From Natural Struggle to Biological Weapon, The Enduring Metaphor of Warfare

“ The invaders, if they gain a foothold at all, soon secure an advantage by reason of their terrific rate of increase. In some instances they carry on the war by producing poisonous substances, in others they rob the animal cells of food and oxygen. If the organism can withstand these assaults, can keep up its nutrition during the long siege, can ultimately destroy its assailants, it wins the battle. Fortunately for us, victory for once means victory forever, at least in many cases. Most contagious diseases attack an individual but once in his lifetime. ”

“ On this ground one must infer that, in accordance with the same law of natural selection, the bacteria of acute infections have met by natural selection each advance in the struggle of the host for immunity. Hence the fast and furious struggle between man and his microscopic enemies merely indicates to what extent natural selection has developed the ATTACK and the DEFENSE respectively. This struggle is analogous to the quick and decisive battles of the carnivora when fighting among themselves or when contending against their ancient enemies. ”

“ Indeed we might compare the cases of fungi which attack the root and collar, and so strike at and cut off the water supply, to a compact army which at once cuts off the enemy from his narrow base; whereas the innumerable units which bring about an epidemic attack on the leaves, and so surround the enemy and cut off his food supplies all round, is rather like a much larger army which cannot get in [116] beyond the natural barriers of the tissues, and so puts a cordon all round the territory and seizes the multitudes of food-stuffs at the frontiers. ”

“ In the warfare with the pathogenic microbes the idea of employing certain species as our allies, and opposing them against the very dangerous ones, is brilliant, and there are many facts encouraging the belief that the kingdom of the microbes may be further divided against itself, through the natural voracity of its numerous clans. ”

“ He has shown that an army of small cells, called phagocytes, which wander through the blood and tissues, are able to attack the microbes of disease, and that after a struggle they are able in many cases to kill these voracious invaders. In so doing, however, the weaker phagocytes succumb to the struggle, while those which are left alive within the body of the convalescent patient possess the power of resisting and destroying the particular microbe which had undertaken the invasion. ”

“ So in general, the invasion is stopped at the first lymph gland. A few thousand white corpuscles fall in the war. The enemy is massacred to the last man. And the body is saved.
Or else the foe get the upper hand; increase faster than the defenders can kill them off; break through the defense; enter the blood stream; invade the whole body; overrun the country; and put the inhabitants to the sword.
Lymph Cells or White Blood Corpuscles
All our lives long, every day of our lives, we keep up this fight against disease. ”

“ When we consider that tuberculosis, diphtheria, cholera, tetanus, typhoid fever, anthrax, malaria and a host of other contagious diseases have each been proved to be of parasitical origin, an idea may be conveyed of the range of the subject. The living organism may be regarded as constantly engaged in a warfare with these silent and apparently insignificant messengers of destruction and death, with the result that too often the battle ends in favour of the attacking enemy. ”

“ The struggle of man against his unseen and silent enemies, the lower or bacterial forms of life, once one becomes alive to it, has an irresistible fascination. More dramatic than any novel, more sombre and terrifying than a battle fought in the dark, would be the intimate picture of the battle of our bodies against the hosts of disease. If we could see with the eye of the microscope and feel and hear with the delicacy of chemical and physical interactions between atoms, the heat and intensity and the savage relentlessness of that battle would blot out all perception of anything but itself. ”

“ In concluding this inquiry as to the nature of infection and its effects on the body, the following statement of a biologist as to the bacterium seems justified: “When it enters a living body, it aims directly at the destruction of the Bacteria Aim to
Destroy the Body latter. It multiplies rapidly, tends to scatter its broods throughout the tissues, and all the while gives off the most powerful poisons. This agent is wickedly implacable, neither giving nor asking201 quarter. The battle that it wages with the body can terminate only by the destruction of one of the combatants.” ”

“ Furthermore, it has been demonstrated in a large proportion of these diseases that the essential principle of infection in the virus is the living germ called the pathogenic microbe.
The literally vital relation of microbic to human life can be observed in the following general statement: The pathogenic microbes cause four fifths of all diseases of the human family; they destroy more lives than war, famine, fire, murders, shipwreck, and all other casualties ”

