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The United States biological defense program — in recent years also called the National Biodefense Strategy — began as a small defensive effort that paralleled the country's offensive biological weapons development and production program, active between 1943 and 1969. Organizationally, the medical defense research effort was pursued first (1956-1969) by the U.S. Army Medical Unit (USAMU) and later, after the discontinuation of the offensive program, by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). Both of these units were located at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories were headquartered. The current mission is multi-agency, not exclusively military, and is purely to develop defensive measures against bio-agents, as opposed to the former bio-weapons development program. In 1951, due to biological warfare concerns arising from the Korean War, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) created the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a hands-on two-year postgraduate training program in epidemiology, with a focus on field work. Since the 2001 anthrax attacks, and the consequent expansion of federal bio-defense expenditures, USAMRIID has been joined at Fort Detrick by sister bio-defense agencies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (NIAID’s Integrated Research Facility) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center and the National Bioforensic Analysis Center). These—along with the much older Foreign Disease Weed Science Research Unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture—now constitute the National Interagency Confederation for Biological Research (NICBR). Broadly defined, the "United States biological defense program" now also encompasses all federal level programs and efforts to monitor, prevent, and contain naturally occurring infectious disease outbreaks of widespread public health concern. These include efforts to forestall large scale disasters such as flu pandemics and other "emerging infections" such as novel pathogens or those imported from other countries. Today, these U.S. biodefense programs — military and civilian — have raised concerns that the U.S. may be pursuing research that is outlawed by the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972.〔Leitenberg, Milton (2005), ''Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat'', pg 68. (but USG/public domain ); ISBN 9781495965951.〕 ==Overview== Biological agents have been used in warfare for centuries to produce death or disease in humans, animals, or plants. The United States, however, did not begin a biological warfare offensive program until 1941. During the next 28 years, the U.S. initiative evolved into an effective, military-driven research and acquisition program, shrouded in secrecy and, later, controversy. Most research and development was done at Fort Detrick, Maryland, while production and testing of bio-weapons occurred at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Dugway Proving Ground (DPG), Utah. Field testing was done secretly and successfully with simulants and actual agents disseminated over wide areas. A small defensive effort always paralleled the weapons development and production program. With the presidential decision in 1969 to halt offensive biological weapons production—and the agreement in 1972 at the international BWC never to develop, produce, stockpile, or retain biological agents or toxins—the program became entirely defensive, with medical and nonmedical components. The U.S. biological defense research program exists today, conducting research to develop physical and medical countermeasures to protect service members and civilians from the threat of modern biological warfare.〔Franz, David R., Cheryl D. Parrott, and Ernest T. Takafuji (1997), Chapter 19: “The U.S. Biological Warfare and Biological Defense Programs", In: Frederick R. Sidell, Ernest T. Takafuji, David R. Franz (editors), ''Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare'' (1997); Published by the Office of The Surgeon General at TMM Publications, The Borden Institute.〕 Both the U.S. bio-weapons ban and the BWC restricted any work in the area of biological warfare to defensive in nature. In reality, this gives BWC member-states wide latitude to conduct biological weapons research because the BWC contains no provisions for monitoring of enforcement.〔〔Joseph Cirincione, et al. ''Deadly Arsenals'', p. 35.〕 The treaty, essentially, is a gentlemen's agreement amongst members backed by the long-prevailing thought that biological warfare should not be used in battle.〔Littlewood, Jez. ''The Biological Weapons Convention: A Failed Revolution'', ((Google Books )), Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2005, p. 9, (ISBN 0754638545).〕 In recent years certain critics have claimed the U.S. stance on biological warfare and the use of biological agents has differed from historical interpretations of the BWC.〔"(Introduction to Biological Weapons )", ''Federation of American Scientists'', official site. Retrieved January 9, 2009.〕 For example, it is said that the U.S. now maintains that the Article I of the BWC (which explicitly bans bio-weapons), does not apply to "non-lethal" biological agents.〔 Previous interpretation was stated to be in line with a definition laid out in Public Law 101-298, the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.〔"(Original U.S. Interpretation of the BWC )", ((PDF )),''Federation of American Scientists'', official site. Retrieved January 9, 2009.〕 That law defined a biological agent as:〔 any micro-organism, virus, infectious substance, or biological product that may be engineered as a result of biotechnology, or any naturally occurring or bioengineered component of any such microorganism, virus, infectious substance, or biological product, capable of causing death, disease, or other biological malfunction in a human, an animal, a plant, or another living organism; deterioration of food, water, equipment, supplies, or material of any kind...According to the Federation of American Scientists, U.S. work on non-lethal agents exceeds limitations in the BWC.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「United States biological defense program」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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