals, who gained immunity from prosecution in exchange for sharing with the United States the results of their country's bacteriological experiments on Allied prisoners. The authors show that operational prototype weapons were in fact built and tested and were incorporated into the US war plans for war in Europe. The next part of the book deals with the Korean War. Endicott and Hagerman argue that the United States did not fight the Korean War as a limited war. Rather, US leaders were prepared to use "whatever methods and weapons were considered necessary to achieve their goals."Documentation of bombing campaigns against civilian targets supports this assertion. Endicott and Hagerman also describe the administrative structures established by the United States in Korea to carry out covert operations and the connection between these structures to those individuals responsible for the biological warfare program. Careful scrutiny is given to specific missions that seem likely to have been biological-warfare attacks. For example, disease-carrying insects were packaged into the same containers used to drop leaflets warning civilians of imminent bombings. The United States maintained that all such containers dropped on Korea during the war contained only leaflets. However, on some occasions, these "leaflet bombs" were dropped on an area just after bombing, not before. Endicott and Hagerman conclude that these leaflet bombs probably contained insects or other disease vectors that were dropped late in the attack with information to protect civilians from possible exploding bombs. Finally, the authors study the confessions of a number of US prisoners of war to their Chinese captors about US biological warfare attacks. Although all the captors retracted their confessions under threat of court-martial or treason-trial on return to the United States, the evidence that the confessions were extracted under duress is weak. Endicott and Hagerman cannot absolutely prove that the United States deployed biological weapons in the Korean War, because no US declassified documents yet exist that explicitly admits these claims. However, through exhaustive research and careful documentation, Endicott and Hagerman build an effective case that a biological attack could have happened and probably did. They show that the US government built biological weapons and prepared to use them in war, whether or not an enemy government had used biological weapons first. Testimony from US military personnel, Chinese health officials, and international observers who were asked to investigate Chinese allegations of biological warfare all weigh heavily toward the probability that it happened. The book is meticulously researched, carefully documented, and well written. Its clarity suffers only, and unavoidably, from the confusing succession of US government agencies concerned with biological warfare. Medical students and others preparing to enter the health professions will be especially interested in the roles played by physicians and medical researchers in the biological warfare program. By its very nature, biological-warfare research required the talents of people with medical and related scientific training. Endicott and Hagerman show that physicians affiliated with the US Army and leaders of the US pharmaceutical industry played critical roles in promoting the biological-warfare program during and after World War II. Medical scientists were employed at special military installations that were devoted to developing biological weapons, and they sometimes used data they obtained about Japanese experiments on US prisoners of war. Perhaps most worrisome of all, biological warfare research projects were given to a number of US medical research universities through an extramural grant system. Faculty members of these universities served on advisory committees that helped to endorse and advise the biological warfare program. One regrettable omission in the authors' treatment, from the point of view of medical students, is that they leave unexplored the many burning questions raised by this involvement of the medical and scientific communities at large. To what extent did US university administrators and faculty know that some of their research was being used to build weapons of mass destruction? If they did know, how willingly did they participate, and why? If they generally did not know, how easy was it for government agencies to use the medical and scientific establishments for purposes directly contrary to their principles? Endicott and Hagerman bemoan the war mentality that led US leaders to cast aside moral considerations and pursue building biological weaponsfor possible use against innocent people. Their book will help medical students to recognize that even people devoted to the preservation of life are not immune to unethical situations. This study may "help prod medical doctors, scientists, and universities to take effective action to ensure that the science of healing will never again be used to build weapons of war." Reviews Page Table of Contents <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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