The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets From the Early Cold War and Korea

KEYWORDS:
• endicott s, hagerman e: the united states and biological warfare: secrets from the early cold war and korea
• book reviews (meyer hs, ed)

This book is written in the style of an investigative news report. The authors accuse US and Canadian forces of having waged offensive biological warfare by using artificially infected insects as vectors during the Korean campaign. We concede that all major powers have experimented with biological warfare agents.¹ However, this book suffers from many defects, specifically the use of anecdotal data that appear questionable when seen in the light of current science. Terms like "encephalitis" and "meningitis" are thrown at the reader without definition.

For example, how were the diagnoses made and what kind of encephalitis or meningitis was encountered? Tick-borne, herpes, and Japanese encephalitis were known to be present in much of Asia for decades prior to the Korean War and had been described as early as 1871.^{2- …}