And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 19:21:27 -0400 >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (austin) >Subject: SMALLPOX FOUND IN ROGUE GOVERNMENT BIO ARSENALS > >Khwe Ish: >An article on the front page of today's (Sunday) NY Times: "Govt. Report >Says 3 nations Hide Stocks of Smallpox" >I don't have the energy to retype the whole thing, but feel its something of >interest to Turtle Islanders, (perhaps someone could scan it?)since 9 out of >10 American Indians died from this horrible pestilence, often deliberately >infected...And now the world seems to be gearing up for another round of >Cold War, this time with bio weapons. On Tuesday, the NY Times Science >section is running a comprehensive article on smallpox. This scares the hell >out of me. Native immune systems weren't much against this virus in 1492. >Who knows how they'll fare today? >Blessings...in lak ech, Laughing Crow > The following excerpts from the New York Times is the main ideas presented in this multi part series. Each section has further links on the pages. I agree with Laughing Crow, this may be something to seriously keep in awareness. the truth is no one under the age of ten (or perhaps even older) has been vaccinated in this country since it was declared eradicated in the wild. http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/061399intel-report.html By WILLIAM J. BROAD and JUDITH MILLER secret Federal intelligence assessment completed late last year concludes that Iraq, North Korea and Russia are probably concealing the deadly smallpox virus for military use, Government officials say. The assessment, the officials say, is based on evidence that includes disclosures by a senior Soviet defector, blood samples from North Korean soldiers that show smallpox vaccinations and the fairly recent manufacture of smallpox vaccine by Iraq. The officials say the warning was an important factor in President Clinton's recent decision to reverse course and forgo destruction of American stocks of the virus. Besides the United States, only Russia retains openly declared stocks of the virus now, nearly 20 years after the disease was declared to be eradicated. The intelligence assessment concludes that Russia is most likely hiding additional stocks of the virus at military sites. http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/060299anthrax-island.html By JUDITH MILLER OZROZHDENIYE ISLAND, Uzbekistan -- In the spring of 1988, germ scientists 850 miles east of Moscow were ordered to undertake their most critical mission. Working in great haste and total secrecy, the scientists in the city of Sverdlovsk transferred hundreds of tons of anthrax bacteria -- enough to destroy the world many times over -- into giant stainless-steel canisters, poured bleach into them to decontaminate the deadly pink powder, packed the canisters onto a train two dozen cars long and sent the illicit cargo almost a thousand miles across Russia and Kazakhstan to this remote island in the heart of the inland Aral Sea, American and Central Asian officials say. Here Russian soldiers dug huge pits and poured the sludge into the ground, burying the germs and, Moscow hoped, a grave political threat. While Mikhail S. Gorbachev was pressing his glasnost and perestroika campaign and warming ties with the West, intelligence evidence was mounting in Washington that the Soviet Union, contrary to its treaty pledges, was producing tons of deadly germs for weapons that the world had banned. The stockpile had to be destroyed in case the United States and Britain demanded an inspection, Russian scientists close to the program said. Vozrozhdeniye Island was a natural choice. Until the military left here for good in 1992, Renaissance Island, as it translates from the Russian, had been the Soviet Union's major open-air testing site. Today, Renaissance Island, which the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan now share, is the world's largest anthrax burial ground. http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/052599hth-doctors.html By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D. mallpox, the ancient disease, was eradicated 20 years ago. Smallpox, the virus, is on death row, frozen in two highly protected laboratories in the United States and Russia. Like lawyers filing last-minute briefs, American scientists have come up with new arguments for reprieve. Monday, with the backing of Russia and other governments, the World Health Organization formally bowed to their wishes and granted the virus yet another stay. In keeping with action taken last week, the United Nations subagency in Geneva said it would appoint another committee to study the arguments and help decide the virus's fate. It has now been put off until June 2002. By then, the Geneva-based organization hopes, the committee may have figured out whether there is any reason to keep stocks on hand. For example, research using the virus might yield drugs against the disease, or improved vaccines to prevent it. These would be of no use, in effect, unless some rogue nation unleashed hidden stores of smallpox virus in a biological terror attack, a prospect no longer regarded as outlandish. Or use of new techniques might decipher some of smallpox's distinctive features, providing clues to help fight other diseases. Ordinarily, such broad research goals would attract little attention until they produced important findings. But there is nothing ordinary about smallpox. It was one of the deadliest scourges, killing one in three victims, peasants and monarchs alike. The virus, known as variola, usually left survivors with deep, pitting scars on the face and body, and often blinded them. Smallpox was the first disease prevented by a vaccine, one developed by Edward Jenner in 1798, and it was the first and only disease to be wiped out, by the World Health Organization in 1979. Variola lives only in people. After epidemiologists tracked down the last cases and focused vaccinations on areas where they occurred, they broke the human-to-human chain of infection. The virus came to a dead end. Only the research stocks remained. http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/052299smallpox.html By JUDITH MILLER he United States and Uzbekistan have quietly negotiated and are expected to sign a bilateral agreement Tuesday to provide American aid in dismantling and decontaminating one of the former Soviet Union's largest chemical weapons testing facilities, according to Defense Department and Uzbek officials. Earlier this year, the Pentagon informed Congress that it intends to spend up to $6 million under its Cooperative Threat Reduction program to demilitarize the so-called Chemical Research Institute, in Nukus, Uzbekistan. Soviet