It happened here: Biological terrorism in the United States

Abstract

The use of biological weapons by terrorist groups, or non-state actors, vexes counter-terrorist officials. While various treaties, such as the Geneva Protocol of 1925, ban the use of biological weapons, as well as other types of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), they have been used in conflicts throughout the 20th century. During World War I, German troops used anthrax to make horses and cattle sick, and various chemical agents such as mustard gas were used against troops on both sides (Kuhr & Hauer, 2001). Preceding World War II, Japan's infamous Unit 731, housed in occupied Manchuria, tested biological weapons on Chinese prisoners of war, dropped bombs with plague-infested insects, and served contaminated food to spread disease in Chinese cities (Tucker, 2002). The atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 killed tens of thousands of people. In 1979, anthrax was accidentally released from a Russian weapons manufacturing plant in Sverdlovsk, killing over 60 people (Amato, 1993; Garmon, 1980; Meselson & Guillemin, 1994). Saddam Hussein was widely reported to have used various outlawed chemical weapons during the Iran/Iraq war, and in 1988, to suppress Kurdish rebellions in northern Iraq (Cowell, 1988). © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.