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Date sent: Thu, 04 May 2000 02:30:42 -0700
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Subject: SNET: Drug Control or Biowarfare?
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Talk of conspiracy; see Madeline Albright's attempt to control world and
Kissinger lurking in background, is he now cornerning market on drugs
USA Clinton Style?
Drug Control or Biowarfare?
The US is strong-arming Colombia into unleashing the latest weapon in the
war on drugs: a powerful new herbicide. But along with killing coca plants,
the toxic fungus may pose serious dangers to the environment and human
health -- threats so compelling that Florida has suspended plans to test the
fungus for its own anti-drug efforts.
by Sharon Stevenson and Jeremy Bigwood
May 3, 2000
The big American suddenly stood up, leaned over the table and said to the
Colombian in a low voice, "You�d better be careful not to talk to the press!"
Dr. David C. Sands, scientist and entrepreneur, was meeting with
advisors to the Colombian Ministry of the Environment last March to push a
new drug-war weapon marketed by his company: a special toxic fungus
which would kill coca plants. The Colombian scientist who raised Sands'
hackles had pointed out that the fungus could also attack humans with
weakened immune systems -- a condition common among the often
undernourished and generally unhealthy poor coca farmers and workers in
the tropical rain forests of Colombia, where Sands wants to carry out a
massive spraying program. "He didn't care," said the Colombian, who
asked not to be named. Sands is not the only party pushing this new
biological weapon. The US Congress is demanding that Colombia apply
the controversial fungus in order to receive $1.6 billion in emergency
bailout funds for Colombia's antidrug/counterinsurgency strategy called
Plan Colombia. Last March, Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., tacked on an
amendment to the pending aid bill requiring President Clinton to certify that
the Colombian government "has agreed to and is implementing a strategy
to eliminate Colombia's total coca and opium poppy production" using,
among other means "tested, environmentally safe mycoherbicides." Myco
= fungus; herbicide = plant killer. Steve Peterson, an official with the State
Department's International Narcotics and Law Enforcement division, says
they want to see mycoherbicides used because they would be "more cost
effective and more environmentally friendly" than chemical herbicides. The
trouble is that abundant evidence indicates that the only mycoherbicide
being considered for this purpose, Fusarium oxysporum, may in fact, in
massive application, pose serious dangers to the environment and human
health. Florida has put an indefinite hold on its plans to test the fungus for
its own antidrug efforts after environmentalists and a state official warned
that it could mutate, spread rapidly, and kill off other plants including food
crops. And for over a decade, coca growers in Peru have accused the US
of secretly applying the fungus there to attack coca plants -- in the process
also harming food crops and farm animals. Moreover, the fungus can,
under certain circumstances, cause lethal infections in humans with
weakened immune systems. None of this, however, has dimmed US
government enthusiasm for the project -- nor that of Sands' corporation,
which stands to profit if the fungus is adopted for widespread use. Years of
US-funded aerial spraying have so far failed to even slow Colombia's
thriving industries of coca plants, which produce the raw material for
cocaine, and opium poppies, which are used to make heroin. The country's
cocaine and heroin production has more than doubled since 1995. The
New York Times reported in early May that US-funded spraying of the
herbicide glyphosate (marketed as Roundup by Monsanto Company) may
have exposed scores of Colombian villagers to harmful toxins and
damaged nondrug crops. But the proposed Fusarium program, experts
say, could unleash far worse consequences. The UN Cover The
Congressional hardball mandating fungus use follows a less coercive
approach to push Colombia into playing guinea pig for the first real on-the-
ground testing of the toxic Fusarium oxysporum strain called EN-4. The
first approach was through a United Nations Drug Control Program-
proposed project to establish a research station to conduct field trials for
eventual large-scale application of the fungus. Although the UN
representative in Colombia, Klaus Nyholm, said the draft agreement is "not
what the Colombians want," it certainly reflects what the US State
Department wants and has sold to Congress. The proposed agreement
turns over results of at least 12 years of research by the US Department of
Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) to refine the use of fungi
against narcotic "weeds." The agreement openly takes political cover
under the UN umbrella. A May 1999 Action Request by Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright pushes the UNDCP to get ! other countries to ante up
"in order to avoid a perception that this is solely a (US government)
initiative." Which, of course, it is. "It was an American interest," said
Nyholm. "It wasn't my idea." Erythroxylum novogranatense, the coca
plant While the concept of using herbicides against weeds and
camouflaging foliage (such as Agent Orange in Vietnam) is not novel, using
them against crops is. Ironically, the great majority of research on
Fusarium focuses on combating it as a major food-crop killer. The soil-
borne mold infects crops by secreting toxins into their roots, which then
putrefy and dissolve the plant's cells, often eventually killing them, or worse -
- poisoning humans or animals who feed on contaminated plants or plant
products. The fungus can survive in soil for years. The idea of using a
fungal herbicide to kill drug plants began in the 1970s after a fungus, later
identified as EN-4, began to kill off the coca at a soft drink research
plantation in Kauai, Hawaii. In 1986, the ARS began a full-blown research
project, classified for a time, to find a biological agent to kill coca. By
1991, the government had invested at least $14 million in it. Congress has
now given the State Department $23 million originally slated for
mycoherbicide development in the US, which State plans to pass on to the
UN. By getting the UN to take on the fungus project, the US not only gets
political cover, but makes it harder to get information about the program.
