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Introduction: The Responsibility of Scientists
For most scientists of my acquaintance, the fundamental notion of professional responsibility is to tell the truth. That is, to reach conclusions based on all the scientific evidence available to them, whether or not it conflicts with previous opinions and positions, and to share this evidence with other scientists. This criterion of responsibility is captured well in the following statement by Albert Einstein, which is engraved on the base of his statue in front of the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, DC:

"The right to search for the truth implies also a duty not to conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true."

In practice, this criterion of scientific responsibility can be quite demanding: given the highly competitive nature of many disciplines of contemporary science and technology, including the potential for considerable prestige and financial gain, it isn't surprising that scientists sometimes pay “selective attention” to the evidence. While regrettable, such behavior is unlikely to have catastrophic consequences for society as a whole. In most cases, unsubstantiated claims are eventually exposed, although individual scientists may have their careers or lives ruined in the process.

The subject of this paper concerns a different dimension of the notion of scientific responsibility, the choice of what to work on, rather than the degree of honesty with which this work is pursued. Specifically, I discuss what has motivated scientists during the 20th century to help develop nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, i.e., the so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and then consider the feasibility of providing disincentives for such work as a means of minimizing the risk of their further proliferation. In the next section, I examine what factors were most important in the decisions of several prominent scientists to work on WMD. This is followed by a discussion of “the other side of the coin”: the practicality and the wisdom of trying to dissuade scientists not to work on WMD. I conclude with some observations about the need for scientists to take a more active interest in such ethical issues, and the difficulties involved in bringing this to pass.

Scientists and WMD in the 20th Century
The best-known and most controversial example of the involvement of scientists in the development of WMD was the German atomic bomb project during World War II, particularly the involvement of the famous physicist Werner Heisenberg. I begin my mini-survey of the scientists and WMD issue with this episode, starting with some background material.

The fission of uranium was first identified by two German chemists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, in December 1938. Although this finding was a complete surprise to most scientists, its theoretical explanation followed quickly as did experiments in several countries which confirmed that neutrons are released in the fission process. This implied that large amounts of energy might be released in a macroscopic mass of uranium either in a controlled manner over time or instantaneously in a powerful explosion via a neutron chain reaction. For the latter purpose it was clear that the uranium would have to be enriched, i.e., the concentration of the isotope U-235 would have to be increased above its small value in natural uranium by isotope separation. However, until the spring of 1940, no one had made an accurate estimate of the minimum amount of enriched uranium that would be needed for a uranium bomb, a quantity which became known as the critical mass. This was a key consideration because the processes of isotope separation known at that time were very technically demanding, and if the critical mass was as large as the initial estimates - on the order of tons to tens of tons - a uranium nuclear bomb might not be feasible.

The result of the calculation of the critical mass of fully enriched (i.e., 100% U-235) uranium made by Rudolph Peierls and Otto Frisch in England in the spring of 1940 - on the order of kilograms not tons - was quickly transmitted to the US. It gave fresh impetus to the American atomic bomb project which was initiated in 1939 largely as the result of the concerns of prominent refugee scientists such as Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Enrico Fermi who feared that Germany and hence the Nazi regime would get the bomb first. Such fears seemed well-founded at the time, and persisted until the last few months of the war in Europe. In 1939, Germany had access to ample supplies of uranium from mines in occupied Czechoslovakia, and by spring 1940, also from stocks in occupied Belgium. Moreover, despite the departure in the 1930s of Peierls, Frisch, Szilard et al, Germany retained a cadre of world-class scientists, in particular, Werner Heisenberg, who received the Nobel prize in physics in 1933, and was still at the height of his intellectual powers.

