Harris, Robert and Paxman, Jeremy. A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story
of Chemical and Biological Warfare. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982. 306 pages.
With this book, BBC reporters Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman have put
together the best history of CBW available. Other books in this field tend
to concentrate exclusively on CBW research in the U.S., or the use of
chemicals in Vietnam. By contrast, this book begins with the first World
War and includes the Japanese in the 1930s, the Nazi research program, and
British secret experiments with anthrax in the 1940s. Churchill wanted to
gas Germany during the war, and Britain actually produced five million
anthrax cakes at Porton Down, designed to be dropped on Germany to infect
the food chain. This may have been the world's first mass-produced biological
weapon. Today germ warfare is outlawed, but chemical weapons are still a
matter of international concern.
Using previously-classified documents and interviews with scientists
and soldiers in Britain, Europe, America and Russia, the authors continue
this history with chapter titles such as "The Search for the Patriotic Germ"
(post-war biological weapons research), "The Rise and Rise of Chemical
Weapons" (Vietnam), and "The Tools of Spies." In the epilogue, the authors
warn that genetic manipulation and synthetic viruses have opened new prospects
for biological warfare, and could someday remove concepts such as ethnic and
cross-generational warfare from the exclusive domain of science fiction.
ISBN unavailable
Extract the names from this source
Back to search page