Invention and research BZ was invented by the Swiss
pharmaceutical company Hoffman-LaRoche in 1951. By 1959, the
United States Army showed significant interest in deploying it as a chemical warfare agent. As described in retired Army psychiatrist
James Ketchum's autobiographical book
Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten (2006), work proceeded in 1964 when a general envisioned a scheme to incapacitate an entire
trawler with
aerosolized BZ; this effort was dubbed
Project DORK. BZ was ultimately weaponized for delivery in the
M44 generator cluster and the
M43 cluster bomb, until all such stocks were destroyed in 1989 as part of a general downsizing of the US chemical warfare program. In 2022 a documentary film,
Dr Delirium and The Edgewood Experiments, was broadcast on
Discovery+, featuring an interview with Ketchum not previously shown.
Use and alleged use Survivors of the 11-12 July 1995
Srebrenica massacre near
Tuzla during the
Bosnian War claimed they were attacked with a chemical agent that caused hallucinations, disorientation and strange behaviour. In February 1998, the British
Ministry of Defence accused
Iraq of having stockpiled large amounts of a
glycolate anticholinergic incapacitating agent known as ‘Agent 15’. Agent 15 is an alleged Iraqi incapacitating agent that is likely to be chemically identical to BZ or closely related to it. Agent 15 was reportedly stockpiled in large quantities prior to and during the
Persian Gulf War. However, after the war the
CIA concluded that Iraq had not stockpiled or weaponized Agent 15. According to Konstantin Anokhin, professor at the Institute of Normal Physiology in Moscow, BZ was the
chemical agent used to incapacitate terrorists during the
2002 Nord-Ost siege, resulting in at least 115 hostages perishing due to overdose. However, 2012 study concluded that a mixture of
carfentanil and
remifentanil was used instead. In January 2013, an unidentified U.S. administration official, referring to an undisclosed U.S. State Department cable, claimed that "Syrian contacts made a compelling case that Agent 15, a hallucinogenic chemical similar to BZ, was used in
Homs". However, in response to these reports a
U.S. National Security Council spokesman stated, The reporting we have seen from media sources regarding alleged chemical weapons incidents in Syria has not been consistent with what we believe to be true about the Syrian chemical weapons program. It sees occasional use in biomedical research, for example to induce
Alzheimer's-like symptoms in mice. ==See also==