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Report Questions Use of Drugs as Nonlethal Weapons By Chris Schneidmiller The “The BMA is fundamentally opposed to the use of any pharmaceutical agent as a weapon. The BMA is concerned equally by the promotion of the use of drugs as weapons under the banner of ‘nonlethal’ weapons and by the ways in which this promotion could lead to weakening” of treaties banning biological and chemical weapons, Charles George, chairman of the organization’s Board of Science, wrote in his foreword to the May report. “The BMA believes that healthcare professions have a duty … to promote international law especially in relation to weapons and violence.” Nations working in this field tend to classify their programs, making it difficult to determine what exactly sort of agents they are seeking or the status of their efforts, said Alan Pearson, director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington. Much of the known research has been focused on “calmatives,” drugs that would sedate targets or cause them to lose consciousness, Pearson said. The The BMA report lists behavioral mood changes, memory loss and fertility impairment as other possible “desirable effects” in the development of nonlethal weapons. This type of weapon has only been used once in recent years, with disastrous results. Russian authorities trying to end the 2002 siege at a The incident illustrates a major danger in the use of incapacitating drugs — delivering a dose that does the job without killing anyone. There is presently no agent that could be used completely safely in a tactical situation, the report states. Ensuring that only selected targets are exposed to an effective but safe dose “will continue to be almost impossible,” it adds. Reactions to a drug would be based on a number of variables, including age, weight and size, hydration and levels of physical activity. “The primary conclusion of this report is that the use of drugs as weapons is simply not feasible without generating a significant mortality among the target population,” the report states. “There’s a wide acceptance that nonlethal doesn’t mean nonlethal, it means less lethal than the other ones,” Pearson said. There has been little said in the The U.S. Defense Department’s Joint Nonlethal Weapons Program said last week that it was not conducting work on nonlethal weapons drugs of any sort. It was not known if research is occurring within other Representatives from the three nations joined French, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish and Swiss officials at one NATO panel on nonlethal weapons. The German official at the meeting said “there is an urgent need for rethinking and rewriting the existing laws with respect to the implementation of NLTs (nonlethal technologies) using chemicals,” the BMA report states. In light of March 2004 riots that killed 28 and injured hundreds in Kosovo, “we should consider relaxing restrictions on the use of ‘chemicals’ in certain situations. Such exceptions could be limited to Operations Other Than War … or for discrimination between rioters, combatants and civilians in a hostage or human-shield situation,” the official said, according to a 2006 report from the panel. Proponents see numerous uses for these weapons, according to Pearson and Vivienne Nathanson, director of professional activities at the association. These include ending hostage situations, quelling riots, clearing battlefields, and dealing with urban warfare scenarios in which combatants are mixed in with civilians. Once drug-based weapons are introduced into use, there is an increased likelihood that their application would be expanded into additional scenarios, such as urban warfare in which there are no noncombatants, Pearson said. The BMA report argues that weaponized drugs intended for nonlethal usage must be considered to be covered by either or both the Chemical Weapons Convention or the Biological Weapons Convention. By definition pharmaceuticals are chemicals, Nathanson said. Some might also have biologically active elements. In addressing nonlethal weapons, the Chemical Weapons Convention allows only for law-enforcement uses of tear gas and other riot control agents which “produce rapidly in humans sensory irritation or disabling physical effects which disappear within a short time following termination of exposure.” Use in warfare is expressly forbidden. The Biological Weapons Convention makes no exception for any use of weapons covered by the treaty, and releasing drug weapons in warfare would also violate the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the report states. Nations with an interest in weaponized pharmaceuticals “want the [BWC] and CWC rewritten to allow their use or to allow ‘nonlethal agent’ use — both of course currently prohibited,” Nathanson said by e-mail. Breaching or amending the treaties leaves them vulnerable to additional violations or weakening, she argued. Research and deployment of nonlethal agents “would inevitably result in their reaching the hands of state or nonstate actors for whom lethality among those targeted is not of concern. This would simply be chemical warfare with a medical label,” the BMA report states. Details of research are likely to end up on the Internet, where they could be easily accessed, Nathanson said. Development of these weapons also poses potential ethical dilemmas for the medical profession, the association said. Preparation of pharmaceuticals intended as nonlethal weapons would require the assistance of medical professionals, but that could create conflict with their responsibility to “do no harm.” It could also cost healthcare personnel their position of neutrality, potentially leaving them open to retaliation, the report states. The organization plans to lobby the new British government in opposition to pharmaceutical weapons, Nathanson said. Among a list of recommendations, it urged medical professional organizations to do the same.
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