PROJECT ANTHRAX
By Alex Constantine
Parts I-V - ILLICIT HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION, WAR
PROFITEERING & STATE TERRORISM - SAIC, FORT DETRICK,
STEPHEN HATFILL, BIOPORT, ETC.
-
Part VI - VAXGEN'S DR. DONALD FRANCIS, CO-CREATOR OF
AIDS, THE THAI EXPERIMENTS & THE NEXT PHASE OF ANTHRAX
"VACCINATIONS"
The towers fell. Fear of a tiny spore gripped the
great democracy.
Emergency measures in a jingoistic package, under
consideration in the House of Representatives, arrived
at the same time as the Ames strain, and the emergency
measures floated through Congress on a cloud of lethal
white powder.
Right-wing propagandists stepped up to point out the
obvious culprit. Laurie Mylroie, a "conservative"
state propagandist, explained to CNN, "it takes a
highly sophisticated agency to produce anthrax in the
lethal form-. Not many parties can do that." Saddam
Hussein "continues his part of the war in the form of
terrorism. It is unlikely that that anthrax will
remain in letters. It is likely that it will be used -
in the subway of a city, or in the ventilation system
of a U.S. building. Saddam wants revenge against us.
He wants to do to the U.S. what we've done to Iraq."
This cover story didn't hold up under the tension of
scientific deduction, though. The true culprit - it
emerged after Dr. Barbara Rosenberg of the Federation
of American Scientists pestered the Bureau with facts
and public exposure - was an obscure, right-wing
biochemical warfare "counterterrorist." The serial
killer took his training at the NIH in Bethesda,
Maryland and other civilian-run, federal facilities,
also a two-year fellowship from the National Research
Council, the country's leading CBW defense lab. He
moved on to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute
of Infectious Diseases - USAMRIID - at Fort Detrick.
He experimented with biological responses to
filoviridae, the family of viruses that transmit
Ebola. In September 1999 - as the Jerry
Hauer-SAIC-Fort Detrick-USAMRIID West Nile Virus was
taking hold in New York - the terrorist began working
at the very same lab.
By March of 2002, it was clear that the FBI was
protecting him. Spokesmen for the Bureau were evasive
about the source of the anthrax but it gradually
emerged, by process of elimination and genetic
analysis, that the culprit worked at the SAIC facility
in Maryland.
CounterPunch commented a month later on geographic
connections that bore directly on the case: "The South
African media [have] been abuzz with details of that
nation's former biological warfare program and its
links to the CIA. The South African Nazi Party.
But some of Hatfill's closest friends maintained his
innocence. Stan Bedlington, a veteran CIA agent, told
the Washington Post that he'd known Hatfill for
several years: "They were drinking buddies who'd both
been involved in anti-terrorism efforts long before
the World Trade Center crumbled. Now, suddenly, people
were saying that Hatfill could be responsible for the
country's first case of domestic bioterrorism, a
release of lethal anthrax through the mail that had
left five people dead and 17 others infected in the
fall of 2001."
Bedlington had fond memories of Hatfill, though he
hadn't seen him for some time. They'd met at a
Baltimore symposium on bioterrorism. Bedlington had
spent six years bent over a senior analyst desk at the
CIA's Counter-terrorism Center. Hatfill was a
virologist at the U.S. Army-SAIC Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases, "where he'd begun
making a name for himself preaching the dangers of a
bioterror attack. Soon they ran into each other again
at Charley's Place in McLean, then a favorite hangout
for the U.S. intelligence community." Hatfill "showed
up there with men whom Bedlington recognized as
bodyguards for Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar bin
Sultan."2
To respond to intrusive media, Hatfill's friend Pat
Clawson served as spokesman. Clawson was a radio
executive who worked with Iran-contra's Oliver North.
Clawson, reports the Baltimore Sun, was a "former CNN
reporter who has known Hatfill socially for six years,
said he and Hatfill are part of a group of friends who
visited a house in the Virginia mountains near
Shenandoah National Park in October for a weekend of
skeet-shooting and socializing. The visit, in the
middle of that month, came at the peak of anthrax
hysteria, Clawson said. He told Hatfill that a few
weeks earlier he had opened a vitriolic letter
addressed to Oliver North, whose radio program is
produced by Clawson's employer, Radio America. White
powder had spilled from the envelope, which Clawson
discarded3
After Stephen J. Hatfill was named as the FBI's
leading suspect, the same ultracon media
opinion-shapers who had immediately blamed Saddam
Hussein now hustled to Hatfill's defense. Rupert
Murdoch's Evening Standard opined that his status as
"interesting" to federal inevestigators "inspired a
mini-industry of speculation that he may somehow be
implicated in last fall's deadly anthrax attacks.
[But] much of that speculation pretends to be
something more: certainty of his guilt, and certainty
that in every nook and cranny of his life must be
found some blot or scar or mark of the devil that
proves his guilt."4
Marks of the devil?:
• Bloodhounds found him of some interest after
snuffling a letter inside of envelope put there by
Hatfill, preserved in a hermetically-sealed bag. The
hounds responded to him alone.
• A return address on one of the anthrax-bearing
envelopes was Greendale, Rhodesia. Hatfill lived in
Greendale.
• The neo-fascist Selous Scouts in Rhodesia spread
anthrax. Hatfill was a member of the Scouts at the
time of the contagion's spread.
• Hatfill had no fit alibi for the days of the anthrax
mailings.
• Hatfill's PhD was forged. He was caught lying on his
resumé.
• He failed a CIA lie-detector test regarding his
activities in Rhodesia before the anthrax attacks. He
failed a lie detector test afterward concerning his
involvement in them.
Some of most damaging evidence was discovered in ponds
recently searched near his home. Items pulled from the
mud included a clear box with insert holes for rubber
gloves to protect someone working with toxic
materials. Also recovered were glass vials in plastic
wrap, and gloves.5
One wonders which expletive David Kay, the SAIC vice
president and Hatfill's boss, whispered to himself the
moment he heard that these items had been found - not
to mention a positive lab test for traces of anthrax
FBI technicians detected on these objects, later
changed to "inconclusive."6 But then, Kay was out of
the country, conducting a WMD "search" of his own.
-------------------
NOTES
1) Wayne Madsen, "Anthrax And The Agency - Thinking
The Unthinkable," CounterPunch.org, April 8, 2002.
2) David Tell, "The Hunting of Steven J. Hatfill: Why
are so many people eager to believe that this man is
the anthrax killer?' Evening Standard, vol. 8, no. 1,
September 16, 2002.
3) Scott Shane, "FBI defends anthrax inquiry,"
Baltimore Sun, August 13, 2002.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.hatfill13aug13.story
4) Marilyn W. Thompson, 'The Pursuit of Steven
Hatfill," Washington Post, September 14, 2003, p. W-6.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49717-2003Sep9?language=printer
5) See, The Biovangelist web site.
http://jdo.org/hatfill.htm
6) Ibid.
***************************************
PROJECT ANTHRAX II
By Alex Constantine
The epidemic swept through Zimbabwe, the former
British colony of Southern Rhodesia, in the late
1970s. It killed 180 people, infected over 10,000,
devastated livestock, brought on economic disaster and
widespread hunger ... but not throughout Zimbabwe
indiscriminately, as you might expect. Only in black
areas. This epidemic was respectful of gated white
communities and politely kept out.1
Stephen Hatfill signed on with the Rhodesian Special
Air Service (SAS) and the Selous Scouts, a
counter-insurgency death squad that enforced apartheid
rule, before arriving at the Godfrey Huggins School of
Medicine. Some of the faculty were curious why the
Yank would stoop to studying at a backwater academy
like Huggins.
His admission was arranged by Robert Burns Symington,
an anatomy professor and neo-Nazi. "Symington is
strongly believed to have worked with the Ian
Smith-led white supremacist regime on its biological
warfare project," Africa's Sunday Mirror reported in
2002. "The Zimbabwe authorities have since established
that [Smith's] security forces, particularly the much
feared Selous Scouts, stealthily distributed the
deadly anthrax spore among the hungry cattle of the
Rhodesian Tribal Trust Lands, where most Africans
lived, and seeded cholera into the rivers."
STURM UND DRANG (UND JURMS)
"Thirteen years after Zimbabwe's independence, a
former senior white member of the Rhodesian Security
forces admitted the use of anthrax in the war by the
military. 'It is true that anthrax was used in an
experimental role and the idea came from the Army
Psychological Operations,' he said." The psychology of
genocide isn't sophisticated - guerillas were
scapegoated for the outbreak.2
One of the Selous Scout's favored tactics was mailing
anthrax spores through the mail, embedded in the glue
on envelope flaps.3
Hatfill. You know the type. A student at the medical
school's radiation oncology department recalls that
Hatfill sported a 9mm pistol, and boasted of past
paramilitary glories in Vietnam and Zimbabwe.4
In 1984, he moved on to study at South African medical
schools, joined the military. While in the area,
Hatfill befriended Eugene Terre Blanche, leader of the
Afrikaner Resistance Movement, the South African Nazi
Party.5 After a year-long tour in Anarctica, he
pressed on to the States, and found employment at the
National Institutes of Health. "The PhD certificate he
submitted to NIH could have easily been tracked back
by authorities and exposed as a forgery," Marilyn
Thompson, author of The Killer Strain: Anthrax and a
Government Exposed, said in a blogged Q&A hosted by
UCLA's School of Public Health in 2003, "but it was
overlooked and Hatfill's credentials helped him gain
access to sensitive government agencies. USAMRIID
allowed him in as a contract researcher."6
The first casualty of the anthrax mailings was Bob
Stevens, a photo editor at a tabloid that had run an
article blasting the Saudi royals. From the CDC
report: "On October 4, 2001, we confirmed the first
bioterrorism-related anthrax case identified in the
United States is a resident of Palm Beach County,
Florida. Epidemiologic investigation indicated that
exposure occurred at the workplace through
intentionally contaminated mail..."7
It's within the realm of possibility that 911
hijackers Mohammed Atta and Ahmed Alhanzawi were the
first to contract the disease, despite FBI denials.
