[MUSIC PLAYING]
PRESENTER: This is the first in
a series of lectures sponsored
by the Whitehead Institute.
It arose because there
are now new techniques
in molecular biology
that have made
it possible to diagnose
hidden genetic disorders,
redesign farm animals,
produce plants
with new and unusual
characteristics.
It's clear that these techniques
will lead to new approaches
to problems outside
of the laboratory--
hunger, environmental
pollution, and disease.
But they also raise important
social and ethical questions.
For example, who
will have access
to the results of genetic tests?
What does it mean to
patent a new life form?
How will new technologies
affect the likelihood
of biological warfare?
The discussions
at the Institute,
and specifically between
Eric Lander and myself,
led us to organize
this series, which is
titled "Biology in the Future."
Basically to explore
the social, ethical,
and environmental
consequences of the revolution
in molecular biology.
It's supported by
a generous grant
from the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation,
with the specific charge
that we not limit this solely
to biologists, for reasons that
perhaps are apparent to you.
And so we have made
every attempt--
and I believe have succeeded--
in attracting people from
not only outside the biology
community, outside of
MIT, to get scientists
and non-scientists
here to talk about some
of these possibilities
and what lies ahead.
Tonight's lecture is
the first of these.
On March 2 there will
be a lecture, Genetics
and your Health, Tales of
Genetic Discrimination,
by Paul Billings.
On April 29, The
Blood of our Children,
Genetic Identification
of the Disappeared,
by Mary Claire King.
And on September
30, Purple Cows,
Issues in Biotechnology and
Agriculture, by Dan Kevles.
And then Genetic Diagnostics,
Reading the Future,
on November 4.
The format of this
lecture is that we
will have first a
presentation by Doctor Matthew
Meselson, and then some
subsequent comments
by John Deutch.
Tonight's speaker on the
future of biological warfare
is by Matthew Meselson, who
is the Thomas Dudley Cabot
Professor of the Natural
Sciences at Harvard University.
I first learned of Matt
from my genetics textbook,
since he had
performed what is now
a classical experiment
in molecular biology,
and one that we still teach to
graduate students as the way
experiments ought to be done.
But Matt has, as many
of you know, broadened--
or, has a broad interest in
matters of public policy,
and as a consultant to the
Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency in the 1960s he
helped shape US policy
on biological and
chemical weapons,
and he is credited with being
a key influence in President
Nixon's 1969 decision to
renounce biological warfare
and to get rid of
the US stockpile
of microbiological weapons.
I have always found Matt to
be a compelling and articulate
speaker, and look forward
to hearing him this evening.
Would you please welcome
Matthew Meselson.
[APPLAUSE]
MATTHEW MESELSON: You have
a very obedient audience.
The reason I accepted
this invitation
was that I was invited.
[LAUGHTER]
But if I had to justify it
I would say that many of you
are biologists, I'm sure--
there being such a
high concentration
of biologists in this area--
and may want to get some
information about a subject
that you don't
deal with everyday,
but which is still related to
your work one way or another.
And then, more generally,
people in this community
must know that it is one of
the few places in the world
in which the biological
revolution is taking place,
and are probably
interested to know
what's going on in your
community in the broadest way.
So what I'm going to try
to do is simply describe
some of the history as well as
present issues in this subject,
and try to be as
informative as I can.
Why should we be
concerned with this issue
of the utilization of biological
sciences for hostile purposes?
Certainly at the outset
one has to realize
that the implications of the
new biology for human benefit
are vast.
But it is also
true that if there
should come into play
large-scale or serious
exploitation, deliberate
exploitation of biology
for hostile purposes, that
this could cause great harm.
Over the short-run the kind of
harm that's easy to envisage
and describe in detail
derives from the fact that,
at least in principle-- though
no one's ever done it and maybe
an attempt to do
it would fizzle--
but nevertheless, potentially
with biological weapons
based on infectious
organisms it could
be possible to cause illness
and death over very large areas
with relatively small payloads.
The reason for this is simply
that the mass, the weight,
of infectious agent
that is required
to initiate an infection
in a human being
is a very small mass.
Any one number is
going to be misleading,
because there are so
many variables, starting
with how many
organisms are required
to initiate an infection,
say, by the aerosol route
by inhalation.
There is great
variation in this number
depending on the
organism in question.
Even with a fairly
homogeneous population.
For example, just
a very few cells
of the organism that causes
tularemia, Francisella
tularensis, three,
four, five cells
probably are enough to
initiate an infection.
Whereas with another
organism, bacillus anthracis,
the agent of anthrax, maybe
10, maybe 50,000 spores
are required before
there's a 50% likelihood
of infecting a primate.
We don't do
experiments-- experiments
like that haven't been
done on human beings
and recorded, or known to me.
So there is variation there.
There are many
other uncertainties.
Stability of the organism,
susceptibility of a population,
distribution modalities.
So if any one number is
unlikely to mean much.
Nevertheless, even if one allows
for all the variabilities,
it's pretty clear that
relatively small quantities.
Some have said maybe as
small a weight per area
made lethal to be as,
say, hydrogen bombs.
Maybe a greater weight, maybe
a smaller weight, but perhaps
in that ballpark.
Certainly much
smaller weights than
would be required
to attack people
with conventional weapons
or with chemical weapons.
Simply because of the fact
that a single organism weighing
about 10 to the minus 12 grams
or a few dozen organisms,
given the right
infectious organism,
could initiate an infection.
So this means that,
in relatively simple--
not totally simple
and not totally cheap,
but relatively compared
to other kinds of weapons
that could have strategic
effects over large areas,
biological weapons could be a
very serious strategic threat,
either for intimidation or
for actually causing disease.
There is possible a
protection, if you're
wearing a simple air filter.
But the problem is that for the
attack of large populations,
unless they're warned,
unless they were equipped,
they could be very vulnerable.
So that is a short description
of the kind of hazard
that's easy to see
today if there were
a deliberate, intense
exploitation of bacteriology
for military purposes.
The future potential
for danger is harder
and more foggy to describe.
And, in fact, I'm going to
swing all the way to a very
distant future and say
something that may sound
very foggy to some of you.
And that is that
we've gone through
many different technological
ages, muscle power, fire--
the power of fire.
Then coupled via
various agencies.
So steam, then an electronic
age, a nuclear age.
And all of these technologies do
get used for hostile purposes,
as well as for
constructive purposes.
Some people might feel--
and I'm one of them, and I
should admit this up front--
that those methods
of waging war,
or more amorphous kinds of
hostile action against other
members of our species, are
somehow survivable compared
to what would happen if we used
our knowledge of ourselves,
if we use the kind of knowledge
of life processes that is
beginning to accumulate--
not very much of it yet,
but more and more rapidly
and will become increasingly
profound until we understand
all of the life processes,
including those of
development and of the brain--
that if this kind of
knowledge is deliberately used
for hostile purposes on
any significant scale,
that we could be in
a kind of trouble
as a species that's very
different from the kinds
of trouble we could have
gotten into with other kinds
of scientific violence.
And not just in overt
war, but in other areas
in which human hostility
can be manifested.
Well, so much for the
ball-gazing and the philosophy.
I'd like now to try to give
you a short historical sketch
of this subject.
Before World War I
and even in World War
I there wasn't much really
going on in the area
of biological warfare.
After all, the whole idea
of infectious organisms
and the isolation of pure
cultures wasn't much before
World War I. And although there
were some biological warfare
attempts, small-scale--
giving horses glanders,
some things like that--
it wasn't until World War
II that it really got going.
But during World War II there
were sizable biological warfare
programs in Great Britain, the
United States, Germany, Japan,
Canada, and almost certainly
in the Soviet Union.
And we will find out about that
as I'll explain later, we hope,
very soon.
We know most about the
United States program
because the United
States has by far--
more than the Canadians,
more than the British,
more than the Japanese,
more than Germany--
been open about what
it was that we were
doing, up until the year 1969.
Lots of different organisms
were screened to see
which would be most effective
for aerosol dissemination.
Aerosol dissemination was the
main mode of dissemination
that was investigated.
It was early on
realized that it was
by far the most
effective if one wanted
effectiveness out of biological
weapons and strategic weapons.
