Often Thwarted Treaty Efforts Leave Chemical, Biological Weapons a Still Potent Threat

Abstract

A SPECIAL repugnance toward and biological warfare (weapons that Saddam Hussein now threatens to use) may be expected of physicians because the use of these agents conflicts directly with ethical conduct standards from the Oath of Hippocrates to the Code of the World Medical Association. So state Robert M. Goldwyn, MD, and Victor W. Sidel, MD, in an essay entitled The Physician and War ( Ethical Issues in Medicine . Boston, Mass: Little Brown & Co Inc; 1968). Published at a time when the Vietnam Conflict intensified the involvement of physicians and other scientists in national policy issues, this essay reflects the thinking that produced two major studies aimed at controlling such weapons. According to Elisa D. Harris, a senior research analyst at the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, chemical and biological weaponry became an issue in the 1960s largely because of the United States' use of riot control agents and herbicides