Drug-based weapons all lethal at high doses | Prescription Drugs

Drug-based weapons all lethal at high doses

When is a non-lethal weapon lethal? When it's a drug, say UK doctors.

In a report last week, the British Medical Association concluded that drugs used to stupefy hostage-takers, for example, can never be classed as "non-lethal" because they can all kill at high doses.

image from "XIII" by Feral Interactive

The BMA cites the alarming death toll from the Moscow theatre siege in 2002, when Chechen terrorists held more than 800 theatre-goers hostage and threatened to kill them all. To end the siege, Russian authorities filled the theatre with the breathable anaesthetic fentanyl, quickly knocking out the occupants. However, 130 of the hostages died from the drug's effects (New Scientist, 2 November 2002, p 7).

The report urges doctors to oppose the development of drug-based non-lethal weapons, denouncing calls from countries such as the US, China and Czech Republic to legalise them by rewriting the Chemical Weapons Convention.

http://www.newscientist.com/

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