U.S. Biological Warfare Committee

This arrangement was modified in October 1944, when the secretary of war established the U.S. Biological Warfare Committee with Merck as the chairman. The CWS assigned the biological warfare program to its Special Projects Division. At its peak, this division had 3,900 army, navy, and civilian personnel working on various programs.26106... 

The U.S. Biological Warfare Committee, with Mr. Merck as chairman, came into being in October 1944, as a supervisory body to make recommendations to the Secretary of War and Chief of Staff on policy and to establish liaison with its British counterpart, the London Inter-Service Sub-Committee on Biological Warfare (ISSCBW). Members of the new committee included the Chief, Chemical Warfare Service the director of the New Developments Division, WDSS the director of the Office of Strategic Services the chief of the Navy Bureau of Ordnance the Surgeon Generals of the Army and Navy the chief of the Military Intelligence Service the Chief of Staff, ASF the chief of the Requirements Section, AGF the assistant chief of Air Staff Plans the British Army Staff representatives the director of Canada s Department of Chemical Warfare and Smoke and the CWS representative on the ISSCBW. Research and de-... 

Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate, U.S. chemical and biological warfare-related dual use export to Iraq and their possible impact on the health consequences of the Persian Gulf War, Washington D.C., U.S. Senate, 1994. 

As a practical matter, the committee has taken as its reference point and as a framework within which to discuss current capabilities a limited number of agents the relatively short list of chemical and biological agents discussed in the U.S. Army s recent textbook on medical aspects of chemical and biological warfare (Sidell et al., 1997). 

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