Overview: Defense against the Effects of Chemical and Biological Warfare Agents

Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare 2 INTRODUCTION " Gas! Gas! " This warning cry, so common in World War I, almost became real to U.S. forces again as they prepared to liberate Kuwait in late 1990. The threat of chemical, and even biological, warfare was foremost in the minds of U.S. military personnel during Operation Desert Shield, the preparation for the Persian Gulf War. Iraq was known to have a large stockpile of chemical weapons and had demonstrated during its conflict with Iran that it would use them. It was not until after the Persian Gulf War that the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq confirmed that Saddam Hussein also had biological agents loaded in weapons. The chemical and biological threats were major concerns to those in the military medical departments who would be called on to care for poisoned or infected casualties, possibly in a chemically contaminated environment. Fortunately the ground war of the Persian Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) was brief, and even more fortunately, our adversary did not employ these weapons. In the desert, during the fall and winter of 1990–1991, the threat of chemical warfare became very real to our military medical personnel. The threat of biological warfare was no less feared. The military medical departments realized that medical personnel were not prepared to provide care to chemical or biological casualties or to function in a contaminated environment. This textbook should help accelerate the assimilation of medical defense information in the next war; in the past, such information has not been readily accessible. Two handbooks have also been pre-land (March 1996). Rapid and intense teaching programs helped prepare our medical healthcare providers, so that by the onset of Operation Desert Storm, they were as ready as any military medical personnel might be to go to war. Hundreds of thousands of troops were supplied with chemical pretreatment and therapeutic agents and thousands were immunized against anthrax and the botulinum toxins, the two most likely biological battlefield threats. Two lessons were learned from this conflict, lessons that should never be forgotten by those in the military. The first was that there are countries that have chemical and biological weapons, and there are other countries that might obtain or produce them. The second was that the U.S. military medical departments must be prepared at all times to treat both types of casualties. As long as potential adversaries exist, …