Although Heisenberg and the other German scientists started research on the atomic bomb in 1939, they never produced one. The reason for this is at the heart of the controversy surrounding the German atomic bomb project. The two poles of opinion on this question are presented in the books by Rose and Powers cited in reference #1. Powers argues that Heisenberg et al knew how to make a bomb, but that Heisenberg's distaste for the Nazi regime led him to quietly but effectively sabotage the project. Rose counters that moral scruples had nothing to do with it: Heisenberg was a German patriot who made his peace with the Nazi regime, but who also made an early and crucial overestimate of the critical mass of uranium which led him to believe that there was no chance of completing the manufacture of a bomb during the war. As a consequence, he did not press the government for a crash program, and only limited resources were allocated to it. Most knowledgeable observers are now inclined to Rose's view, which is shared by the author.

The key point is that many of the German scientists, Heisenberg in particular, disliked the Nazi regime, yet as patriots who loved their country they decided that they could not refuse to work for their government, in particular on the development of an atomic bomb. After the war, Heisenberg argued that the central moral issue was that atomic bombs were intrinsically bad, and should not have been developed by anyone. Rose strenuously rejects this position:

"The fallacy here is that it is not atomic bombs that are the primary moral problem, but rather the evilness of Nazi Germany. By suppressing the Nazi and the Allied contexts, Heisenberg creates a false symmetry between the moral predicaments of the Allied and German scientists. It is as though the scientists are acting in a political vacuum simply as scientists, rather than as fighters for their respective causes. Given this political neutralism, the action of Allied physicists in choosing to manufacture an atomic bomb thus becomes morally reprehensible. Heisenberg never says anything in his accounts about the fact that the Allied scientists were behaving morally by virtue of the fact that they were developing weapons for the defense of a moral cause against an evil one."

From all accounts, the above was the prevailing view among the Allied bomb scientists. The Nazi regime was the epitome of evil, and Germany might win the war and then dominate the world if it developed an atomic bomb first. However, even when it became clear in late 1944 that the Germans had abandoned their bomb project, the great majority of the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project continued their work with undiminished zeal, and the focus of the project shifted seamlessly from Germany to the possible use of the bomb against Japan. Although some scientists were opposed to its use against civilian populations, it was the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought home to scientists and the public alike the horror of nuclear devastation and started the ongoing debate about the morality of the possession and possible use of nuclear and other WMD.

The disagreement between Heisenberg and Rose is central to the issue of the morality of the involvement of scientists in work on such weapons, and I return to it later in the paper. First, I continue my mini-survey of well-known scientists who worked on WMD in the 20th century, beginning with two whose basic motivation was the same as Heisenberg's, patriotic duty to one's country.

The first is Fritz Haber (1868-1934), the Jewish-born, German chemist, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1918 for the discovery of a process for the synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen, and is also known as the father of chemical warfare. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Haber immediately placed the facilities of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin, of which he was the director, at the disposal of the German Government. In his son's words:

"Haber's patriotism was unusual even in an age where jingoism, into which it so frequently spills over, was condoned. He was a Prussian, with an uncritical acceptance of the State's wisdom, as interpreted by bureaucrats, many of them intellectually his inferiors. He was also ambitious, determined to succeed, and well aware that his Jewish origins was both obstacle and spur. His involvement in chemical warfare began in December 1914 and was marked for the duration by strong purpose, great energy, a practical turn of mind, and outstanding administrative ability. Haber's greatest successes came in 1915 - the year of the first gas attacks and the organization of gas-mask production - but his most important role was played in the last two years of the war when he tendered advice at the highest level and was officially in charge of German gas supplies and gas protection."

Thus, Haber's involvement with the German chemical weapons program in World War I was marked by much greater enthusiasm and accomplishment than Heisenberg's participation in the German atomic bomb project in World War II. Indeed, the reference to his “strong purpose, great energy, practical turn of mind, and outstanding administrative ability” is much more reminiscent of the qualities that characterized J. Robert Oppenheimer's and Igor Kurchatov's leadership of the US and Soviet atomic bomb projects, respectively. However, unlike Heisenberg and Oppenheimer, Haber never tried to minimize his role or express any moral misgivings about it, at least not publicly. On the contrary, after the war he denied that Germany had violated the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which expressly prohibited the use of “asphyxiating or deleterious gases” and “poison or poisoned weapons”. He also argued that gas did not cause undue suffering and therefore was not inhuman, and was very critical of scientists, particularly Germans, who did not share his views on the subject.

