Arms expert warns new mind drugs eyed by military

"LOVE AND CUDDLE" DRUGS
I can see where this style of weapon could be useful , But a "love and cuddle " bio weapon against the Taliban or Al qaida just does not make sense !
They already do a lot of hugging and cuddling amongst themselves !

GENEVA (Reuters) - A leading expert on chemical and biological arms control called Wednesday for urgent efforts to stop new mind-altering drugs developed for medical purposes from being adopted by the military for use in warfare.

In an article in the U.S. journal Nature, British academic Malcolm Dando said civilian researchers in many countries seemed largely unaware of the danger and urged quick action to adapt a key arms pact to head it off.

"In the past 20 years, modern warfare has changed from predominantly large-scale clashes of armies to messy civil strife," wrote Dando, citing the Bosnian conflict of the mid-1990s and current fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"LOVE AND CUDDLE" DRUGS

Fentanyl, a strong painkiller, Dando said, was deployed in a still unrevealed mixture by Russian special forces in 2002 to subdue Chechen militants who had seized a Moscow theater.

But its use led to the deaths of over 120 hostages among the theater-goers and Russian commandoes who went into the theater with protective gear shot dead the incapacitated hostage-takers.

Other agents being developed, said Dando, include oxytocin, dubbed the "love and cuddle" chemical which induces trust and whose emergence "opens up the possibility of a drug that could be used to manipulate people's emotions in a military context."

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