When is a non-lethal weapon lethal? When it鈥檚 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 鈥渘on-lethal鈥� because they can all kill at high doses.
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鈥檚 effects (New 杏吧原创, 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.
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