| SARS, Bioterrorism
and the Media
By Alan Cantwell New Dawn No. 79 (July-August 2003) SARS in
China, SARS in Africa The new pandemic of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) should come as no surprise. For more than two decades health officials have warned about new diseases caused by “emerging” viruses. With each new disease outbreak we are reminded the ‘Big One’ will kill millions of people in the future. And with each new outbreak health officials blame Nature or animals. Many people seem reassured the number of SARS cases is still small when compared to the world population. As of May 28, 2003, there are 8,240 probable cases with 745 deaths. The virus has broken out in 30 countries, although 90% of cases are in Asia. The death rate is reported at 12%, but in people over the age of 60, it can go as high as 60%. SARS spreads more rapidly than HIV. In the US it took 5 years for AIDS to infect that many people; in Asia it took SARS 6 months. Except for mild cases, SARS is unlike the common cold and flu. In more severe cases pneumonia rapidly develops, along with great difficulty breathing (“acute respiratory distress”). Some victims require a mechanical respirator to breath, and patients who recover are often left with lungs that are permanently damaged. Unlike the AIDS virus, which greatly depresses the immune system, the SARS virus stimulates it so much that the overactive immune system causes damage to vital lung tissue. The mysterious SARS virus, reportedly a member of the coronavirus family, is a new virus never before seen by virologists. The air-borne contagious disease, spread by droplets from coughing, is an entirely new illness with devastating effects on the immune system, and there is no known treatment. Certainly SARS has the hallmarks of a bioweapon. After all, aren’t new biological warfare agents designed to produce a new disease with a new infectious agent? According to the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, at least one Russian scientist has suggested a link between SARS and biowarfare, On April 3, the Russian Interfax-AVN news service quoted Sergei Kolesnikov, a member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, as saying: “The propagation of the atypical pneumonia [SARS] may well be caused by a leak of a combat virus grown in Asian bacteriological weapons labs.” Later, on April 12, Kolesnikov claimed the virus was a mixture of measles and mumps – one that could not occur naturally and could only be made in a laboratory.” This accusation was never reported by the mainstream media, but brings to mind similar accusations Russian scientists made in December 1985 when they concluded the AIDS epidemic was caused by experiments carried out in the USA as part of the development of new biological weapons. Amazingly, we are repeatedly reminded about bioterrorists and bioweapons, yet with SARS not a word about biowarfare. Certainly proof the media are controlled by powerful forces that refuse to recognise what many citizens are thinking privately, and posting on the Internet. The earliest April 2003 media reports detailed a mysterious lung disease (acute respiratory syndrome or ARS) that broke out in Guangdong province in mainland China, close to the island of Hong Kong. Shortly thereafter, I received an email describing similar epidemics of ARS with many deaths in the Congo and on the island of Madagascar, off the coast of Eastern Africa, in the summer of 2002. In the beginning of the epidemic, the Chinese scientists claimed the lung disease was caused by a bacterium (a chlamydia); Western scientists and the World Health Organisation (WHO) suspected a coronavirus. For anyone doing research, an Internet “search-engine” like google.com is invaluable. I typed-in “acute respiratory syndrome African cases 2002”, and quickly discovered WHO reports of ARS in the summer and fall of 2002. In civil war-torn Congo, there were 4000 cases of ARS reported in October 2002, with 500 deaths, making the death rate 12%. In contrast, the Chinese mortality rate from SARS was initially (and erroneously) reported as 3-4%. Even though the African ARS death rate was four times higher, the WHO added the letter “S” and termed the epidemic in China “severe” ARS (SARS). In Madagascar, another country torn by civil strife, the ARS epidemic affected 22,646 people, with 153 deaths. Both epidemics were believed to be caused by influenza A virus, although none of the cases were tested for unusual coronavirus infection. None of these African pre-SARS epidemics were reported by the Western media. Within days of the first April reports, WHO investigators claimed Chinese health officials were lying by covering-up the first cases of SARS that occurred in mid-November 2002. It is possible the ARS epidemics in Africa had nothing to do with SARS in China. However, it is well known that Sub-Saharan Africa is a testing place for new vaccines and drugs, and presumably for biowarfare agents as well. By April 17, WHO officially recognised the new coronavirus as the cause of SARS, and named it the SARS virus. Could the new coronavirus/SARS virus be biological warfare? No one in the media was asking that question. SARS, Genetic Engineering, and PubMed Along with an Internet search engine like google.com, the scientific information on the PubMed Web site (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/) is essential for serious biomedical research, particularly