Biological warfare Plague

Vaccines The currently available inactivated whole cell vaccine is not recommended for protection from a biological warfare agent since it does not protect laboratory animals from aerosolized plague. However, the vaccine is effective in preventing bubonic plague in persons in endemic or epidemic areas. 

In a biological warfare scenario, the plague bacteria could be delivered by contaminated fleas (bubonic plague) or, more likely, by aerosol spread (pneumonic plague). Pneumonic plague can be transmitted also by large aerosol droplets expelled by coughing. 

Nopar, R. (1967). Plagues on our children The threat of biological warfare. Pediatrics, 6, 63-73. 

McGovern, T. W, Friedlander, A. M. (1997). Plague. In R. Za-jtchuk (Ed.), Textbook of military medicine Medical aspects of chemical and biological warfare (pp. 479-502). Washington, DC Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army. 

It is caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Rodents are the normal host of plague, and the disease is transmitted to humans by flea bites and occasionally by aerosol in the form of pneumoitic plague. The disease has a history of use in biological warfare dating back many centuries (see Roman times, above), and is considered a threat due to its ease of culture and ability to remain in circulation in rodents for long periods. 

Mankind has practised primitive forms of biological warfare for thousands of years the poisoning of enemy wells with the bodies of dead soldiers and animals in order to spread disease is a practice as old as war itself. In the fourteenth century the Crimean town of Kaffa was captured when the beseiging Tartar army catapulted the bodies of plague victims into the city the Russians are said to have used similar techniques against the Swedes in the eighteenth century. The British used blankets infected with smallpox in an attempt to wipe out whole tribes of North American Indians. 

Mangold T, Goldberg J (1999). Plague Wars The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare. St. Martin s, New York, pp. 250, 254, 277-279. 

Plague has been one of the worst human pandemics throughout history. Its use as a biological warfare agent, however, is not known. The disease is attributed to the bacteria Yersinia pestis, and caused mostly from bites of rat flea. The animals that transmit this disease are mostly black rats and the rock and ground squirrels. When the flea bites an infected animal the bacteria enter into the body of the flea and multiply inside. When the infected flea attempts to bite again it vomits clotted blood and bacteria into the bloodstream of the victim, either human or a small mammal, usually rat. Thus the disease is mostly transmitted from rodents from the bites of infected fleas. 

Cole L., Enearta Chemical and Biological Warfare, the Eleventh Plague the Politics of Biological and Chemical Warfare (New York, NY W H Freeman Company, 1999). 

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