Well,

everybody was investing on these, it seems, and no wonder...

Scientists and the history of biological weapons: A brief historical overview of the development of biological weapons in the twentieth century

Banting's definition of total war was consonant with Allied aerial bombing of German cities, the development and use of atomic weapons by the USA, and British, American and Canadian covert pursuits of strategic biological warfare capability. In late 1942, the USA, then at war, lent its considerable resources—scientific and technological expertise, laboratories and production facilities, military officers and troops, testing grounds and a refitted munitions factory—to what soon became the largest biological warfare project thus far in history. A far-sighted report by Columbia University scientists Theodor Rosebury and Elvin Kabat in 1942 outlined "candidate" pathogens as well as an organizational structure and civil defence strategies (Rosebury et al, 1947). Ira Baldwin, an expert on fermentation at the University of Wisconsin, oversaw the mass production of anthrax spores to fill bombs. Hundreds of other scientists, civilian and military, became involved in biological warfare research, which was kept as secret as the Manhattan Project. However, the Second World War ended before any biological weapons, including the anthrax bomb, could be achieved at a level competitive with nuclear arms.

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