as a source for free information on genetic engineering and molecular biology. Sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health, the web site catalogs everything published in reputable scientific journals, along with the title, often an abstract, and an identification number (PMID) for each paper. One can also enter a researcher’s name (type in “Cantwell, AR”) or a phrase, and instantly access a medical and scientific library at your fingertips. If you enter “coronavirus bioterrorism”, PubMed refers you to one article; on google the same words give you 200 items on various web sites. When I typed “coronavirus animal experimentation” on PubMed, one article appeared. However, “coronavirus genetic engineering” referred me to 107 articles on scientific experiments dating back to 1987. I quickly confirmed scientists have been genetically engineering animal and human coronaviruses to make disease-producing mutant and recombinant viruses for over a decade. No wonder WHO scientists identified the SARS/coronavirus so quickly. Never emphasised by medical news writers is the fact that for over forty years scientists have been “jumping species” with all sorts of animal and human viruses and creating chimera viruses (viruses composed from viruses of two different species). This unsupervised research produces dangerous man-made viruses, many of which have potential as bioweapons. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho of the Institute for Science in Society cites a Journal of Virology report (Feb 2000) describing a method for inducing desired mutations into coronavirus to create new viruses. “A key feature of the procedure is to make interspecific chimera recombinant viruses. It involves replacing part of the spike protein gene in the feline (cat) infectious peritonitis (corona) virus (FIPV) – which causes invariably fatal infections in cats – with that of the mouse hepatitis (corona) virus. The recombinant mFIPV will no longer infect cat cells, but will infect mouse cells instead, and multiply rapidly in them.” (PMID: 10627550) Ho continues: “Manipulating viral genomes is now routine, and it is easy to create new viruses that jump host species in the laboratory in the course of apparently legitimate experiments in genetic engineering. It is not even necessary to intentionally create lethal viruses, if one so wishes. It is actually much faster and much more effective to let random recombination and mutation take place in the test tube. Using a technique called ‘molecular breeding’, millions of recombinants can be generated in a matter of minutes. These can be screened for improved function in the case of enzymes, or increased virulence, in the case of viruses and bacteria. In other words, geneticists can now greatly speed up evolution in the laboratory to create viruses and bacteria that never existed in all the billions of years of evolution on earth.” Ho asks: Why are scientists not held accountable like everyone else? The media constantly associate the SARS virus with a human coronavirus that causes the common cold, apparently in an effort to soothe the public. But they downplay the various coronaviruses which affect different animal and bird species and produce a variety of serious infections and fatal illness in various species of animals and birds. It is mostly these animal coronaviruses that have been genetically engineered. For example, there are three groups of coronaviruses. Group 1 contains the pig epidemic diarrhea virus, the pig transmissible gastroenteritis virus, canine (dog) coronavirus, feline (cat) infectious peritonitis, and human coronavirus. Group 2 contains the avian (bird) infectious bronchitis and the turkey coronavirus. Group 3 contains a murine (mouse) hepatitis virus, a bovine (cow) coronavirus, the rat sialoacryoadenitis virus, and porcine (pig) hemagglutinating encephomyelitis virus. According to Dr. Julie Gerberding, Director of the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, the genetic analysis and sequencing of SARS were not helpful in determining the origins of the virus. “Unfortunately the clues from comparing it to the animal viruses have not given us any real leads… We can’t say it’s a mouse virus or a pig virus, or any other animal virus, necessarily, because it just isn’t similar enough to the known species to be able to draw those conclusions.” In mid-May, experiments inoculating SARS virus into chickens and pigs were unsuccessful, indicating SARS did not originate in Chinese pigs and chickens, as theorised. Although proof of pre-SARS genetic engineering is easily obtained on PubMed, the scientific language of virology and molecular biology studies is very difficult to understand for the layperson. However, it is possible to get the gist of what is going on in this technology. In 1995, an abstract of an experiment details the species-mixing of mouse coronavirus with cow “mutant” (coronavirus) using these words: “Targeted RNA recombination was used to construct mouse hepatitis [corona] virus (MHV) mutants containing chimeric nucleocapsid (N) protein genes in which segments of the bovine [cow] coronavirus N gene were substituted in place of their corresponding MHV sequences. Our results demonstrate that targeted recombination can be used to make extensive substitutions in the coronavirus genome and can generate recombinants that could not otherwise be made between two viruses separated by a