These have not held up well over time.
In March 2002, the New York Times reported that Atta
and his entourage "identified themselves as pilots
when they came to the emergency room of Holy Cross
Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last June. One had
an ugly, dark lesion on his leg," and "in October, a
pharmacist in Delray Bea ch, Fla., said he had told
the F.B.I. that two of the hijackers, Mohamad Atta and
Marwan al-Shehhi, came into the pharmacy looking for
something to treat irritations on Mr. Atta's hands."
Dr. Christos Tsonas thought Alhanzawi's wound curious,
but cleaned it and prescribed medication. "After Sept.
11, when federal investigators found the medicine
among the possessions of one of the hijackers, Ahmed
Alhaznawi, Dr. Tsonas reviewed the case and arrived at
a new diagnosis. The lesion, he said in an interview
this week, 'was consistent with cutaneous anthrax.'"
Dr. Thomas Inglesby of John Hopkins, and Dr. Tara
O'Toole, assistant secretary for health and safety at
the Energy Department, sided with Dr. Tsonas.
Thompson followed every step in the Bureau's
investigation, and she finds it entirely possible that
Atta and Alhaznawi had some contact with anthrax
spores: "The FBI contends that it pursued a hijacker
connection in the early days and be ©came convinced
that they were not involved in these mailings - mainly
because the anthrax strain used was a military
research strain. Many people in Florida, however, who
know about the hijackers' movements in that part of
the country in the months before 9/11, do not believe
the FBI pursued this with enough vigor..."
The Times: "In an interview, Dr. O'Toole said that
after consulting with additional medical experts on
the Alhaznawi case, she was 'more persuaded than ever'
that the diagnosis of cutaneous anthrax was
correct..."
It was widely reported that Mohammed Atta's cell took
flight school training in Boca Raton, not far from
American Media, Inc., where Stevens worked, and rented
apartments from the wife of an editor of The Sun,
published by AMI.8
Others continued the mailings after 911. The Times:
"They would probably have needed an accomplice to mail
the tainted letters.... The four recovered anthrax
letters we re postmarked on Sept. 18 and Oct. 9 in
Trenton."9
But the mailings weren't confined by domestic borders.
In November 2001, the CDC's web site in Atlanta
confirmed that a tainted letter had been sent from
Switzerland to Chile. Dr. Antonio Banfi, a
pediatrician at a children's hospital in Santiago,
received the letter. He suspected that something was
amiss because it had been postmarked in Zurich but had
a Florida return address.10
In 2003, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports,
Maureen Stevens, the widow of the first victim, filed
a wrongful-death suit that "could embarrass the U.S.
government and provide insight into the ongoing
investigation of the fall 2001 bioterrorism attacks."
The "embarrassing" lawsuit held that spores "were
known to be missing from an Army laboratory at Fort
Detrick, Md., as early as 1992," and that the
litigants "accuse the government of failing to
adequately secure them. 'The bottom line is that a lo
t of our [FOIA] requests were not acknowledged or were
not answered or responded to.'"11
Maureen Stevens' lawsuit was filed in Palm Beach
County Circuit Court. It named Ft. Detrick-USAMRIID,
Battelle Memorial Institute and other possible sources
of the anthrax - and BioPort Corp., of Lansing, Mich.,
a vaccine manufacturer.
The name BioPort is synonymous with mismanagement and
contaminated product.
The company was founded on June 22, 1995 by Yoav
Stern, a former avionics system officer specializing
in F-15, A-4, Mirage and Kfir fighter jets for the
Israeli Air Force. He was also commander of a flight
training unit, and a deputy squadron commander. The
BioPort web site reports that one Zive R. Nedivi has
been the CEO, president and a director of the company
since June 1995. Mr. Nedivi also served in the Israeli
Air Force and was the founder "of the predecessor of
the company, an indirectly wholly-owned subsidiary of
Rada Electro £nic Industries Ltd."12
Three of BioPort's directors:
Niv Harizman: A director of the Company since December
1997. From January 1998 onward, Harizman was a
principal with BT Alex. Brown Incorporated, the
investment banking subsidiary of Bankers Trust New
York Corporation. From June 1996 until January 1998,
Mr. Harizman was a Vice President with Alex. Brown. He
started with Alex. Brown in 1995.
General William Lyon: Retired Air Force general,
currently serves as a director of Board of Fidelity
National Financial, Inc. Chairman of the Research and
Development Institute at the Air Force Academy.
Most interestingly of all, on the BioPort board sat
another Iran-contra connection:
Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr.: A director of the
company since March 1999. From 1985-89, Admiral Crowe
held the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs
under President Reagan. After retirement from the
military in 1989, Admiral Crowe was a c eounselor at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington. He has also served as chairman of the
notorious President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board, 1993-94, and served as U.S. ambassador to the
UK and Northern Ireland, 1994-97. Admiral Crowe has
previously served as a director of Merrill Lynch,
Texaco and General Dynamics. He currently serves as a
director of Bioport, and Intervac, an investment firm.
He is a part-time senior advisor to Global Options
LLC. The admiral commanded U.S. forces in the Middle
East, was the commander-in-chief of NATO forces in
Southern Europe, and headed up the nation's largest
geographical military operation, the U.S. Pacific
Command.13
Lois Battuello dug into BioPort's financial records,
compared them with the inside-trade put option
activity preceding 911, and found a jostling for
position in financi tal circles that suggests
premeditation of 911 and the anthrax attacks: "Niv
Harizman was with Alex. Brown (BT for Bankers Trust),"
she points out. "This is the firm that executed the
'puts' prior to September 11 that plunged the stocks
of American Airlines, United Airlines, Boeing, some
brokerage houses, and several reinsurance companies
(some inter-locked) including AXA Assurance, Swiss Re
and Munich Re. These trades hubbed from Alex. Brown,
which was acquired with Deutsche Bank's acquisition of
Bankers Trust. The gent heading Alex. Brown unit,
Deutsche's trading-brokerage arm, was terminated
rather suddenly. Former director of enforcement for
SEC, Richard Walker, took a position as staff counsel
for Deutsche."
Niv Harizman "is a dark side," Battuello says, "on the
Chicago Board of Options Exchange (put into play by
First Chicago group, Robert Angelo Podesta) when Peter
G. Peterson (school under MI6) was Secretary of
Commerce in 1972-73 under Nixon. And Robert Podesta
was UnderSecretary of Commerce - both Chicago - pushed
through legislation to approve creation of Chicago
Board of Options Exchange. (Can't have options trading
as it exists in its current form without options on
equities to pair, i.e., can't have a bubble economy
without a bubble machine). Peterson, currently
chairman of the New York Fed, moved up the ranks along
notorious Chicago bank lines - 1985 sets up the
Blackstone Group and [Iran-contra's] Frank Carlucci
sets up the Carlyle Group the same year. Admiral
Crowe, following retirement in 1989, held board
positions at Merrill Lynch, General Dynamics and
Texaco, all very 'Republican' companies at the time
... "14
[TO BE CONTINUED]
--------------------
NOTES
1) Meryl Nass, M.D., "Zimbabwe's Anthrax Epizoodic,"
Bioterror: Manufacturing Wars the American Way, edited
by Ellen Ray and William H g. Schaap, New York: Ocean
Press, 2003, p. 29.
2) "Zimbabwean authorities have made several reports
that indicate that Rhodesians were using biological
warfare against guerillas during the liberation war,
but these have not received international coverage." -
Innocent Chofamba-Sithole and Norman Mlambo,
"Ex-Rhodesian under probe for US anthrax attacks,"
Sunday Mirror, July 9, 2002.
http://www.africaonline.co.zw/mirror/stage/archive/020709/national8599.html
3) Wayne Madsen, "Anthrax and The Agency,"
CounterPunch.org, April 8, 2002.
4) See, "The Anthrax Letters"
http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0208a/0208a-404.html
... This site offers a description of the covert
tactics of the Selous Scouts, "a wolf pack. A handful
of fighters would drop into the back country disguised
as rebels. Living off the land for weeks without
support, they would relentlessly track d down their
opponents and kill them, even if it meant crossing
into neighboring countries in violation of
international law. Their training taught them to live
off the barren land during their long pursuit on foot,
drinking fetid water and eating carrion scraps. Some
articles claim that they were responsible for two out
of every three enemy fatalities in the civil war.
Admirers and vets boast that the Selous Scouts were
the most skilled and ruthless guerrilla warfare
fighters in history."
5) See, "The Biovangelist" web site.
http://jdo.org/hatfill.htm
6) UClA Department of Epidemiology, School of Public
Health, "Reporter Interview on Steven Hatfill
Article," September 15, 2003.
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/reporterinterview.html,"
7) Centers for Disease Control, "Bioterrorism-Related
Anthrax: First Case of Bioterrorism-Related
Inhalational Anthrax i dn the United States, Palm
Beach County, Florida, 2001."
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol8no10/02-0354.htm
8) William J. Broad and David Johnston, "Report
Linking Anthrax and Hijackers Is Investigated," New
York Times, March 23, 2002.