Unlike the US government, the UN has no Freedom of Information Act
guaranteeing outsiders access to official documents. The US Congress'
arm-twisting to make Colombia use the fungus even before it has been
tested for environmental and human safety raises the fundamental issue of
informed consent by the Colombian people. The program could easily be
construed as having a non-peaceful purpose, thus contravening the
international Biological Weapons Convention morphing it from "biocontrol"
into "biowarfare." While both the US and UN stridently object to the latter
phrase, the lack of independent monitoring and evaluation of the US fungus
development, the lack of media exposure to the project, and the classified
nature of the development program in its early years, leave serious
questions unanswered.
Colombia targeted When we visited Colombia in late March to research
this article, the UN proposal had already landed in the Ministry of
Environment, which must approve its use. At a meeting with ranking
officials, however, it became clear that the Ministry had precious little to go
on in making their decision. The Vice-Minister of the Environment and her
aides gathered around the conference table were asking us, the
journalists, to supply them with information. Neither the US government nor
the UN agency pushing the plan had given the Ministry the detailed
available documentation on the genesis and development of Fusarium
oxysporum that they would need to help decide if it were safe to apply.
Ministry staffers were reduced to trying to cull information from the Internet.
What they had found there was evidence that Fusarium oxysporum could
mutate to gobble other plants and could be dangerous to animal and
human health. Ministry advisers also told us that Peruvian organizations
had not responded to queries on the fungus epidemic that had affected
coca fields there. Since 1991, Peruvian coca growers have charged that
they have seen helicopters fly over their coca fields emitting a brown or
white cloud which caused their coca and food crops to die and sickened
their farm animals. Many of the farmers believe these helicopters are part
of an American antidrug campaign, a charge the US denies. Research in
1993 by a US-funded Peruvian scientist showed that many of the food
crops were infected by the same fungus species that had killed the coca.
There are many troubling aspects to the UN proposal. It maintains that EN-
4 already exists in Colombia, which is convenient since introducing a
foreign pathogen to the country would present a problem under
international law; UN representative Nyholm, however, says there is no EN-
4 in Colombia. The proposal admits that fungus development, large-scale
production, storage and application techniques for Fusarium already exist;
now, it says, all that's needed are "large-scale" field trials to compare
different formulations and application rates, and assess the environmental
impact. Yet it doesn't specify how they would measure the safety of these
trials. Nowhere in the draft is any non-involved stakeholder monitor
established to oversee research and development in Colombia. And while
the Vice-Minister says they have yet to approve the fungus, the draft
proposal and State Department "Action Request" both make clear that
someone in the Colombian government has already demonst! rated a
willingness to forge ahead, with or without the Environment Ministry's
approval. This is no small matter in Colombia, home to the world's second
most diverse biosystem -- one that is uniquely vulnerable to the potential
threat posed by the massive spraying of a toxic, mutative, fungus in vast
swaths of jungle. Will it really attack only coca? Department of Agriculture
research documents on the fungus explicitly avow that it is environmentally
safe and would attack only coca. But Colombian researchers and
scientists are far from convinced � especially given Fusarium's notorious
tendency to mutate. Colombia is no stranger to Fusarium, a genus that
includes several strains besides EN-4. "There's a group of scientists
who've been working [to combat] Fusarium here for a long time," said vice-
minister Martinez. In fact a major epidemic of one Fusarium strain hit the
flower growers in the plains of Bogot� a few years ago, and as a result,
growers could no longer plant in the contaminated earth -- they were forced
to switch to soilless hydroponics systems. US scientists also maintain that
the EN-4 strain will only attack plants within the genus Erythroxylum, of
which coca is one. But there are over 200 other plant species within that
genus, many of which are found in Colombia, which EN-4 could then kill
besides its intended target. Plants of the Erythroxylum genus are also used
by indigenous populations for medicinal and religious-cultural practices
would also be at risk. Colombian herbicide expert Luis Parra has "a lot
of doubts" about Fusarium. Moreover, a 1995 International Institute of
Biological Control report on the ARS fungus program admitted that non-
Erythroxylum North American plants under stress could be infected by EN-
4. Surprisingly, this seems to be the only research testing EN-4's ability to
attack other plants, Luis Parra, an herbicide expert recommended to us by
the American Embassy, oversees the glyphosate spraying of coca and
opium in Colombia, says he has "a lot of doubts" about Fusarium. "I don't
believe in the specificity of these organisms," he said. "It is very different to
apply an herbicide (such as glyphosate) that has a known and predictable
and undeniable risk, than to apply a microbe (such as a mycoherbicide)
where the risks are still unknown." Risks extend to human health While the