species barrier.” (PMID: 7636993) In another 1997 gene therapy experiment, scientists mixed cat, human, and pig coronaviruses, and adapted them to human kidney cells (PMID: 9367365). These are just two examples of thousands of gene experiments found on PubMed. One can enter “rat sialoacryoadenitis virus and genetic engineering” and be referred to 1424 experiments. SARS Disinformation, Racism, and Conspiracy Theory Media journalists never mention the genetic engineering of coronaviruses, and never suggest SARS could be a lab-made virus. With each new emerging disease, the same litanies are presented. Too many people crowded together, the crowding of animals and birds in food production, international travel that carries viruses far and wide, closeness to farm animals, climate changes, destruction of the rain forest, etc. Like the homophobia (and the green monkey stories) surrounding the early days of AIDS, medical writers parrot the subtle racist science provided by the WHO regarding the supposed origin of flu viruses. On May 19, Lawrence Altman, M.D., the premier AIDS writer for the New York Times since 1981, asks: “Did the SARS virus jump species from an exotic animal in a food market in China to infect a human? If SARS is an animal virus, did it mutate to cause a new virus? Did the virus somehow come from another human coronavirus, perhaps mutating into a deadly form”? Altman tells us, “the scientific search into the origins of SARS is mainly focused on the wild game and food markets in Guangdong Province…. an area where merchants commonly sit on stacked cages of exotic animals in food stalls, a setting that could easily allow for the transfer of a virus from animals to humans.” There is no reference to bioterrorism, or lab experimentation with coronaviruses. He notes epidemiologic clues, “and the Chinese practice of putting exotic species of animals on the dinner plate have led many scientists to theorise that SARS may have originated from handling or eating wild game.” And, “because the molecular structure of the SARS virus does not resemble that of any known coronavirus, scientists theorise that it may have come from wild animals that had never been extensively studied.” How can we deal with bioterrorism if we never seriously question whether any of these new emerging diseases are man-made? For example, the subject of HIV/AIDS as a man-made disease has been widely discussed in “conspiracy literature” since the disease became official in 1981. Yet the major media and the medical community totally dismiss this research as “conspiracy theory” or paranoia. (On google, “AIDS biological warfare” will refer you to 540 different Web sites.) My own two books on man-made AIDS (AIDS and the Doctors of Death and Queer Blood – available from New Dawn Book Service) have been ignored by the media, the medical authorities, and the AIDS establishment. Why does the mere mention of man-made disease bring up the spectre of “conspiracy theory” when, in fact, the production of genetically engineered infectious agents and the “introduction” of these agents into civilian populations are exactly what biowarfare programs are supposed to accomplish? How are scientists and journalists convinced a new biological agent is some “mutant” from Nature, when these same people don’t seem to have a clue as to what has already been created in the arsenal of biowarfare researchers and bioterrorists, as well as in routine biomed laboratories. How can any independent researcher of biowarfare secure information on the subject when all these programs are Top Secret, with workers who are sworn to secrecy under penalty of jail time, or worse. Because there is a blackout on secret biowarfare, it is necessary for the media to concoct all sorts of other explanations (most of which are eventually proven wrong) to explain the “origin” of these new diseases. Any conflicting theories are labeled “conspiracy theory.” When some classified government reports of civilian covert medical experimentation are released (usually after 30-50 years), these reports rarely make headlines. Decades after the fact, most of the victims of experimentation are dead and the story “old news.” One must assume medical journalists cannot conceive the possibility that some emerging viruses might be new biowarfare agents introduced into civilian populations for experimentation purposes, or for population control, or genocide, or for attacks against certain specific political, cultural, racial, or religious groups, or against so-called deviants in society, such as homosexuals. Emerging Diseases: Accident of Nature or Man-Made Illnesses? In the 1970s it was thought many infectious diseases had been banished from the industrialised world. But with the spectacular rise of genetic engineering over the last two decades, more than 30 new emerging diseases have appeared around the world. Some of the better-known diseases include AIDS, Legionnaire’s disease, toxic shock syndrome, Lyme disease, hepatitis C, “mad cow disease”, hanta virus, various new encephalitis and hemorrhagic viruses, Lassa fever, and Ebola virus. (New controversial diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome and Persian Gulf War Syndrome affecting Gulf War veterans are not included in the CDC’s list of emerging diseases.) After 80 years of steady decline in infectious disease, the mortality rate in the US rose 58% between 1980 and 1992. We blame this on increased