9) Ibid. 10) AP report, "Anthrax Case in Chile
Confirmed," November 23, 2001.
http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/talk.environment/msg06625.html
11) Kathy Bushouse, "Security at Issue in Widow's
Case," South Florida Sun-Sentinel, September 28, 2003.
12) Alex Constantine post, "Adm. Crowe, Bioport and
the Put Option Activity," December 5, 2001.
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&frame=right&th=88439d0c0d6bf5d2&se
ekm=alexx12-65A234.12015319122000%40nntp.we.mediaone.net
13) CSIS web site:
http://www.csis.org/html/alumni/crowew.html
14) Lois Ann Battuello, e-mail exchange with author,
December 5, 2001.
*************************************
PROJECT ANTHRAX III
By Alex Constantine
BIOPORT
The stock market symbol for BioPort, inc. should be pi
- because its corruption goes on indefinitely, or so
it seems when you begin to sift through the records.
The company's founder and CEO is Mr. Fuad El-Hibri, a
German of Lebanese extraction and a naturalized
American citizen. In 1998, El-Hibri entered into a
leveraged buyout of the Michigan State-owned
Biological Products Institute (MBPI). This company
held the exclusive contract on the U.S. supply of
anthrax vaccine ... and it wasn't all that effective
against the disease, right from the start. The Wall
Street Journal discovered: "While its vaccine worked
well against the Vollum strain of anthrax (used by
Russia), it was more problematic against the Ames
strain. So it had conducted tests with the virulent
Ames strain on guinea pigs, mice and monkeys with
mixed results. BioPort's spokeperson confirmed that it
had access to the virulent Ames strain for testing on
animals."
For the sole purpose of acquiring MBPI, El-Hibri
became an American citizen. He gave retired Admiral
William J. Crowe Jr. a sizable share of Intervac, "one
of the corporations involved in the maneuver. The
controlling shareholder was the same I&F Holdings used
to take control of the British biotech lab, CAMR. He
then renamed the company BioPort. BioPort, which
controlled America's anthrax vaccine, was apparently
of some interest to scientists in Afghanistan since an
environmental assessment report of its planned
laboratory renovations turned up in the house of a
Pakistani scientist in Kabul..."1
Crowe made no investment in either company, but owns
22.5 percent of all Intervac shares. Another 30
percent went to El-Hibri's wife. In 1999, ABC reported
that the remainder of the Intervace shares were "in
the hands of I&F Holdings, a company directed by Nancy
El-Hibri's father-in-law, Ibrahim El-Hibri, a
Venezuelan citizen, and her husband, Fuad El-Hibri, a
German citizen of Lebanese descent. ... Crowe's
ownership of Intervac stock gives him a 13 percent
share of Bioport."2
The company's web site displays El-Hibri's bona fidés:
"Mr. El-Hibri helped establish regional offices in
Singapore and Sydney for Booz-Allen & Hamilton..."
Let's just pause it right there, because in 1990 Mr.
El-Hibri also arranged "the purchase of anthrax
vaccine for Saudi Arabia." Did he perform this service
for Booz-Allen, or the CIA? The well-connected
security firm, to be sure, had extensive ties to the
intelligence sector, and silky Faud palaces, too.
Students of the CIA know Booz-Allen as a privatized
branch of the Agency with Saudi defense contracts
worth billions. The company trained the Saudi marine
corps and operates the country's Armed Forces Staff
College.3 On 14 June 2000, the Pentagon's Defense
Security Cooperation Agency announced that the Royal
Saudi Naval Forces had begun a ten year development
program that drew on the services of two American
contractors - SAIC and Booz-Allen Hamilton.4 The FBI's
Dale Watson was a leading "investigator" of the 1993
WTC bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, the East
Africa Embassy bombings, Khobar Towers, USS Cole, the
September 11 attacks and the anthrax mailings before
he "retired" to work for Booz-Allen Hamilton.5 Former
CIA director James Woolsey is a vice president there.
" ... As a Senior Associate and resident project
manager, Mr. El-Hibri led consulting projects in
Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Sydney, and
Wellington. Before joining Booz-Allen, he was a
manager of Citicorp in New York (Mergers and
Acquisitions) and in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia."
All of this is more than grounds for investigation -
these financial bridges to the Middle East are, in a
sensible world, an argument for impeachment.
On January 26 2003, Bob Fitrakis wrote: "Let's recall
Bush's strange relationship with that bizarre little
company in Lansing, Michigan, known as Bioport. The
company, despite failing various FDA inspections and
being accused of bad record-keeping, holds the only
federal contract for producing the anthrax vaccine.
Bush has rewarded Bioport with favors such as ongoing
military protection, and within weeks of 9/11 granted
them a contract that tripled the price per vaccine.
Now, add into the mix that the Strangelovian
CIA-connected Battelle and Britain's top secret Porton
Down labs are partners with Bioport.... Public records
and foreign press reports have linked El-Hibri to the
selling of anthrax to Saudi Arabia after the Pentagon
refused to. He's also a business associate of the bin
Laden family. A real Congressional investigation of
Bush's relationships with the bin Laden family,
El-Hibri and the related drug bank BCCI would easily
lead to the President's impeachment."6
The ABC report was a horror show of rampant
side-effects produced by BioPort. Human agony was the
bottom line: ----------- 20/20 REPORT: WIDESPREAD
MISTRUST AMONG THE RANKS
PFC Matthew Baker who was stationed at Fort Stewart,
Ga. went AWOL after his first sergeant threatened to
have him strapped to a gurney and forcibly injected
with the anthrax vaccine.
MAJ Sonnie Bates, USAF, one of many pilots at Dover,
AFB Del. was headed for a court martial and up to five
years in prison until he went on "60 Minutes" and told
what was going on. Soon the Air Force scrapped their
hard-line tactics and Bates was allowed to leave the
service.
More than a dozen members of Bates' squadron came down
sick with a variety of illnesses. Thyroid and liver
damage, memory loss, bone and joint pain, fevers,
dizziness, infected cysts and lesions. The only common
thread was these maladies immediately followed anthrax
injections.
In a letter to the Air Force, Bates stated his
position was a matter of principle.
"I'm doing what I've always been trained and taught to
do. If you know it's right, you stand up for it. And
likewise, if you know it's wrong, you have to
challenge it, no matter what the consequences.
"After 13 years of exemplary service to my country, I
am willing to give up my job, my rank, and everything
I have worked for to avoid taking an unsafe drug."
Army SPC Kevin Edwards started to feel sick a few
weeks after his third anthrax shot. He nearly died.
Bleeding sores covered the soldier's entire body. Rep.
Walter Jones of North Carolina said he could barely
keep his composure after seeing pictures taken of
Edwards at an Army hospital. Jones is one of three
dozen congressmen calling for a halt in the forced
anthrax immunization program.
Texas Army National Guard CPT Jody Grenga, a medical
operations officer with nearly 18 years service, was
kicked out of the Army for refusing the anthrax shots
on religious grounds. The highly respected officer
said she also refused the immunizations because of her
medical history of adverse reactions to medications.
PFC Jemekia Barber, an African-American Army soldier
who was forced out of the service with a
less-than-honorable discharge after she refused the
shots, has filed suit in U.S. District Court in
Colorado. Her lawyers contend the mandatory shot order
violated Barber's Constitutional rights. Herbert
Fenster argued that because his client is of
child-bearing age, ordering her to take the anthrax
vaccine injections could subject her to risk of
bearing a child with birth defects.
Two former Connecticut Air National Guard pilots, MAJ
Russell Dingle and MAJ Thomas "Buzz" Rempfer said they
concluded the Pentagon's use of the vaccine was
illegal because of serious questions about its safety
and effectiveness. They said they were ordered not to
talk to the press, but refused, and with seven other
pilots in their unit, the 103rd Fighter Wing,
resigned.
More than thirty pilots and 17 KC-10 tanker
crew-members at Travis AFB in California quit rather
than take the shots. So did pilots in the Wisconsin
Air National Guard. And Air Force Capt. Clifton Volpe,
assigned to a VIP transport squadron at Andrews AFB
Maryland, is getting the boot for refusing to take the
controversial injections.
Perhaps the most eloquent of the military opponents of
the mandatory anthrax inoculation program is retired
Air Force Lt. Col. Redmond Handy. Named the "most
outstanding officer" in 1996 by the Reserve Officers
Association, Handy was a full colonel on "the fast
track to stars" when he quit his Pentagon job and
decided to speak out. Because he didn't have the
minimum time in grade requirement as a full colonel,
Handy put principle ahead of pay and left the Air
Force as a light colonel.
"It is appalling that Admiral Crowe, who was a key
player in the effort to let all U.S. citizens sleep
better at night by leading our defenders of freedom to
defeat communism, now keeps these same defenders and
their families awake at night wondering if their
health will be defeated by his company's product."
[TO BE CONTINUED]
-------------------
NOTES
1) Edward Jay Epstein, "FBI Overlooks Foreign Sources
of Anthrax," Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2001.
http://edwardjayepstein.com/archived/anthrax.htm 2)
ABC News, 20/20 (March 12, 1999.
3) Ken Silverstein, "Privatizing War: How affairs of
state are outsourced to corporations beyond public
control," Nation, July 28, 1997.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/silver.htm
4) GlobalSecurity.org, "Royal Saudi Naval Forces
(RSNF)":
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/gulf/rsnf.htm
5) Tom Flocco, "Terrorist's Name On Manifest Raises
Questions About Saudi Flights After 9/11," Tom Flocco
web site, April 4, 2004.
http://www.tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=53
6) Bob Fitrakis, "Impeach Bush," January 26, 2003.
