TIME - Jun. 03, 1946 (take a look)

The other possibility, biological warfare, also had impressive scientific scripture behind it. Wrote General H. H. Arnold in the book One World or None: "It is worth while pointing out that biological warfare, consisting of the spreading of disease, could occupy a position similar to atomic warfare."

Living Killers. For three years, U.S. biological warfare research has been carried on at the University of California under Navy auspices. Virtually nothing has been published about it except that the principal disease under study was "hundreds of years old and one of the greatest killers." But the day after Thomas' original break, other Congressmen, popeyed and anonymous, announced that the Navy had a weapon which could wipe out "all forms of life" in a large city. "It is a germ proposition and is sprayed from airplanes that can fly high enough to be reasonably safe from ground fire. It is quick and certain death."*

While germs are usually specialists, attacking only a limited number of species, some form of biological warfare might be only too practicable. Chances are that pestilence-spreaders would not use old, familiar diseases, but would create new ones by modifying standard bacteria or viruses. With modern knowledge of genetics and biochemistry, this should not be impossible. Human beings would have little natural resistance against such synthetic diseases, which might conceivably spread, in a biological chain reaction, through the world's entire population. Perhaps suitable diseases have already been created in several countries, their organisms kept alive in secret, guarded incubators.

The only defense would be mass immunization in advance. A nation planning aggression would protect its own soldiers and citizens before loosing its high-bred germs upon enemies and innocent bystanders. If all went well, its territory would be left an island of health in a world of poisonous corpses.

So far, no nation's agents had publicly reported such a suspicious "health campaign."

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