Yellow Rain - Disputed Conclusions

Disputed Conclusions

Currently, two main viewpoints exist on the yellow rain controversy. One viewpoint sees these allegations as supported by insufficient evidence, or as having been completely refuted. For instance, a 1992 review published in Politics and the Life Sciences described the idea of yellow rain as a biological agent as conclusively disproved and called for an assessment by the US government of the mistakes made in this episode, stating that "the present approach of sweeping the matter under the rug and hoping people will forget about it could be counterproductive." Similarly, a 1997 review of the history of biological warfare published in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that the yellow rain allegations are "widely regarded as erroneous", a 2001 review in the Annual Reviews in Microbiology described them as "unsubstantiated for many reasons", and a 2003 article in Annual review of phytopathology described them as "largely discredited". A 2003 review of the history of biological warfare described these allegations as one of many cases where states have produced propaganda containing false or unsubstantiated accusations of the use of biological weapons by their enemies.

In contrast, as of 1997 the US Army maintains that some experts believe that "trichothecenes were used as biological weapons in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan" although they write that "it has not been possible for the United States to prove unequivocally that trichothecene mycotoxins were used as biological weapons." They argued that presence of pollen in yellow rain samples is best explained by the idea that "during biological warfare attacks, dispersed trichothecenes landed in pollen-containing areas." (Essentially the same position is taken in a subsequent volume in the same series of US Army textbooks published in 2007.) Similarly, the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency argues that the controversy has not been resolved and state that a CIA report indicated the Soviet Union did possess weapons based on T-2 mycotoxin, although they state that "no trace of a trichothecene-containing weapon was ever found in the areas affected by yellow rain" and conclude that the use of such weapons "may never be unequivocally proved." A 2007 review published in Politics and the Life Sciences concluded that the balance of evidence strongly supported the hypothesis that some type of chemical or biological weapon was used in Southeast Asia in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but noted that they found no definitive proof of this hypothesis and that the evidence could not "identify the specific agents used, the intent, or the root source or sources of the attacks."