MUNCIE, Ind. -- Iraq is not the first nation to make biological weapons. The use of toxins and related dangerous biological materials dates back thousands of years, says a Ball State University biologist.

As early as 600 B.C. they were used when Athenian legislator Solon poisoned the water supply of the city of Kirrha with a biological toxin, said Ann Blakey, a biology professor.

While the United Nations worries that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein will fire his Scud missiles containing anthrax or other highly dangerous biological weapons, armies of the Middle Ages used the fear of the plague to conquer cities, she said.

"A better known example comes from the 14th century when the Tartar army laid siege to the Crimean city of Kaffa," Blakey said. "Bodies of plague victims were catapulted over the walls of the city in order to cause an epidemic among the population.

"In the 17th to 19th centuries in North America, smallpox was used to decimate the Native American populations," she said. "The whites would trade with the Indians, giving them smallpox-contaminated blankets. Hundreds of thousands of Native Americans died because they lacked medicine and immunity to the disease."

In the United States, the development of biological weapons began in 1942 at what is now Fort Derrick, Md. U.S. offensive biological weapons programs were terminated in 1969-70 by an executive order by President Nixon.

The world finally recognized the threat to international safety concerning biological weapons with the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin weapons and their Destruction.  Destruction, possession, development, and stockpiling of these materials were prohibited.

Knowledge that Iraq lacked an effective delivery system in the form of bombs or bomblets to disperse the biologicals for large-scale use in battle would greately reduce the level of danger that U.S. troops might be facing in the coming months if Iraq violates the recent U.N. agreement, she said.

"From one scientist's standpoint, a far more insidious and present danger lies in the potential harm from the use of biological weapons in international terrorism attacks as a highly effective anti-personnel weapon," Blakey said.