EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS

DR. LEDERBERG SPEAKS OUT ON
BIOLOGICAL WARFARE HAZARDS

HON. CLEMENT ENT J. ZABLOCKI

OF WISCONSIN
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, September 10, 1970

Mr. ZABLOCKI. Mr. Speaker, Dr.
Joshua Lederberg, professor of genetics
at Stanford University and a Nobel Prize
winner for his work in biology, recently
addressed the Conference of the Com-
mittee on Disarmament in Geneva.

In his talk he emphasized the hazards
which biological warfare poses to the
world and urged that the Conference
promptly reach agreement on a ban on
the development, production, prolifera-
tion or use of biological weapons.

His position parallels that of the
U.S. delegation, which has urged that
an agreement on biological weapons be
reached now, with subsequent work on a
total ban on chemical weapons. This ap-
proach has been opposed by the Soviet
Union, its allies, and some neutrals at
the Conference.

It is my hope that Dr. Lederberg’s mes-
sage of urgency will help break down the
resistance of Communist and other na-
tions and allow a ban on biological wea-
pons to be concluded at the next session
of the Conference.

In the thought that. Dr. Lederberg’s

become the most efficient means for removing
man from the planet. As a student of evolu-
tion, and having studied it in the micro-
cosmos with bacterial cultures, I knew that
man had no guaranteed place on our earth.
He has faced and continues to face natural
disasters like the infestations that have
wiped out the American chestnut and the
European grapevine. To these long-standing
threats would now be added new ones, po-
tentially of our own invention.

These past 25 years, in the course of which
the world community has reached a certain
degree of familiarity with the problems of
nuclear power, and has uridertaken some of
the steps. needed to contain it as a servant
for rather than against human aims, have
seen a sustained, remarkable development of
molecular biology. For example, Professor
Gobind Khorana recently reported the syn-
thetic assembly of a small gene through
chemical operations on DNA components, It
will be a step of another order of magnitude
to extend this technical capability to the
synthesis of small viruses, but this surely
will be accomplished within the next decade.
This procedure will allow an unlimited range
of experimental variations of the gentic
structure of different viruses, a process which
has many important potential applications
for human health. It also offers us the pros-
pect of engineering the design of viruses to
exquisite detail. Accomplishments like Kho-
rana’s have been possible in a small labora-
tory on an annual research budget which is
miniscule compared to weapons hardware. A
serious military investment in this area could
be expected to outstrip this already breath-
taking pace of advance by many fold.

I could mention many other intriguing
scientific advances from my own work and

the intentional release of an infectious par-
ticle, be it a virus or bacterium, from ‘the
confines of the laboratory or of medical prac+
tice must be condemned as an irresponsible
threat against the whole human community.

The Black Death, the great bubonic plague
that ravaged Europe in the mid-14th century
is in fact a well documented historic ex-
ample of just this process. The plague first
entered Europe in 1346 via the sailors, rats,
and fleas on the ships that returned to
Genoa after having been expelled from
Theodosia-in the Crimea where the attack-
ing Tartars had catapulted some of their
corpses into the Genoese fortifications. This
plague which reduced the population of
Europe by at least one-third, would. of
course, almost surely have made its way
West sooner or later, the nature of the dis-—
ease being quite beyond the comprehension
of the medical science of that era.

The Black Death in Europe was only one
of many visitations of the plague suffered by
Europe during the last 2000 years. We do not
know why this ome should have been s0
much more disastrous than many others.
The progress of a disease in any given indi-
vidual is subject to many factors of which
only a few are well understood. A large epi-
demic, involving millions of people spread
over time and space, is an immensely more
complicated phenomenon about which it is
very difficult to make accurate scientific pre-
dictions. This combination of very grave
potential hazard with a high degree of
unpredictability is a peculiar attribute of
biological weaponry at its present stage of
development. This has a great deal to do
with the rational doctrine that so far has
placed a relatively low value on its military
utility.
SvLalCINenl WOud Ye OL wiverest w UIC
Members of the House, I am placing it in
' the Recorp at this point:

REMARKS BY JOSHUA LEDERBERG, PROFESSOR OF
GENETICS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY, FoR In-
FORMAL DISCUSSIONS AT THE CONFERENCE OF
THE COMMITTEE ON DISARMAMENT, GENEVA,
Aucust 5, 1970

