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A Brief History of Biowarfare

In the spring of 1811, two Indians, a man and a woman, appeared at the Pacific Fur Company's post at the mouth of the Columbia River. While the man, a Crow Indian named Qànqon, provided the inhabitants of the post with "much information respecting the interior of the country," he quickly became an object of fear.¹ Qànqon, as the Post inhabitants discovered, was not all that he appeared to be. To begin with, Qànqon was actually a woman who had adopted male dress and taken a wife. But for the inhabitants at the Pacific Fur Company, this was a minor concern-the real problem with Qànqon was that he claimed to be able to infect others with smallpox.

Nearly two hundred years after Qànqon's appearance at the Pacific Fur Company, the fear which he evoked is still very much with us. Despite the tremendous progress which science and medicine have made in the last two centuries, disease and the ability to inflict disease remain among the most powerful threats which confront us both as a society and as individuals. In fact, it is our knowledge of science-our understanding of the genetic code, our knowledge of genetic engineering and so on-which provides us with the ability to inflict biological havoc on our enemies and ourselves. The more science we know, the better the biological weapons we can develop.

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