“ IT is universally admitted that economic entomology, like such other branches of applied biology as medicine and sanitary science, is to a very considerable extent the strategics of our warfare with a host of parasites, which are forever endeavoring to destroy our bodies, our domestic animals, our food supply, our clothing and the very materials with which we construct our dwellings and on which we write or print our interpretations of the wonderful world in which we live. ”

“ The relations of protozoa and bacteria, conger-eels and other fish, English sparrows and hawks, plants and herbivorous animals, are typical examples of the universal conflict in which all organisms are involved in some way. Again it is only too evident that human beings must participate every day in some form of warfare with other species. In order that food may be provided for mankind the lives of countless wild organisms must be sacrificed in addition to the great numbers of domesticated animals reared by man only that they may be destroyed. ”

“ Only consider the myriads of insects that perish from hunger or accident, and from the preying of one species on another. If it were not so, the world would be overrun by plagues of mice, of birds, of insects of all kinds, and indeed by creatures of every grade. The term "struggle for existence" is, then, not an inapt one. All forms of living creatures have to contend with enemies which seek to prey upon or to destroy them, with the difficulty of obtaining food, and with what I may call the chances of nature—cold, storms, floods, disease, and so forth. ”

“ The warfare is continuous from the birth to the death. Everything must fight, fly, feint, or use poison; and every slayer eventually becomes a victim. What a murderous brood for Nature to bring forth! And what a place she has chosen in which to breed them! Not only the struggle among themselves, but the struggle with the land, the elements—the eternal fighting with heat, drouth, and famine. What else but fierceness and savagery could come out of such conditions? ”

“ War in one way and another is at the very root of life. War is not conducted only by fire and sword; it is in all nature, it is the condition of existence for all created things. Even the wild flowers in the meadow wage war, and they wage it more ruthlessly even than man, for with them defeat means extermination. The law of Nature is that the fit should kill the unfit. ”

“ La nature semble s'être fait un jeu d'établir entre tous les êtres organisés une sorte de guerre qui entretient leur activité: si elle a donné aux uns des moyens de défense, elle a donné aux autres des moyens d'attaque. ”

“ The horticultural kingdom must contend with imps of death until garnered safely in the harvest.
When we examine the animal kingdom we find the same conditions obtain; every animal from the bug to the buzzard, from the ant to the elephant, from mice to monkeys, have a bitter struggle for existence. A distinguished German professor has this to say, addressing the Fishery Association of Berlin: “War is the watchword of the whole of organic nature; there is a constant war of all organisms against outward unfavourable circumstances, and there is a constant war among the different individuals. ”

“ The facts which have now been adduced, sufficiently prove that there is a continual competition, and struggle, and war going on in nature, and that each species of animal and plant affects many others in complex and often unexpected ways. We will now proceed to show the fundamental cause of this struggle, and to prove that it is ever acting over the whole field of nature, and that no single species of animal or plant can possibly escape from it. This results from the fact of the rapid increase, in a geometrical ratio, of all the species of animals and plants. ”

“ The original Darwinian theory was soon found to be altogether insufficient to account for the observed facts, because of the tendency of the bare struggle for existence to produce degradation rather than elevation; because of the testimony of geology to the fact that introduction of new species takes place in times of expansion rather than of struggle; because of the manifest tendency of the breeds produced by artificial selection to become infertile and die out in proportion to their deviation from the original types ”

“ In many campaigns of the past, disease has slain its thousands where bullets and shells have killed hundreds, and even the twentieth century with its marvelous science of sanitation has not defeated the direful common enemies of allies and foes. Why disease should attack masses of men in the prime of life, living in the open air, and on the whole well fed and clothed, at first sight seems strange, but when we remember that modern fighting begets an intolerable thirst, which the soldier is naturally tempted to slake as best he can and when he can, at least one reason is not hard to find. ”

“ Scarlet fever, influenza, yellow fever, relapsing fever, and malaria (if the war is waged in countries where this disease is endemic—especially in the Lower Danube region, in the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy) have also played an important rôle in many wars. But we give the name ‘war pestilences’ only to those infectious diseases which in the course of centuries have usually followed at the heels of belligerent armies, such as typhus fever, bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, and small-pox ”