By the time that
President Nixon ordered
our stockpiles
destroyed, we had gone
through several different
infectious organisms,
standardize them, and then
declared them obsolete.
But the ones that were
standardized and stockpiled
at that time were
Francisella tularensis--
that's the organism
that causes tularemia.
Maybe four or five cells,
though I don't know how reliable
these numbers, extrapolated
from quite different situation,
would be.
But it was thought that a
small number of organisms
would be infectious.
And we had a large stockpile.
Coxiella burnetti, a
Rickettsia that causes Q fever.
And Venezuelan
equine encephalitis,
a virus that was categorized as
an incapacitating rather than
a lethal biological weapon.
So we had stockpiles
of these things.
And there were also
stockpiles of wheat rust
and rice blast two
anti-crop fungal agents.
The scale of this
effort was pretty big.
For example, at Pine Bluff
there were separate facilities
for each infectious organism.
In the late '50s one of the
facilities there for growing
Rickettsia--
it was called the X201
Facility-- it was fairly big.
It employed more
than 800 people,
used two million
gallons of water
a day, five megawatts of
electricity, lots of steam.
It was big.
Partly because, at
least at that time,
it was not possible,
reliably, to store
these agents for
very long periods
and keep them infectious.
And so the idea was to have
a pretty big capacity that
could be put online quickly.
Generally speaking,
protection wasn't
available to
civilian populations.
It still isn't.
It would be a big
chore, as I indicated.
Although conceivably
it could be done,
if there was a sense of
acute danger maintained,
detectors, diagnosis, gas masks,
alarms, discipline, and so on.
But the capability of the
United States at that time
was offensive.
But, as it is today, hardly
any defensive capability.
At least in the narrow
sense of the word.
I should now digress
slightly and say
how I got interested in this.
It was by total accident.
During the summer of 1963,
as I only recently learned,
there was a budget surplus at
the United States Arms Control
and Disarmament
Agency, and there
was the alternative of giving it
back or figuring out something
to do with it.
And so the science and
technology branch director
of the time, an excellent
chemist from Montana,
decided to use it.
And he invited a
group of academics.
I shared an office
with Freeman Dyson
and we were told, do
whatever you want.
Just do something.
[AUDIENCE CHUCKLES]
And I said, well, that's not--
I don't know.
What should I do?
I went down there
just because I thought
it would be interesting
to see a completely
different kind of human
activity from molecular biology.
And just for a summer.
I didn't think it would risk
losing more than a summer.
And so I was told, well, why
don't you look into theater
nuclear arms control in Europe?
And I tried that for
a couple of weeks.
[LAUGHTER]
Then it dawned on me slowly--
too slowly-- that
there were already
lots of people in the field.
And I never liked
to be in a field
where there are too
many other people.
And they had written wisely
about the subject and unwisely
about the subject, and
there was a lot known.
In two or three months
there was no way
that I could do anything
useful for the United States
government.
So I went to my boss
and said, well, I'm
a chemist and a biologist.
Haven't you got something for me
that would draw on what I know?
He said, yeah.
We had a guy who did that.
He was from Caltech, too.
He got depressed and
he killed himself,
but you could have his desk.
[LAUGHTER]
So I did.
And, that is, I took his desk.
[LAUGHTER]
At first I thought, well,
I'll deal with this subject.
And then I realized that even
that was too big a subject
for just a summer.
So I put the larger
of the two aside--
that was chemical weapons--
and concentrated on
biological weapons.
So I went to Fort Detrick
to see what we were doing.
This was 1963.
And I went to the
CIA to see what
we thought other
people were doing,
and I talked to lots of people.
And I came to a rather
simple conclusion.
Probably too simple,
but it was this.
It sort of went like a
series of propositions.
What can you do with
biological weapons?
You can kill people and
threaten to kill them
over very big areas, hundreds
of square kilometers.
The United States
can already do that.
The way that we can do, or could
have done it, can still do it,
was very expensive and very
technologically sophisticated,
namely nuclear weapons.
Why should we be the ones to
introduce a cheap way of doing
the same thing?
What capability
would it add for us?
Other people, yes.
They would have a
new capability if we
were to pioneer the development
of biological weapons.
Besides, usually what
the United States
does gets to be known around
the world with a small time lag,
so the possibility of
doing it all in secret--
in fact, there were
chemical warfare officers
that were writing books praising
it because it would save money.
And I concluded that the
cheaper it was the worse it was,
and we should definitely stop
it completely and instead
just concentrate on watching
as carefully as we could what
other people were doing,
discouraging it, and thinking
about what to do if it
should ever break loose.
But nobody at that
time felt that there
was enough time on
their schedule, no one
high up enough, to
do much about it.
When President Nixon was
elected various things
conspired to cause a review to
be ordered by the president.
And this was a very
interesting review.
There are different
kinds of reviews.
I suppose sometimes
you review something
because you don't want
to do anything about it,
so you review it.
Sometimes you review something
because you've already
decided what you
want to do about it,
but you review it
so that it looks
like you're thinking about
all the different arguments
and trying to get all the facts.
And then sometimes you
would review something
when you really thought
you ought to look into it
and didn't know what it all
meant and what you should do.
I could be wrong, but
I think this review
was of the third kind.
And it was done in
a style that may
have been, at least in
some of those reviews,
characteristic of Henry
Kissinger, which I thought
was a very admirable style.
And that was, each
agency of the government
was not only asked but there was
insistence that it explain not
only what it thought
was its best policy
but give the pros and cons
for all the other policies.
So that this enabled
relatively junior staff people
from the National
Security Council
to go over to the Joint
Chiefs, for example, or to ACDA
or to state and say,
well gentlemen, you've
done an excellent job here
of explaining your preferred
option.
Now, when it comes down
to this option number two,
you haven't given a very
good argument for it.
Of course, that wasn't
what they wanted.
So naturally they didn't
give a good argument for it.
But because of this
ground rule that you
had to give the
president every option
and you had to argue every
option, pros and cons--
which, so far as I know, maybe
didn't happen in many reviews.
This is the only
review at that level
that I've had much to do with.
But I thought it was
pretty excellent.
And I do know that what
President Nixon got
had all the options
and all the arguments
that at least I could
ever imagine, pro and con.
And he decided something
more sweeping than I
think most of us expected.
He decided to get rid of the
biological warfare program
completely.
He was offered many options.
He was told, you
could renounce it.
If someone else,
namely the Soviets,
are willing to do that there
would be a quid pro quo.
Or you could renounce
it, but mothball it.
Don't renounce the option,
just get rid of the program
or tune it down.
It was running at a pretty
fast clip in those days.
But keep the option.
He rejected it
completely and ordered
that the program be stopped, and
that the United States renounce
its right ever to use
biological weapons.
And then, during a
backgrounder some journalists
asked Henry Kissinger,
well what about toxins?
And there's a
verbatim text of this.
And Kissinger says,
what are toxins?
[CHUCKLES]
And the journalist
didn't know either.
Someone had fed
him the question.
[LAUGHTER]
It turned out the NSC staff
had written a lot about toxins,
but the head of that particular
review saw how long it was
and how technical it looked and
said, take this, reduce this.
And so what went to the
president about toxins
was really very brief,
and it got left out.
And so a whole new review
was ordered up about toxins.
And again, the
president was offered
a whole range of options
from, toxins are not living.
They do not reproduce.
You know?
Toxins are defined as poisonous
things, poisonous chemicals--
they don't reproduce.
They're chemicals-- but that
are made by living things.
So the clostridium
botulinum makes
a nasty toxin called botulin.
Yeast makes a pleasurable
toxin called ethanol.
It's still a toxin in the sense
that it, in appropriate dose
can be harmful.
And it's made by a living thing.
Anyway, one option was,
toxins are not infectious.
They're not BW.
We're not going
to renounce them.
Another was, toxins, if
made by living things--
because bacteria make
toxins and that's
getting close to sounding
like disease again--
would be prohibited
and renounced.
But if the chemists
over there can
learn how to synthesize
them that would be OK.
[LAUGHTER]
Another option was,
no, we'll renounce them
under all circumstances, but
we won't renounce the right
to use them in future
if other people do.