global travel and globalisation, population growth and movements, deforestation and reforestation programs, human sexuality (in the case of HIV), and increased human contact with tropical mini-forests and other wilderness habitats that are reservoirs for insects and animals harbouring unknown infectious agents. But nowhere in the official list of causes is the fact that for years millions of animals and innumerable vials of infectious material have been shipped around the world for commercial and biological warfare purposes. In addition, we still have to deal with the “old” infectious agents, like anthrax bacteria, which are staples in all biowarfare laboratories. HIV/AIDS: A Designer Disease with a Laboratory Virus? In the 1970s, the decade before AIDS, the US Army’s biowarfare program intensified, particularly in the area of genetic engineering research. In 1971, President Richard Nixon transferred a major part of the Army’s Biological Warfare Unit at Ft. Detrick over to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Thereafter, secret biowarfare experimentation continued under the cover of bona-fide cancer research. During the 1970s the NCI’s Special Virus Cancer Program also brought together leading national and international medical scientists in a unified attempt to uncover and genetically alter cancer-causing and immunosuppresive viruses. The genetic manipulation of cells and infectious agents, as well as the mixing and transferring of viruses between various animals (including monkeys, chimps and other primates), resulted in the creation of many man-made infectious agents for research, commercial and biowarfare purposes. At the end of this decade a new immunosuppressive virus (HIV) was introduced into the gay community, the most hated minority in America. Some researchers believe this Special Virus Cancer Program, with its covert connection to America’s biowarfare program, spawned HIV which was subsequently seeded into the black African population via contaminated WHO-sponsored vaccine programs, and seeded into the US homosexual community via the government-sponsored experimental hepatitis B vaccine program (1978-1981). Not only was HIV introduced, but the virus that causes Kaposi’s sarcoma (the “gay cancer” of AIDS) was also seeded into gay men. These hepatitis B experiments in Manhattan, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, utilised only highly promiscuous, healthy white gay and bisexual men as guinea pigs. Shortly after this experiment began, the first cases of “gay-related immune deficiency disease” and “gay cancer” in the form of KS, first erupted in New York City in 1979. The idea of AIDS as a man-made virus is considered by most scientists to be a joke. Scientists pooh-pooh the idea of a man-made virus, even though the laboratory transfer of viruses from one species to another always results in a man-made virus. But man-made AIDS is no joke, especially to some American blacks. If you type-in “AIDS conspiracy blacks” on PubMed, it will refer you to a 1999 study polling black people who were asked if they believed “HIV/AIDS is a man-made virus that the federal government made to kill and wipe out black people.” [PMID: 10329334] The majority of black people questioned said “yes” or “undecided.” Interestingly, the higher the education, the more black people were likely to answer yes. The authors concluded that “the prevalence and health-related implications of blacks’ AIDS-conspiracy beliefs must be fully investigated.” There is a little-known reason why HIV continues to disproportionately affect gay men and bisexuals in America, and why it is predominantly a heterosexual disease in Africa. It is now recognised there are 10 different “subtypes” of HIV, which reflect differences in the genetic composition of the AIDS virus. Subtype B is the form of HIV existing in America; this subtype is not prevalent in Africa. (Another reason to suspect HIV in America did not originate from Africa and the US outbreak in gays was distinct from the African outbreak.) Subtype B in the US spreads more easily with anal sex and IV drug use, whereas the African subtypes spread more easily via heterosexual contact. Dr. Max Essex at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston has demonstrated that subtypes C and E infect and replicate more efficiently than subtype B in certain cells of the vagina, cervix and the foreskin of the penis – but not on the wall of the rectum. Essex contends these subtypes are spread more efficiently through vaginal intercourse. Subtype B helps explain why the US epidemic spread quickly among homosexual men and IV drug users, while in Africa and Asia, subtypes C and E have spread rapidly among heterosexuals. In my view, all these subtypes further suggest HIV is a manipulated virus introduced by the hand of man, rather than a genetically-diverse virus descended and derived from primates in the African jungle. In sub-Saharan Africa in 2002, there were an estimated 2.4 million AIDS deaths with 3.5 million new infections, and a total of 30 million people in the region living with the infection. Isn’t it time the scientific community asked itself if HIV could have evolved from lab experiments and vaccine contaminations, rather then everyone blithely going along with the dubious theory that “some chimpanzee in the jungle did it!” The New Epidemic of West Nile Virus in America SARS in 2003 follows in the wake of another