In fairness, there were many people on both sides in World War I who condoned the development of chemical weapons. Indeed, the US, England, and France all developed and used gas against the Germans during the war, and to that end many scientists were willing participants. After the war, the strongest misgivings against chemical weapons was the concern that non-combatants would be deliberately or inadvertently targeted in future conflicts, and that research would lead to the development of more potent chemical agents which could cause injury and death on a wide scale extending to cities or even countries. Both these concerns have materialized, but as L. K. Haber notes chemical weapons were not used by either side in World War II against either troops or civilians because of a fear of retaliation and the inadequacy of means to protect the home populations.

As for Haber, he remained a German patriot to the end. When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Jewish academics were purged, and Haber resigned as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry and emigrated to England. Still, in his farewell letter to his institute colleagues, he could say:

"Im Frieden der Menschheit, im Kriege dem Vaterlande! (In peace for mankind, in war for the fatherland!)"

Another scientist, who also insisted on the primacy of the patriotic motive in working on WMD, in this case nuclear weapons, was Andrei Sakharov, whose considerable scientific achievements were overshadowed for many by his heroism in the pursuit of democratic change in the Soviet Union. In his memoirs, Sakharov comments at length on his decision to join in the development of nuclear weapons in 1948 at the age of 27.

"In 1948, no one asked whether I wanted to take part in such work. I had no real choice in the matter, but the concentration, total absorption, and energy that I brought to the task were my own. Now that some many years have passed, I would like to explain my dedication - not least to myself. One reason for it (though not the main one) was the opportunity to do “superb physics” (Fermi's comment on the atomic bomb program.) But I feel confident in saying that infatuation with a spectacular new physics was not my primary motivation; I could easily have found another problem in theoretical physics to keep me amused - as Fermi did, if you will pardon this immodest comparison. What was most important for me at the time, and also, I believe for Tamm and the other members of the group, was the conviction that our work was essential.

I understood, of course, the terrifying, inhuman nature of the weapons we were building. But the recent war had also been an exercise in barbarity; and although I hadn't fought in that conflict, I regarded myself as a soldier in this new scientific war (Kurchatov himself said we were “soldiers”, and this was no idle remark.) We were possessed by a true war psychology, which became still more overpowering after our transfer to the Installation.

Oppenheimer's judgment [not to develop an H-Bomb] was challenged by Edward Teller. Teller had experienced the 1919 communist revolution in his native Hungary, and he had a deep-seated mistrust for the socialist system. He insisted that only American military strength could restrain the socialist camp from an expansion that would threaten civilization and democracy and might trigger a third world war.

That is why Teller believed it necessary to speed development of an American H-Bomb and continue nuclear testing despite the genetic damage and other nonthreshold biological effects they implied In the 1940s and 1950s my position was much closer to Teller's, practically a mirror image (one had only to substitute “USSR” for “USA”, “peace and national security” for “defense against the communist menace”, etc.) - so that in defending his actions, I am also defending what I and my colleagues did at the time."

The forgoing is worthy of extended comment. I begin with Sakharov's downplaying of the opportunity to do “superb physics” as a motive for his enthusiastic participation in nuclear weapons development compared to service to his country.