And then finally there's an
extreme, exceedingly left-wing
alternative.
Renounce them, no matter how
they're made, and renounced
them in perpetuity.
And that's what
President Nixon did.
The first decision about
infectious agents in 1969,
November, and the second one
about toxins after someone
asked, what are toxins, in 1970.
And this really got the United
States out of the business.
We destroyed our stockpiles.
We converted the
laboratories at Pine Bluff
to the study of toxic substances
in the laboratories at Fort
Detrick--
and the production facilities--
and the laboratories at Fort
Detrick to cancer
research and other things.
There were kept at those
sites military units that
did other things, and
a biological defensive
enterprise, but not making
weapons at Fort Detrick.
And also a biological
defensively-oriented facility
at Dugway in Utah.
But the offensive program
was really extirpated.
Gone.
Then there came up the question,
well, how about a treaty?
Well, we had
already given it up.
And not only that, we'd
renounced the option.
So a treaty then
would be only a bonus.
If people didn't obey it,
that wouldn't be so good.
But since it didn't
require us to do anything
we weren't going to
do anyway, why not?
And the British had
proposed such a treaty,
and so at the same
time the president
renounced BW he announced
support for that British draft
treaty which is called
the Biological Weapons
Convention of 1972.
Today there are about
100 parties to it.
It prohibits the production--
it prohibits the development,
production,
possession, transfer,
et cetera of biological agents
for any but peaceful purposes.
It didn't have any
verification attached to it,
but it did have an article
which required a review
conference after five years.
And it's become customary
to have review conferences
periodically.
There have now been three.
And these review
conferences have
achieved what some would call
a little bit of verification,
and what others would call
some confidence-building.
The first review
conference in 1980
didn't accomplish very much.
This was, at the time,
shortly after in December
that the Soviets had
invaded Afghanistan.
The Cold War was very bitter.
[INAUDIBLE] There had been an
outbreak of anthrax and had
become known in the
West in April of 1979--
became known in the
West shortly after that.
And these subjects dominated
much of the debates
at that first review conference.
But the second one in 1986
did achieve something.
The parties to the
Biological Weapons Convention
agreed that they would declare
the location, ownership, size,
and general purpose
of all P4 facilities.
P4, as you know, is a
high level of containment
for exceedingly-dangerous
infectious agents.
And that they would also
declare the location, et cetera
of all P3 facilities
if they were engaged
in work of direct relevance
to the Biological Weapons
Convention.
And pursuant to that
these declarations,
which the United States and the
Soviet Union and Great Britain
and many countries--
but also many didn't--
but many countries--
every April the 15th they
are supposed to renew
their declarations.
And this has been going
on ever since, the United
States and the Soviet Union have
been filing these declarations.
The third review conference
was last year in 1991,
and it added some
more measures--
states parties to the
convention which, as I say,
has about 120 parties today--
agreed that they would describe
their biological defense
programs.
They're not supposed to have
biological offense programs,
so there'd be no point asking
them to describe those--
but their biological
defense programs.
Namely, how they're
organized, actually
giving names of people in
charge of the major components,
what their facilities
are, and so on.
Now, you could dodge this.
You could say, it's actually
my cotton candy program.
It's not a biological
defense program at all.
It's something else.
But it allows one to
compare both what you know
and what you fear
with what is declared.
And by comparison
of this information,
it's possible to derive
conclusions about compliance
or about noncompliance.
They may not be rock
solid, but they're
better than the conclusions
that you could otherwise make.
A very interesting agreement
was that all states parties
agreed to submit by April
15 of this year, income tax
day, a description of their
biological warfare activities
beginning in the year 1946.
So we're waiting very eagerly.
We know what the United States
was doing since 1946 pretty
much, but there are
a lot of countries
which never said anything.
The Soviet Union has said--
when there was a Soviet Union--
that they were in compliance,
But it will be very
interesting to find out
what they say they were
doing beginning in 1946.
And there are some
other governments, too.
It would be interesting
to know what they say.
And it was agreed to have a
further meeting very soon.
Not with the usual
five-year wait--
in fact, this March--
of experts to discuss possible
methods of verification.
There is a disagreement here.
The United States
generally has argued--
to some extent it's a hangover
from the etiological days
of the Reagan administration,
but to some extent
there's a lot of
merit to it, that--
and it doesn't
matter whether you
say a ban on biological
weapons is unverifiable
or it's not verifiable enough.
Its theology to try to
make that distinction.
But the United States has argued
that it's not verifiable enough
to have a verification regime.
So we could call them
confidence-building measures
instead.
I think at some points
it ends up as a quibble.
Except for a concept
that is pretty obvious,
but I would like to take a
minute and talk about it.
And that is, yes, it could
be difficult to verify
a biological disarmament
treaty, although there
are things you can look for
if you know where to look,
certain kinds of storage
facilities, aero-biology,
aerosolization chambers.
What kind, what size,
what precautions.
Studies of
non-endemic pathogens.
Why are you studying that?
You don't have that
in your country.
If the explanation
is reasonable, fine.
If not, keep asking questions.
Very large-scale production
units, though those
may exist for other
purposes, too.
Trace the organization
in financing.
Look for test grounds,
and so on and so forth.
But there's another way--
not to exclude those
others-- but there's
another way of dealing
with this kind of problem.
And that is based
on the assumption
that nobody is going to develop
biological weapons in the open.
You're not supposed to do it,
so you shouldn't do it publicly.
Therefore, that would mean that
if you could verify openness
then you would be
verifying compliance.
Maybe openness could be
viewed as a real object,
like a cube of platinum.
Can't you verify openness?
Yes, there are ways you
can verify openness.
For example, much better
than checking on the volume
of their aerosol chambers.
If my daughter was
the biological safety
officer at a suspect facility,
considering how snoopy--
I hope I'm not
insulting anybody--
[LAUGHTER]
--biological safety
officers are.
They go into everything.
I'd feel very happy
about that facility.
I'd say there's nothing
that-- there can't be anything
wrong there if she's there.
And she talks to
me on the phone.
I can tell her voice,
it's not funny.
She comes home for visits.
I go there and see her.
What I'm getting at is that,
the exchange of personnel
is an awfully good way
to verify openness.
And especially certain
kinds of personnel.
And there are other ways.
And probably some ingenious ways
that haven't been thought of.
But of verifying
openness as an entity
so that you don't have to get
down to the little details of,
well, they haven't
got one of those.
And then someone says, but
maybe you have one of these.
And they could do the job with
one of those instead of that,
and so on.
OK.
So although this treaty is
not one which has all kinds
of rigorous verification
attached to it,
it is one to which
have been added--
and now with a changed world
environment we hope there will
be added more and more--
measures of openness and
of confidence-building.
And since we don't want anything
to do with biological weapons--
I hope that none
of our officials
want anything to do
with biological weapons,
except for a few souls
at relatively low levels.
I've never met anybody who
seems to want to anymore.
We're out of it anyway.
Maybe there are some
things we should be doing.
We should be interested in
methods of rapid diagnosis.
We should be interested
in how to make vaccines
and how to make some
of them quickly.
We should have a good
epidemiological surveillance
service.
I think ours in recent
years has slipped a bit.
We should be doing those things.
There are some things that
are arguable that we do.
I won't get into those.
There's room to
argue on both sides.
But what I would
assert very strongly
is, we shouldn't do
anything that isn't open.
It should be open.
There are some slight
risks in openness,
if you're working in defense
and diagnosis and detection.
But I think that so long as
you try and get quid pro quos,
get other people open, but
be willing to open yourself,
that you're ahead.
Now, what things
are there to watch
coming up in this area
of biological hostility?
Well, we could start with Iraq.
We thought that there might be
a hazard emanating from Iraq,
to the extent that we
vaccinated soldiers
against bacillus
anthracis and some of them
against botulinum,
botulisnus toxin.
I thought I was going to be
on that UN team for a while,
so I was vaccinated
with bacillus anthracis.
There was a concern on the
part of several countries
that maybe there
was a program there.
And it turns out,
according to the Iraqis
now, that there was a program.
They say that it was
at the research level
and nothing has been detected
in the nature of actual weapons
production or weapons filling.