***************************************
PROJECT ANTHRAX IV
By Alex Constantine
"'Our family has been through a living hell, to almost
see your 23-year-old son die-' exclaims Cheryl. 'The
government is wrong, and they need to take care of all
these people that they've hurt.' The Department of
defense says they continue to believe that the vaccine
is 'safe' ..." - Firstcoastnews.com
Fuad El-Hibri arranged investments for well-heeled
Saudi clients as a broker at Citibank's Jeddah office.
Tom Suber, a contributor to the Rouge Forum, a
grassroots Internet think-tank, reports that the
broker handled "the individual financial holdings of
the bin Laden family group and the larger $18 billion
Carlyle Group."
The bin Ladens and Carlyle are "reputed to have had
partnership interests with Fuad El-Hibri's Porton
International and Bioport investments. These
embarrassing partnerships are the result of complex
web of interlocking private corporate holdings and are
publicly denied by the El-Hibri family."1
Carlyle Management Group, of course, is America's
eleventh leading defense contractor, founded by
Iran-contra's Frank Carlucci, James Baker III and
George H.W. Bush.
Ties to the bin Ladens and Carlyle constituted one
"embarrassing" pact with the devil. Another was
El-Hibri's acquisition of the Center for Applied
Microbiology and Research (CAMR) at Porton Downs in
the UK, a government-held toxic stockpile-research
laboratory privatized by Margaret Thatcher. CAMR was
launched under private ownership - El-Hibri's - as
Porton International in 1993.
Porton Downs was the English mirror-image of Ft.
Detrick. Both military laboratories conducted
Auschwitz-style experiments on human subjects during
the Cold War. In 2002, Express reported that
scientists of the Ministry of Defense faced
prosecution "over horrifying experiments on service
men and women during chemical and biological weapons
tests."
Subjects were duped into volunteering, led to believe
that the military doctors were searching for an
innocuous "cold cure." The guinea-pigs said they were
"impregnated with deadly chemical agents such as sarin
and mustard gas." Ronald Maddison, a volunteer airman,
died after a cloth treated with sarin was wrapped
round his arm. Another subject said he was coerced to
participate "under threat of court martial. During
three nightmare weeks at the center, he said he was
stripped to his underpants and marched repeatedly into
gas chambers where he was impregnated with sarin,
tabin and mustard gas."2
El-Hibri inherited a horror factory, and this it
remained. By 1996, Suber says, "the rape of the public
resources of Great Britain was virtually complete,"
speaking of the "conservative" agenda behind
privatization. The profit-lusting "interests of the
Saudis and the Carlyle Group began to look to the
United States for more promising plunder."
Michigan Governor John Engler was urged by fellow
Republicans to privatize the state-owned vaccination
lab - exactly as Thatcher had done with CAMR. It was
renamed the Michigan Biologics Products Institute.
"Governor Engler gave the most respectable and
profitable agency in Michigan government to Fuad
El-Hibri without any individual investment
whatsoever," Suber writes. The new owners "incurred no
individual expense, made no investments, and did not
owe any individual promissory notes or obligations of
any kind for their new lab purchase. Receipt of a $180
million business for absolutely nothing. The next
hand-out the company received was an unsecured,
interest-free loan of $18.7 million as an advance
payment from the Defense Department."3
All this fuss and expense over a vaccine that didn't
even work against inhalation anthrax - it just made
people sick.
But homeland defense was never the idea, as Houston
attorney Linda Minor noted after scanning BioPort's
directors' page: "This group is obviously an
investment syndicate composed of numerous intelligence
agency members representing assorted countries."4
Bio-economic terrorism is the CIA's kind of
low-intensity conflict. Dr. Edgar J. DaSilva, director
of the Division of Life Sciences of the UN, says the
approach is predicated on "the undermining and
destruction of economic progress and stability" by
"the development and use of biological agents against
economic targets such as crops, livestock and
ecosystems."
Germs, bacilli and viruses have certain advantages
over conventional armaments - explosives and noxious
gases have to be explained, but viral agents are
plausibly deniable: "Such warfare can always be
carried out under the pretexts that such traumatic
occurrences are the result of natural circumstances
that lead to outbreaks of diseases and disasters of
either endemic or epidemic proportions."5 The Zimbabwe
anthrax outbreak, the West Nile Virus, conceived at
SAIC-USAMRIID, for instance. Add a trained provocateur
- a biochemical warfare specialist from a Rhodesian
death squad with a parafascist history will do - a
little media manipulation, and the result is anthrax
psychosis.
That's exactly what the collective response was called
in Argentina when a false alarm was tripped by a
suspect piece of mail. "Anthrax psychosis," an
Argentine newspaper reported, spread in October 2001,
"when a travel brochure mailed from Miami to a Buenos
Aires family initially tested positive." The spores
tested inactive the second time, but "within hours,
frantic citizens swamped police stations, hospitals
and all kinds of government offices throughout the
country with about 1,000 pieces of suspicious mail,
most of them posted from the United States or
Pakistan."6
The Ame strain did get around. The lethal dust was
found in mail rooms - in a Princeton borough - in the
Senate - in Dan Rather's CBS office - in a Kabul
factory - in New York City Hall - in a diplomatic
pouch to the US Consulate General in Yekaterinburg,
Russia - in the Supreme Court's basement mailroom - in
a letter mailed to Kenya - at the Bureau of Prisons
headquarters in Washington - at the broadcaster's
headquarters in 30 Rockefeller Plaza - on and on.
And the FBI, by focusing on Hatfill, gave the false
impression that the perpetrator was a lone gunman. He
had accomplices, ran with a death squad in the United
States as he did in Rhodesia.
The anthrax plot - as reconstructed by Leonard
Horowitz, Robert Lederman and other researchers -
began with the meeting at the White House regarding
the fate of OraVax, attended by representatives of the
company, the administration, and DoD officials. It was
agreed that the company, facing bankruptcy, would
receive a pass to inventory vaccines. The idea was to
allow OraVax to bail itself out with government
contracts, not murder.
But some of those attending this meeting were active
in our American Pinay Circle. One of them was William
Patrick III, President and CEO of Advanced Biosystems
Inc. (ABS). Patrick ran the anthrax "weaponization"
program at the Ft. Detrick-SAIC lab where Hatfill
worked. In 1999, Patrick wrote a study, according to
the Baltimore Sun, that discussed "the danger of
anthrax spores spreading through the air and the
requirements for decontamination after various kinds
of attacks. The author, William C. Patrick III,
describes placing 2.5 grams of Bacillus globigii, an
anthrax simulant, in a standard business envelope -
slightly more than the estimated amount of anthrax in
each of the letters that killed five people last fall
Stephen Hatfill, we learn, "is a friend and protegé of
Patrick, 75, a bio-weapons legend who has himself
experienced the dual status of expert and possible
suspect."7
"Protegé?"
[TO BE CONTINUED]
----------------------------
NOTES
1) Tom Suber, "3500 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd,"
Rouge Forum, February 2003.
http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/rouge_forum/newspaper/winter2003/SuberAnthr
ax.htm
2) Alun Reesand Cyril Dixon, "Scandal of the British
soldiers 'poisoned in MoD tests,'" Express, November 7
, 2000.
http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/pro-freedom.co.uk/n1020-d.html
2) Suber. Also see, The Subcommittee on National
Security, Veterans Affairs, and International
Relations of the House Committee on Government Reform
June 30, 1999.
4) Linda Minor, e-mail exchange with author, November
8, 2004.
5) Wayne Madsen, "Combining biological and economic
warfare," Online Journal, May 3, 2003.
http://www.911review.org/Wget/www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/050303Ma
dsen/050303madsen.html
6) Juan Pérez Cabral, "Anthrax, Anti-Semitism and
Anguish In Argentina,' NOVEMBER 9, 2001..
http://www.thegully.com/essays/argentina/011109_debt_default_wtc.html
7) Scott Shane, "Scientist theorized anthrax mail
attack - FBI searched apartment of expert linked to
study," Baltimore Sun, June 27, 2002.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.anthrax27jun27,0,3331733.story
*************************************
PROJECT ANTHRAX V
By Alex Constantine
"You simply don't develop a new hyper-weaponized
strain of anthrax powder for military defense, and
then commission the top U.S. anthrax expert to report
on this new weapon's capability and lethality from
mailed delivery, unless that's how you foresee it
being used." - Ingri Cassel, director of the National
Vaccination Liberation Association
-------------------------- The "conservative"
corporatists in the 911 loop seem to derive a
childlike thrill from their weaponized anthrax
stockpiles.
A "new and highly lethal strain" was produced in
advance of 911, a nameless Pentagon general told the
New York Times in September 2001. He mentioned
something called Operation Jefferson.1
What was "Operation Jefferson?" Before the anthrax
mailings, William Patrick went to work at the Battelle
Memorial Institute (BMI). Patrick holds five
classified patents in the manufacture of weapons-grade
anthrax. BMI - a contractual partner of BioPort -
hired him to conduct a risk-assessment study involving
the dissemination of anthrax powder through the mail
system.2 BMI is located in West Jefferson, Ohio. The
work was done at the BL-3 Anthrax Lab.3
Battelle had exclusive control of the Ames strain, a
fact the press has not made clear. It's true that
Dugway Proving Ground had an anthrax program of its
own, as reported, but Battelle directed that program
as well.
This narrows it down quite a bit... The FBI was drawn
straight to William Patrick III - Stephen Hatfill's
"mentor" at Ft. Detrick - and Ken Alibeck, a BMI
consultant with a background in CBW research for the
Soviets.4
One independent Internet news site reports that the
FBI investigated "the possibility that financial gain
was the motive behind the anthrax mailings." Two
federal laboratories were searched, BMI and Dugway,
but "a contradictory announcement was relayed the same
day (December 21, 2001) by Ohio Senator Mike DeWine.
