Toxin weapons

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, http //projects.sipri.se/cbw/docs/bw-btwc-rruiinpage.html the Chemical Weapons Convention, http //www.opcw.nl/. 

Franz, David R. Defense Against Toxin Weapons. Rev. ed. Fort Detrick, MD United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, 1997. 

Defense against Toxin Weapons. U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Franz, David R. DVM, PhD. Fort Detrick, Maryland, 1997. 

BWC—Officially known as the Convention on the Prohibition of Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction. The BWC works toward general and complete disarmament, including the prohibition and elimination of all types of weapons of mass destruction. 

Franz, D.R. (1997). Defense against toxin weapons. In Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Weapons (Textbook of Military Medicine series. Warfare, Weaponry, and the Casualty, Part I, 1st edition (R. Zajtchuk, ed.), pp. 603-19. Borden Institute, Washington, DC. 

For further discussion of the U.S. decision to renounce biological weapons, see Tucker, Jonathan. 2002. A Farewell to Germs The U.S. Renunciation of Biological and Toxin Weapons, 1969-1970, International Security, Vol. 27, No. 1, June, pp. 107-149. 

Franz, D. R. Defense against toxin weapons, in Textbook of Military Medicine Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare, 1994. http //www.usamriid.army.mil/education/defensetox/ toxdefbook.pdf. Accessed 2 June, 2005. 

Synthetically produced toxins and genetically engineered toxin chimeras are areas of emerging interest because of their possible application as new medical modalities (e.g., IgTs) and powerful research tools, as well as their potential misuse as toxin weapons to confuse traditional medical countermeasures (Olsnes and Pihl, 1986 Millard, 2005). With the advent of facile production systems for recombinant proteins, the large-scale production of type 2 plant RIP toxins or toxin chimeras is increasingly practicable. 

As with other protein toxin weapons, we expect that the generation of primary or secondary ricin aerosols, especially within an enclosed space, poses a potential biological warfare or bioterrorism risk (LeClaire and Pitt, 2005 Millard, 2005). Due to the technical challenges of generating highly toxic and persistent protein aerosols, we expect the risk of lethality to be less than the risk of operational disruption, prolonged incapacitation from ocular or respiratory tract inflammation, and increased burden on medical and logistical assets. 

The aerosol toxicity of ricin has been documented in several laboratory animals, including rhesus (Wilhelmsen and Pitt, 1996) and African green monkeys, but it remains unclear which, if any, of these effectively model the human response to ricin. Is it necessary to conduct animal trials with medical countermeasures for ricin in an NHP aerosol model, or will other animal models suffice to predict the human response The unexpected appearance of VLS in human clinical trials underscores the difficulty in extrapolating from animal models. Data addressing these questions will be critical in devising practical and effective strategies for coping with ricin as a toxin weapon. 

Millard, C.B. (2005) Medical defense against protein toxin weapons review and perspective, in Lindler, L.E., Lebeda, F.J. and Korch, G.W. (Eds.) Biological Weapons Defense Infectious Diseases and Counterbioterrorism, Totowa, NJ, Humana Press. 

This chapter examines the prohibitions in the relevant treaties - the Geneva Protocol of 1925, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention - and concludes that chemical weapons are totally prohibited. Consideration is given to the risk of use of chemical weapons posed in the 21st Century, both by states and by other organizations and individuals, such as terrorists, and to how these risks can be countered by the effective implementation of the treaties. 

As of February 2005, there are 134 States Parties to the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In addition, many of the States Parties, which entered reservations, have lifted those reservations as they are incompatible with the obligations under the later Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention. However, there have been successive UnitedNations General Assembly resolutions on measures to uphold the authority of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, such as that adopted in October 2004 which include language that ... 

The maintenance of such reservations today are incompatible with the obligations that many of these States Parties have entered into as States Parties to the later treaties - notably the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention and it is for that reason that the successive UN General Assembly... 

A draft convention was submitted by the UK in 1969 to the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament and this gained support from first the USA and then from the Soviet Union. It is, however, evident that its content was considerably diluted in a bilateral negotiations between the USA and the Soviet Union who, consciously or unconsciously, gutted the draft treaty of some of its more important components (Sims, 2001). Nevertheless, this led to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) which opened for signature on 10 April 1972 and entered into force three years later on 26 March 1975. 

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