They say that they did have
a military program though.
Their declaration says that they
worked with bacillus anthracis,
with clostridium botulinum,
and clostridium perfringens.
The latter two making
toxins, and anthrax
being an infectious organism
of which many of you, I think,
know a little bit about it.
Lethal, infectious--
a lethal disease
that can be spread by
inhalation or ingestion.
So they were working
on these things.
And there was a secured,
refrigerated storage facility
that you could argue
might have had in mind
doing something bad with it.
That's all the UN
has found to date.
But there was some
work going on.
In the next few weeks we should
be learning more about what
went on in the Soviet Union.
As I say, there is a requirement
for declaration on April 15.
And you probably read
in the newspapers
that Boris Yeltsin and
his military advisor
on his recent trip
to United States
have spoken to
American officials
about some things which
they say went beyond what
the treaty would have allowed.
And we'll see what those were.
We might even see--
though, perhaps,
less political
incentive for it--
US admissions of error in
some things that we have said.
Particularly I have in mind the
allegation that we made again
and again-- and unfortunately
even repeated this last year
in what's called the
president's Annual Noncompliance
Statement--
the allegation that
somebody was practicing
trichothecene mycotoxin
warfare in Southeast Asia.
So far as I know that
"yellow rain" story was just
completely wrong.
There was no such--
there is, as far as I know,
no good evidence for it,
and a lot of evidence of the
presence of poor reasoning
and poor data, and even misuse
of science in that story.
There'll be the March
verification conference
in Geneva, and that might
agree on further measures
of verification.
I don't expect
anything major from it,
but rather something in
the nature of slow progress
towards further opening
and confidence-building.
There's something big though
that's on the horizon,
and that's the Chemical
Weapons Convention.
And it's related to biological
weapons because of toxins.
Now, I haven't said much about
toxins yet, so now I should.
I'm going to choose to do
that in the course of making
comments about what
some people say
is the possible
impact of new biology
and making more effective
biological weapons.
I've never believed that
recombinant DNA technology
or new biological technology
would make infectious organisms
into a much worse threat
than they already are.
Now, there are two ways
of understanding that.
Or, there's really one
way of understanding it
and one way of
misunderstanding it.
One way of misunderstanding
it is to say,
these things aren't threatening
with either old biology
or new biology.
That's not what I mean.
What I mean is
that the old ones--
well, no one ever did it,
but it's a very good chance
that the old ones were
already bad enough.
That pasteurella tularensis--
an awful lot of research
was done on it.
You'd have to write
down a list of things
that would make it
more threatening,
and I would look
at it, and I don't
think I would find
it more threatening.
Four organisms?
Well, so you might
develop something
where one organism is enough.
There's no difference.
It's fairly stable,
et cetera, et cetera.
So I've never agreed that
recombinant DNA technology
makes infectious biological
warfare look that much more
ominous in any practical
sense that anyone has ever
been able to describe to me.
Now toxins, to some extent,
are a different matter.
By the way, on
infectious organisms
I should say, though, that
recombinant DNA technology,
or more modern methods of
doing biological research,
can make better
vaccines and make--
we haven't got many yet, but
in principle can make vaccines
better, can make them easier.
Now, that's on the defensive
side, not the offensive side.
But toxins are
something else again.
There are toxins that
are very poisonous.
Getting them to act
through the skin and--
after all, there are
chemical weapons,
nerve agents that are
also very poisonous,
and they do go through the skin.
They're very stable
and they don't burn up
when they are detonated
with an explosive.
And militarily they have
all kinds of advantages,
if that's what one is after.
And toxins don't get
you much beyond that.
They don't go through the skin.
But in principle maybe someone
could engineer them or mix them
or get them to do that.
And you could go to higher
levels of toxicity with toxins,
and so on.
And there's some other things
you can say about them.
So maybe there is some
room if you really
want biological weapons to
do something with toxins
if you felt you wanted them.
But the Chemical Weapons
Convention, which is--
now I've finished the few
technical remarks I had about
toxins--
covers toxins as well
as other chemicals.
And it's a very
amazing convention.
And we're going to get it--
probably it will be
initialed this year.
I say we're going to get it.
I'd be surprised if we don't.
It looks very much
as though we will.
This is a treaty which
will involve many nations.
It's a multilateral treaty.
It states parties will
agree to declare and then
destroy their present holdings
of poison gas weapons, chemical
weapons, to destroy their
facilities for making them,
and to institute a verification
regime which, far from perfect,
nevertheless will certainly
raise the likelihood of getting
caught if you want to
cheat, and will constitute
some kind of deterrent.
And over time will reinforce--
or create and reinforce a norm
against the use
of toxic weapons.
And will also provide a model--
or, better yet, a test
or an experiment--
of whether we really are
anywhere near a new world
order, something in which
it's possible to act more
cooperatively than in the
past to achieve security.
The Chemical Weapons Convention
will do all of those things
if it succeeds.
I have one great
concern about it,
which is a little bit
off my topic tonight,
but I do want to
pass it on to you
because I'm concerned about it.
Nearly all nations
have the view that--
nearly all nations have
expressed a view on this,
that the Geneva
Protocol prohibits
the use of all toxic
chemicals as means of war.
And that would include
incapacitating chemicals
as well as lethal ones.
The United States has
renounced lethal chemicals
and has renounced so-called
incapacitating chemicals,
but has not renounced the use
of what are called "riot control
agents" in warfare.
There are some reasons
why riot control agents
can be useful in warfare.
We used about 8,000
tons of them in Vietnam.
Never, essentially--
once, I believe--
for separating
civilians from soldiers.
In the overwhelming
majority of cases in order
to enhance mobility
or firepower,
dropping CS before bombing runs
and using CS in 155 artillery
projectiles, and so on.
And it can be, I
think, marginally
useful to the side that
uses it, especially
if the other side
doesn't use it.
But it is a kind of
chemical warfare.
Soldiers are wearing gas masks.
Military establishments
are learning
how to make offensive
use of toxic chemicals
that go through the air.
Establishments back
home are becoming
dependent for
budgets and careers
and so on, on a role for
toxic things, and so on.
In this new convention,
in the article
which defines what chemicals
are to be prohibited,
there is a bracketed
pair of sentences
put there by the United
States which would totally
exempt all chemicals with
the lethality below 10
milligrams per kilogram body
weight of Sprague-Dawley
rat from the convention if
they are used by a state party
also for law enforcement or
police purposes domestically.
This bothers me.
There's now research
going on to try and get
riot control agents that
are better than CS, which,
incidentally, stands for the
two Harvard chemists who first
synthesized it,
Corson and Stoughton.
It doesn't last very long.
For example, there's
the whole family
of opioids, synthetic
compounds like heroin,
sometimes mistakenly
called China white.
China white is really real
heroin, a very pure kind.
But these
fentanyl-like compounds
are synthetic analogs.
And there's work going
on now to try and develop
these as weapons.
The idea would be
to release them
as an aerosol and people
would be knocked out.
A problem with this is
that, although these
are the kinds of compounds that
are used in darts to capture
wild animals, it doesn't
work on primates because they
are more sensitive to
the respiratory arrest
properties of these
fentanyl compounds,
these synthetic opioids.
And so they're
lethal, too often.
They would be lethal too often
in practice for primates,
including human primates.
And so there's research
trying to mix them
with antidotes against
their respiratory effects,
but to maintain their
knockout effects.
And one has to agree that
there are military situations
in which one side or
another might use such
a weapon to some advantage.
The treaty protects all peaceful
purposes and police purposes
and riot control
purposes of chemicals.
That's not at issue.
What is at issue is the
United States policy
which, at the moment at least--
and our negotiators in Geneva
will tell you that this policy
is absolutely non-negotiable
unless the president himself
changes it--
insists that if a chemical
is used for domestic law
enforcement by a state
party, then that chemical
may be used freely
without the restraints.
And which we now, by the
way, do impose ourselves.
Those restraints would be gone.
That chemical could
be used freely in war.
That, I think, could
be a big mistake
because it's a loophole.
Now, an incapacitating gas is
a long way from a lethal one,
and it's some distance away
from a biological agent,
and that's some distance
away from a lethal biological
infectious agent.
