On November 25, 1969 in a speech, President Richard Nixon announced the end of the U.S. offensive biological warfare/weapons program which was developing deadly biological weapons. [1, 2, 3]

Since 1943 Camp Detrick was the home of biological warfare research, in 1956 it became Fort Detrick “with a mandate of continuing biological research and remaining the world’s leading research campus for biological agents that require special containment.”  Following Nov 25, 1969 Nixon announcement, “Research at Fort Detrick became focused solely on defensive measures – public health considerations, diagnostics, preventive measures, and treatments for biological warfare infections.”  It was stated at the time the “only defense that we have at present in this country against an enemy’s biological attach is purely a medical matter.. ”

Developments from 1971 allowed the US Army and HHS to work side by side on the campus, broadening into cancer research and becoming the “center of scientific excellence in the area of public health“. [4, 5, 6]

  • Since the beginning Fort Detrick has been the home of anthrax research [5].  Between 1951-55 an anthrax vaccine was developed, and  in 1960 first outbreak of anthrax in the 20th Century occurred.  Since the 1950s research staff have been given anthrax vaccines, and military since 1998 [maybe before]
  • On June 11, 20o1 the DOD announced the “slow down” of anthrax vaccinations due to inadequate supplies of the vaccine, which happened to ramp up again following the anthrax letter’s incident one week after 9/11, the anthrax source eventurally traced back to Fort Detrick! [8, 9]
  • “Operation Whitecoat” experiments at Fort Detirck, ran on army volunteers was reported early Nov 1969 by Richard Lebherz
  • In 1987 a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) was established between the FDA and DOD which had provided “certain exemptions, relieving the DOD from the need to meet the ordinary requirements of the Investigation New Drug (IND)…” for its Special Immunizations Program (SIP) and use of investigational vaccines, ended.  SIP then “underwent marked change”. [7]
  • In 2003 the non-profit Fort Detrick Alliance, Inc. was founded to facilitate the communications between federal agencies (DOD, USDA, DHHS, VA) and the public both local and globally – in “partnership”.

This led to the 1972 United Nations the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which was signed and went into force in 1975.