Weekly Meeting - Dr David Bruce - Chemical Weapons

Wed, May 15th 2019 at 8:00 pm - 10:30 pm

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VOT: Chris Brent-Smith


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Dr David Bruce - Chemical Weapons

David Bruce gave us a presentation on chemical weapons prompted by last year’s events in Salisbury.  His opening comment was that all the content was widely available on the open internet or unclassified NATO publications so he was not giving away any State secrets.  Historically, it appeared that there were records of the Chinese using arsenic, described as a ‘soul hunting fog’, to suppress a peasant revolt as far back as 1000BC and the Athenians used hellebore to poison the water supply and break a siege in 595BC. 

However, the first use of chemicals in modern warfare was in April 1915 when the Germans released chlorine gas at Gravenstafel; it caused a 4-mile breech in the front line.  Not to be outdone, the British used chlorine a few months later at the Battle of Loos reportedly because they were short of ammunition for the normal pre-attack bombardment.  Unfortunately, some of the gas blew back into the British lines.  Nations widened their research on chemical weapons and we were told that chemical weapons could be described as choking agents such as chlorine or phosgene; blistering agents such as mustard gas; and blood agents such as cyanide.   

David then concentrated on the nerve agents which were related to organophosphate insecticides and were developed between the wars.  He described the normal functioning of the nervous system and how this was inhibited by nerve agents before going on to describe the protective equipment worn by the British military.  He also chatted about the preventive treatments for nerve agent poisoning as well as treatment regimes – with animations. 

It has been estimated that there were 45 – 100,000 deaths in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s and approximately 3 -5,000 were killed in a mixed chemical agent attack on Halabjah alone in 1988.  Terrorists also used chemical agents in the Tokyo subway attacks in the 1990s.  More recently, VX agent was reportedly used to assassinate Kim Jong Un’s brother and Novichok was used against Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. 

Overall, it was a sobering talk and something we do not talk about.  However, he also pointed out that one of the first anti-cancer drugs was derived from mustard gas so there were some positives. 


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