Dear ACFGenet, Ecofem, Sakina and T2k,
Bioarmageddon 1999
While I am intending that 1999 will be the advent of peace and
reconciliation, I think we had better look carefully at the known realities
before assuming too much:
*The principal wild factor driving the Iraqi arms inspections were the
culture media and bio-reactors for the bio-wafare program.
*US Government defence spokesman (tonight): "We have not been able to take
out Iraqi bio-warfare capability because that is something you can do in a
room this size".
Here is an example of the full scope of gene-tech bio-warfare: Bioarmageddon
We are all alarmed at the prospects of nuclear holocaust, but the potential
for a genetically-engineered biowarfare apocalypse is becoming realer by
the day. Genetic engineering opens up vast possibilities for splicing the
most pernicious viral genes between such holocaust species as HIV, common
cold, ebola and smallpox. Carcinogenic adenoviruses are already known in
cats. While some of these viruses have differing replication strategies
between DNA and RNA specialized and enivronmental niches, the possibilities
for inducing a devastating world plague to which a few progenitors of this
nightmare have selectively immunized themselves remains an almost unlimited
Pandorra's box. Bioarmageddon is a real threat which has been pursued to
the testing stage in Russia with the outbreak of accidental anthrax deaths
and in countries as contraposed as Israel and Iraq.
Biowarfare poses completely new cutting-edge incentives which emerge from
the very nature of genetic technolgy because it provides the macabre option
of selectively anihilating an entire population without making the habitat
radioactive. Services and detection for biowarfare are only at a vestigal
stage by comparison with nuclear defences and monitoring. Any serious
outbreak of even a conventional disease is likely to completely overwhelms
supplies of vaccines and medicines. The US currently holds 5 million doses
of smallpox vaccine, insufficient to contain a hypothetical attack. Of the
bacterial agents such as Anthrax, Russia has already produced specific
antibiotic-resistant strains, redering antibiotics potentially useless as a
defence. Research is urgently going into quick investigation techniques
using RNA analysis and rapid sequencing with the aim of developing some
type-matched vaccine within 24 hours of an attack with a new engineered
agent. Unlike nuclear and even chemical weapons, monitoring is much more
difficult. Detectors are being researched which might detect agents
directly from the air. Databases of disease outbreaks are also being set
up to provide wordwide monitoring for signs of non-compliance
internationally.
Marburg: A Tale of Russian Germ Warfare Research
"Ustinov had been doing basic military research on the Marburg virus,
studying its potential as a weapon. The long-term goal was to see if it
could be loaded into special biological warheads on the MIRV missaes that
were aimed at the United States. (A MIRV has multiple warheads, which are
directed at different targets.) At the time, the Soviet biological missile
warheads were designed to be loaded with strategic /operational smaflpox
virus, Black Death, and anthrax. The Marburg virus had potential for
weaponization, too. Marburg is a close cousin to the Ebola virus, and is
extremely lethal. Dr. Ustinov had been wearing a spacesuit in a Level 4 hot
lab, injecting guinea pigs with Marburg virus. He pricked himself in the
finger with a needle, and it penetrated two layers of rubber gloves.
Nikolai Ustinov exited through an air lock and a chemical decon shower to
Level 3, and used an emergency telephone to call his supervisor. The
supervisor decided to put Ustinov into a biocontainment hospital, a
twenty-bed unit with steel air-lock doors, like in a submarine, where
nurses and doctors wearing spacesuits could monitor him."
"He was not allowed to speak with his wife and children. Ustinov did not
seem to be afraid of dying, but, separated from his family, he became
deeply depressed. On about the fourth day, Ustinov developed a headache,
and his eyes turned red. Tiny hemorrhages were occurring in them. He
requested a laboratory notebook, and he began writing a diary in it, every
day. He was a scientist, and he was determined to explain how he was dying.
What does it feel like to die of Marburg virus? What are the psychological
effects? For a while, he maintained a small hope that he wouldn't die, but
when his skin developed spontaneous bruises he understood what the future
held. Dr. Sandakhchiev's cryptograms to Alibek were dry and factual, and
didn't include the human details. Alibek would later learn that perhaps
twice Ustinov had broken down and wept."
"The Marburg virus seems to live in an unknown animal host in East Africa.
... In 1967, the virus had broken out at a vaccine factory in Marburg, a
small city in central Germany, and had killed a number of people who were
working with monkeys that were being used to produce vaccine. ... I have
seen a photograph of a Marburg monkey worker taken shortly before his
death, in late summer, 1967 ... a stout man, lying on a hospital bed
without a shirt. His mouth is slack, his teeth are covered with blood. He
is hemorrhaging from the mouth and nose. The blood has run down his neck
and pooled in the hollow of his throat. It looks spidery, because it's
unable to clot. He also seems to be leaking blood from his nipples. The
final pages of Dr. Nikolai Ustinov's scientific journal are smeared with
unclotted blood. His skin developed starlike hemorrhages in the
underlayers. Incredibly-the Vector scientists had never seen this-he
sweated blood directly from the pores of his skin, and left bloody
fingerprints on the pages of his diary. He wept again before he died. Ken.
... . Dr. Ustinov died on April 30, 1988. An autopsy was performed in the
spacesuit morgue of the biocontainment hospital. If this was indeed the
Popp strain of Marburg virus-and who could say?-It was incredibly lethal.
It produced effects in the human body that were stunning, terrifying.
Alibek says that a pathology team removed Ustinov's liver and his spleen.
They sucked a quantity of his destroyed blood,out of a leg vein using large
syringes. They froze the blood and the body parts. They kept the Ustinov
strain alive and continually replicating in the laboratories at Vector.
They named the strain Variant U, after Ustinov, and they teamed how to
mass-produce it in simple bioreactors, flasks used for growing viruses.
They dried Variant U, and processed it into an inhalable dust. The
particles of Variant U were coated to protect them in the air so that they
would drift for many miles. In late 1990, Biopreparat researchers tested
airborne Variant U on monkeys and other small animals in special
explosion-test chambers at the Stepnagorsk plant."
"Marburg Variant U proved to be extremely potent in airborne form. They
found that just one to five microscopic particles of Variant U lodged in
the lungs of a monkey were almost guaranteed to make the animal crash,
bleed, and die. With normal weapons-grade anthrax, in comparison, it takes
about eight thousand spores lodged in the lungs to pretty much guarantee
infection and death. Alibek said that by the fall of 1991, just before
Boris Yeltsin came to power, Marburg Variant U was on the verge of becoming
a strategic/operational biological weapon, ready to be manufactured in
large quantities and loaded into warheads on mirvs. ... Variant U never
became part of the Soviets' strategic arsenal, which was stocked with Black
Death, Alibekov anthrax, and powdered smallpox. Never less than twenty tons
of weapons-grade dry smallpox was stockpiled in bunkers." (New Yorker 9 Mar
98).
Chris King
_____________________________________________________________________________
Chaos is the Mother of Invention - Necessity the Offspring
_____________________________________________________________________________
Chris KING, Phone: 0064-9-3737599 # 8818
Senior Lecturer Mathematics Fax: 0064-9-3737457
University of Auckland E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Private Bag 92019
AUCKLAND, New Zealand.
http://matu1.math.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/book/genesis.htm
"Genesis of Eden" - Alta Vista Search