defectors and American officials say that the Nukus plant was the major research testing site for a new class of secret, highly lethal chemical weapons called "Novichok," which in Russian means "new guy." The agreement to help Uzbekistan clean up the plant is part of wide-ranging cooperation between Uzbekistan and Washington since the former Soviet republic became independent in 1991. On Monday, American and Uzbek officials opened a series of meetings in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. Uzbek officials said in interviews earlier this year that, only after their country became independent, did they come to understand the legacy of pollution that had resulted from their designated role as the Soviet Union's major testing ground for chemical and biological weapons. "We were shocked when we first learned the real picture," said Isan Mustafoev, Uzbekistan's deputy foreign minister, in an interview in Tashkent last March. http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/052299smallpox.html NITED NATIONS -- Prompted by fears of a new outbreak of one the world's deadliest scourges, a World Health Organization panel in Geneva effectively decided Friday to postpone eradicating the world's known remaining stocks of the smallpox virus until at least 2002. Virtually all member countries said they remained committed to the elimination of the smallpox stocks as soon as possible. But the recommendations of the World Health Assembly, the organization's governing body, reflected widespread agreement that more time is needed to study smallpox before it is irrevocably destroyed. The assembly's recommendations are to be officially adopted next week, a step that officials of the organization said was usually a formality. In Friday's debate, representatives of 25 nations spoke, many of them reluctantly affirming the need for a stay of execution for the virus. It would be the third that the virus has received since the 191-member organization decided in 1980 to destroy the known stocks. Friday's resolution also calls for the creation of an international committee of experts to advise on the need for further research and to devise an eradication timetable. The decision reflects a major shift in scientific thinking about smallpox since 1996, when the assembly decided that the virus should be destroyed at the end of June 1999. It also highlighted an unusual consensus between the United States and Russia, the countries with the two remaining declared repositories of the deadly stocks. Washington and Moscow have publicly opposed eradication of the virus until more research has been done. http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/042399smallpox-germ.html U.S. Foresees Smallpox Research With Russia By JUDITH MILLER resident Clinton's decision to retain samples of smallpox virus in the United States is likely to lead to more scientific cooperation and biological research with Russia at a time of badly strained relations, Administration officials said Thursday. As expected, the White House announced Thursday that Clinton, acting largely on the advice of independent scientific advisers, had decided to delay the planned destruction of the samples of the deadly virus this June because he fears the disease, which is apparently eradicated, might revive naturally or be spread by a terrorist attack. The White House stressed that the decision was motivated solely by national security and scientific considerations, and on the President's conclusion that retaining the virus was "the best way to reduce the loss of life in the event of an outbreak," said David Leavy, spokesman for the National Security Council. He added that the Administration hopes that the reversal of its previous support for destruction would open up possibilities for joint research with Russia, the only other nation known to have smallpox stocks and a fervent opponent of their destruction. "We certainly hope to have a cooperative relationship with the Russians on this issue, and we have been working together to strengthen security at their facilities and on many other projects of mutual benefit," Leavy said. Specifically, he added, the Administration is "looking forward to working with the Russians and others at the World Health Assembly to build an international consensus on how best to handle this issue." The World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization, is to meet in May to consider destroying the remaining samples. The last known outbreak of the disease occurred in Somalia in 1977. Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980, and in 1996 the Assembly recommended the destruction this June of the remaining stocks, which are held under tight security at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and at the Russian State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Siberia. David L. Heymann, executive director of the communicable diseases division of W.H.O., said the agency would have no official comment until the issue is presented to the assembly. But he added, "We're happy to know at least where the United States stands." http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/012299germ-warfare.html By JUDITH MILLER and WILLIAM J. BROAD WASHINGTON -- President Clinton said Thursday that it is "highly likely" that a terrorist group will launch or threaten a germ or chemical attack on American soil within the next few years. In an interview in the Oval Office late in the day, Clinton said he had been persuaded by intelligence reports that the United States needs to bolster its defenses. "I want to raise public awareness of this," the President said in the 45-minute interview, "without throwing people into an unnecessary panic." He said he wanted Americans "not to be afraid or asleep. I think that's the trick." Without providing specifics, Clinton warned that any attack with germ or chemical weapons would prompt "at least a proportionate if not a disproportionate response." The United States has signed treaties not to use chemical or germ weapons. He made the assertions as the White House disclosed that the Administration planned to ask Congress for $2.8 billion in the next budget year to fight terrorists armed with such unconventional weapons as deadly germs, chemicals and electronic devices. Clinton insisted during the interview that his drive to expand the budget for these programs was rooted in the growing danger of such threats. Elaborating on some of the initiatives he intends to unveil on Friday, Clinton said he is weighing a proposal from the Defense Department to establish a commander in chief for the defense of the continental United States, a step that civil liberties groups strongly resist. Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
