{"id":38862,"date":"2018-10-08T07:33:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T12:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38862"},"modified":"2018-10-08T07:33:52","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T12:33:52","slug":"international-team-of-researchers-concerned-over-us-efforts-to-create-bio-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38862","title":{"rendered":"International Team of Researchers Concerned Over US Efforts to Create Bio-Weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"International<\/p>\n

International Team of Researchers Concerned Over US Efforts to Create Bio-Weapons<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n

In 1969, US President Richard Nixon ended all offensive aspects of the US bio-weapons program \u2014 the first category of weapons prohibited by an international treaty. In 1975, the US ratified both the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) \u2014 the international treaties outlawing biological warfare. But many reports from different sources offer reason to believe that the US military is developing a new generation of weapons in violation of the international treaties Washington is a party to.<\/p>\n

An\u00a0opinion paper<\/a>\u00a0published on Oct. 4 in the journal\u00a0Science<\/em>,\u00a0written by\u00a0an international group of researchers led by Richard Guy Reeves from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, claims the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is potentially developing insects as a means of delivering a \u201cnew class of biological weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The official goal of Insect Allies, an ongoing research program, is to disperse infectious, genetically modified viruses that have been engineered to edit crop chromosomes directly in the field. But there is a\u00a0reason to believe<\/a>\u00a0that the program is actually an effort to develop biological agents and a means of delivery intended for hostile purposes. If true, this would constitute a breach of the\u00a0Biological Weapons Convention<\/a>\u00a0(BWC).<\/p>\n

The researchers warn the project could be used to create drought-resistant crops as an \u201cagricultural bio-weapon.\u201d\u00a0The Washington Post\u00a0<\/em>cited<\/a>\u00a0Silja Voeneky, the co-author of the\u00a0Science\u00a0article and a professor of international law at the University of Freiburg,\u00a0who stated, \u201cWe argue that there is the risk that the program is seen as not justified by peaceful purposes.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0According to her, \u201cTo use insects as a vector to spread diseases is a classical bio-weapon.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

International Team of Researchers Concerned Over US Efforts to Create Bio-Weapons In 1969, US President Richard Nixon ended all offensive aspects of the US bio-weapons program \u2014 the first category of weapons prohibited by an international treaty. In 1975, the US ratified both the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[9821,9823,22190,16490,8203,827],"class_list":["post-38862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-geopolitics","tag-biological-warfare","tag-bioweapons","tag-international-treaties","tag-peter-korzun","tag-strategic-culture-foundation","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38863,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38862\/revisions\/38863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}