Milton Leitenberg

Milton Leitenberg is an American academic specializing in arms control. He is a senior research associate with the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), a division within the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.[1]

Milton Leitenberg
NationalityUSA
Occupationacademic
Known forexpert on arms control

He received a bachelor of science degree in biology and chemistry from the City College of New York in 1955. He did graduate work in biochemistry at Johns Hopkins University and Brandeis University.[1] After several years of research he taught at Vassar College, Northeastern University and Washington University in St. Louis. He transitioned to full time specialization in arms control in September 1966. In January 1968 he became the first American to work at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Upon return to the United States, he became associated with university arms control research institutes, and published a series of books and papers on nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and arms control.[1]

News agencies call upon him as an arms control expert, most recently to comment upon the possibility that the Covid19 virus had escaped from one of the two virology laboratories in Wuhan, China.[2] In a June 2020 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists he examined the evidence for an accidental escape of the virus from a laboratory. He concluded that such an escape is "a plausible, if unproven, possibility", as is the alternative explanation of a natural evolution in the field, and that the true source of the virus is currently unknown.[3]

In 2012 Leitenberg and Raymond A. Zilinskas co-authored "The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History". A review in the journal Microbe described the book as "a significant source document for microbiologists, policy makers, historians, and students interested in this important subject".[4] Tim Trevan writing in Nature called the book "an authoritative take on the Soviet Union's vast, covert and costly bioweapons programme" and "a major contribution to the field".[5] Michael D. Gordin said in The Historian, "This is a magisterial history of something that was not supposed to exist."[6] In a 15-page monograph from the Harvard-Sussex Program, John R. Walker said "Undoubtedly The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History will be the standard and definitive reference source on this issue for years to come... a thoroughly impressive achievement by any standard."[7]

Bibliography

References
  1. "Milton Leitenberg". University of Maryland. Retrieved 2020-03-21.
  2. Adam Taylor (2020-01-29). "Experts debunk fringe theory linking China's coronavirus to weapons research". Washington Post. Retrieved 2020-03-21. Milton Leitenberg, an expert on chemical weapons at the University of Maryland, said he and other analysts around the world had discussed the possibility that weapons development at the Wuhan lab could have led to the coronavirus outbreak in a private email chain but that no one had found convincing evidence to support the theory.
  3. Milton Leitenberg (2020-06-04). "Did the SARS-CoV-2 virus arise from a bat coronavirus research program in a Chinese laboratory? Very possibly". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Retrieved 2020-08-15.
  4. James A. Poupard (2012). "Reviews and Resources: The Soviet Biological Weapons Program—a History" (PDF). Microbe. 7 (11): 533–534. doi:10.5860/choice.50-3512. S2CID 151240342. Retrieved 2020-03-21.
  5. Tim Trevan (2012). "Military Science: The USSR's deadly secret". Nature. 489 (7416): 364–365. doi:10.1038/489364a. S2CID 4329448. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  6. Michael D. Gordin (2014). "The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History". The Historian. 76 (2): 409–410. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  7. John R. Walker (2012). "The Leitenberg-Zilinskas History of the Soviet Biological Weapons Programme" (PDF). Harvard-Sussex Program Occasional Paper (2). Retrieved 2020-08-17.
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