Based on an ABC News report concerning a BMI employee
who had been under FBI investigation for an anthrax
threat, FBI Director Robert Mueller had, according to
The Dispatch, assured Senator DeWine that the bureau
was not investigating, nor intending to investigate,
anyone with, or formerly with, BMI."5
Case closed. The FBI's stalling perplexed reporters
assigned to the story. George Monbiot wrote in the
Guardian in May 2002: "Last week, I phoned the FBI.
Why, I asked, when the evidence was so abundant, did
the trail appear to have gone cold? 'The investigation
is continuing,' the spokesman replied. 'Has it gone
cold because it has led you to a government office?' I
asked. He put down the phone." Had the FBI spokesman
remained on the line, there were any number of related
outrages he might have explained: "The army's
development of weaponized anthrax [the processed Ames
strain], for example, directly contravenes both the
biological weapons convention and domestic law. So
does its plan to test live microbes in 'aerosol
chambers' at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center,
also in Maryland. So does its development of a
genetically modified fungus for attacking coca crops
in Colombia, and GM bacteria for destroying materials
belonging to enemy forces. These, as the research
group Project Sunshine has discovered, appear to be
just a tiny sample of the illegal offensive biological
research programmes which the US government has
secretly funded..."6
Some of the government's anthrax has been weaponized,
kills effectively but is otherwise useless. It is also
illegal. Ingri Cassel, director of the National
Vaccination Liberation Association, points out that
vaccines "are developed to help guard against
pre-existing threats." Ames was processed illegally,
"apparently for offensive military uses, sabotage, and
even terrorism. You simply don't develop a new
hyper-weaponized strain of anthrax powder for military
defense ... and then commission the top U.S. anthrax
expert [William C. Patrick, III] to report on this new
weapon's capability and lethality from mailed
delivery, unless that's how you foresee it being
used."7
Once the anthrax was weaponized - milled and capable
of airborne transmission - BMI ran a classified test
in the Nevada desert. This was in early September
2001. It was reported that Patrick's study on mailing
anthrax was instrumental to the test.
Was Stephen Hatfill recruited for the next phase of
"testing?" This appears to be the case and explains
the FBI's capricious explanations to the press:
"Operation Jefferson" is a federally-sanctioned covert
operation that would have never come to light had it
not been for the doggedness of independent journalists
and the scientific community. Wayne Madsen points to
past bio-warfare studies: "In 1957, at the Dugway
Proving Grounds in Utah, the Q-Fever toxin was
discharged by an airborne F-100A plane. If a more
potent dose had been used, the Army concluded 99 per
cent of the humans in the area would have been
infected. In the 1960s, conscientious objecting
Seventh Day Adventists, serving in non-combat
positions in the Army, were exposed to airborne
tularemia..."8
The West Nile outbreak and the anthrax mailings began
with the 1998 BioVax meeting held in the Truman Room
of the White House, attended by SAIC's Jerry Hauer and
William Patrick. Another participant at the meeting
was William Cohen, who, as a Republican Senator,
signed off on the heavily-spun Cheney-Hamilton
Iran-contra report. In 2004, he was elected to the
American International Group's (AIG) Board of
Directors.
AIG is part owner of Kroll Associates, the infamous
private security firm. Kroll - run by former CIA, FBI,
British secret service, Scotland Yard and British
Special Air Service agents - was once known as the CIA
of Wall Street because the firm did everything from
corporate espionage to the training of foreign armies.
A Kroll partner provides counter-terrorism instruction
in Saudi Arabia.
Cohen is also a member of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, the Cold War propaganda mill
and ultracon academic base of Ray Cline, John Hamre,
Admiral Crowe, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Kenneth Langone,
Henry Kissinger and others central to 911 and
subsequent profiteering through privatization.
Another attendee "of interest" at the 1998 Truman Room
conference was Thomas Monath, former chief of the
virology division at the SAIC-USAMIID facility at Ft.
Detrick, and VP/chief scientific officer at BioVax,
since renamed Acimbis.
Monath was a friend of Stephen Hatfill's. He was
introduced to Rudolph Giuliani by Jerry Hauer, SAIC
scientist and president of Rockefeller University -
the fruits of this relationship were the aerial
spraying of malathion, resmethrin or sumithrin in the
New York City area.9 Nevertheless, the mosquito-borne
disease has spread across the country.
The anthrax scourge also recurs from time to time. An
increasingly feasible theory for the origin of Gulf
War Syndrome is military experimentation with anthrax
vaccines. Were the following incidents further "tests"
of anthrax delivery systems by the
"counter-terrorists" at SAIC-Ft. Detrick? ...
A) Exposure at a children's hospital blamed on an
"accidental" shipment of live spores from the Southern
Research Institute in Frederick, Maryland. BioPort
director David Franz comes from SRI (a leading
producer of depleted uranium):
http://www.nvo.com/shildtfinancial/sv003data/view.nhtml?profile=sv003data&UI
D=12056
Researchers Exposed To Anthrax Health Highlights June
7 to June 13, 2004
A possible shipping mistake in late May resulted in at
least half a dozen researchers at Children's Hospital
Oakland Research Institute being exposed to live
anthrax.
Some of the researchers, working on an anthrax
vaccine, handled the live anthrax bacterium and others
were present at the time. So far, none have shown any
signs of illness. Seven of the workers are taking the
antibiotic Cipro as a precautionary measure, the
Oakland Tribune reported.
State health officials said there is no risk to other
staff or residents living in the area.
The researchers believed they were handling a dead
sample of the anthrax bacterium. However, according to
hospital officials, the researchers were mistakenly
sent live anthrax by the supplier, Southern Research
Institute of Frederick, Md.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is
investigating the incident.
B) Anthrax-Contaminated Heroin
Anthrax clue to heroin deaths Times of London May 18
2000 By Helen Rumbelow, medical reporter ANTHRAX, a
virulent disease used as a biological weapon, could be
responsible for a spate of deaths among heroin addicts
in Scotland, it was disclosed yesterday.
Ten heroin users in Glasgow and one in Aberdeen have
died of a mysterious illness in the past three weeks,
which led scientists, who had heard of a similar death
in Oslo, to send the victims' blood samples to Porton
Down, the biological defence laboratory.
Two of the five tested so far have shown low levels of
antibodies to anthrax, suggesting that the addicts
were exposed to the disease through a contaminated
heroin supply.
Although the results are not conclusive, experts are
carrying out tests on the others who died and on nine
more heroin addicts who have come down with the
illness. One survivor still has the black scab that is
typical of localised anthrax infection.
David Goldberg, deputy director of the Scottish Centre
for Infection and Environmental Health in Glasgow,
said that tests were also being made for anthrax
spores on heroin batches seized by police in the city.
Meanwhile users were being advised to smoke the drug
rather than inject it, and especially not to inject
into the muscle.
He believes that the weak results in the anthrax test
may be because all the victims were treated with
antibiotics before their samples were taken.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
--------------------------
NOTES
1.) Nick Papadimitriou, "Anthrax Attacks Linked to CIA
and Drug Industry?" Institute of Science in Society
(UK), February 14, 2002.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews/i-sisnews13-12.php
2) Ibid.
3) Bob Fitrakis, "Battelle Exposed In Anthrax
Biochemical Conspiracy," FreePress.org, January 14,
2002.
4) Ibid.
5) Anon., "FBI Implicated in Anthrax Mailings
Cover-up."
http://www.worldnewsstand.net/news/anthrax.htm
6) George Monbiot, "Riddle of the spores: Why has the
FBI investigation into the anthrax attacks stalled?"
Guardian, May 21, 2002.
7) Ingri Cassel, "Public Health Expert Says Solving
The Anthrax Mailing Mystery May Be Easy: FBI Doesn't
Seem Interested," NVLA press release, Nov. 12, 2001.
http://www.tetrahedron.org/news/NR011112.html
8) Wayne Madsen, "Thinking The Unthinkable,"
CounterPunch.org, April 8, 2002.
9) See,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=printer_
format&om=5074&forum=DCForumID43
**************************
PROJECT ANTHRAX VI: - VAXGEN'S DR. DONALD FRANCIS,
CO-CREATOR OF AIDS, THE THAI EXPERIMENTS & THE NEXT
PHASE OF ANTHRAX "VACCINATIONS"
By Alex Constantine
Colonel David Franz was a cheerful
"counter-terrorist." He told ABC News on April 4, 2002
that a "lot of good" had come of the anthrax attacks.
Sad Sacks and Dreary Donnas may tremble because "five
people have died, but we've put about $6 billion in
our budget." Thumbs up. A sunny disposition can carry
one far in the military heirarchy. Dr. Franz was
appointed to the Homeland Security Science and
Technology Committee in February 2004 by Dr. Charles
E. McQueary (former president of General Dynamics),
undersecretary for science and technology at the
Department of Homeland Security.
Biological threats loomed on the horizon, the
Pentagon's viral visionaries assured with psychic
certainty. Peculiar, though ... read the small print
on the packaging and it's clear that the newly
emerging diseases and the vaccines created to repel
them hung in ... CLUSTERS.
Ingri Cassel comments, "Cipro and smallpox vaccine
have much in common besides capturing America's urgent
attention." Alas, the corporate parents of the
companies that produce "these favored elixirs for
anthrax and smallpox bioterrorism are linked,
strangely enough, to an infamous history involving
contaminated blood, the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), and even the Nazi [ties] that the FBI doesn't
seem anxious to explore."
