Does vaccination of troops against biological warfare agents even make sense strategically?
This slide from DARPA, the military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, lists over 65 known biological warfare agents, which are naturally occurring. In addition, there are an infinite number of microorganisms that may be created using genetic engineering. There are less than 10 vaccines effective against these agents. It takes an estimated ten years, once one is aware of a microbial pathogen, to develop an effective and safe vaccine against it. The fact that we did not have an effective and safe anthrax vaccine at the time of the Gulf War, and now 10 years later we still do not have one, makes this perfectly clear. Furthermore, if we vaccinate against anthrax, an enemy can just pick a different microorganism to use. If an enemy genetically engineers a new virulent organism, we will not even be able to begin developing a vaccine against it until after it has presented itself — in other words, after if has been used. For these simple reasons, the use of vaccines against the th
