Medical countermeasures to WMDs: Defence research for civilian and military use

This document will address the contributions of defence research to both military and civilian applications. Compared to civilian research capabilities, particularly in terms of personnel, defence research resources are limited. Additionally, many of the research targets are either classified or involve applications that have (or had) limited civilian use. Recently, however, spurred by counter-terrorism preparedness particularly in North America, many previously ‘orphaned’ research projects have assumed much greater prominence. This has occurred in all areas of militarily significant research, but this paper will focus on medical countermeasures to weapons of mass destruction and to a lesser extent on detection/identification issues.In the area of countermeasures to chemical weapons, most of the defence research has been devoted to “classical” CWAs such as nerve agents, vesicants, choking and blood agents, with considerable success in some applications. Similarly vaccination programs for the biological weapons have also been quite successful. And recent attention has been directed toward the “emerging” threats such as some of the exquisitely lethal toxins. The difference now is that all of these research programs have the objective of moving from research to development of not only military but also civilian use very much sooner than later.