Cipro is manufactured by Germany's Bayer AG, and "the
smallpox vaccine's newly formed producers are Acambis
[formerly OraVax, the West Nile people]. ... All have
jaded histories. The 'Big Three' - Bayer, Baxter, and
Rhone-Poulenc - are infamously known for having
infected more than 7,000 American hemophiliacs with
the AIDS virus during the early 1980s. They admitted
foreknowledge in selling HIV-tainted blood clotting
products and settled the class action case for
$100,000 per claimant."1
Two shrouded power bases of the Third Reich, Bayer and
Hoechst, were spun from IG Farben following World War
Two. Hermann Schmitz, president of Farben during the
war (which had partial control of the Deutsche Bank)
"held as much stock in Standard Oil of New Jersey as
did the Rockefellers," according to author Paul
Manning. He wrote that on August 10, 1944, the
Rockefeller-Farben group filtered flight capital
through "affiliated German/French, American, British
and Swiss banks 'for the new Germany.'" The reserves
secured "the sophisticated distribution of national
and corporate assets to safe havens" across the globe,
ensuring the continuation of the "Neuordnung (New
Order)" for the petrochemical, drug and banking
cartels.2
An upcoming distiller of the said "elixirs," joining
BioPort and Bayer, is VaxGen (owned by Genentech
((55.6%-owned by by Hoffmann-La Roche (((owned by
Roche AG of Switzerland, also an ally of Farben and
the German Reich))).
In November 2004, the company publicized a contract
under the auspices of Project BioShield worth $877
million over five years, with the government paying
VaxGen to produce 75 million doses of anthrax vaccine.
In addition, the company is to receive $123 million in
further payments from the government in late 2007.3
And it's just one more well-hyped boondoggle if the
history of AidsVax, the company's failed HIV drug, is
any indication.
On October 3, 1999, the Times of London reported that
before VaxGen went public, "the most important
government cheerleader for AidsVax" - Dr William
Heyward, head of HIV vaccine research at the CDC -
"had a SECRET DEAL to join the company." From the CDC,
Dr. Heyward "lobbied policymakers and approved $8
million in grants for VaxGen. But the company had
already drawn this chart on his future duties, and in
January 2000, he joined ex-CDC staffer Dr. Donald
Francis, VaxGen president, who also hired former CDC
deputy director Dr Walter Dowdle to head its
influential data monitoring board."
In US v William L. Heyward, prosecutors charged him
with violation of anti-graft laws. Dr. Heyward skipped
up the corporate ladder to a VP's office at VaxGen,
but eventually confessed to the flagrant conflict of
interest, paid a $32,500 fine "and escaped a
high-profile criminal trial that might have proved
devastating to the AidsVax project," the Times
reported.
Next thing you know, on March 17 2003, a class action
lawsuit was thrown at VaxGen. The suit claimed
securities fraud after Dr. Heyward wrote a series of
glowing reports on the potential of AidsVax that
inflated the stock price but proved baseless when the
drug failed its clinical trials.
A word about those "trials": As we shall see, there
was little that was "clinical" about them. Testing of
the vaccine was sponsored by the NIH, FDA, World Bank,
UN agencies and the International Aids Vaccine
Initiative.4
The tests were overseen by Dr. Donald Pinkston
Francis, president of VasGen, who, along with
molecular biologist Dr. Philip Berman, founded the
company in 1995. Dr. Francis, 62, was bestowed with an
honorary Doctor of Science degree from Harvard in
1979. Since 1978, he has been chief of the
epidemiology division at the Hepatitis Labs Division
of the CDC. Under the auspices of the Agency for
International Development (AID), he served as an
epidemiologist in Rivers State, Nigeria (1971). He was
American "epidemiological intelligence service
officer" at the CDC (1971-73).(In And The Band Played
On, Randy Shilts's 1987 Aids book, Dr. Francis is
found on no less than 76 pages, a driven, scolding, at
times hysterical presence. In the movie, he's played
by Full Metal Jacket's Matthew Modine."5)
Dr. Leonard Horowitz, an indepenent authority on
public health education and the origins of AIDS,
writes that Dr. Francis had "intimate connections to
the U.S. Government agencies, programs and people
(including Max Essex and Robert Gallo) that CREATED
numerous AIDS-like and Ebola-like viruses during the
'Special Virus Cancer Program' of the late 1960s and
early 1970s..."6
Dr. Francis is one of the instigators of Aids, as
Horowitz deconstructs the history of the disease under
the Neuordnung.7
The London Times detailed the "clinical trials"
conducted by Dr. Francis's team in Thailand. As Dr.
Heyward sees it, "only through such trials will
further knowledge be gained". Thumbs up.
Excerpt:
AIDSVAX: THE VAXGEN EXPERIMENT The Sunday Times
Magazine (UK) October 3, 1999 By Brian Deer
... At first glance, Thailand is a strange location to
carry out medical trials.... Corruption is de
rigeueur, while police are accused by Amnesty
International of "extra-judicial killings". Much of
its profile relies on sex: first with young women and
later with children.
Since the coup, however, quick cheap, experiments on
the Thai population have been added to the country's
attractions. Dozens of projects are currently in
progress, run by foreign pharmaceutical companies and
sponsored by the CDC and WHO. With an estimated
800,000 Thais infected with HIV, Aids is the big one,
with tests of drugs, immune-system stimulants, and top
of the list Francis's AidsVax trial.
It makes sense to test products where the risk of Aids
is greatest, but my attention was drawn to potential
problems during a conference in a Bangkok hotel. The
topic was Aids vaccines. Francis spoke. And a doctor
pointed out that some volunteers in an AZT trial were
mothers from remote hill tribes. "They come across the
border from Burma." he said. "They don't speak Thai,
so there is the question of whether they can
understand enough to give informed consent."
The question was brushed aside ("They keep coming
back.") and might not have meant much if I hadn't also
met an activist from the northern town of Chiang Mai.
Despite grilling 11 people who swallowed tablets
daily, he complained that he couldn't discover even
the name of the product or the pharmaceutical company
involved. This man was a former heroin user, so I
asked him where VaxGen was recruiting. "Go to Khlong
Toei," he said. "By Port Authority Building. That's
where they'll get people for the trial."
Khlong Toei is a slum; a sewage-stinking wasteland; a
cauldron of disease and drug use. The better-off live
in concrete hutches, with wire-fenced windows and
balconies. Next down in the social scale are
wooden-shack coops on plots of flood-prone ground.
Then there are kennels: festering shantytown alleys of
plank, sheet-iron and debris sheds. The "streets" are
dim corridors, with boardwalk floors, cluttered with
children and dogs. At night frail figures shuffle
around, suffering from Aids, tuberculosis or both.
Thailand was once praised for anti-HIV efforts in
disease hot zones such as this. But evidence suggests
that since the 1992 coup priorities have changed. In
1992, a health minister complained that talk about the
virus had "seriously affected tourism". And now,
official figures show that Aids prevention has been
slashed by one third against comparable public health
programmes.
The biggest cuts have been in initiatives aimed
specifically at drug misusers. "There used to be a
project for clean needles in the early 90s, but now
it's gone," a spokeswoman for a Khlong Toei charity,
the Duang Prateep Foundation, told me....
Nobody could explain the thinking, but the effect on
the junkies can be measured. Blood tests reveal that
HIV prevalence peaked among female prostitutes in 1993
- when 30% were positive - and has since fallen back
to 21%. Among rent boys, prevalence peaked in the
following year at 18%, and is now half that figure.
But prevalence among heroin-injectors has leapt from
31% in 1994 to a staggering 47% now.
Were these changes evidence that the government were
allowing the junkies to be put at greater risk to make
them useful for experiments? (Health department
officials told me that if AidsVax is marketed, they
expect a billion-dollar manufacturing plant.) I
couldn't find out. People wouldn't talk when I raised
such contentious concerns. Even Bangkok's Medicines
Sans Frontieres staff went silent when asked about the
trial.
Francis is convinced that nothing is amiss, and his
collaborators voice no worries. "All have assured me
that this has been done ethically," he told me, when
eventually we met. "We are going out of our way not to
increase the vulnerability of an already vulnerable
population." The trial was conducted in Thailand, he
said, for scientific reasons. Different parts of the
world are linked with different HIV subtypes, with
their myriad subsidiary strains. B subtype strains,
for instance, are most common in North America, Europe
and Australasia; A, C and D in Africa. In Thailand,
there's a mix of B and E strains and, for technical
reasons to do with E strains, the company argues that
success is more likely there "than anywhere else in
the world."
But there are aspects of the project which suggest
that the junkies may be involved in an unusual way. A
parallel trial among gay men at American clinics is
having problems finding and keeping volunteers, due to
scepticism towards the venture. But at Kachit's
clinics the programme has features which may help to
avoid these snags. The junkies get methadone, an oral
heroin substitute, plus $10 expenses for each of up to
17 visits. The risk is the appearance of offering
drugs and money as inducements to this desperate
group.
There's also a feature of the experiment's design that
seems self-contradictory. If the methadone liquid got
people off injecting heroin, the volunteers' risk of
infection would slump and they would be of little use
to the vaccine trial. In fact, documents drawn up with
the CDC and WHO show that that 7% of clinic users are
expected to become HIV-infected each year. So, despite
the oral methadone, they keep injecting heroin. They
may even buy it with VaxGen's money and have an
increased risk of getting Aids.
The logic of the trial creates a dilemma for Francis.