But both the pattern of
proliferation in the world
and in the thinking
of many people,
there is a kind of linkage
amongst all these infectious
and toxic--
all these things which take
advantage of the inner life
processes, all
these things which
could be developed and perfected
over time by deeper knowledge
of our own living systems.
People tend to think
of these as a unit.
And I don't know if
fine distinctions would
last very long if one
nation or another insisted
on using just that end
of the spectrum that
was useful for it.
Especially if the other nations
have to be dragged along
to make that distinction.
So I hope that doesn't happen.
So I've really come
to the end, and I hope
I have left time for questions.
I'd like to end by saying,
and really repeating
what I said before,
that it might be wise
now at the very beginning of
the real revolution in biology
just to put a hold on all the
hostile uses of our relatively
new science.
We don't lose much
by doing that,
and we might gain a great deal.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
PRESENTER: [INAUDIBLE]
MATTHEW MESELSON: Yeah.
Good.
PRESENTER: Our discussant
for Matt's talk
is John Deutch, who's served
as MIT provost from 1985
until 1990.
He's currently Institute
Professor here at MIT.
In August of 1990 George
Bush appointed John Deutch
to the president's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board.
He's also served on the Defense
Policy Board of the Defense
Science Board.
You can read a great deal of his
public service in these areas
in the biography here.
I was particularly
anxious to have
John be here because Matt
is such a compelling speaker
that I always feel,
after hearing him,
that I now agree completely
with what he's said.
And whenever I get into a
situation of thinking I really
know what the right course
is, I talk to John Deutch
and he convinces me that
that's completely wrong.
So I think John is in the
spirit of the Henry Kissinger's
options.
And in that spirit of making
us think about something
else, other
possibilities, I'm very
happy to welcome John
as the discussant.
[APPLAUSE]
JOHN DEUTCH: Thank you, Jerry.
I'm pleased to learn that I
was invited to participate
this evening because
perhaps I could offer
some interesting views
in contrast to the fact
that I'm not a biologist
and would satisfy
the terms of the grant
under which these--
[LAUGHTER]
I'm also very pleased to
appear at the same time as Matt
Meselson.
Matt has dedicated
himself to study
of the subjects of biological
and chemical warfare
as he's described, I think,
scrupulously and very carefully
for, I guess,
about 30 years now.
And that serves the public well,
and we have every great reason
to listen to him carefully
and to be pleased
that there's somebody
in our community
who is taking the pains to
follow such important matters.
I don't believe that
I'm going to stand here
before you with a
long list of items
on which I disagree about the
subject which Matt has dressed.
What I do want to
do is perhaps spend
a moment touching on
a few of the points
which were brought up.
Let me begin though with
bringing you some bad news
and some good news.
The bad news is that I believe
that the world is entering
a period where a proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction
is going to be of
significantly larger concern
than it has been in the past
several decades, where we've
been really moderately fortunate
at the slow pace at which
weapons of mass destruction
have diffused throughout nations
of the world.
There are a lot of
reasons for that.
I don't want to dwell on them.
I think it's partially,
but not entirely,
connected with the collapse
of the former Soviet Union.
But there is also a growing
regional instability
in the world which
leads countries to seek,
unfortunately, weapons
of mass destruction,
quite independent
of what the United
States, the former Soviet Union,
or other European or Japan--
independently of what they do.
Now, these weapons
of mass destruction
are three varieties.
There are nuclear
weapons, chemical weapons,
and the biological weapons
of which Matt principally
addressed.
That's the bad news.
So I think it's a very,
very serious problem.
It a principal
problem, I would say,
that should be on the foreign
policy agenda of the United
States currently,
with the happy loss
of the political competition
with the Soviet Union.
That is really bad news.
And I would like to spend
some time mentioning
to you, talking to you about
this issue of proliferation.
The good news is,
for those of you
who are rather more concered
with the principal topic
of this evening's
conversation, that I just
don't think modern
biology is going
to be a central player in
this for some period of time.
And I think on that
Matt and I share,
that you just don't need
a lot better or worse
than what we already have.
Slightly better
living organisms still
are inconvenient to
manage and handle,
and not militarily
useful in my view,
and there's really no
purpose in developing them.
Complex toxins developed maybe
by biotechnology techniques
or genetic engineering
in the future strike me
as still having to
compete with the rather
awesome organophosphate
nerve agents which
are present in quantity
and easy to produce.
Odorless, colorless, and have
the ability to survive, and--
some of them have the ability
to survive in some climates.
So I really do not believe
that we run the risk here,
as we do perhaps
in other subjects
that this symposium
will be addressing,
or the seminar will be
addressing on future evenings,
of saying that
molecular biology has
a particular-- or modern biology
has a particular problem here.
But I do think that we
have jointly at issue,
whether you call it
new biology or not,
to worry about the proliferation
of nuclear, chemical weapons
of mass destruction.
Especially in
regions of the world
that are highly unstable
and prone to violence.
When I look at the lesson
of Iraq, the war in Iraq
as it bears on this
subject, I find
that there are three
points of great importance.
First, I think that it is
shocking and scandalous that
the world stood by while there
was an all-out war between Iran
and Iraq and saw the fairly
widespread use of chemicals
in that war causing
really substantial numbers
of fatalities and
injuries and in no way--
in no diplomatic way, much
less any more forceful means--
intervened in that conflict.
I think that the
absence of intervention
in the Iraq-Iran war in the
matter of the use of chemicals
did indeed provide a lesson,
an unfortunate lesson,
for nations of the world that
I might regard as rogue states.
It gave them a greater interest
in weapons of mass destruction.
Second point I would like to
make about the Iran-Iraq war
has to do with the enormous
error of US intelligence
or US policy with
respect to what
was going on in Iran and Iraq.
And indeed, the era occurred
with opposite [INAUDIBLE]
in the case of nuclear
and in the case
of chemical and biological.
In the case of nuclear weapons
the estimates before the war--
and, in fact, during the war--
were that Iraq had--
was a signatory, I might add,
of the nonproliferation treaty--
Iraq was a signatory of the
nonproliferation treaty,
and whose one declared
nuclear facility
was indeed inspected
and properly inspected
by the International
Atomic Energy Agency.
But the official estimate
and the policy view
was that, while they certainly
had a covert nuclear weapons
program that it was R&D,
modest in scale, and so forth.
Point of fact it is now
quite completely apparent
with the quite successful--
I guess it had been
10 up until now--
IAEA inspections of Iraq.
They had an absolutely
massive program from soup
to nuts from mining
ore, all the way
to experimenting with
sophisticated means
of enriching uranium to
obtain highly-enriched uranium
for bomb use.
They had somewhere
between 10 and 15,000
trained scientists and engineers
working in this program.
It was not a little side bit.
It was an enormous venture,
which completely escaped
reporting not only
of the United States
and its intelligence
services, but similarly
the reporting of
the intelligence
services of the French,
the British, the Russians,
and the Israelis to the
extent that you can believe
the information they provide.
In that case, we had an
enormous underestimate
of what was going on in Iraq,
a country which at that time
had a major nuclear
weapons program.
I do not want to
suggest to you that they
were eight months or
six months or five days
away from having a bomb.
What I do want to
say is that they
had a very serious program.
We have at this very
moment a similar discussion
going on with North Korea.
There is great concern about
what is happening in Algeria.
There's concern about
what is happening in Iran,
and there is concern about
what is happening, certainly,
in Libya.
On that side, we
underestimated dramatically
what was going on
in nuclear matters
in the case of a nuclear
proliferation treaty
signatory in Iraq.
On the chemical
side we estimated--
we estimated-- that the Iraqis
had deliverable chemicals
in a variety of forms,
including on scud missiles,
and that if the
United States forces--
if United States forces
joined with them in the desert
that they would
use these chemical
agents against US forces.
Matt has described to
you, quite correctly, it
was also a concern that they
had biological agent, anthrax
and botulinum, that this
would be potentially used
against US servicemen.
And there was a
desultory program
to inoculate them
during the campaign.
It turned out, of course,
that the Iraqis did not
use their chemical weapons.
