Edward Hammond

In 1969 President Richard Nixon pledged that the United States would never use biological weapons. The United States signed the Biological Weapons Convention, prohibiting development and stockpiling of biological weapons, in 1972. But in the following viewpoint, Edward Hammond argues that the United States might be violating the treaty and going back on its pledges. Secret military research programs to develop defenses against biological weapons, destroy drug plants, and develop “nonlethal” weapons of incapacitation involve the creation of what are clearly biological (and chemical) weapons, he asserts. Such programs leave the United States in a weakened position to campaign for biological weapons disarmament. Hammond is director of the U.S. office of the Sunshine Project, an international organization dedicated to biological weapons control.

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