US continues to murmur its "environmentally safe" mantra, Eduardo
Posada, head of the Colombian Center for International Physics believes
that Fusarium can be devastating to people with lowered resistance due to
immunological diseases or malnutrition -- common conditions among the
farmers who often live near the coca fields that would be sprayed with the
fungus. "The mortality rate for people infected by Fusarium is 76 percent,"
wrote Posada in a letter to the Minister of Environment. He lists the
scientific literature indicating that Fusarium toxins are "highly toxic" to
animals and humans, and that the use of ants to spread the fungus
(research actually done by ARS scientists), could cause the ecosystem to
be affected much faster than imagined. None of that, however, appears to
trouble David Sands. Pecuniary interests? Presenting Dr. Sands Vice-
Minister Claudia Martinez was ordered by the Colombian ambassador in
Washington to receive Dr. David C. Sands, a professor at Montana State
University in Bozeman and the vice president of Ag/Bio Con (agricultural
biological control), a company that markets the fungus. He is listed as a
major researcher of the fungus in the UN proposal, and it was he who first
isolated EN-4 for ARS in Hawaii. Yet now he seems to be more
appropriately classified as a free-lance businessman, hawking his
company's version of a fully developed fungus field-ready for "precision
delivery from high altitude" application by large C-130 cargo planes -- as a
picture in his literature shows. Sands has no shortage of influential
contacts. Ag/Bio Con has retained a prominent DC consulting firm to lobby
on bills related to mycoherbicide development. The company's officials
include a retired Air Force General with a background in research; Sands
has received a Navy research award and has traveled with ranking US
government personnel to a similar fungus project in Kazakhstan and
Russia. Through his Congressional connections, he arranged a face-to-
face meeting with President Andr�s Pastrana in Washington last January.
Sands did not return repeated phone calls for comment on this article.
Sands received nationwide attention for Ag/Bio Con in spring and summer
of last year, when he -- along with Colonel Jim McDonough, a former top
aide to US drug czar General McCaffrey who had taken a new job as
Florida's top drug official -- tried a similar sales job to use another strain of
Fusariumto control Florida's burgeoning marijuana industry. David Struhs,
the head of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection, reacted with
a strongly cautionary letter saying: "Fusarium species are capable of
evolving rapidly...Mutagenicity is by far the most disturbing factor in
attempting to use a Fusarium species as a bioherbicide. It is difficult, if not
impossible, to control the spread of Fusarium species. The mutated fungi
can cause disease in a large number of crops, including tomatoes,
peppers, flowers, corn and vines, and are normally considered a threat to
farmers as a pest, rather than as a pesticide. Fusarium Fusarium species
are more active in warm soils and ! can stay resident in the soil for years.
Their longevity and enhanced activity under Florida conditions are of
concern, as this could lead to an increased risk of mutagenicity." Having
been rebuffed by the state of Florida -- failing even to convince the state
authorities to initiate a simple experiment in a quarantined test site --
Sands apparently set his sights on Colombia. Two scientists who attended
Sands' Colombia presentation said he first presented himself only as a
scientist, not mentioning Ag/Bio Con. When asked about aerial
application, they said he got flustered seeing they already had his sales
literature. His goal seemed to be to find four hectares anywhere to use for a
field trial. The US full-court press That goal may be within reach. With the
State Department pushing the UN and the US Congress threatening fund
cutoffs, the pressure is on and the stakes high. Two biologists who made a
case on Colombian TV against the UN proposal say colleagues have told
them to cool the rhetoric. One, who asked that his name not be used, says
he received telephone threats after his statements and is now watching his
mouth. "Various times I've answered the phone and they've said...they
know where they can find me, where I teach, at what times I go out and I
think that the country has enough heroes," he told us. In response to the
pressures, the Ministry of Environment has come up with a preliminary
counter-proposal, calling for back-to-basic research on "native micro-
organisms with biocontrol potential" in the coca zones. The proposal does
not rule out the unpredictable and dangerous Fusarium, as some scientists
have demanded. But it does call for a long, meticulous study emphasizing
safety over the expediency urged on by the State Department and
members of Congress. After all, why should the people of Colombia
expose themselves to a risk the people of Florida refused to run? "If we're
going to ask, for example, the Colombians to do something," said Andy
Bernard, spokesman for the Florida Office of Drug Control, "we ought to
have the guts to do it here as well."
Read the entire article here:
http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/coca.html Check out the latest from
the MoJo Wire and Mother Jones magazine at:
http://www.motherjones.com
------- End of forwarded message -------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Wingate
California Director
SKYWATCH INTERNATIONAL
Anomalous Images and UFO Files
http://www.anomalous-images.com
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