History of Biotoxic Arms Development (BAD) and its implications to Mexico and other Caribbean Countries
The history of development of the so-called 'dirty means of war', 'higher forms of killing' or biotoxic arms, confronts special theoretical problems shared with the history of science, since its study object although present from classical times, intensify its figure in contemporary years. The historyography of BAD then, can be divided in three different stages:
a) A set of pre-scientific, classical scenarios equally present in older China chronicals or Mayan texts that extend up to industrial revolution times; focused exclusively on war between armies, its ethics left urban ares and civilians aside. In this stage BAD was mostly empirical and its effect localized or pin-pointed.
b) A second or modern stage considered to include from the late 19th century (particularely from the WWI World War 1 1914-1918) to the early 1970's. It can be characterized by having intensive science and heavy industrial production at the service of BAD for the first time in history, with classical military ethics broken and cities and civilians populations included as object of war.
c) Denounces of undercover events and secret testing or deployment of biotoxic arms becoming frequent, while international consensus tried to limit it growing popularity among individual nations.
d) A third or contemporary stage, when BAD has become inextricably associated with biotechnology -particularly microbial transgenomic research- with far and foreseen consecuences as is the case of several microbial organisms in BAD armamentarium including the dreaded smallpox virus. It is a historical paradox that this virus, the same that decimated Amerindian populations 500 years ago, is again at the forefront of BAD research with it genome recently deciphered and at the brink of additional lethal manipulation.
Within the scope of the above historial framework, a cross-section of findings regarding biotoxic arms development case analisis of relevance to
Mexico and the Caribbean nations shall be presented.