The context here was the “recent war” in which 20 million Soviet citizens had been killed, and the strong feeling that the fruits of victory over Nazi Germany would be short-lived if the US maintained a monopoly on nuclear weapons. Sakharov and his colleagues were thus “possessed by a true war psychology”. By contrast, in the US from the end of World War II until the Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb in August 1949, there was little of this. Nuclear weapons development at Los Alamos continued apace, but the consensus view was that the US had a long lead over the Soviet Union in the nuclear domain. In this atmosphere, the opportunity to improve the Nagasaki bomb design had a strong appeal. One of the pioneers in this work was Theodore Taylor:

"I continue to insist that, although a concern for national well-being may have been what drew most scientists and engineers into the world's nuclear weapon programs, the work has remained fascinating for any who have been creatively inclined. I'm also convinced that the fascination persists in any environment in which pushing the physical limits for nuclear weaponry is encouraged...As a graduate student at Berkeley I had even been strongly involved in student activism against the bomb. But within weeks after getting to Los Alamos [in 1949], I was thoroughly hooked on the fascinations for nuclear explosives. That addiction persists through the present, and I can only deal with it by abstinence."

I concur with Taylor's judgment. While the ability of the leadership of WMD programs to provide interesting technical challenges for scientists may be of secondary importance in times of war or crisis, real or manufactured, it becomes increasingly important when the war ends or the crisis cools. A contemporary example is the planned expenditure of considerable sums on various high-tech facilities at the US weapon laboratories as part of the Department of Energy's Stockpile Stewardship Program in order to attract first-rate scientists to the labs and thus maintain US expertise in nuclear weapons after the Cold War.

Another important aspect of Sakharov's statement are the references to two of his older scientific colleagues, the aforementioned Igor Kurchatov, the leader of the Soviet nuclear weapon program from its inception in 1943 until his death in 1960, and the distinguished physicist, Igor Tamm, who invited Sakharov to join the program in 1948. Sakharov's enthusiasm for his work was influenced by his admiration for the scientific prowess and dedication of these men. These qualities were shared by many of Sakharov's contemporaries in the program, e.g., the brilliant physicist Yakov Zeldovich, but his older mentors provided an important additional dimension: the example that any moral qualms about “the terrifying, inhuman nature of the weapons we were building” must be put aside because having such weapons was “essential” for the survival of the state. As Sakharov notes, such feelings were reinforced “after our transfer to the Installation”, a euphemism for the secret weapons laboratory at Arzamas-16 where the weapons team worked long hours under the watchful eyes of the KGB, isolated from any outside doubts and distractions.

In addition to all of the above, more mundane “sticks and carrots”, are undoubtedly influential in recruiting scientists to work on WMD. Sakharov refers to the fact that “no one asked whether I wanted to take part in such work, I had no real choice in the matter”. On the other hand, the prestige and material rewards he accrued for his contributions to the weapons program were substantial. Later, his concerns about “the horror, the real danger, and the utter insanity of thermonuclear warfare, which threatens everyone on earth”, led to the publication in 1968 of his essay, Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom. This statement, as well as his subsequent writings and activities in defense of individual victims of injustice in the Soviet Union, brought him into growing conflict with the Soviet authorities, which culminated in his forced exile in Gorky from 1980 to 1986. In December 1986, he was rehabilitated on the order of the Soviet Premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, and returned to Moscow, where he played an active role in the reform movement in the Soviet Union until his death in December 1989.

Sakharov left the Installation in 1969, and had no further connection with the Soviet nuclear weapons program. Although his outspoken advocacy of democracy and peaceful coexistence after 1968 were heroic and probably unprecedented, other scientists who had significant roles in their country's WMD programs have also left such programs, and subsequently “told all”, including a rationalization for their involvement. A contemporary case in point is Ken Alibek (formerly, Arkady Alibekov), who was born in Kazakstan in the former Soviet Union in 1950 and received a Ph.D. in microbiology for research and development of plague and tulameria-based biological weapons as well as a doctorate of science in biotechnology for developing the technology to manufacture anthrax on an industrial scale for use as biological weapons. Alibek joined Biopreparat, the principal government agency in the Soviet Union for research and development of biological weapons. He joined Biopreparat in 1975 and was its first deputy chief from 1988 to 1992 when he defected to the US.