Indeed it is a striking feature
that Mr. Saddam Hussein,
to best of my knowledge, did not
deploy any chemical munition--
of which we had many.
And we now know that he had
at least 30 scud warheads that
were available to be used,
including binary agent
warheads--
that he did not deploy any
of these chemical weapons
into the Kuwaiti
theater of operations
or anywhere near Basra
or south of Basra.
And that therefore he was much
more reluctant or unable--
to argue it either
way, but certainly
there was some initial
reluctance of him
to deploy these weapons--
so that in this case
there was an instance
of enormous, enormous
overestimating
how likely chemical
weapons were to be used.
The point I want to make is not
to argue the rights or wrongs
of either one of those
pictures, but to indicate
how absolutely difficult
it is going to be,
in a time when we
are trying to slow
the proliferation of these
weapons of mass destruction,
to assess properly
and at a policy level
what the picture is
before one intervenes
in a diplomatic matter.
Especially if one
wants to intervene
in a diplomatic matter in
concert with other nations,
perhaps through the UN, perhaps
through some other agency
in a matter like this.
And, as I say, the matter is
presently an identical case
occurs in North
Korea where we have
astonishing little information
about what is influencing
the North Korean government.
The reason I raise
this is that I
would like to conclude
by making a comment
about the multilateral
chemical treaty.
It is indeed the
most important--
the most significant, I should
say-- the most significant arms
control measure in this
area that is on the agenda,
I would say, for the
next five or 10 years.
For a variety of reasons the
multilateral chemical treaty
is a treaty which
is of great interest
to this administration.
It has the support
of the president.
And I would bet
more than even money
that that treaty will be passed.
What concerns me about that
treaty is the following.
While it is a measure
that I support--
I think its a reasonable
thing for the United States
to enter into and to
encourage within the community
of nations--
it does have several very,
very severe weaknesses.
And I mention them
only to you in passing.
The first is that
there is really
an issue of verification.
It is extremely difficult-- as
I've tried to illustrate with
my remarks about Iraq--
very, very difficult to know
that one has an accurate
picture, even with very
sophisticated intelligence
gathering and other information
gathering techniques.
"Very sophisticated"
means it is very difficult
to know what is
going on, especially
covertly in a nation.
Not a friendly
nation, but a nation
that sees itself having
security concerns
and maybe having less
than friendly intentions
towards its neighbor.
Second is that that treaty does
not really, as I understand it,
contain a "no first
use" declaration by all
of its members.
I believe it should.
Nor does the treaty agree--
nor does the treaty agree
to what the signatories will
do if somebody either
violates the treaty
or proceeds to use chemicals
even if they are not
members of the treaty.
And until the issue
of sanctions is
agreed upon by those
people who enter
into the multilateral
chemical treaty,
I think that we will
have stopped short
of taking a
multilateral step that
will indeed effectively slow
the spread of chemical weapons.
Because as matters
stand now the world
has the lesson,
first, of Iran-Iraq,
a war where chemicals
were freely used,
and everybody stood by.
And the second, we have
the example of the Iraq war
itself, the most recent
conflict in the Gulf
where, indeed, we
had a signatory
to the nonproliferation
treaty who
was violating the nuclear
part of the treaty--
the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty-- and was not
being brought to bear for it
by any inspection scheme that
was present.
In sum, the multilateral
treaty, in my judgment,
needs to have a
strengthening along the lines
that I mentioned.
No first use, some discussion
and agreement among its members
about what sanctions will
be taken in case someone
does violate that treaty.
Why doesn't that take place?
Why doesn't that take place?
The reason that there is
not such an agreement,
why that is not included in
the treaty in my judgment,
is that policy makers today
in the United States--
in Washington, or elsewhere
across the globe--
face two questions, and
have no good answers
to those questions.
The first question is, how
do you deter proliferation?
How do you slow the spread?
And I must say that I think
since 1974, the last time we
had, for example, a
detonation of a nuclear weapon
by a country, India,
there are probably
three new members
of the nuclear club.
Certainly Israel, South
Africa, and Pakistan.
We don't know how
to slow that spread.
We don't know how to slow that
spread in the nuclear area.
Much more difficult in the
chemical and biological area.
And secondly, if we
arrive at a situation
where somebody does
proliferate, we
have no effective
policy measures
of knowing what to do about
it in a political manner.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
MODERATOR: Why don't
you take a seat up here?
JOHN DEUTCH: With Matt.
MODERATOR: With Matt.
Yes.
If I can ask both
of our speakers
to come up to the front,
I'm sure that there
are many questions
from the audience.
I know some people will
need to leave there,
but the speakers have
agreed to stay on
for about 10 or 15
minutes of questions.
We have a microphone down here
for those who want to use it.
For those with loud voices,
I'm willing to recognize people
anywhere in the
audience if they don't
want to come down to use it.
There's a first
question over there.
Oh, and could I ask you--
because this is such a diverse
audience we've
tried to attract--
to say who you are
and where you're from?
Because I think it
would be nice for us
to know the range of
people who have come today.
AUDIENCE: Howard Hugh, a
physician epidemiologist
at [INAUDIBLE] School
of Public Health.
First question for
Professor Deutch.
I wonder if you'd
comment on the point
that Professor
Meselson raised, which
is that the US continues to try
to exclude riot control agents
from the chemical weapons ban.
It seems, for one thing, that
riot control agents are not
quite as non-lethal as the US
would like to portray them.
They are lethal in high
enough concentrations,
and their toxicity in
terms of chronic effects
has been not
adequately addressed.
And it would put chemical
weapons and the US position
on the so-called "slippery
slope" of advocating
toxic versus non-toxic weapons.
The second question
is that, it's clear
that Iraq didn't use its
chemical weapons partly
because the US
admittedly had over 500
tactical nuclear weapons in the
Mid-East theater of operations,
and it wouldn't quite
make sense to use
one weapon of mass destruction
and be totally wiped
out by a second.
But it would seem that
chemical and biological weapons
are a much greater threat
in the developing world--
developing nations against
developing nations.
What divisions might
there be for looking
at those kinds of issues?
JOHN DEUTCH: Well, I must admit
to a scholarly deficiency.
I have not kept so close
to the BW convention
and the subsequent negotiations
to know what could even
be described
[INAUDIBLE] reliably
why our position is so strong
on incapacitated agents.
The apocryphal story
in the past was
that the police
chief of New Orleans
was really insistent
on keeping BZ--
I guess is what it
was-- which is tear gas.
Or, is BZ tear gas?
MATTHEW MESELSON: No, CS.
JOHN DEUTCH: CS is tear gas--
available for domestic use.
And at that time
there was a confusion
about if you used
it domestically
for civilian control purposes
whether you would have a right
to use it in the military.
But I want to tell you, this
is not a big deal with me.
And I would guess that if
somebody put their mind to it
we could probably change that.
We could probably get the
position of the United
States changed on it.
I don't think it's a big deal.
I can't see where
in the government
there's going to be a real
hard overview on this.
So to me it's not a big deal.
And apocryphally it's
because of the police chief
of New Orleans.
That's the answer to
the first question.
Second question, I think, is
a little bit more complicated.
I do not believe it would be in
the United States's interests.
And I believe the president
declared this quite clearly,
that if chemicals had been
used against US forces
in the Middle East
I would not believe
that the president would
have or should have used
nuclear weapons in response.
You might say to me,
it doesn't matter
what you think or
believe, it's what
Saddam Hussein [INAUDIBLE].
[LAUGHTER]
But I do--
I think-- I want to tell you
that the issue with the United
States is a little bit
more dicey, because I think
we have to worry
about how we deter use
against our own forces
overseas, or our own cities,
if you like, but not say the
way we deter it is, I think,
is mindless and, quite frankly,
not quite credible, to say,
we'll hit you with
nuclear weapons.
I don't think that's an
adequate response for us.
On the other hand, I'm
quite happy to believe
that if one of those scuds
with chemical weapons,
for a variety of deeply-held
historical and religious
reasons, had been
sent into Tel Aviv
I believe we might well have
seen a nuclear weapon popped
into Baghdad, without
much question.
So in that sense I think
you're absolutely right.
The issue about
how do we help or--
I'm not sure we can do a lot--
but how do we understand
the dynamics of deterrence
within the unstable
regions of the world?