The moral uncertainties about using junkies as GUINEA
PIGS might be offset by humanity's greater needs. But
there would need to be plausible scientific grounds to
think that AidsVax might work. And on that the VaxGen
experiment is open to even greater doubts. ***** When
Francis returns from his trips to Bangkok, it's to
Brisbane, a community on the San Francisco peninsula,
midway between the city and its airport. His home and
workplace both looks eastward across the bay: towards
Oakland and, beyond that, America. His home is on a
hill and lined with Chinese paintings. His office is
by the shore, in black glass.
He huddles weekly with his senior colleagues: VaxGen's
vice-president, Dr Phillip Berman, and its chairman,
Dr Robert Nowinski. Berman, aged 49, is a molecular
biologist. He's heavy set with curly hair and has
laboured on the science for 15 years. Nowinski, 52, is
bald and wears glasses. He's a biotechnology
entrepreneur from Seattle. His main claim to fame is
having founded and sold a company, ICOS, which boasts
Microsoft's Bill Gates as an owner.
The key document at many of their sessions is a
"special issue" of a prestigious journal, called Aids
Research and Human Retroviruses. It's dated last
October. Twenty papers are inside and they're a rave
for VaxGen's ideas. Dr Seth Berkley, the International
Aids Vaccine Initiative's president, declares that
politics and economics are bigger obstacles to
progress than "a scientific barrier". Dr Mary Lou
Clements-Mann, a researcher for a rival company's
vaccine (and who died in a Swissair plane crash off
Nova Scotia last year), shrugs off pessimistic
"misperceptions". ...
When visitors drop by, Berman outlines his own paper.
It sets out how AidsVax is meant to work. "Many lines
of evidence suggest that a strong antibody response to
the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein," he explains, "will
be an essential feature of any Aids vaccine." Berman
sketches what this means on a board in the conference
room, across the corridor from Francis's office. The
billions spent on Aids have produced unparalleled
insights on HIV, which are the platform on which he
builds. The virus infects. The immune system checks it
with, among other things, specially-tailored
antibodies. But the virus mutates around these
adversaries. So the immune system tailors new
defences. The virus then mutates and immunity
responds. It's like a leapfrog competition.
Eventually, the immune system tires of all this
leaping, packs up and then it's Aids.
Of all the different parts of HIV, the envelope
glycoprotein gp120 is the part that mutates the most.
This sits in blobs around the virus, like loose balls
of wool, on the tips of protruding spikes. Berman
zooms on the moment a blob meets a cell, which is 1m
times bigger than the virus. Part of the blob's
surface locks onto a receptor (like a data-port where
cells get information). The blob then unravels and
locks another of its parts onto a second sort of
receptor on the cell. This cues the cell to pull the
virus inside. Infection is complete.
Here, Berman argues, is where AidsVax helps: by
blocking this double-lock connection. Summoned in
advance, due to earlier vaccination, antibodies stick
to key parts of the blob and so stop it from locking
on the cell. If the virus is a burglar, these
antibodies are bullterriers, waiting for a leg to
appear through the window on which to snap their jaws.
Once they've got hold, the virus is paralysed, to be
disposed of by other kinds of cell.
He makes things sound simple. Visitors are impressed.
Investors wonder: why dither in Bangkok? But the
science expounded in the journal issue doesn't
convince many people who grasp the detail. "It's a
waste of time," Dr Robert Gallo, America's pre-eminent
retrovirologist, told me. Prof Andrew McMichael, Aids
vaccine chief at Oxford's Institute of Molecular
Medicine, said: "I wouldn't have the belief that this
will work." And Dr Jean-Paul Levy, head of France's
vaccine programme, spat: "It forgets one century of
science."
For all the plausibility of the journal's special
issue, the most detailed analysis of VaxGen's approach
was published in February last year in the Journal of
Virology, an even more influential publication. More
than 500 people - mostly American gay men - took part
in preliminary tests of gp120 in the mid-1990s but
experts at seven of America's leading research centres
found that, despite the shots, 16 vaccine recipients
became infected with HIV. That's more than 3% of those
getting vaccine, roughly the same percentage as those
on placebo.
Molecular biologists were not surprised, although
their critique is extremely technical. What it boils
down to is that if HIV leapfrogs the immune system -
with all its astounding complexity - it will easily do
the same with antibodies induced by an off-the-shelf
manufactured product. Inducing antibodies to one B
strain, or two E strains, or five, or fifty XYZ
strains, is like buying insurance against being hit by
cars with specified license plates.
VaxGen's answer is to develop products from strains it
claims provide "cross-protection" against others. In
Bangkok, for instance, the vaccine is AidsVax B/E,
including gp120 clones from one B and one E strain.
The B strain was isolated from a six-year-old New
Jersey boy in 1984, while the E strain was collected
from a soldier in Chiang Mai about nine years ago. The
plan is to mix 'n' match vaccines in this way to suit
the subtypes in different parts of the world. Berman
zooms closer and claims that parts of gp120 stay
sufficiently constant between the mutating strains to
offer a point of attack. Like all proteins, the blob
is made from amino acid molecules, which string
together like beads in a necklace to make the loose
balls of wool. Each bead is made from one of a
possible 20 amino acids. Letters are used to denote
these acids: G stands for glycine, for instance, R for
arginine and Q for glutamine.
Berman says that the vaccine needs to copy the amino
acid sequence at a key point in this string. Near to
where gp120 locks onto the cell, there is a loose loop
of "wool" - not 100 millionth a cell's size - which
biologists call V3. Berman zooms again: to the tip of
this loop, a string of just six necklace beads. Here,
he argues, is a segment that remains more constant
than most and induces antibodies which will stick and
stop the double-lock connection with the cell. All it
needs is for the vaccine and the virus to have the
same acids at the tip of this loop.
Using this argument, Berman deduces that the early
tests of gp120 offer hope for the experiment after
all. Mostly, volunteers studied for the Journal of
Virology were injected with gp120 cloned from the New
Jersey strain, in which the necklace in the V3 loop's
tip has the beads GPGRAF (meaning: glycine, proline,
glycine, arginine, alanine, and phenylalanine). It's a
common configuration in North American strains. But
Berman argues that some of the volunteers who became
HIV-positive despite being vaccinated were infected
with strains in which the loop was different: say,
GPGRVL (ending with valine and leucine instead). This,
he suggests, was why the gp120 didn't protect them.
With the commoner strains he believes it did.
At VaxGen's offices, this bottom-line is dazzling. The
"special issue" paper quickens pulses. But additional
information reveals an oddity, which Berman's
presentation overlooks. At the American government's
Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, staff
track amino acid sequences for thousands of HIV
strains. And when I asked them to print their data
from Thailand, a startling contradiction emerged. The
B component in AidsVax B/E - the shots being given to
the junkies - has the New Jersey V3 loop tip sequence.
It goes: GPGRAF.
According to Berman's argument, the local B strains
would need to have the same string of beads. But only
10% of Thai B strains have the New Jersey amino acid
sequence. Far more often - in nearly half the strains
- there are two different beads in the loop's tip:
glutamine (Q) and tryptophan (W). They are GPGQAW. By
Berman's own reasoning, the Bangkok junkies are being
injected with the wrong vaccine. ***** Every six
months, a ten-strong committee of doctors and
scientists crowds into VaxGen's boardroom. This is the
"data safety and monitoring board", recruited to keep
an eye on the experiment. On one side of the table
sits a Harvard infectious disease specialist. On the
other is a Yale ethicist. There are three Thai
physicians and a Seattle statistician. Dr Walter
Dowdle, a former CDC deputy director, presides. The
Americans are casual, in open-necked shirts, but
Dowdle runs proceedings with care. Piled around the
table are printouts on the volunteers, with blood
tests and other results. Using codes which nobody else
gets to look at, they can see who's getting AidsVax
and who the placebo and whether any difference the
number of HIV infections has emerged between the
groups.
By the convention for vaccines, any difference would
be vast for the product to be declared effective.
Measles vaccine, for instance, is 95% effective,
tetanus 90%, and hepatitis B 85%. But the committee's
brief is to watch for just 30% effectiveness. Such is
the threat from Aids, it's argued, that this figure is
enough for success.
I asked a professor of medical statistics to
number-crunch this percentage. To reach the 30% mark,
he said, there would only need to be 28 more
infections among junkies on the placebo than among
those receiving AidsVax. If VaxGen recruits 2,500 -
and on its assumption that in a year about 7% (87
people) on placebo will become infected due to
needle-sharing - then if the number who become
infected after getting AidsVax is 59 (4.7%) or fewer,
the committee can rule that the product works.
VaxGen critics think that even this meagre difference
couldn't appear, and that Dowdle, 68, will one day
emerge to drape a consoling arm on Francis's shoulder.
But an alternative scenario is predicted by some with
long research experience. Nobody can recall an HIV
product being ditched after reaching a full-scale
efficacy trial. And, such is the desire for "something
to be done" about Aids that science could be pushed to
one side.
The most powerful pressure for something to be done
comes from the White House, anxious to appease the
Aids lobby. In May 1997, President Clinton threw his
weight behind urgent action. "If the 21st century is
to be the century of biology," he declared. "Let us
make an Aids vaccine its first great triumph."
How such pressures can translate date back to 1989 and
the first anti-Aids drug, AZT. A board like Dowdle's
monitoring a trial among HIV-positive volunteers with
no obvious illness, saw data suggesting that
full-blown Aids could be prevented. At the time, AZT
was licensed only for terminal disease, but this
finding caused the trial to be halted and the product
to be approved for this use. But the decision was
based on a transitory data "blip", which had caused
the board to act prematurely. A longer study,
published four years later, found no preventative
effect.