In his recent book, Alibek provides both a history of the Soviet biological weapon program, and his own involvement in it, including why he joined and why he left. The former includes all of the reasons that have been mentioned, the most important of which was the patriotic motive. In 1973, as a young graduate student, Alibek discovered that tularemia was used by Soviet troops against the Germans at Stalingrad in 1942. The lesson seemed clear:

"Stalingrad was a test of survival of the Soviet Union. More than one million of our soldiers died defending the city. In forcing the Germans into a humiliating retreat, they had turned the tide of the war. The moral argument for using any available weapon against an enemy threatening us with certain annihilation seemed to me irrefutable. I came away fascinated that disease could be used as an instrument of war."

Although the Soviet Union was not at war when Alibek joined Biopreparat in 1975, the war psychology referred to by Sakharov was still alive and well. Thus, when informed by a KGB official that the work he would be engaged in violated the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention of 1972, but that the US also had a secret biological weapon program, Alibek had no difficulty in “saluting the flag”:

"We had been taught as schoolchildren and it was drummed into us as young military officers that the capitalist world was united in only one aim: to destroy the Soviet Union. It was not difficult for me to believe that the United States would use any conceivable weapon against us, and that our own survival depended on matching their duplicity. The five minutes I spent with him represented the first and last time any official would bring up a question of ethics for the rest of my career."

Once a member of the program, Alibek became fascinated by various technical challenges, e.g., developing aerosols which did not lose their virulence and dissipate quickly, and using genetic engineering to develop new agents which were resistant to existing vaccines and antidotes. He also admired many of his scientific colleagues, and grew accustomed to the prestige and privileges associated with his position at Biopreparat. Starting in the late 1980s, an accumulation of factors, including the physical and emotional wear and tear associated with his position, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the realization that the US did not have a biological weapon program, and the assurance of a warm welcome in the US, led to his defection in 1992. Alibek realized that some of his colleagues might consider defection as a betrayal, but adds: “...my real betrayal was to have pursued a career that violated the oath I had taken as a doctor.” Still, Alibek had managed to keep working in an area which has aptly been characterized as “public health in reverse” for more than 17 years. Obviously, the incentives for scientists to work on WMD, particularly the patriotic motive, can be quite strong.

Influencing Scientists not to Work on WMD
What can be done to provide even stronger disincentives, or more accurately, what can and should be done to provide such disincentives? The basic issue here is the “target set”: what scientists should be influenced not to work on WMD? The current policy of the US Government regarding WMD is that further proliferation of nuclear weapons, both “horizontal and vertical”, is bad, as is possession of chemical and biological weapons. The US also vigorously opposes acquisition of any WMD by sub-national groups. On the other hand, it believes that indefinite retention of a robust nuclear weapons arsenal, albeit reduced in numbers from its size during the Cold War, is essential for both US and global security, and that this policy is compatible with US obligations under Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

To maintain such an arsenal without nuclear testing, the US has initiated its Stockpile Stewardship Program. This is a well-funded effort to keep both existing weapons in good working order, and to pursue further research in “high energy density physics”, i.e., physical phenomena encountered in certain domains of astrophysics as well as during nuclear detonations, in order that the US be prepared for all future contingencies such as testing of new weapon designs by Russia. To this end, sophisticated and expensive new facilities are being built at the weapons laboratories, in large measure to attract and retain a cadre of young, highly-qualified scientists. Obviously then, the US Government would oppose any initiative which sought to dissuade all scientists from working on nuclear weapons, even it were caveated to apply only to new nuclear designs.

