A Global Surveillance Program Might Solve Several Serious Problems

Extract

There seems to be an obvious contradiction in the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). Whereas Article III reasonably requests restriction of transfer of biological warfare (BW) and toxin warfare (TW) agents, equipment, and means of delivery, Article X not less reasonably calls for peaceful international cooperation in microbiology. This contradiction became especially obvious in the late 1980s, for two reasons: (1) regional conflicts increased as one of the consequences of the peaceful end of the Cold War, with a corresponding increase in the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and (2) the technology gap between North and South continued to expand, not least as a direct consequence of the rapid development of molecular biotechnology in industrialized countries.