I was less then absolutely clear and you assumed too much. My “this” perhaps should have been “this use”. So, no, i was not saying that i thought the tool would be wonderful.
‘Fault’ is a particularly useless way to discuss these kinds of things. I am not saying we should ‘blame’ the tool, just that certain tool engender certain mindsets. Training helps (and is definitely incredibly inadequate here in the states), but we have to remember that we’re dealing with humans here and humans, no matter what their training, will fuck things up.
That’s not the weapon! I asked:
not, “Are the techniques used in creating biological weapons useful in other ways?” or “Did we learn useful things while creating biological weapons?”.
These, however, are reasonable points and are analogous to why i originally changed that from “nuclear warheads” as i remembered science fiction stories of using them for inter-planetary propulsion. But they aren’t tools that we just let anybody have.
There are tools that are more dangerous than other tools, either because of their instability, the likelihood of great harm from their mis-use, or the mind-set they help foster in their user. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t ever use them, just that we need to have caution.