Indeed, even leaving the issue of nuclear weapons entirely aside, I believe that the US Government would at best offer only lukewarm support for appeals to scientists worldwide not to work on chemical and biological weapons on the basis that such weapons are morally reprehensible. There are two reasons for this. First is the credibility of the argument that chemical and biological weapons are beyond the pale, but nuclear weapons, in the right hands, are not. Other states may perceive that US disavowal of such weapons is less a matter of their inhumanity than of a judgment that as long as the US retains a qualitative edge in advanced conventional weaponry, as well as a powerful nuclear arsenal, global elimination of chemical and biological weapons serves US security interests.

Moreover, to the extent that universal appeals to scientists condition them to think of themselves as “citizens of the world” rather than Americans, Russians, Indians, Israelis, etc., it might well become more difficult to persuade them of their duty to act as “soldiers” in time of real or perceived threats to their country.

Of course, the US and other countries have alternative means to degrade the ability of or punish scientists who work in WMD programs which are perceived to threaten their interests. The obvious targets are the so-called “rogue states”, e.g., Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. However, they also include WMD scientists and their places of employment in Russia, China, India, and Pakistan, depending on circumstances such as the perceived bad behavior of such states with regard to e.g., testing of WMD and potential delivery means, export of the associated technology, and failure to sign on to international agreements restraining WMD development such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and the Chemical Weapons Convention.

One such tool are restrictions on the entry of students and scientists from these states into the US and other countries such as England, France, Germany, and Japan to pursue academic studies, do research, or attend scientific meetings. In most cases, the targeted students and scientists want to study or engage in research in disciplines related to WMD, but this is not always true. Sometimes foreign scientists who seek entry or are already in the US for purposes completely unrelated to WMD are refused visas or continued financial support strictly as a punitive measure: there is a price to be paid for proliferating activities, and the penalties are sometimes administered with a broad brush. However, even when there is a potential WMD connection, restricting the ability of foreign students and scientists to come to the US is a delicate matter.

With regard to foreign students who seek to gain expertise relating to WMD via enrollment at universities in the US and other countries, denying them such access can be viewed as a logical, hence legitimate extension of export controls on tangible embodiments of the same technology. However, identifying “rogue students” as such is often problematic, restrictions on study on non-academic grounds violate established notions of academic freedom, and foreign students exposed to the openness of American society can have a change of heart regarding the wisdom of being used to further the WMD ambitions of their countries of origin. Finally, there is an ethical dilemma stemming from the fact that one of the main obstacles to the economic development of many poorer countries is their weak educational institutions. Restricting the opportunity of foreign students to study abroad thus jeopardizes the societal benefit of increasing the expertise of scientists from some of the same countries which are widely suspected of harboring WMD programs or ambitions. In sum, restricting educational access needs to be handled with great care.

The same can be said of restrictions on foreign scientists, both for some of the reasons relevant to foreign students and others. Among the latter are the loss of the benefits for the US of interaction between scientists at the US weapons laboratories and foreign scientists from states of proliferation concern if such interactions are curtailed because, e.g., of recent allegations of Chinese spying at the Los Alamos Weapons Laboratory. These benefits are of two kinds. First, is the reduction of the risk of “loose nukes” escaping from Russia. Such a reduction is the goal of ongoing exchange programs between US and Russian weapons laboratories designed to upgrade security and accounting procedures on nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons materials in Russia. Second is the ability to attract and retain first-rate scientists to work in the US Stockpile Stewardship Program by offering them the opportunity for wide-ranging interactions with their foreign counterparts.

In addition, the fact that some scientists involved in stockpile stewardship activities will also be engaged in interesting non-weapons work can serve as a spur for getting unemployed nuclear weaponeers in Russia to collaborate on such work rather than selling their expertise to proliferating states or terrorist groups. This is an important consideration since scientific “guns for hire” can significantly assist foreign WMD programs. Although the focus of current concern in this area is Russia, there are many other potential sources of WMD expertise worldwide, e.g., German scientists who consulted for the Iraqi centrifuge program. Greater efforts to identify and dissuade these individuals, e.g., by offering appropriate carrots and sticks including making such assistance a basis for fines and imprisonment in their home countries, seems worthwhile.