unprecedented outbreak of West Nile virus in New York City in August 1999, which worsens with each passing year. The first sign of an epidemic of unknown origin occurred in early July when many birds died mysteriously. The virus has an affinity for some species of birds; and the mosquito acts as a vector to spread the virus between birds, humans and other animals. A few weeks after the bird kills, the first human cases of encephalitis appeared in local hospitals. On September 24, it was finally determined the virus was West Nile virus – a virus that had never been seen in America – and a virus for which there was no testing available in any New York state laboratory. Although the virus is contagious between birds, the disease is not contagious between humans. Only about 20% of infected people develop a mild flu-like form of the illness; but 1 in 150 people develop a severe form of the disease with mental confusion, headache, swollen glands, high fever, severe muscle weakness, and the tell-tale symptoms of encephalitis (inflammation of the brain). In 1999, the disease was confined to the New York City area, with 62 cases and 7 deaths. In year 2000, there were 21 cases and two deaths; in 2001 there were 56 cases with 7 deaths. In year 2002, the CDC reported 4156 cases with 284 deaths; and it is estimated as many as 200,000 people are infected nationally. Inexplicably, as of May 2003, the CDC reports no cases. Until 2002 the virus was confined to states in the eastern half of the country. By the summer of 2002, all but 6 of the lower 48 states reported WN virus in birds, mosquitoes, animals or humans. Shockingly, it was announced that WN virus was in the nation’s blood supply – and there is no blood screening test available to test for the new virus. There is also no treatment or cure for WN virus disease. West Nile Virus: Out of Africa? Or out of a Lab? WN virus was first discovered in 1937 in encephalitis cases in Uganda, East Africa. African cases tend to be mild, and the virus there does not affect animal and bird populations to any significant degree. In fact, the ability of the virus to infect and kill birds has only been noticed recently. Mild outbreaks of WN occurred in Israel in 1951-1954 and 1957, and also in South Africa in 1974. However, since the mid 1990s, outbreaks of increasing frequency and severity have appeared in Morocco, Tunisia, Italy, Israel, and Russia, and have been strangely accompanied with a large number of bird deaths. Scientists have determined the closest viral “relative” of the New York 99 strain of WN virus is a strain of WN virus that circulated in Israel from 1997-2000. Health authorities claim the virus entered the US via travelers from the Middle East, or via a stray mosquito on an airplane. Other researchers claim the virus arrived with African animals or birds placed in zoos. But, in fact, the WN virus has been housed in US labs for decades (along with African animals), and has been openly sold to researchers around the world. From the very beginning of the WN virus outbreak, there were rumours of bioterrorism, but these rumours were denied by health officials. Various new theories of origin still appear in the press. For example, a Los Angeles Times editorial (September 28, 2002) proclaimed that “scientists think (the virus) may have arrived in the early 1980s when Asian tiger mosquitoes traveled in tire casings from Japan to Houston.” (One wonders who supplies the press with these bizarre and undocumented stories.) On September 12, 2002, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy declared: “I think we have to ask ourselves: Is it a coincidence that we’re seeing such an increase in WN virus – or is that something that’s being tested as a biological weapon against us.” Leahy is no stranger to bioterrorism, having received an anthrax-laden letter at his Washington office a year earlier. Was WN virus deliberately or accidentally seeded into the environment? Could the new outbreaks of WN virus be a result of decades of animal experimentation and manipulation with the African virus? I discovered on PubMed, for example, that fragments of West Nile virus were spliced into cowpox virus in 1994 (PMID: 7958993). In September 2002, some WN patients developed signs and symptoms of polio, even though that disease is caused by a totally different virus. Another reason to suspect laboratory genetic manipulation of WN virus and/or the mixing of this virus in vaccine preparations. Secret US Military Experiments on Human Populations It is surprising the US government quickly eliminated bioterrorism as a cause for HIV, the West Nile and the SARS virus, particularly when the government has a long and well-documented history of radiation and biowarfare experimentation against its own unsuspecting citizens. In the 1950s the US military planned a project to cripple the Soviet economy by killing horses, cattle, and swine with biological warfare weapons developed from exotic animal diseases. The laboratory at Plum Island, off the coast of Long Island, New York, is the Army’s repository for viruses derived from the world’s most dangerous animal diseases. According to Norman Covert, base historian and public information officer at Fort Detrick, only a handful of scientists were aware of this project. “In many cases there were only maybe five people who knew what was going on in weapons research. People in one lab didn’t know what happened in