Question: Do you think that man made diseases were intended to create suffering for people in other countries due to political wars?

Ee Lyn Lim answered on 22 Jun 2013:

People have been using disease to fight wars for hundreds of years. It used to be standard practice to throw a dead body (like a cow or a person, especially if they died of illness like the plague) into wells – so that the water would be full of bacteria and all the people who drank from those wells became sick. Until about 40 years ago, several countries in the world including the UK still tried to use diseases (now we call them bioweapons) in wars. Deadly bacteria and viruses were hidden in food, and fed to both humans and cattle (so that the cows would be poisoned and the army would have nothing to eat). The most advanced sorts can even be transmitted through the air, like anthrax spores – even now, soldiers who serve in high-risk areas are vaccinated against anthrax before they go.

But this is really a horrible thing to do, so many countries have signed an agreement to say that they won’t ever do that in the future – that’s the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, that says they’re not allowed to produce or store large amounts of deadly pathogens, except just enough for research. There is always a danger though that bacteria and viruses in the lab might be stolen and used by terrorists, which is why labs that do research on these kinds of bacteria and viruses have extra-heavy security!

Like Peter said, though, all the bacteria and viruses used in war have been natural ones, not man-made – we just used them for political purposes. In theory – not sure if anyone’s actually doing this kind of research – you’re certainly not supposed to be! – we could ‘modify’ currently existing pathogens to make them more lethal, more infectious, and more resistant to vaccines and antibiotics. That’s a scary thought…