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Soviet Biological Weapons Program
The Soviet Union covertly operated the world's largest, longest, and most sophisticated biological weapons program, thereby violating its obligations as a party to the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972.Leitenberg, M., Zilinskas, R., & Kuhn, J. (2012). Conclusion. In ''The Soviet Biological Weapons Program'' (pp. 698-712). Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: Harvard University Press. Retrieved February 7, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jbscf.30 The Soviet program began in the 1920s and lasted until at least September 1992 but has possibly been continued by Russian Federation after that. By 1960, numerous military-purposed biological research facilities existed throughout the Soviet Union. Although the former USSR also signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the Soviet authorities subsequently augmented their biowarfare programs. Over the course of its history, the Soviet program is known to have weaponized and stockpiled the following bio-ag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet Union, it dissolved in 1991. During its existence, it was the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country by area, extending across Time in Russia, eleven time zones and sharing Geography of the Soviet Union#Borders and neighbors, borders with twelve countries, and the List of countries and dependencies by population, third-most populous country. An overall successor to the Russian Empire, it was nominally organized as a federal union of Republics of the Soviet Union, national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR. In practice, Government of the Soviet Union, its government and Economy of the Soviet Union, economy were Soviet-type economic planning, highly centralized. As a one-party state go ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Botulinum Toxin
Botulinum toxin, or botulinum neurotoxin (commonly called botox), is a neurotoxic protein produced by the bacterium ''Clostridium botulinum'' and related species. It prevents the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from axon endings at the neuromuscular junction, thus causing flaccid paralysis. The toxin causes the disease botulism. The toxin is also used commercially for medical and cosmetic purposes. Botulinum toxin is an acetylcholine release inhibitor and a neuromuscular blocking agent. The seven main types of botulinum toxin are named types A to G (A, B, C1, C2, D, E, F and G). New types are occasionally found. Types A and B are capable of causing disease in humans, and are also used commercially and medically. Types C–G are less common; types E and F can cause disease in humans, while the other types cause disease in other animals. Botulinum toxins are among the most potent toxins known to science. Intoxication can occur naturally as a result of eithe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
No First Use
In nuclear ethics and deterrence theory, no first use (NFU) refers to a type of pledge or policy wherein a nuclear power formally refrains from the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in warfare, except for as a second strike in retaliation to an attack by an enemy power using WMD. Such a pledge would allow for a unique state of affairs in which a given nuclear power can be engaged in a conflict of conventional weaponry while it formally forswears any of the strategic advantages of nuclear weapons, provided the enemy power does not possess or utilize any such weapons of their own. The concept is primarily invoked in reference to nuclear mutually assured destruction but has also been applied to chemical and biological warfare, as is the case of the official WMD policy of India. China and India are currently the only two nuclear powers to formally maintain a no first use policy, adopting pledges in 1964 and 1998 respectively. Both NATO and a number ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reservation (law)
A reservation in international law is a :wikt:caveat, caveat to a state's acceptance of a treaty. A reservation is defined by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) as: a unilateral statement, however phrased or named, made by a Sovereign state, State, when signing, ratification, ratifying, accepting, approving or acceding to a treaty, whereby it purports to exclude or to modify the legal effect of certain provisions of the treaty in their application to that State. (''Article 2 (1)(d))'' In effect, a reservation allows the state to be a party to the treaty, while excluding the legal effect of that specific provision in the treaty to which it objects. States cannot take reservations after they have accepted the treaty; a reservation must be made at the time that the treaty affects the State. The Vienna Convention did not create the concept of reservations but codified existing Custom (law), customary law. Thus even States that have not formally acceded to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Nations Office For Disarmament Affairs
The UN Office for Disarmament Affairs ( UNODA, ) is an Office of the United Nations Secretariat established in January 1998 as the Department for Disarmament Affairs, part of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's plan to reform the UN as presented in his report to the General Assembly in July 1997. Its goal is to promote nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation and the strengthening of the disarmament regimes in respect to other weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological weapons. It also promotes disarmament efforts in the area of conventional weapons, especially landmines and small arms, which are often the weapons of choice in contemporary conflicts. It is led by an Under-Secretary-General (USG) and High Representative (HR), Izumi Nakamitsu of Japan, who took office on 1 May 2017. History In its landmark resolution 1653 of 1961, "Declaration on the prohibition of the use of nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons", the UN General Assembly stated that the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geneva Protocol
The Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, usually called the Geneva Protocol, is a treaty prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in international armed conflicts. It was signed at Geneva on 17 June 1925 and entered into force on 8 February 1928. It was registered in ''League of Nations Treaty Series'' on 7 September 1929. The Geneva Protocol is a protocol to the Convention for the Supervision of the International Trade in Arms and Ammunition and in Implements of War signed on the same date, and followed the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. It prohibits the use of "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices" and "bacteriological methods of warfare". This is now understood to be a general prohibition on chemical weapons and biological weapons between state parties, but has nothing to say about production, storage or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kanatjan Alibekov
Kanatzhan "Kanat" Baizakovich Alibekov (born 1950), known as Kenneth "Ken" Alibek since 1992, is a Kazakh-American microbiologist, bioweaponeer, and biological warfare administrative management expert. He was the first deputy director of Biopreparat. During his career in Soviet bioweaponry development in the late 1970s and 1980s, Alibekov managed projects that included weaponizing glanders and Marburg hemorrhagic fever, and created Russia's first tularemia bomb. Jacobsen, Annie (2015), ''The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top Secret Military Research Agency''; New York: Little, Brown and Company, pg 293. His most prominent accomplishment was the creation of a new "battle strain" of anthrax, known as "Strain 836", later described by the ''Los Angeles Times'' as "the most virulent and vicious strain of anthrax known to man". In 1992, he defected to the United States; he has since become an American citizen and made his living as a biodefense consulta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vladimir Pasechnik
Vladimir Artemovich Pasechnik (12October 193721November 2001) was a senior Soviet biologist and bioweaponeer who defected to the United Kingdom in 1989, alerting Western intelligence to the vast scope of Moscow's clandestine biological warfare (BW) programme, known as Biopreparat. His revelations that the program was ten times larger than previously suspected were confirmed in 1992 with the defection to the United States of Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov, the No. 2 scientist for the program. Biography A native of Leningrad, many members of Pasechnik's family, including his parents, perished in the Nazi siege of that city during World War II. Pasechnik studied at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute, where he was one of the institute's brightest stars, graduating at the top of his class. Pasechnik initially specialised in the study of polymers for biological uses at the Institute of High Molecular Compounds in Leningrad. The intent was to develop new antibiotics and other treatment ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sverdlovsk Anthrax Leak
On 2 April 1979, spores of ''Bacillus anthracis'' (the causative agent of anthrax) were accidentally released from a Soviet Armed Forces research facility in the city of Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union. The ensuing outbreak of the disease resulted in the deaths of at least 68 people, although the exact number of victims remains unknown. The cause of the outbreak was denied for years by the Soviet authorities, which blamed the deaths on consumption of tainted meat from the area, and subcutaneous exposure due to butchers handling the tainted meat. The accident was the first major indication in the Western world that the Soviet Union had embarked upon an offensive programme aimed at the development and large-scale production of biological weapons. Background Sverdlovsk had been a major production center of the Soviet military-industrial complex since World War II. By the 1970s, 87 percent of the city's industrial production was military; only 13 percent for public consumption. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician and statesman who served as President of Russia from 1991 to 1999. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1961 to 1990. He later stood as a Independent politician, political independent, during which time he was viewed as being ideologically aligned with Liberalism in Russia, liberalism. Yeltsin was born in Butka, Russia, Butka, Ural Oblast (1923–1934), Ural Oblast. He would grow up in Kazan and Berezniki. He worked in construction after studying at the Ural State Technical University. After joining the Communist Party, he rose through its ranks, and in 1976, he became First Secretary of the party's Sverdlovsk Oblast committee. Yeltsin was initially a supporter of the ''perestroika'' reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. He later criticized the reforms as being too moderate and called for a transition to a Multi-party system, multi-party repr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by Variola virus (often called Smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus '' Orthopoxvirus''. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980, making smallpox the only human disease to have been eradicated to date. The initial symptoms of the disease included fever and vomiting. This was followed by formation of ulcers in the mouth and a skin rash. Over a number of days, the skin rash turned into the characteristic fluid-filled blisters with a dent in the center. The bumps then scabbed over and fell off, leaving scars. The disease was transmitted from one person to another primarily through prolonged face-to-face contact with an infected person or rarely via contaminated objects. Prevention was achieved mainly through the smallpox vaccine. Once the disease had developed, certain antiviral medications could poten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orthopoxvirus
''Orthopoxvirus'' is a genus of viruses in the family ''Poxviridae'' and subfamily ''Chordopoxvirinae''. Vertebrates, including mammals and humans, and arthropods serve as natural hosts. There are 12 species in this genus. Diseases associated with this genus include smallpox, cowpox, horsepox, camelpox, and mpox. The most widely known member of the genus is Variola virus, which causes smallpox. It was eradicated globally by 1977, through the use of Vaccinia virus as a vaccine. The most recently described species is the Borealpox virus, first isolated in 2015. Microbiology Structure Orthopoxviruses are enveloped with brick-shaped geometries and virion dimensions around 200 nm wide and 250 nm long. Genome Member viruses have linear double-stranded DNA genomes around 170–250 kb in length. Lifecycle Viral replication is cytoplasmic. Entry into the host cell is achieved by attachment of the viral proteins to host glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), which mediate cellu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
