Institut de recherche sur les lois fondamentales de l'Univers

Etienne AUCOUTURIER 

Researcher in Ethics

Excerpt from Prof. Jeanne Guillemin's (1943-2019) foreword to Biological warfare (Matériologiques, Paris 2020)

"In Aucouturier’s work, the history of France’s investment in germ weapons is at last presented with the depth of archival detail and analysis that this important story deserves. Among the other major powers that created biological weapons programs (the Soviet Union, Japan, Great Britain, and the United States), none began as early as the French and with such significant scientific resources. France’s superior microbiology, developed over decades at the Institut Pasteur, allowed a sophisticated evaluation of dangerous pathogens and research on the aerodynamics of germ dispersal essential to mass attack. Ethical issues had to be suppressed. The demand that military scientists live a double life, advocating health protection in public while secretly developing an offensive anti-civilian capability, was later imposed on thousands of scientists in other programs, not only in the larger ones but in initiatives in smaller states that arose during the Cold War in Israel, South Africa, Iraq, and other countries seeking a surprise advantage over their enemies."