Biological Warfare In Africa Essay

Biological Warfare in Africa during the 1960’s and 1970’s

Throughout my research in many different books, reports on Biological warfare in Africa during the 1960’s and 1970’s, I have found a number of things. They include South Africa’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Program and the beginning of the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and the Ebola virus. Biological warfare is defined as “the use of harmful living things (such as germs that cause disease) as weapons in a war” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). In this report I will discuss the South Africa’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Program and bits of the AIDS theories and the Ebola virus.

South Africa’s Chemical and Biological Warfare program has been ongoing since World War I. Even after the Geneva Convention of 1925 was established South Africa did not entirely cease production and research of their Chemical and Biological Warfare program (Boston). In fact, during World War II, South Africa sidestepped the convention protocol and began planning a more extensive Chemical and Biological Warfare program, to protect the country from the threat of the Nazi regime.

Following World War II, the South African Defense Force continued to research Chemical and Biological Warfare but more for riot control. In the 1960s, South Africa realized that they needed to update their Chemical and Biological Warfare program after the Egyptians starting using chemicals in Yemen during the mid 60s. It was not until the 1970s when South Africa started producing more destructive agents, even though South Africa signed the Biological Warfare Convention (BWC) in 1972 and ratified it in November of 1975(Boston).

South Africa increased their production of more aggressive biological and chemic...

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... countries during the 1960s and 1970s or using as a population control (Youde 2007). AIDS has many theories on how it was created, but the one that holds true to this day is that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes AIDS began in chimpanzees and has been passed on from them. It is common known that AIDS is a huge problem in the African population today.

In conclusion there have been many serious situations that have happened in Africa with biological warfare, the use of biological agents in water sources, and Ebola virus outbreaks. Although the Chemical and Biological Warfare program started out as defensive measures to ongoing threats, it did end up being more trouble than necessary. Still to this day, Africa deals with Ebola virus breakouts and the AIDS epidemic which is of biological warfare resulting of man-made or natural occurring incidences.