Influencing senior scientists who work in WMD programs in their own countries to do otherwise is much more difficult, both because they tend to be highly motivated to continue their activities, and also because they are usually considered to be national assets, and protected as such. Nevertheless, the idea of seeking opportunities to make these people “offers they can't refuse” or even to kidnap or kill them has been contemplated and perhaps implemented. A less draconian suggestion for divesting a proliferating state, Iraq in this instance, of its senior nuclear weapons scientists, has been made by David Albright and Khidhir Hamza, the latter a former Iraqi nuclear weapons scientist. Their idea is to link US support for lifting sanctions on Iraq to Iraqi agreement to allow certain scientists and their families to leave the country. The premise is that if allowed to leave, most of the key scientists would agree to do so, provided they are offered resettlement including economic support in another country such as the US, as well as protection from retaliation for themselves and their families.

This is an innovative proposal, but it is doubtful that it could have been implemented even before UNSCOM's presence in Iraq ended abruptly last December. Saddam Hussein's actions since the end of the Gulf War have demonstrated that keeping the basic elements of his WMD programs intact is more important than the lifting of sanctions. So why should he agree to a proposal that would impair his nuclear program in a much more fundamental sense than if Iraq surrended some hidden nuclear hardware and related information? Moreover, it would be a sensitive matter for the US or another nuclear weapons state to become heavily involved in an effort to divest another country of its weapons scientists on moral grounds, even in the case of a state such as Iraq.

Conclusions
The heart of the matter with regard to the participation of scientists in WMD programs is the legitimacy of possession and possible use of such weapons. In this connection, I recall Paul Rose's vehement objection to Werner Heisenberg's defense of his role in Germany's atomic bomb project during World War II. For Rose, Heisenberg's post-war position that nuclear weapons are bad per se and should not have been developed by anyone is a “cop out”. On the contrary, the Allied scientists behaved morally in developing a weapon whose prior possession by the Nazi regime could have led to its victory in the war.

In contemporary terms, Rose would presumably argue similarly that there is no moral equivalence between possession of nuclear weapons by the US and Iraq under its current leadership. Others concede this, but question whether nuclear weapons can ever be used by any state in a manner which satisfies the just war criteria, and also argue that retention of nuclear weapons on the grounds of national security by any state will lead to powerful pressure in other states to acquire them for the same reason.

I do not consider these issues further here. They have been the subject of discussion and debate by policymakers, security analysts, philosophers, lawyers, and theologians in many countries, but not - and this is my main concern - among scientists who have been or may in the future be called upon to develop nuclear weapons or other WMD. This is not surprising; most scientists would prefer to do science.

"The vast majority of working scientists in fact are quite happy to leave the discussion of societal concerns to the small minority. Most in the silent majority and even some in the vocal minority, although willing to tolerate such discussions up to a point, would not go so far as to make such concerns a matter of personal, active participation...We shall have to face the possibility that for the large majority of scientists euphoric personal commitment to the pursuit of science as currently fostered and understood, and the hoped-for societal concerns needed on the part of professionals in today's world, are at bottom orthogonal or possibly even antithetical traits - antithetical both in terms of the psychodynamics of the majority of individual scientists and in terms of science as a profession."

For this reason, I believe it important to create more opportunities for discussion and debate about the ethical implications of work on WMD among scientists in universities, laboratories, and in professional societies. One means to this end are appeals to scientists worldwide or in a particular country not to work on WMD.

During World War II, the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard summarized his frustration about the lack of influence of the scientists who made the atomic bomb in making the major decisions about its use by stating that scientists were “on tap, but not on top”. Although I disagree with Szilard about the wisdom of scientists being “on top”, I agree that being “on tap”, in the sense of unquestioning involvement in work on WMD, even in time of crisis or war, represents a significant and potentially dangerous failure of scientific responsibility. We need to do better.

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