the next lab, and they didn’t ask.” Details of these Plum Island animal experiments were classified as secret until 1993. During the 1950s and 60s secret military biowarfare attacks on unsuspecting civilians took place in many parts of America. The most notorious was a six-day attack on San Francisco in which clouds of potentially harmful bacteria were sprayed over the city. Twelve people developed pneumonia due to the infectious bacteria, and one elderly man died from the attack. This attack was not revealed to the public until years later when classified documents were finally released. In other classified experiments, the military sprayed bacteria in New York City subways, in a Washington D.C. airport, and on highways in Pennsylvania. Biological warfare testing also took place in military bases in Virginia, in Key West (Florida), and off the coasts of Southern California and Hawaii. In preparing America for nuclear attack during the Cold War years following World War II, thousands of US citizens were used as unsuspecting guinea pigs in over 4,000 secret and classified radiation experiments conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies, such as the Department of Defense, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Public Health Service (now the CDC), the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Administration, the CIA and NASA. (See my article “The Human Radiation Experiments: How scientists secretly used US citizens as guinea pigs during the Cold War”, New Dawn, Sept 2001.) The full extent of the US government’s experiments on unsuspecting people will probably never be known because many incriminating documents remain Top Secret or classified. Other documents are often declared as missing, destroyed, or “unavailable”, in an attempt to hide the truth from the public. Not only is the public kept ignorant of biowarfare research, but biowarfare “accidents” are officially covered-up, downplayed, and frequently blamed on animals. For example, the Russians finally revealed the truth about an epidemic of anthrax that caused at least 68 deaths in 1979 in the city of Sverdlovsk, 850 miles east of Moscow. The outbreak was officially blamed on eating meat from infected animals. In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin finally acknowledged the real truth. The cause was not “natural”, but due to the accidental escape of spores of weapons-grade anthrax produced by the nearby biowarfare installation. Why are all these Man-Made Viruses Being Created? The Human Genome Project has been heralded in science and in the media as a project to save mankind. By mapping and swapping our human genes, scientists are trying to save us from illness, cancer and genetic defects. However, it doesn’t take Einstein to figure out the same technology can be used to make people sick, as well as healthy. For obvious reasons, this fact is never mentioned. Molecular biologists claim these genetic experiments are needed for vaccine development, gene therapy, and disease cures. Most people do not know that animal cells are used in the development and production of certain vaccines. And with every new emerging virus and disease, there is big money to be made by pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, biologists, vaccine makers, the entire health industry, and stockholders. Health agencies, and international groups like the World Health Organisation, have close ties to the pharmaceutical cartels, who in turn are closely allied with governments and big business. Let’s face it: ever since the WHO took over the health of the planet, the health of the planet has steadily deteriorated. When my book AIDS and the Doctors of Death was published in 1988, it detailed the dangers of vaccines and genetic engineering and provided extensive circumstantial evidence that AIDS was man-made. In 1989 the book so incensed WHO officials, who were sponsors of the fifth international AIDS Conference in Montreal, they demanded the book be removed from the shelves of an exhibit run by the Highway Bookshop, thus effectively banning the book from the conference. Dr. David Heymann is the current executive director of the WHO
Communicable Disease Program. Back in 1992 Heymann was asked by Rolling
Stone’s reporter Tom Curtis if the possibly contaminated experimental
polio vaccines given to Africans back in the 1950s might have caused HIV
to erupt there. Heymann answered: “The origin of the AIDS virus is of no
importance to science today. Any speculation on how it arose is of no
importance.” (Quoted in Queer Blood, Government health agencies have little interest in uncovering possible man-made origins of any emerging disease because such an investigation could compromise covert biowarfare activities. The WHO is no exception. In reality, the WHO (in its own mission statement) “cooperates” with government agencies like the US Department of Defense, which funds the US biological warfare program. On February 12, 2003, while the Chinese were hiding the SARS outbreak, the US National Academies’ National Research Council issued a draft report estimating 11,000 people died from cancer related to nuclear testing during the Cold War. The government admitted that radioactive fallout exposed virtually everyone in the US to radiation and contributed to the cancer deaths. The study, performed by the CDC and NCI, has not yet been formally published. After a half-century, the “good