Portal:Biological warfare

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Biological warfare (BW), also known as germ warfare, is the use of pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, other disease-causing biological agents, or the toxins produced by them as biological weapons (or bioweapons). There is a clear overlap between biological warfare and chemical warfare, as the use of toxins produced by living organisms is considered under the provisions of both the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Toxins, which are of organic origin, are often called "midspectrum agents". A biological weapon may be intended to kill, incapacitate, or seriously impair a person, group of people, or even an entire population. It may also be defined as the material or defense against such employment. Biological warfare is a military technique that can be used by nation-states or non-national groups. In the latter case, or if a nation-state uses it clandestinely, it may also be considered bioterrorism.The Geneva convention restricts the use of biological and chemical weapons as it is against human rights to use them.

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1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack
The 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack was the food poisoning of more than 750 individuals in The Dalles, Oregon, United States through the deliberate contamination of salad bars at ten local restaurants with salmonella. A leading group of followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (now known as Osho) had hoped to incapacitate the voting population of the city so that their own candidates would win the 1984 Wasco County elections. The incident was the first bioterrorism attack in the United States, and the single largest bioterrorist attack in United States history. The attack is one of only two confirmed terrorist uses of biological weapons to harm humans. Having previously gained political control of Antelope, Oregon, Rajneesh's followers based in nearby Rajneeshpuram sought election to two of the three seats on the Wasco County Circuit Court which were up for election in November 1984. Fearing they would not gain enough votes, Rajneeshpuram officials decided to incapacitate voters in The Dalles, the largest population center in Wasco County. The chosen biological agent was Salmonella enterica Typhimurium, which was first delivered through glasses of water to two county commissioners, and then delivered on a larger scale at salad bars and in salad dressing. Seven hundred and fifty-one people contracted salmonellosis as a result of the attack, of whom 45 were hospitalized. There were no fatalities. Oregon Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer set up an interagency task force between the Oregon State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and executed search warrants in Rajneeshpuram. A sample of bacteria matching the contaminant that had sickened the town residents was found in a Rajneeshpuram medical laboratory. Two leading Rajneeshpuram officials were indicted and served 29 months in a minimum-security federal prison.

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Credit: Chemical and Biological Defense Command Historical Research and Response Team

The M33 cluster bomb, also known as the (M33) Brucella cluster bomb, was a U.S. biological cluster bomb developed in the early 1950s and deployed in 1952. It was the first standardized biological weapon in the U.S. arsenal.

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This bacterium, carried and spread by fleas, is the cause of the various forms of the disease plague.
Plague is a deadly infectious disease caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis (Pasteurella pestis). Primarily carried by rodents (most notably rats) and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death and devastation it brought. Plague is still endemic in some parts of the world. The epidemiological use of the term plague is currently applied to bacterial infections that cause buboes, although historically the medical use of the term plague has been applied to pandemic infections in general. Plague is often synonymous with "bubonic plague" but this only describes one of its manifestations. Other names have been used to describe this disease, such as "The Black Plague" and "The Black Death"; the latter is now used primarily to describe the second, and most devastating, pandemic of the disease.

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Jay Rockefeller
[Bioterrorism] is as great a threat or a greater threat than the Soviet Union posed to us.

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Concepts
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Featured articles: Featured class articles, Biology, Featured class articles, Crime, Featured class articles, Military history, Featured class articles, Terrorism

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