Report on Criteria Necessary to Establish the Effectiveness of Anti-Personnel BW Agents

Report on Criteria Necessary to Establish the Effectiveness of Anti-Personnel BW Agents

This report is a reply to the Chemical Corps, which asked for recommendations on what evidence is needed to prove a BW agent can be disseminated in concentrations effectively against personnel. The War Council rejected a request for the use of human volunteers for testing, so the report specifies other ways to obtain data and the standard for acceptance in various criteria pertaining to anti-personnel BW agents.

1949

The report explains that ideal anti-personnel agents have high infectivity/toxicity, can cause fatalities, are able to be produced in large quantities using available materials at a reasonable cost, will be stable when stored/transported/used, and will be a susceptibility of the target population. It also takes a look at some of the other criteria that are important in protecting the personnel deploying the weapon, such as persistency in a target area, capacity to spread (high level of transmissibility may not be ideal), and safety throughout the production/storage/transportation/and dissemination process.