Royal Society Says Panel Needed for Bioweapons Treaty.

Great Britain's Royal Society (RS) has called for the creation of an independent scientific body that would help give teeth to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. The treaty, which came into force in 1975, has been called a paper tiger because it failed to prevent signatories such as the Soviet Union and Iraq from pursuing advanced weapons programs. RS argues that a science panel could advise governments on developing new countermeasures to threats and improving approaches for verifying treaty compliance.