Bioterrorismo y armas biológicas: caracterización y respuesta frente a las amenazas actuales / Bioterrorism and biological weapons: characterization and response to current threats

El uso de agentes biológicos con fines terroristas constituye una amenaza singular. Aunque poco probable, su materialización puede ser difícilmente evitable en el futuro. Este artículo revisa el fenómeno del bioterrorismo, examinando los posibles riesgos y vulnerabilidades, los mecanismos de respuesta y las nuevas amenazas para la bioseguridad. (AU)

The use of biological agents for terrorist purposes is a unique threat. Although unlikely, it may be difficult to prevent in the future. This article provides an overview of the phenomenon of bioterrorism, examining potential risks and vulnerabilities, response mechanisms and emerging threats to biosecurity. (AU)

Unit 731 and moral repair.

Unit 731, a biological warfare research organisation that operated under the authority of the Imperial Japanese Army in the 1930s and 1940s, conducted brutal experiments on thousands of unconsenting subjects. Because of the US interest in the data from these experiments, the perpetrators were not prosecuted and the atrocities are still relatively undiscussed. What counts as meaningful moral repair in this case-what should perpetrators and collaborator communities do decades later? We argue for three non-ideal but realistic forms of moral repair: (1) a national policy in Japan against human experimentation without appropriate informed and voluntary consent; (2) the establishment of a memorial to the victims of Unit 731; and (3) US disclosure about its use of Unit 731 data and an apology for failing to hold the perpetrators accountable.

Open-Air Biowarfare Testing and the Evolution of Values.

The United States and the United Kingdom ended outdoor biological warfare testing in populated areas nearly half a century ago. Yet, the conduct, health effects, and propriety of those tests remain controversial. The varied views reflect the limits of currently available test information and evolving societal values on research involving human subjects. Western political culture has changed since the early days of the American and British testing programs. People have become less reluctant to question authority, and institutional review boards must now pre-approve research involving human subjects. Further, the heightened stringency of laboratory containment has accentuated the safety gap between a confined test space and one without physical boundaries. All this makes it less likely that masses of people would again be unwittingly subjected to secret open-air biological warfare tests.

Chemical and biological weapons in the 'new wars'.

The strategic use of disease and poison in warfare has been subject to a longstanding and cross-cultural taboo that condemns the hostile exploitation of poisons and disease as the act of a pariah. In short, biological and chemical weapons are simply not fair game. The normative opprobrium is, however, not fixed, but context dependent and, as a social phenomenon, remains subject to erosion by social (or more specifically, antisocial) actors. The cross cultural understanding that fighting with poisons and disease is reprehensible, that they are taboo, is codified through a web of interconnected measures, principal amongst these are the 1925 Geneva Protocol; the Biological Weapons Convention; and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Whilst these treaties have weathered the storm of international events reasonably well, their continued health is premised on their being 'tended to' in the face of contextual changes, particularly facing changes in science and technology, as well as the changed nature and character of conflict. This article looks at the potential for normative erosion of the norm against chemical and biological weapons in the face of these contextual changes and the creeping legitimization of chemical and biological weapons.

Terrorism and the behavioral sciences.

Terrorism has existed for millennia and is a phenomenon well-known to many parts of the world. Americans were forced to recognize this phenomenon, and our vulnerability to it, by two sets of events in 2001: the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, and the anthrax mailings that followed shortly thereafter. Psychiatry, psychology, and other behavioral and social sciences have been looked to for assistance in collecting and analyzing intelligence data, understanding terrorism, and developing strategies to combat terrorism. In addition to reviewing areas in which the behavioral sciences have made contributions in addressing this problem, this article discusses the developing roles for behavioral scientists in this field.

Military medicine and the ethics of war: British colonial warfare during the Seven Years War (1756-63).

This article examines 18th-century European warfare, tracing the first formal codifications of conventions of war, frequently introduced by military physicians and initially regarding the treatment of the sick and wounded. It outlines to what extent these conventions were followed in practice, particularly in the challenging environment of American irregular warfare, with a focus on the most well-known incident of "biological warfare" in the period: the deliberate spread of smallpox by British officers among Amerindians in 1763. More broadly, it demonstrates that the history of military medicine provides a fruitful method with which to uncover assumptions about the ethics of war.

Is all fair in biological warfare? The controversy over genetically engineered biological weapons.

Advances in genetics may soon make possible the development of ethnic bioweapons that target specific ethnic or racial groups based upon genetic markers. While occasional published reports of such research generate public outrage, little has been written about the ethical distinction (if any) between the development of such weapons and ethnically neutral bioweapons. The purpose of this paper is to launch a debate on the subject of ethnic bioweapons before they become a scientific reality.

The ethics of biodefense.

This essay reviews major areas of ethical debate with regard to biodefense, focusing on cases in which biodefense presents ethical problems that diverge from those presented by naturally-occurring outbreaks of infectious disease. It concludes with a call for ethicists to study not only the ethical issues raised in biodefense programs, but also the ethics of biodefense more generally.

Biodefense research: an emerging conundrum.

Biodefense research creates a conundrum for the scientific community--what are the permissible limits of biodefense research and how can knowledge in the life sciences be protected against misuse? As biodefense research expands to counter the threat of bioterrorism, so does suspicion and the need for guidance to respond to these concerns.

Coding ethical behaviour: the challenges of biological weapons.

Since 11 September 2001 and the anthrax attacks that followed in the US, public and policy concerns about the security threats posed by biological weapons have increased significantly. With this has come an expansion of those activities in civil society deemed as potential sites for applying security controls. This paper examines the assumptions and implications of national and international efforts in one such area: how a balance or integration can take place between security and openness in civilian biomedical research through devising professional codes of conduct for scientists. Future attempts to establish such codes must find a way of reconciling or at least addressing dilemmatic and tension-ridden issues about the appropriateness of research; a topic that raises fundamental questions about the position of science within society.

Ethical issues in modern biological technologies.

Today's biology-based technologies have emerged from a historical imperative and as an inevitable consequence of developments in modern biology beginning in the last half-century. They can be classified into almost 30 different areas, ranging from the use of gene therapy for human beings, enzyme engineering, stem cells and cloning, to marine biotechnology, bioinformatics, nanotechnology and biological warfare among many others. Many of them have major sociopolitico-economic, moral, ethical and legal implications. They include genetic engineering, gene therapy, tissue culture, stem cell work, the new DNA technologies, commercialization of traditional plant-based drug formulations, assisted reproduction techniques, cloning technologies, organ transplantation, bioinformatics, and biological weapons. Examples of the ethical implications of several of these items will be considered. They will be assessed with special reference to ethical implications in respect of assisted reproduction techniques, of worldwide importance today, particularly for a country such as India.