doctors” finally admitted the truth. Further complicating the genetic engineering of the planet is the sale of deadly microbes to anyone and any country with the cash to buy them. From 1985-1988, Iraq purchased 70 shipments of anthrax, West Nile virus, and other disease-causing organisms from the American Type Culture Collection. Even after Hussein gassed the Kurds in 1988, and even after the Gulf War, US officials continued to supply Iraq with biochemical warfare ingredients. The CDC also sent West Nile virus and numerous other biological agents to Iraq during the years 1984 and 1993. (No wonder the CDC doesn’t want to investigate WN virus as a bioweapon!) On October 18, 2001, the CDC issued an unprecedented alert asking physicians to watch out for cases of smallpox, plague, botulism, tularemia, and even “emerging” hemorrhagic African viruses that cause Ebola and Marburg disease. Before the terrorist bombings, virologists were blaming animals in the wild for these diseases; now it is clear the more likely threat comes from crazy scientists and terrorists. Ignored by the media is a recently updated report entitled “Iraq and the West Nile Virus: A Possible Connection?” by the Centre for Defense Information (October 28, 2002), raising the possibility the West Nile virus was artificially introduced into the United States by Iraq in 1999 in order to test Iraq’s bioweapon capabilities and US defenses. “A Centers for Disease Control source told CDI the CDC is investigating the possibility that the appearance of West Nile was part of a coordinated plan to introduce biological weapons into the United States by Iraq. ‘We’ve been investigating that possibility pretty much since nine-eleven,’ he said. The source refused to provide his name, citing security concerns, as did other health communication experts contacted through the CDC public inquiry hotline, and added that he cannot speculate on any probabilities until further investigation is complete. A CDC media spokesperson denied these statements in a later interview. The CDC states on its Web site that although they do not know the origin of the virus, the US strain is genetically closest to strains found in the Middle East.” To this date, the CDC vehemently denies that West Nile virus is bioterrorism. No one yet knows how SARS started in China. Did the virus escape from a Chinese lab? It’s a possibility, but it cannot easily explain how SARS came to Hong Kong, where half the 600 infections in the city derive from one apartment complex (the Amoy Gardens). While avoiding the possibility of “super-spreader” bioterrorists, the media was quickly labeling certain SARS victims as “super-spreaders.” As in prior military experiments, all it might take for terrorists to spread SARS is an aerosol can or a specially designed suitcase, or a “gloved” box (the type used by anthrax spreaders) to infect an apartment building like the Amoy Gardens or a floor of a hotel, like the Metropole in Hong Kong, which also had a large number of SARS cases. Why would anyone want to infect China and the Far East with a highly contagious virus? Disrupting the economy of Asia would only be one demonic reason. Biological Warfare: Who Cares? Most people don’t give a damn about biological warfare. Even people who suffer from emerging diseases often don’t have a clue about research pointing to man-made diseases; and if you try and educate them about biowarfare and unethical medical experimentation, most people don’t want to know. In the nuclear arsenal of the world’s major powers is enough explosive power to completely destroy the planet. Yet strong nations are still not content and want newer and better agents of mass destruction and biowarfare. As time goes by, the “old stuff” gets sold off to poorer countries, and all of it is subject to thievery by terrorists and genocidal scientists. Biotechnology is wedded to world power and military defense; people who work in these fields are sworn to secrecy and whistle-blowers can land in jail, or worse. Government health authorities all have the same “official story” and their “expert” views are dutifully recounted by adoring media-controlled journalists. Contrary views are not considered. Researchers must rely on government or pharmaceutical grants, and trouble-makers with “politically and scientifically incorrect” views find themselves quickly out of a job and a career. How many more bioterrorism wake up calls are required before health officials stop looking in rain forests and animal populations for the origin of these new epidemic diseases – and begin to look at the world trade in deadly infectious agents and laboratory animals, and the insanities of genetic research, as reasons for our new plagues? Biowarfare agents are designed solely to maim or kill large numbers of civilians. And any country that is willing to employ and deploy these agents should be fully aware of the old adage: What goes around, comes around. So what does the future hold for us with all these coming plagues? Is it too late to educate people and get governments to start behaving responsibly by not supporting biowarfare insanity – and recognising it when it appears? The pessimist in me says “no.” The optimist says “maybe.” My spirit says our Mission here on planet Earth is to try to learn to love one another, and not to kill each other. Or is that just another silly “conspiracy theory”?
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