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The development of the norm against the use of poison: What literature tells us

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

John Ellis van Courtland Moon
John Ellis van Courtland Moon*
Affiliation:
Fitchburg State College 160 Pearl Street Fitchburg, Massachussetts 01420-2697 USA [email protected]

Abstract

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The use of chemical and biological weapons on the battlefield is considered by most commentators — and by international law — as more abhorrent than the use of nearly all other weapons, including ones meant either to kill secretly or to kill terribly, as do fire or burial alive. I ask why this is so. I explore this question through the study of imagery patterns in Western literature and campaigns against food contamination and environmental pollution. I find that the norm against chemical and biological weapons builds upon a taboo against poisons, a prohibition widely accepted in military manuals as distinguishing soldierly conduct from criminal conduct, especially those forms of conduct made criminal by the employment of treachery, invisibility, and transformation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 55 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

References

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