“ Epidemic diseases can have a decisive influence on the result of the war and might in the end be of a greater importance than battles, as for instance the plague during the siege of Athens, or typhus during the advance of Napoleon into Russia. ”

“ Man is a warring animal. The first sun of civilization's dawn broke through a war cloud, and what light it has since shed upon mankind has been through rifts in clouds of war. The history of nations is the history of wars; but while armies of men have met and hewn each other down, there have been enemies in the ranks of the combatants on every side far more deadly than he of the two-edged sword.
WAR WITH DISEASE In every war pestilence has slain dozens to every one that has fallen in battle. There are no rifts in the clouds of war waged with the deadly germs of disease. ”

“ Other forms of war and other weapons of mass destruction have large scale efforts of both human societies and the human environment. Biological warfare could release new agents of disease that would prove difficult to control. ”

“ Effects of Biological Weapons Biological warfare is the intentional use, by an enemy, of live agents or toxins to cause death and disease among personnel, animals, and plants, or to deteriorate materiel. ”

“ Biological weapons have massive, unpredictable and potentially uncontrollable consequences. They may produce global epidemics and impair the health of future generations. I have therefore decided that:
—The United States shall renounce the use of lethal biological agents and weapons, and all other methods of biological warfare. —The United States will confine its biological research to defensive measures such as immunization and safety measures. —The Department of Defense has been asked to make recommendations as to the disposal of existing stocks of bacteriological weapons. ”

“ Science can now reshuffle the genetic deck of micro- organisms to produce a theoretically unlimited number of combinations, each with its own unique blend of toxicity, hardness, incubation period, etc. In short, it is becoming possible to synthesize biological agents to military specifications. Thus, the world lies on the threshold of a dangerous era of designer bugs as well as designer drugs.
Biological weapons have been called the poor man's atomic bomb. They are relatively cheap to produce, and you get an appallingly big bang for your buck. ”

“ A biological weapon limited to attack one species: the enemy. It is insidious. There is no warning and no defense. Unconsciousness and death occur painlessly within an hour after contact, and the victim has not realized he is being destroyed. ”

“ They are seldom found in actual association, each is best adapted to a particular environment; there is no reason to suppose that they fight. It is so throughout Nature. Animals may utilise other species as food; but that is true of even, the most peaceable and civilised human races. The struggle for existence means that one species is more favoured by circumstances than another species; there is not the remotest resemblance anywhere to human warfare.
We may pass on to the second claim for war: that it is an essential factor in the social development of primitive human races. ”

“ It failed to reform the criminal, and it failed to prevent crime. It failed because it was unintelligent. It had taken no notice of causes.
Many people are today talking of war, and its prevention. The same questions that are asked in any other scientific inquiry must be asked here. There is no use in trying to prevent war, until we understand the causes of war. It will be time enough to think of preventing war when we have isolated the germs of war and studied them.
What are the germs of war? Where do they breed? On what do they thrive? ”

“ War is one of the greatest plagues that can afflict humanity: it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge, in fact, is preferable to it. Famine and pestilence become as nothing in comparison with it.... Cannons and fire-arms are cruel and damnable machines. ”

“ IT IS SCIENTIFICALLY INCORRECT to say that we have inherited a tendency to make war from our animal ancestors. Although fighting occurs widely throughout animal species, only a few cases of destructive intra-species fighting between organized groups have ever been reported among naturally living species, and none of these involve the use of tools designed to be weapons. Normal predatory feeding upon other species cannot be equated with intra-species violence. Warfare is a peculiarly human phenomenon and does not occur in other animals. ”

“ In particular, we argue that the myths overlook significant difficulties faced when seeking to design and/or produce a pathogen because they focus mostly on material features, thus missing important socio-technical factors, such as tacit knowledge. We have also shown that this dominant narrative underestimates a crucial step needed to mount a terrorist attack, especially a mass attack: the need to produce weapons, not just pathogens. Thus, we conclude that the five myths that recur in the dominant narrative embody misleading assumptions about both synthetic biology and bioterrorism. ”