What is being discussed is biological warfare, which existed from ancient
times.  In the pre-Islamic Mideast, besiegers catapulted dead bodies inside
of cities.  the problem with all of this is that before the germ theory of
disease was proven in the 19th century, biological warfare was as likely to
backfire as not.

You have to be good with a bow or a rifle to kill with it effectively.  This
rule does not disapear when one begins using microbes as weapons.

The real danger is people who have reached our level of technical
competence.  We can bottle, alter, make airborne, and perhaps even create
deadly microbes.  Our ability to do this with microbes, chemicals, and
atomic energy are perhaps the greatest threats to our continued existence.

Harold S. Forsythe
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Apple" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 2:34 PM
Subject: Re: smallpox - not just a myth


> On Wed, 8 Mar 2006 14:12:51 -0500, Douglas Deal wrote
>
>> This is probably *not* a myth. See the refs to Jeffrey Amherst and
>> other smallpox related episodes in the following H-West exchange
>> from 1995: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~west/threads/disc-smallpox.html
>>
>
> From that website:
>
> <<<<On the plan to use smallpox as a weapon against the Indians; Parkman,
> in
> _The Conspiracy of Pontiac_ (Vol 2, pgs 39-40, in the new Bison edition)
> discussed this proposal. The idea, apparently, came from Lord Amherst, in
> a
> letter of orders to Col Bouquet, saying "Could it not be contrived to send
> the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this
> occassion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them". Bouquet
> replied
> that he would try and use infected blankets as a means of introducing the
> disease among the Indians, but was wary of the effects that it would have
> on
> his own men.
>
> Parkman states that there is no evidence that Bouquet ever used the
> smallpox
> plan, although an epidemic raged among the Ohio Indians "a few months
> after"
> the July 1763 correspondence.>>>>
>
> At Fort Pitt in 1763, Capt. Ecuyer did attempt infecting them by giving
> the
> Indians two blankets and a handkerchief. There has been considerable doubt
> that it would have been effective. As I had mentioned before, it's more
> probable that the infected, bloody scalps taken from the dead buried
> outside
> Ft. Pitt would have been much more effective in spreading the pathogen
> than
> two blankets. Those scalps would have been distributed further and faster
> than two blankets and a handkerchief. That would explain the epidemic that
> raged throughout the Ohio Indians after Pontiac has laid siege to Ft.
> Pitt.
>
> Granted, it was attempted by Ecuyer, in one documented instance, but was
> probably not near as successful (if it even was) as taking bloody war
> trophies.
>
> The problem is that one letter by Amherst is used as evidence that giving
> infected blankets was a common practice, which has not been proven.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tom Apple
>
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