Biological and Toxic Weapons

In 1972, more than 100 countries including the U.S. signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Biologic and Toxic Weapons and Their Destruction — a measure designed to limit further development or use of biological and chemical weapons. Unfortunately, the accord has been breached several times. 

In antiquity, natural toxins were exploited to make poison weapons to wage the earliest forms of biological and chemical warfare. A wide range of substances, from toxic plants and venomous insects and reptiles to infectious agents and noxious chemicals, were weaponized in ancient Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, India, China, and in the Americas. Evidence for the concept and practice of toxic warfare can be traced back thousands of years. Eor example, cuneiform tablets from about 1200 bc record that the Hittites of Asia Minor deliberately drove plague victims into enemy territory. 

Ricin as a potential biological threat agent has received much popular press. In 2003, suspects were arrested in London for making ricin from castor seed in their apartment (Risen and van Natta 2003). The popular press has speculated that if ricin were made, it could be used to contaminate food in military mess halls. All of these instances indicate that biological and chemical materials may be a potential terrorist weapon to compromise the safety of the military and civilian food supply or other vulnerable areas. Given the extreme toxicity of ricin, the relative ease with which it can be obtained, and the fact that references to its use have been discovered in terrorist haunts, the ability to accurately and precisely detect ricin is a critical need. 

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