Smallpox
Biological warfare

In 1763, Pontiac's War broke out as a Native American confederacy led by Pontiac attempted to counter British control over the Great Lakes region. A group of Native American warriors laid siege to British-held Fort Pitt on June 22. In response, Henry Bouquet, the commander of the fort, ordered his subordinate Simeon Ecuyer to give smallpox-infested blankets from the infirmary to a Delaware delegation outside the fort. Bouquet had discussed this with his superior, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, who wrote to Bouquet stating: "Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them." Bouquet agreed with the proposal, writing back that "I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands". On 24 June 1763, William Trent, a local trader and commander of the Fort Pitt militia, wrote, "Out of our regard for them, we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect." The effectiveness of this effort to broadcast the disease is unknown. There are also accounts that smallpox was used as a weapon during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783).

According to a theory put forward in Journal of Australian Studies (JAS) by independent researcher Christopher Warren, Royal Marines used smallpox in 1789 against indigenous tribes in New South Wales. This theory was also considered earlier in Bulletin of the History of Medicine and by David Day. However it is disputed by some medical academics, including Professor Jack Carmody, who in 2010 claimed that the rapid spread of the outbreak in question was more likely indicative of chickenpox – a more infectious disease which, at the time, was often confused, even by surgeons, with smallpox, and may have been comparably deadly to Aborigines and other peoples without natural immunity to it. Carmody noted that in the 8-month voyage of the First Fleet and the following 14 months there were no reports of smallpox amongst the colonists and that, since smallpox has an incubation period of 10–12 days, it is unlikely it was present in the First Fleet; however, Warren argued in the JAS article that the likely source was bottles of variola virus possessed by First Fleet surgeons. Ian and Jennifer Glynn, in The life and death of smallpox, confirm that bottles of "variolous matter" were carried to Australia for use as a vaccine, but think it unlikely the virus could have survived till 1789. In 2007, Christopher Warren offered evidence that the British smallpox may have been still viable. However, the only non-Aborigine reported to have died in this outbreak was a seaman called Joseph Jeffries, who was recorded as being of "American Indian" origin.

W. S. Carus, an expert in biological weapons, has written that there is circumstantial evidence that smallpox was deliberately introduced to the Aboriginal population. However Carmody and the Australian National University's Boyd Hunter continue to support the chickenpox hypothesis. In a 2013 lecture at the Australian National University, Carmody pointed out that chickenpox, unlike smallpox, was known to be present in the Sydney Cove colony. He also suggested that all c. 18th century (and earlier) identifications of smallpox outbreaks were dubious because: "surgeons … would have been unaware of the distinction between smallpox and chickenpox – the latter having traditionally been considered a milder form of smallpox."

During World War II, scientists from the United Kingdom, United States, and Japan (Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army) were involved in research into producing a biological weapon from smallpox. Plans of large scale production were never carried through as they considered that the weapon would not be very effective due to the wide-scale availability of a vaccine.

In 1947, the Soviet Union established a smallpox weapons factory in the city of Zagorsk, 75 km to the northeast of Moscow. An outbreak of weaponized smallpox occurred during testing at a facility on an island in the Aral Sea in 1971. General Prof. Peter Burgasov, former Chief Sanitary Physician of the Soviet Army and a senior researcher within the Soviet program of biological weapons, described the incident:

On Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea, the strongest recipes of smallpox were tested. Suddenly I was informed that there were mysterious cases of mortalities in Aralsk. A research ship of the Aral fleet came to within 15 km of the island (it was forbidden to come any closer than 40 km). The lab technician of this ship took samples of plankton twice a day from the top deck. The smallpox formulation – 400 gr. of which was exploded on the island – "got her" and she became infected. After returning home to Aralsk, she infected several people including children. All of them died. I suspected the reason for this and called the Chief of General Staff of the Ministry of Defense and requested to forbid the stop of the Alma-Ata –Moscow train in Aralsk. As a result, the epidemic around the country was prevented. I called Andropov, who at that time was Chief of KGB, and informed him of the exclusive recipe of smallpox obtained on Vozrazhdenie Island.

Others contend that the first patient may have contracted the disease while visiting Uyaly or Komsomolsk-on-Ustyurt, two cities where the boat docked.

Responding to international pressures, in 1991 the Soviet government allowed a joint U.S.–British inspection team to tour four of its main weapons facilities at Biopreparat. The inspectors were met with evasion and denials from the Soviet scientists and were eventually ordered out of the facility. In 1992, Soviet defector Ken Alibek alleged that the Soviet bioweapons program at Zagorsk had produced a large stockpile – as much as twenty tons – of weaponized smallpox (possibly engineered to resist vaccines, Alibek further alleged), along with refrigerated warheads to deliver it. Alibek's stories about the former Soviet program's smallpox activities have never been independently verified.

In 1997, the Russian government announced that all of its remaining smallpox samples would be moved to the Vector Institute in Koltsovo. With the breakup of the Soviet Union and unemployment of many of the weapons program's scientists, U.S. government officials have expressed concern that smallpox and the expertise to weaponize it may have become available to other governments or terrorist groups who might wish to use virus as means of biological warfare. Specific allegations made against Iraq in this respect proved to be false.
punctuation:no_comma, detectable_format:number_bullet_lists[5], combination:two_responses