The WBC Committee and War Research Service

Government agencies other than the Chemical Warfare Service also showed concern over the threat. These included the Institute of Health of the U.S. Public Health Service, the Council of National Defense, officers of the staffs of the Surgeons General of the Army and Navy, and G-2 of the Army. 

In July 1S 41, Harvey H. Bundy, Special Assistant to the Secretary of War, called a meeting of representatives of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), The Surgeon General, the CWS, and Army G-2, to discuss means for co-ordinating work in BW. As a result of this meeting the OSRD recommended to the Secretary of War that the National Academy of Sciences investigate the possibilities of BW.  

Two months before Pearl Harbor, the president of the National Academy and the chairman of the National Research Council asked Edwin B. Fred to help form and act as chairman of a committee to study and assess current potentialities of BW. A group of twelve scientists met on 18 November 1941, designated the WBC Committee (War Bureau of Consultants). Liaison members of the committe included Lt. Col. Maurice E. Barker, Lt. Col. James H. Defandorf, and 1st Lt. Luman F. Ney of the Chemical Warfare Service, as well as representatives of Ordnance, the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, The Surgeon General s Office, the Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Public Health Service. The committee report to the Secretary of War in February 1942 declared the BW was distinctly feasible, that it was a potential threat to national security, and that steps should be taken at once to formulate defensive and offensive measures. 

Henry 1. Stubblefield, A Resume of the Biological Warfare Effort, 21 Mar 58. CMLHO C-511.111. 

Initiated with Memo, Dir WRS for C CWS, 10 Dec 42, sub Request for Supplemental Research and Development. Cited in BW Research in U.S., p. 24. 

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