Page "Biological warfare" Paragraph 11

The advent of the germ theory and advances in bacteriology brought a new level of sophistication to the theoretical use of bio-agents in war.

Biological sabotage – in the form of anthrax and glanders — was undertaken on behalf of the Imperial German government during World War I ( 1914 – 1918 ), with indifferent results.

Use of such bioweapons was banned in international law by the Geneva Protocol of 1925.

( The 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention ( BWC ) extended the ban to almost all production, storage and transport.

However, both the Soviet Union and Iraq, at a minimum, secretly defied the treaty and continued research and production of offensive biological weapons, despite being signatories to it.

Major public proof of the Soviet program, called Biopreparat, came when Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, its first deputy director, defected to the U. S. in 1992.