Post by stormbird on Nov 6, 2010 11:11:37 GMT -5
I've been receiving a number of responses from readers of The Last Circle book relative to biological technology. The book discusses some aspects of bio-technology, so I decided to post at this Forum an article I wrote in 1998 about Bio-Terrorism. As follows:
I wrote this in 1998 and someone put it on the Internet.
www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/secret_projects2/project147.htm
Bio-Terrorism - Who and What is the Threat?
by Stormbird8@aol.com
November 1998
In the early 1940’s it was nuclear fission, today it is biological technology, an out of control Manhattan Project hemorrhaging sinuously upon the world scene like a nuclear mushroom, caught in the winds of scientific whimsy. Urgent U.S. defense preparations are underway to cope with this emerging technology, using strategic war plans computer systems, or artificial intelligence, to predict what the first fallout will be and where it will occur.
The discovery of synthetic lab-created retroviruses designed to attack the very nature of human immunity is in the hands of every major country in the world. So is the antidote. While the stalemate continues, people go about their ordinary lives, and governments ponder who will use it first; will it be used for good or evil? It can be used to seek out and detect cancer causing viruses, or as a biological weapon.
The technology is complicated for dissemination to the general public, civilians are not educated on the subject, thus fear of the unknown and unseen creates silent terror in a population. The New York Times reported on April 24th that Bill Clinton, after reading The Cobra Event, a fictional book based on scientific fact about a biological attack on New York City, immediately convened a panel of experts to brief him on preparations for biological warfare. A subsequent report suggested stockpiling vaccines, antibiotics and antidotes, and setting up mechanisms to make large quantities in a hurry.
A secret drill simulating a germ warfare attack in which a small pox hybrid virus was dropped along the Mexican-American border showed the U.S. government is unprepared to deal with such a crisis. Officials who participated in the drill soon found themselves overwhelmed by a panicked population, short of antibiotics and vaccines, hampered by antiquated quarantine laws, and unable to get trained, immunized medical personnel to the scene, the Times reported.
The technology IS scary, to be sure, and that doesn’t change the fact of its existence, however people can educate themselves on the options. Patrick Henry once said, (on the brink of the American revolution):
Excerpted
"We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts --- For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it."
Biology of a Recombinant Virus
Genetic engineering has brought forth cures for diseases and synthetic spray vaccines, while it paradoxically spawned deadly predator viruses that mutate at will and can jump species from a spider host to a mosquito, lizard, mouse, cat, monkey or human. The new hypermutant life form can even live inside a bacteria host and multiply until it explodes out of the cell and finds its way into the bloodstream.
Weapons-related genetic engineering, in military terms, is the creation of genetically altered viruses and bacteria in order to enhance their power as weapons. This can be done by altering an organism’s DNA, or its genetic code, which is found in every cell and in every virus particle in existence. In high schools in the United States today, students are taught how to do genetic engineering. They learn how to create new variants of (safe) bacteria which are resistant to antibiotics. One genetic engineering kit for high-school students costs forty-two dollars and is sold through the mail.
In 1990 and 1991, Russian scientists found a way to splice Venezuelan equine encephalitis (a brain virus) into the genome, or DNA, of smallpox. The result was a "recombinant chimera virus" called Veepox. In ancient Greek mythology, the chimera was a monster made of parts of different animals. Recombination means the mixing of genes from different organisms. Under a microscope, the Veepok looks like smallpox, but it isn’t. It is a new form of life.
Understanding the biology of a deadly Level-4 (90% fatality) virus, how it was conceived, and by whom, is the first step in combatting the effects of biological warfare. The books The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event by Richard Preston, an MIT and American Institute of Physics award winning science writer, provide clear scientific data on Level-4 viral outbreaks in the U.S. and Africa, and give valuable information on bio-hazard protection against these microorganisms.
The book, Emerging Viruses, by Dr. Leonard Horowitz, a Harvard graduate with a master of arts degree in health education and a master of public health degree in behaviorial science, suggests that the Ebola virus has become a biological weapon.
Spray Vaccines for Anthrax & Plague
The biotechnology revolution was launched when Dr. Joshua Lederberg, a professor at Rockefeller University, won the Nobel Prize in 1946 for discovering that bacteria can swap genes with each other. By 1970 huge bio programs, administered by the Rockefeller Foundation in cooperation with the CIA, provided experimental vaccines to millions of recipients worldwide. Today, Dr. Lederberg advises the government on biological weapons and the potential for bio-terrorism.
Currently, Rockefeller University in cooperation with SIGA Pharmaceuticals has developed a revolutionary nasal spray antidote for military defense applications. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding the research under the umbrella of the Department of Defense.