This is the first occasion at which I have
been invited to attend a meeting of this
kind. It is also a 24th anniversary of another
occasion when I was a young medical stu-
dent attending my first scientific conference.
This was an international meeting at Cold
Spring Harbor, near New York, and it could
be truly labeled as the birthdate of a new
scientific field, the genetics of bacteria and
of viruses. My first published work was
presented at that meeting and it concerned
the discovery, contrary to decades of pre-
vious supposition to the contrary, that bac-
terla were indeed possessed of a mechanism
like sexual reproduction which made it pos-
sible to crossbreed different bacterial strains.
These observations, together with related
ones by many other colleagues have gone
into the emergence of the most powerful
of new methods and insights in experimental
biology, going generally under the name of
molecular biology.

From the very beginning it was inescap-
able to me that these new approaches for
the understanding and manipulation of liv-
ing organisms had potential implications for
human progress of very great significance. On
the one hand molecular biology could in-
crease man’s knowledge about himself and
lead to revolutionary changes in medicine
in such fields as cancer, aging, congenital
disease, and virus infections. It might also
play a vital role in industry and in agricul-
ture. On the other side it might be exploited
for military purposes and eventuate in a
biological weapons race whose aim could well

That Of ouners, and fear only that my enthu-
siasm in discussing these details might out-
run your patience in hearing about them.
I will be glad to engage later in informal
discussions on any aspect of molecular biol-
ogy that may be of interest to you, I will
Just mention the discoveries of three methods
of modifying the genetic structure of mi-
crobes: 1) cross-breeding them through what
is, essentially, sexual reproduction; 2) in-
serting new genes carried by a virus, a process
called “transduction,” and 8) direct manip-

ulation of DNA as a chemical substance, and

reintroducing this into microbial cells.

I deeply appreciate the gravity and im-
portance of the work of this Committee. Its
principal significance is, of course, for the
security of all the people of the world; and
to that it is only a small addition to mention
my Own moral pre-occupation with whether
my own career will have been labeled a bless-
ing or @ curse to the humanity from which
I spring. This comment may have more
force if I offer it as not only a personal testi-
mony but as typical of the dilemma that
faces my entire generation of biological re-

search scientists and our younger students’

at this very moment. I am therefore many
times indebted to you not only for your
present labors but also for having offered me
the privilege of a more personal participation

in a process that may yet result in civilizing

this branch of science.

For many years BW has been given only
incidental attention as a subject of diplo-
matic discussion; for it seemed to have little
bearing on the adjustments of power that
were the main work of specialists in foreign
affairs. However, BW does have something
to do with efforts to reduce the barbarity of
warfare. BW stands apart from all other de-
vices in the actual threat that it poses to
the health and life-expectancy of every hu-
man being whether or not he is politically
involved in belligerent actions. In a word,

‘ine present situation thus M1gnt provide
the most favorable opportunity for inter-

national action to regulate the further de-

velopment and proliferation of BW. I am
convinced we know enough about it to have
legitimate concern about its future pros-
pects. Until now no nation appears to have
staked its security to any significant degree
on BW armaments. I would therefore hope
this provides a basis for accord. If we wait
until BW has been developed into a reliable
armament for use under a range of military
doctrine, we must all fear that it could then
be too late to disengage important powers
from their commitment to it.

If I may return to the Black Death, the
main barriers that may today keep bubonic
plague from being a great threat in advanced
countries are: 1) understanding of and the
use of quarantine, 2) the suppression of rats
and fleas by general urban hygiene, and
3) the use of modern therapy, especially
antibiotics, to control the disease. Each
one of these barriers could be breached by
further technical developments if a sub--
stantial effort were to be applied during the
next decade to making the plague bacillus
into @ weapon.

Other infectious agents might be even
more adaptable. Some of man’s deadliest
enemies are viruses which, like yellow fever,
are transmitted by mosquitos or other ar-
thropods, These have the advantage, from a
military standpoint, that they may not start
a potentially retroactive epidemic in “areas
where the vector insect does not normally
abound. It is already evident that such in-
sect-borne viruses could be applied in the
first instance by direct aerial dissemination,
with little or no further spread from the
first wave of infected targets. Recent reports
of airborne or pneumonic rabies, a terrible
disease, which as you know is normally
spread by the bite of an infected dog or
other animal, illustrate this possibility.