Sir

Christian Seelos's Commentary, “Lessons from Iraq on bioweapons”, discussed only active warfare, where the weapons themselves contain infectious materials or biological toxins (Nature 398, 187–188; 1999). He failed to mention an equally nefarious kind of biological warfare, of the passive variety.

The bombing of Iraq during the Gulf War targeted infrastructure, with drastic effects on public health. One of the many results was a lack of water free of infectious particles, which led to a resurgence of bacterial infections, especially infantile diarrhoea, cholera and many other infectious diseases. The mortality rate for infants soared, with excess mortality of close to a million children, exacerbated no doubt by the severe malnutrition that the United Nations embargo has imposed.

One factor that exacerbated this problem was the lack of chlorine, which the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) has decreed to be, in Seelos's sanitized phrase, “dual use”. Eventually another UN agency, the children's fund UNICEF, campaigned to allow chlorine back, but the amount recently allowed is probably enough for only two or three cities. This kind of biological warfare is similar to poisoning wells or rivers upstream of besieged cities, which has its own long and notorious history.

Yet these issues are not discussed, perhaps because the personal viewpoint of Seelos, or the official one of UNSCOM, is that only when you lob the carcass of an infected animal into a besieged city do you commit the horrible crime of biological warfare. Or else, they might simply state, in the words made famous 50 years ago, that they were only following orders.

How many more people have to die before we decide that the price of our policies towards the rogue regime of the day is unsupportable?