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International Journal of Epidemiology 2003;32:660-661
© International Epidemiological Association 2003

Letters to the Editor

Biological warfare and the people of Iraq

Ian Roberts

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London WC1B 3DP, UK. E-mail: ian.roberts@LSHTM.ac.uk

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

Sirs—The only property of micro-organisms that enables them to be used as biological weapons is their capacity to cause infectious disease. People may be deliberately exposed to pathogenic micro-organisms in a variety of ways but it is the fact of exposure rather than the method of delivery that determines whether disease will result. Because the ability to cause infection is the defining aspect of a biological weapon, then any malevolent intervention that causes infection in the civilian population constitutes an attack with a biological weapon.

Micro-organisms are necessary but not sufficient in the causation of infectious disease and other causal factors are required for infection to occur.1 . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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