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Doctors urge ban on medical weapons

The British Medical Association has endorsed a call by the Red Cross for the government to issue new guidelines outlawing ‘medical’ weapons.

The BMA said that weapons should be banned if they are designed to inflict ‘superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering’.

Drawing on information issued by the international committee of the Red Cross, the BMA said that weapons should be banned if they were intended to cause:

• specific diseases, abnormal physiological states, or permanent disability (which includes so-called non-lethal weapons);
• effects for which there is no treatment;
• injuries such as those caused by exploding bullets, which inflict large wounds without being targeted at a specific part of the body;
• nuclear weapons, laser weapons and chemical and biological weapons.

But in a note of caution, Dr Anthony Zwi, head of health policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: ‘By defining some of the most horrific forms of weapons, we in a sense legitimise application of conventional weapons.’

Earlier this year, the BMA warned that technological advances now make it possible to create ‘plague’ or virus bombs that can target people with specific gene groups, for example people from specific ethnic groups.