ROGER SPENCER

By David Kahn

I've never really cared all that much for history, maybe because I've never been able to remember historical dates and figures, or maybe because a lot of the details never seemed intrinsically interesting.  In describing the A-bomb, for example, a fairly typical description might involve the exact time and date when the weapon was first deployed against Japan, the amount of energy released by one explosion, and the area affected by one bomb.  However, in all honesty, I don't really care about that stuff.  My answers to the issues addressed in those questions would be 1945, a lot, and big, respectively.

Another description of the A-bomb's history (one that wouldn't put me to sleep in the first five seconds) would describe what the bomb really did, i.e. caused the world to open its collective eyes and see the fragility of life, along with the realization of how much destructive power humanity had at its disposal. 

Instead of hearing the fine details of A-bomb history, I had always thought that it would be interesting to talk to someone who had worked on the Manhattan Project.  I'm curious about their moral concerns with their task, one that affected the entire world.  Because of this curiosity, I was very interested when I learned that the subject of my interview, Roger Spencer, worked on biological weapons during WW II and I was fascinated by the perspective that working on weapons of mass destruction gave him. 

Being raised on a family farm in Kansas gave Roger a love of animals and led him to consider pursuing a career in veterinary medicine. Eventually this interest led Roger to graduate from the University of Wisconsin and earn a Ph.D. in Veterinary Pathology.  After the war, Roger was able to fulfill one of his ambitions by becoming a professor of veterinary pathology for several decades, as well as serving as Department Chair at Washington State University for eighteen years. 

Prior to the war, Roger worked on brucellosis, a disease that affects cows and humans.  When the draft began in earnest after Pearl Harbor, Roger Spencer was deferred due to his being married, but the military was in need of more men in 1944 and Roger was up for the draft; so he volunteered in the Navy.  He applied to Officer Candidate School, was accepted, and began his officer training.  Originally, the Navy planned to have Roger aid in an invasion of the Philippines, but once they learned of his scientific training and knowledge, the decision was made to put him to work producing biological warfare weapons. 

During his research for the military, Roger worked on developing agents of anthrax, rabbit fever, and brucellosis that would be deadly to humans.  At the same time he was becoming a better scientist by learning from his co-workers. 

While biological weapons were never used during WW II, they still raise a number of ethical questions.  All weapons are designed to kill or injure people, but biological weapons generally do so in a particularly nasty fashion, such as suffocating their victims. 

One of the questions I brought into this interview was "What justification, if any, would warrant the use of biological weaponry?"  While I expected Roger not to be very gung-ho about using biological weapons nor to be completely opposed to them, I was still pleasantly surprised by his well thought-out response. 

Although he said,  "Weapons of mass destruction now make war so terrible it's hard to contemplate," he resisted making any extremely general statements on whether weapons of mass destruction should ever be used.  Instead, he dealt with the question point by point, saying that there was a need for us to protect ourselves, and that in this case, what we were protecting ourselves from was worse than what we were prepared to protect ourselves with. 

Roger certainly didn't feel that using a great force would be justified for anything other than a great reason.  He cited the wars in Korea and Vietnam as being "terrible mistakes" where the United States overstepped its bounds, resulting in many unnecessary deaths.  "Instead of having a duty to protect other countries," he said,  "We should have a desire to, but we can easily go too far." 

Roger's other answers also impressed me with the depth of his thought on the issues I was asking him about.  I put a great value on the philosophical personality that constantly questions its actions, even if the conclusion is different from mine, although in this case I take a certain amount of pride in thinking along the same lines as Roger for the most part.  Roger said that a main cause of war is world leaders being overly macho.  To me this means that those leaders were acting on impulse rather than thinking it over.  I can't help but think that it would be safer to have more people like Roger in positions of leadership.