The U.S. got into the germ-warfare business in 1942 at the request of Britain, which feared that Adolf Hitler was cooking up world-class pestilence in his labs.
While FDR found the weapons ``inhumane,'' he went along with their development, the show says. He was certainly right about the nature of the weapon. As the show explains, ``a biological weapon is alive. What it wants to do is reproduce itself inside a human body.''
Eventually, the guest kills the host, who suffers hideously. Another victim is science itself, which has been used ``not strictly for the benefits it can bring'' but for purely destructive purposes, according to Jeanne Guillemin, senior adviser to MIT's Security Studies Program.
From the start the U.S. program was cloaked in secrecy: Leakers were promised 40 years in jail, with a $10,000 fine thrown in for good measure.
As it turns out, Hitler early on ordered that ``there was to be no offensive biological weapons research.'' His benevolence may have been the result of having been gassed in World War I, the show suggests.
Ghastly Experiments
Japan, however, more than made up for the German restraint. A lengthy segment of the hour-long program takes a close and horrifying look at the Japanese program and its mastermind, Shiro Ishii.
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