CRITIQUE/WMD MASS TERM

USING WMD AS A MASS TERM INCLUDING NUCLEAR, CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL IS INACCURATE AND DECEPTIVE

USING WMD AS A MASS TERM MAKES RESPONDING TO THE THREAT MORE AND MORE DIFFICULT

MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, School of Public Health, Univ. of Minnesota, 2000; LIVING TERRORS: What America needs to know to survive the coming bioterrorist catastrophe //VT2002acs p. 189

1. STOP TALKING ABOUT "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION." I'm not talking about conveniently erasing these weapons out of our everyday world, though it would be a miracle if such magic actually existed. No, I simply mean it's time to stop lumping all weapons that can kill large numbers of people under the single rubric of WMD. The difference in responding to bioterrorism, as opposed to a chemical or nuclear attack, is like the difference between flying a plane and driving a Formula One car. Both are moving vehicles, but very different skills are required for each one. The overuse of the term "weapons of mass destruction" has done a great deal to stunt the necessary attention to the looming threat of biological terrorism. It has allowed policy makers to throw money at the broader problem, shortchange this narrower one, and still claim to be solving the problem. As we've seen, in contrast to other forms of WMD, bioterrorism response is not primarily a military and law enforcement effort. It's a public health and medical system effort.

IT IS ESSENTIAL TO CHANGE THE DEFINITION OF WMD SO THAT IT INCLUDES JUST NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Maintaining nuclear weapons by the Nuclear Weapon States (NWSs) to deter production and stockpiling of chemical and biological weapons, mainly in countries of concern, can only be interpreted as an unjustifiable, unreasonable pretext to keep nuclear weapons indefinitely in stock. Is it politically wise to change the unfortunate, misleading definition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD =NW + CW + BW), repeated again and again in the media, and deeply engraved into the mind of people? Will a new definition distract from the importance of the two, universally ratified treaties? Might it be counterproductive to do so in a time, where scientists are under increasing scrutiny and attack?

The author felt that informing the educated public and policy makers on a re-definition of WMD warrants the change and outweighs possible negative repercussions.

WMD AS A MASS TERM INCLUDING CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS IS MISLEADING AND POLITICALLY DANGEROUS

The term "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD), used to encompass nuclear (NW), biological (BW), and chemical weapons (CW), is misleading, politically dangerous, and cannot be justified on grounds of military efficiency. This has been pointed out earlier [1] and discussed more recently in considerable detail in ref. [2]. Whereas protection with various degrees of efficiency is possible against chemical and biological weapons, however inconvenient it might be for military forces on the battlefield and for civilians at home, it is not feasible at all against nuclear weapons. Chemical weapons have shown to be largely ineffective in warfare, biological weapons have never been deployed on any significant scale. Both types should be better designated as weapons of terror against civilians and weapons of intimidation for soldiers. Requirements on their transport system differ vastly from those for nuclear warheads. They are extremely unpopular. Stockpiling of biological weapons is not possible over a long time scale [3, 4]. Only nuclear weapons are completely indiscriminate by their explosive power, heat radiation and radioactivity, and only they should therefore be called a weapon of mass destruction.

WMD MASS TERM CREATES CONFUSION ABOUT CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

Following these incidents, terror-ism was said to have made a quali-tative leap: for the first time a terrorist organization had dis-charged a weapon of mass destruc-tion. While some analysts had predicted this development, many still have difficulty understanding the purpose of terrorist organizations resorting to chemical and biological (CB) weapons. Part of this confusion results from the focus on the poten-tial consequences of such an attack: because of their classification as so-called weapons of mass destruction, which lumps them together with nuclear and radiological weapons, CB weapons are said to be able to produce huge numbers of casualties.