Stopping trials in this way before their scheduled
completion is now standard in Aids product
development. "If efficacy is observed at the time of a
scheduled interim efficacy analysis," Nowinski
explains, "the monitoring board will recommend
termination of the trial."
But could bodies such as the Food and Drug
Administration and the European Medicines Evaluation
Agency license a vaccine that doesn't work on the
basis of an AZT-style blip? Evidence suggests that
agencies under political pressure take just such
paradoxical steps. The National Institutes of Health,
for instance, vetoed the VaxGen experiment as a waste
of money and volunteers. But after being accused of "a
human rights violation" by Dr Jonathan Mann, 51,
former WHO Aids chief (and who died with his wife,
Clements-Mann, also 51, in the Swissair crash), the
institutes not only reversed themselves, but granted
Francis $4.6m.
Sometimes the clamour may be marshalled by persons who
may not be as detached as they seem. The Journal of
Aids Research and Human Retroviruses, for instance,
has an editorial board that's a Who's Who of Aids. But
Francis paid the publisher $10,000 for the "special
issue", which Berman edited as a "guest". As for some
of the contributors, Francis helped to set up
Berkley's international vaccine initiative and advised
Bill Gates's charity foundation to give it $25m. He
has done a deal to supply proteins to the rival
manufacturer which employed Clements-Mann. And he has
offered the CDC's Heyward the post of VaxGen
vice-president, starting next January.
Pressure also comes from powerful bodies which have
long-held institutional agendas. The CDC, which mostly
collates disease data, first became a significant
health service body due to polio vaccine, launched in
April 1955. The WHO's singular success was smallpox
eradication, accomplished in October 1977. Mass
immunisation is what they know best. It's simply what
they do. "Don Francis reminds them of when they were
young," Dr John Moore, of New York's Aaron Diamond
Aids Research Center, told me.
What worries critics such as Moore is that political
and institutional pressures may lead to millions of
people being injected with AidsVax before the benefits
and risks are clear. The WHO estimates that annual
demand for the first vaccine will be 650m doses and
UNICEF leaders are thinking about adding it to
programmes for 100m children.
Francis anticipates that the CDC, which has already
granted him $8m, is to finance a US immunisation
campaign and, in Europe, national health services will
pick up the tab. "In addition, the International Aids
Vaccine Initiative has started a campaign to fund the
development and purchase of an HIV vaccine for the
developing world," VaxGen documents say. "In meetings
with us, the World Bank has indicated that it's
exploring the potential for low-interest loans to
support the purchase."
One of the snags which may be overlooked in this rush
is the effect on recipients' behaviour. Common sense
says that somebody who thinks that they may be
protected is more likely to take chances with risky
activities than a person who knows that they aren't.
One study of this effect in 1997 found that unsafe
sexual behaviours doubled among gay men in preliminary
vaccine tests. If this was repeated globally, the
impact of an even vaguely effective AidsVax may be
that the Aids epidemic gets worse. ***** South of
VaxGen's offices, the next freeway exit gives access
to its powerhouse: Genentech. This is the world's
front-runner in medical biotechnology, with seven
licensed products, from human growth hormones to a
clot-buster, Activase. Twenty years ago the company
was all dreams and venture capital; its few staff
snipping and splicing genes in a wasteland where
shipyards had died. Today, their ranks of Mercs and
BMWs surround 26 buildings in biology's Silicon
Valley.
Stopping by from time to time are visitors from its
master, the druggernaut Hoffman-La Roche. With twin
headquarters in Basle and New Jersey, and sales last
year of SWf24.7bn, this vitamins-to-Valium giant has
the marketing muscle should AidsVax come on stream. At
its own labs, Roche shuns the vaccine race, but with
taxes pledged to line-and-jab Africa and Asia
executives doodle in billions on the hope that Francis
pulls it off.
When I flew to San Francisco to quiz Francis for this
story, Berman was ecstatic, in jeans and a check
shirt, over a new $1.4m vaccine facility. The
experiment produces a torrent of clinic samples; each
volunteer gives blood on 17 visits, and each sample is
split for tests. Giant freezers were being installed
to store bar-coded specimens. There could be 400,000
in all. There's also a $500,000 microbiology kit going
in: DNA sequencers, PCR machines, centrifuges and the
like. Soon he would direct 30 staff in 20 rooms. He
was like a seven-year-old on Christmas Day.
The first thing that struck me was the push of the
spending, irrespective of scientific achievements.
Apart from all the investment so far, Genentech had a
10,000-litre fermenting tank, half full of New Jersey
strain vaccine. Nobody wanted that, worth $1m, flushed
away, much less the careers of its makers. The next
thing I noted was the standard of safety imposed on
the facility's construction. To handle a dangerous
pathogen in California, the brown-and-yellow building,
made from tipped-upright concrete slabs, was stamped
with certificates and permits by the box load before
the first plank was sawn. It's both earthquake- and
microbe-proof. And its forests of copper pipes, air
ducts and bio-filters were tested to tolerances few
structures could endure.
But while regulations make sure that the building is
safe, critics say that the product itself escapes much
rigorous scrutiny. With vaccines, any problems often
don't appear until mass-market use, and such is the
head of steam building up behind Francis that sceptics
think that if AidsVax doesn't join the annals of
useless shots, it has the potential to join, say, a
1960s measles vaccine that made the disease in those
infected worse.
What worries some scientists is that because AidsVax
provokes antibodies to its own specific gp120 strains,
there's a risk that it may actually suppress the
immune system's ability to combat other strains. On
this thinking (the principle is sometimes called
"deceptive imprinting") even if the junkies were
protected against the New Jersey and Chiang Mai
strains, they might die more quickly if they get
infected with one of the countless other mutations.
"There's nothing new in this," Dr Heinz Kohler, who
has led investigations at Kentucky University, said.
"It's just common sense."
At Kansas University, researchers have found that
monkeys injected with gp120 and then a hybrid kind of
HIV had more of the virus in their blood later on than
infected animals which weren't vaccinated. "The
question is: will those people who are vaccinated
progress to Aids more quickly if they become infected
with HIV than those who were not vaccinated at all?"
Prof McMichael at Oxford summarised. "We might not
know the answer for 10 years."
No such problems were revealed in the preliminary
tests, but despite the importance of long-term
follow-up (recipients of the hepatitis B vaccine that
Francis worked on in the early 1980s have been tracked
for two decades), VaxGen no longer monitors what has
happened to the people who received its product in the
mid-1990s preliminary tests. Francis argues that it
makes more sense to wait for the full-scale trial
results.
This apparent loss of data is surprising to some,
because history warns of the pitfalls of not being
thorough. In 1955, just one month after a
near-hysterical press conference in Michigan launched
polio vaccine, reports poured in to the CDC of
hundreds of children going down with the disease,
induced by the shots themselves. President Dwight
Eisenhower said that, because of the "great pressure
to bring this out", scientists may have "short-cut a
little bit".
AidsVax cannot give volunteers Aids, but there may be
something even more terrifying than the anxiety that
it might accelerate their disease if they are later
infected with HIV. Some scientists think that, if it
works at all, the product may have a dangerous effect
on the evolution of HIV. Five years ago, Los Alamos
scientists declared that there was "no simple answer"
as to whether Aids could become contagious through
coughs and sneezes - and other researchers argue that,
in much the same way as a partial course of
antibiotics can promote resistant bacteria, so a
poorly-effective vaccine may promote more deadly and
infectious strains.
This may sound like journalistic scare, but HIV's
best-understood RNA cousin is influenza virus, which
produces devastating mutations every 20 or 30 years.
Hepatitis B virus, meanwhile, has already produced
mutant strains accepted as being vaccine-induced.
"When you use a vaccine, you are introducing another
selective pressure," Dr Paul Ewald, professor of
biology at Amherst College, Massachusetts, explained.
"It could make the problem more damaging, or less
damaging, depending on the antigen you use."
Researchers told me that, compared with the potential
risks to volunteers, this doomsday scenario was
"unlikely". But with agencies standing by to jab
hundreds of millions of people, some wondered if, for
our species' safety, "unlikely" was reassuring enough.
"My personal view," Dr Art Ammann, president of the
San Francisco-based Global Strategy for HIV
Prevention, and a former AidsVax researcher, said, "is
that we could face a global nightmare." ...
[TO BE CONTINUED]
-------------------------------------
NOTES
1) Ingri Cassel, "Public Health Expert Says Solving
The Anthrax Mailing Mystery May Be Easy: FBI Doesn't
Seem Interested," news release, Tetrahedron, LLC, Nov.
12, 2001.
2) Paul Manning, Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile,
Secaucus: Lyle Stuart, 1981.
3) Adam Feuerstein, "VaxGen Hits Anthrax Jackpot,"
TheStreet.com, November 5, 2004.
http://www.thestreet.com/_googlen/comment/adamfeuerstein/10193015.html?cm_ve
n=GOOGLEN&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA
4) Brian Deer, "AidsVax: The VaxGen Experiment,"
Sunday Times Magazine (UK), October 3 1999.
5) Ibid.
6) Dr. Leonard Horowitz, "New Genocidal AIDS Vaccine
Experiments: Don Francis, Genentech, Hoffman-La-Roche,
and The Rise of the Fourth Reich," updated 11/07/02.
http://www.originofaids.com/articles/experiments.htm
7) Ibid. Also see, A. Cantwell, AIDS and the Doctors
of Death. 1988 (pp. 50-2, 78, 178), A. Cantwell, Queer
Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot. 1993 (pp. 42,
109, 123).
© 2005 Alex Constantine. All rights reserved.