They may not have anything--
Doesn't involve
Washington at all.
How can we understand the
dynamics between Israel--
which we, I think,
much too easily
have permitted to
become a nuclear power--
work that deterrence
within those regions
is one of those
questions which I think
plagues political leaders
throughout the globe
and to which there
are no good answers.
MODERATOR: [INAUDIBLE] We
have a second questioner there
with a brief question.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] positions
of social responsibility.
I wanted to come to Dr. Deutch's
point about how to deter.
And I wonder here the idea of
setting an example is useful?
And there are several examples
in history-- one, of course,
is that of slavery--
that some institutions
do, in fact,
weather it over time, even
without force being [INAUDIBLE]
against them.
Another example,
perhaps, is that
of nuclear weapons testing
above ground which, in fact,
there was a treaty.
But that treaty has
been enforced probably
largely by virtue of the
voluntary participation
of the nations who
have nuclear weapons
and could have continue
above-ground testing.
And in fact we see that even
non-signatories in the '70s
and '80s stopped above-ground
testing and gradually also
stopping underground testing.
So I'm not sure if we have to
throw up our hands in despair
and say there is no
way of thinking of how
to deter this development.
Maybe one way we could think
of is by setting an example,
and having the United
States do that.
JOHN DEUTCH: Well-- if I could
briefly respond to that--
I don't think that there
is a very serious case that
could be made to say what
the United States does
with its nuclear weapons
program will influence
what Iraq, Libya, North
Korea, or China do
with their programs.
Most observers, I think--
serious observers of
non-proliferation--
certainly encounter, in
diplomatic negotiations,
the notion that if you
do as an example give up
all your nuclear weapons, give
up all your nuclear tests,
that that will help us do it.
India, being a prominent nation
which makes such arguments.
I think it's really
not really credible.
What is driving these nations
to acquire their weapons
capability is not the
presence of the United States,
but the presence of the regional
interests that they have.
And indeed I'm personally not
convinced that the world would
be a better place if
the US had zero weapons
and other nations had a few.
MODERATOR: A third
question there.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
physicist at MIT.
Can you say a few words about
the problems, that you didn't
touch at all upon, on the
possible use of such weapons
by clandestine, non-governmental
terrorism groups?
MATTHEW MESELSON:
Whose question is that?
MODERATOR: Who ever
feels like answering.
MATTHEW MESELSON:
Is that for me?
JOHN DEUTCH: That's for you.
MODERATOR: Consider it yours.
MATTHEW MESELSON: Well,
it's always possible.
There are lots of things to
worry about in the world.
I've never thought of that as
being at the top of the list.
But terrorists don't get
their weapons from nowhere.
Usually it is some organized
entity which develops a weapon,
tests it, produces
it, stockpiles it,
and then eventually
maybe it finds its way
into the public domain and
then terrorists can use it.
So far the record on terrorists
has been relatively empty,
if you mean biological
and chemical weapons.
First of all, you could
worry about mad men.
Mad people generally don't
cooperate with each other,
so individual--
to do most of these things
requires some cooperation.
[CHUCKLES]
So perhaps that's why
we don't see that.
Organized terrorists, who
aren't individual mad people,
usually have a political agenda.
This is certainly not my field.
I shouldn't be sounding like
any kind of expert on this,
but I would say
that they usually
have a political agenda.
And simply causing fear
and terror and destruction
doesn't match up with most
terrorist groups' agendas.
They want to obtain the
sympathy of somebody.
And so long as there is
a worldwide abhorrence
of those weapons, they risk
losing the sympathy even
of the group that
they wish to get
to do something that they want.
So I don't know if this
really works, but I
would come to the
conclusion that maintaining
a species-wide taboo against
certain kinds of weapons
can only help keep
terrorists who
have a political agenda
from turning to such weapons
as tools for achieving
their political objectives.
But other than that, I would
like to see a couple of things.
First of all, one thing
John said about the treaty
I certainly agree with.
Its verification
provisions are imperfect.
It will add a new tool,
and a valuable tool,
so we're glad to have it because
we won't make as many type
Iraq-type mistakes in the area
of chemicals with the treaty
as we would without
them, unless it leads us
into overconfidence.
But we should beware of that.
But it is a new tool.
There is a debate
as to whether or not
the United States ought to have
backed away from its original
1986 policy of wanting to have
what's called "anytime anywhere
challenge inspection" under the
Chemical Weapons Convention.
And there are two sides to this,
but basically the United States
does not want to let any of
its black programs be captured.
So we want to retain the
right to be able to say,
you can't go there.
We'll try to convince you
some other way that we're not
making chemical weapons there.
It even goes so far that whereas
the United States Chemical
Manufacturers Association has
said that, so far as they're
concerned, they would be
willing to have all chemical
facilities, whether
they make beer
or whether they make plastics
or whatever they're making,
be subject to open access
so long as certain kinds
of protections for
proprietary information--
but open access
for sample-taking
and negative sample analysis
is OK with the Chemical
Manufacturers Association.
But it's not OK with the
United States government
because there may be a few
industrial establishments where
there are black programs.
And you can debate
this back and forth.
And maybe there are
other countries who
wouldn't allow the "anytime
anywhere challenge."
and we won't get them on board
with it even if we stick to it.
I myself would rather see
more-- as much as possible--
anytime anywhere,
and I would ask--
rhetorically, anyway--
a black program
is usually intended
to make something,
like a weapon or a defensive
thing or something.
So you could ask, let's say
we could have that thing
and it's going to
work, whatever it is.
Glasses that can see
into people's minds,
or whatever you want.
[LAUGHTER]
But if instead I can also
increase the capability which,
as John says, is not
too good for finding out
what other people are up to,
maybe that trade off is worth
it.
So it should be
looked at that way.
So that is still an
issue with the treaty.
But I think that either
way it's something
that can be fixed later.
We can make the
inspection better.
It's going to be a whole lot
better than what exists today.
And we can make it even better.
The thing about the
"no first use"--
that is now in the treaty.
Article 1 now says that under
no circumstances first second
or nth, all parties
renounce all use forever
of chemical weapons.
So that's good.
And it was missing, and
it's there now, finally.
As far as sanctions,
it's not there.
There is a kind of empty
article where sanctions
are supposed to get plugged
in in the bargaining that
will go on in the last few
weeks of the negotiations.
And there's a lot of talk about
them, and it's a long subject
and there probably will be some.
But they basically
will depend on what
the UN special commission
in Iraq depends on.
The reason that they were able
to stay in that parking lot
with their documents--
you know, the reason we found
those documents was probably
because nations make mistakes.
The Iraqis apparently thought
that all the cases which said,
top secret, don't look at it,
in the basement weren't there.
And when the special
commission got there,
there in the basement
were all these cases
full of top secret microfilms.
And the first time
they took them all
and put them in the
truck in the parking lot
so the Iraqis came
and took it away.
They got it back, some of it.
But the next day, after they
kept on taking this stuff,
they distributed a little
bit in everybody's clothing
so that by direct
television link
they were able to say to the
Iraqis, OK, if you take it
we are under instructions
not to resist violently,
but you'll be seen taking these
things from all of our clothing
everywhere, all 40 of us,
and the Security Council
will know this with
the speed of light
because we are direct link.
My point is that, if there
is a Security Council that
backs these things
up-- especially
if the permanent members
of the Security Council
want a new world order-- there
will be a new world order.
And if a very powerful
nation doesn't want it,
it won't happen.
So it will depend very
sensitively on what the most
important nations want to do.
And finally, about the
developing world and chemical
weapons, the advantages
of the treaty--
if I were talking to a
purely self-interested
American audience--
it's very simple.
In this world today there
is high-tech weapons
and there's very
low-tech weapons,
and there's all kinds
of stuff in between.
The thing about
high-tech weapons
is that we're the only ones,
and a few other industrialized
nations, that can afford them.
There are lots
and lots of people
who can afford the
low-tech weapons.
So naturally it's
only common sense
to say let's discredit
low-tech weapons.
Let's de-legitimize them.
Let's prohibit them.
Let's get rid of them.
And then nobody will be
able to have war except us.
