Biological warfare: the threat in historical perspective

The story of work on biological warfare in the twentieth century is briefly reviewed and the history of the British programme analyzed, largely from documents now available in the Public Records Office. The position of the United Kingdom in relation to other military and political issues has varied, as has its overall attitude from time to time. In the 1930s a defensive stance was linked to the health effects of conventional war. During and after the Second World War the objective was to obtain a biological bomb before actual or potential enemies, but later the emphasis returned to a more defensive stance, with attempts to assess the hazard over wide areas. Any evaluation of the effects of new developments in genetics should take the changing nature of these past assessments into account.