And maybe even nobody
would be even better.
But--
[LAUGHTER]
I'm not joking.
That's a serious
self-interested argument.
Why have more players
who can do bad things?
On the other hand,
this doesn't mean
that a developing country should
be opposed to the convention.
Because who are the victims
of chemical weapons usually?
Poor countries.
Time after time.
Every time-- there's
never been a case
in which chemical weapons have
been used against forces who
initially had any gas masks.
In other words,
they're used against
poor, unsophisticated forces.
And usually the
threat today will
be from other poor, relatively
unsophisticated forces.
So for them it's
a good deal too.
So that's why I
think we're going
to get the chemical treaty.
Even India and
Pakistan, impatient
to see the chemical
treaty come along,
are now having bilateral
talks about having
their own verification,
et cetera, on chemicals.
So I think we're
going to get it.
I do think that one great
pity would be if it allows--
and it's not just
tear gas we want.
We want to roll that
way back, in caps.
And I agree with John.
It's military peanuts.
And to open the door
to what could possibly
be dragged through that
door by insisting on that
could be a big mistake.
JOHN DEUTCH: Yeah.
Am I allowed to make
a couple observations?
MODERATOR: I'd be
a fool to stop you.
JOHN DEUTCH: No, no.
You could [INAUDIBLE].
[CHUCKLES]
This goes back to the issue
of whether mad men cooperate.
[LAUGHTER]
MODERATOR: An expert
on this subject.
JOHN DEUTCH: The first
point I want to make
is that I do think that
the inspection issue really
has to be looked at
kind of carefully.
I mean, the Chemical
Manufacturers Associate
of the United States--
some of my best friends--
[LAUGHTER]
The moment that they
saw that this was not
a device for EPA to get
measurements on their plants--
[LAUGHTER]
--also realized
that it was not--
that's a serious--
I mean, I'm serious about that.
You could imagine
such information
being used for a lot of purposes
that would distress them.
I think they really--
you know, the
chemical manufacturers
of Germany, France,
England, the United States--
they're just not going to have
a problem with these kinds
of inspections.
And on the other hand, going
in to a modern chemical plant
and inspecting it on a
challenge basis is a big deal.
And you really
have to go through
with some amusement, some
of the test inspections,
to get a feeling.
You go to one of these places--
Bayou Choctaw,
Louisiana-- and try and do
an inspection on a plan,
it is a major problem.
I mean, it requires
more than just cadres
of chemical engineers
and analytical chemists.
It's a lot of work.
So it's not so easy to do.
And everything
has to work right.
Things don't work
right, big deal.
The matter of a covert is
really where I have a problem.
And it's not that--
I mean, I agree with Matt.
I think the world, the
United States and the world
is better off having
this treaty than not.
But in a covert inspection
you have what you believe--
your policy system has
led you to believe,
is an accurate picture.
Note that the United
States doesn't always
have accurate pictures.
Even in areas
where I advise them
it doesn't have
accurate pictures.
[LAUGHTER]
And now, in order to
actually tell a country--
and, by the way, we
want to come in there
and we're going
to make it stick.
That is big political
news, and I see no evidence
that the world is
prepared to do that.
The concert of nations.
Let's take the example given.
India and Pakistan are now in
an absolute frenzy of affection
on the issue of
chemical weapons treaty.
But if you want to talk
to them about inspecting
nuclear facilities,
especially the Pakistanis,
you will find that they
are quite unwilling to have
nuclear inspectors, even
International Atomic
Energy much less people--
they aren't willing to have it.
And if you try and make
it a political issue,
the first people who
will say "back off"
is our own State
Department because they
say we have many too many
other important issues to deal
with with respect to
Pakistan, than to blow it
all on such a minor matter
as a proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction.
[LAUGHTER]
So the issue of inspection--
so in the Carter
administration--
it was the Carter
administration who backed off
from making Pakistan own up
to its enrichment facilities,
because they felt
that having Pakistan
favorable to the
United States' position
in the matter of Afghanistan
was more important than to make
an issue of enrichment.
That happened in the
Carter administration.
So the point I want to make
is, with the inspection
it's not just saying--
and I'm just reinforcing what
Matt has said-- it's not just
saying, "anytime, anyplace."
It's being sure that you
have the political depth,
domestically and
internationally, to actually do
something about it
to make it stick.
MODERATOR: We'll take
one last question
that I've been promised will
be very brief, because we're
right about the time
we'll need close.
The question.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
MODERATOR: Oh, Sure.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I'm Jonathan King.
I'm in the biology
department here.
I had the privilege to serve
on the committee that organized
the technical briefing for
the third review conference
in Geneva.
And I'd just like
to share with you--
many of you may be interested
in actually continuing
to ensure that the
treaty stays enforced
and it remains effective.
There are gray areas.
The government does have
two funded programs--
the BDRP, the Biological
Defense Research Program,
with many, many, many contracts
all around the United States,
many in the Boston area.
And Congress has authorized the
BATF, the Biological Aerosol
Test Facility in Dugway, Utah.
At this very moment
hundreds of microbiologists,
faculty at University
of Utah Medical School,
University of Utah
itself, are still
engaged in dueling with
the army over whether that
should develop.
And the good features
that Matt has developed
have depended upon quiet but
constant pressure on Congress
from members of primarily
the biomedical community.
The Physicians for
Social Responsibility
nationally have a conscious
monitoring program of BW.
The Federation of American
Scientists, which Matt--
you're not chairing--
played a key role in, had
an active committee.
And I worked with a group of
more than 1,000 scientists
who have signed a pledge
saying we're going to try
to strengthen this treaty.
And we watch what
our congressmen
vote on these issues,
and let them know that--
not just Matt and John, but
also average working scientists
in their districts
competing with the military
for biomedical research funds--
do not think this
is a good thing.
I just might mention that
that network is actually
based in Cambridge at 19
Garden Street, the Council
for Responsible Genetics.
And if you want to join in
and receive regular updates
and you want to let your--
you want to be aware of what
our government is doing on this,
we welcome you, and it's easy.
And these are
professional issues.
They should be in the
professional societies.
Graduate students
should know that we're
signatory to a treaty,
and that's a good treaty.
It should be in the business
of the professional meetings.
Thanks.
MODERATOR: Thanks.
Do either of our speakers want
to add something [INAUDIBLE]??
MATTHEW MESELSON: Jonathan
mentioned some opportunities
for people to do something.
I was in Washington
last weekend.
There is a program--
in fact, most agencies
of the government--
whereby faculty members,
junior or senior,
who want to get involved in
these things in Washington
for a year working for the
United States government--
there's a program by
which you can do that.
And in this particular area of
chemical and biological arms
control, I knew of
several open positions.
Also, people who have a
PhD who are interested
not just in a year
away but in a career,
I know of several
open positions.
And it's a fascinating
series of problems,
and there's probably no time
in our country's history
when there's been
more opportunity
for creative thinking
about how to deal
with some of these problems.
So if anybody's
really interested
and doesn't know how to go
find those things themselves,
I'd be glad to help you.
MODERATOR: The hour
is later and it'll be
time for us to close just now.
I'd like to simply say that,
when Jerry fink and I began
discussing the possibility of a
series like this some time ago,
it was because there was a
sense perceived on our part that
our colleagues on the
faculty, postdocs we knew,
the graduate students all had an
interest-- a growing interest,
in fact--
in understanding and talking
about the social issues
that related to our science
but was outside the laboratory.
I'm very pleased tonight to
see so many people from so
many different areas turn out
to confirm that that is indeed
the case.
The goal of this series, both
tonight and in future lectures,
will not be to try to
provide answers, advocate
any particular positions,
but really to try to squarely
address hard questions, and
principally to be enlightening,
to provide information so that
people can go on from here
and think about things
and perhaps take
some active role
in those things.
Our next speaker will
be Paul Billings,
speaking about genetic
discrimination.
He's a speaker I know well
and I think will, again,
contribute to that.
But for tonight I want to
especially thank the two--
our speaker and our discussant,
who've did a wonderful job
of enlightening us about
this very complicated topic
with their very sober and
very important comments.
Thank you very much
for joining us.
[APPLAUSE]