The nasal spray, called a "mucosal vaccine," is the latest breakthrough in vaccine technology. It is a rapidly deployable defense against biological warfare agents such as anthrax and plague, and can be administered by a soldier, civilian, or even a child. No needles or shots are necessary. This genetically engineered commensal delivers an antigen (stimulates the production of antibodies) from a variety of pathogens (cause of disease), viral or bacterial, to surfaces in the mouth, nasal passages, gastrointestinal and genital tracts. By combining a specific antigen with specific commensals (harmless bacteria that naturally inhabit the body’s mucosal surfaces), vaccines or other neutralizing agents are rapidly produced. It is not known, when, if ever, this spray vaccine will be marketed to the general population, but someone stands to make $billions, akin to a biological Bill Gates, if a bio-war outbreak occurs in the United States.
Long Term Effects of Experimental Vaccines
Other commensal vectors may soon be used to vaccinate children against influenza in 1999. Doctors tested the vaccine, called FluMist, on 1,602 children ages 15 months to 6 years in 1996. One percent of the children receiving the vaccine spray developed influenza, compared to 18 percent in the untreated group. The long-term "fall out" effects of these experimental vaccines are still unknown.
The effects of older vaccines may only just now be surfacing in baby-boomers today as their immune systems weaken and dormant viruses emerge. According to The Health Century by Edward Shorter, Ph.D., Americans are paying a heavy price, particularly those innoculated with Sabin oral polio vaccines prior to 1964, as recipients of 40 different simian (monkey) virus contaminants, called SV40, produced by Merck Laboratories in the 1950’s.
During interviews for his book, Dr. Shorter audiotaped Dr. Maurice Hilleman, director at Merck vaccine division. Hilleman said he notified Albert Sabin of his concerns that the SV40 virus might have long-term effects such as cancerous tumors. In 1961, the SV40 contaminated polio vaccines were pulled off the shelves at Merck after studies showed it might in fact be carcinogenic to humans. No mention of the cancer connection was made in the press until 1962. By then millions of children had received both the Salk inactivated polio vaccine and Sabin’s live virus vaccine, produced in contaminated Rhesus monkey kidney cells.
Years later, in December 1986, when asked why the press was silent on this issue, an elderly Albert Sabin replied, " --- There’s too much scaring the public unnecessarily. Oh, your children were injected with cancer virus and all that. That’s not very good."
In March 1996, new evidence was presented by Dr. W. John Martin, professor of pathology at the University of Southern California, at the Twentieth Century Plagues symposium in Los Angeles and San Francisco, that SV40 gene sequences had been found in childhood choroid plexus brain tumors. Martin noted that chronic fatigue syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, and other behavior-linked illnesses "may be an inadvertent consequence of stealth virus vaccine contaminants" derived from simian viruses. Stealth viruses are unique cell-destroying viruses that are not recognized by the human immune system. These viruses cause persistent infections because they are missing specific genes which ordinarily evoke an immune response.
In his 1997 book, Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola, Nature, Accident or Intentional?, Dr. Leonard Horowitz notes, " --- Anyone who received polio vaccines prior to 1964 is at risk of carrying SV40 and spreading it to others at home or in the community. The virus is apparently circulating now throughout the human race."
NOTE: ABC News on February 19, 1999 noted that the current issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute reported that simian SV-40 virus has been found in 10% of the baby-boomer population who received live polio vaccine prior to 1963.
Origins of AIDS & Ebola
Dr. Horowitz’s book mainly explores evidence that AIDS and Ebola viruses were byproducts of a genetic engineering program, conducted by Merck and other government funded labs to develop and test effects of bio-war viruses. One source from which his theory was derived was a five volume text entitled Virology which noted that during the late 1960’s researchers advanced a new theory of evolution - that through future research of viral evolution (retroviruses) a "genetically superior race of humans could be synthetically evolved."
AIDS For Profit
The irony of this scheme, according to Horowitz, was that the lab (Merck Department of Virus Cell Biology) allegedly responsible for the AIDS contaminated Hepatitus B vaccine injected into 1,083 New York homosexuals, may also reap billions of dollars in future revenues from developing and marketing AIDS-related drugs for T-cell disorders.
Aids-like Viruses used for pre-cancer diagnosis?
Horowitz found buried in the basement of the Davis Library at the University of North Carolina a book entitled Special Virus-Cancer Program, published by the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Md. which detailed a $35 million collaborative program structured for the purpose of proving that viruses are the causative (etiological) agents of cancer - and certain AIDS-like retroviruses can be used for pre-cancer diagnosis by seeking out and detecting inactive human cancer viruses.
The text covered the period from 1970 to 1971, the critical period during which Bionetics Research Labs, a Division of Litton Industries, had created numerous AIDS-like retroviruses. Observed Horowitz: "Litton Bionetics had not only been involved in the development of AIDS-like, Marburg-like, and Ebola-like viruses, but had been innoculating simian monkeys with these mutant horrors as early as 1962, and had shipped the infected monkeys to labs around the world, including the ones in which the Marburg and Reston [Ebola] outbreaks occurred." (There had been an Ebola outbreak at a vaccine factory in Marburg, Germany and another at a primate quarantine unit in Reston, Virginia, owned by Hazelton Research).
A few of the collaborative labs involved in the Special Virus-Cancer Program were listed as Hazelton Research Labs; Merck Institute (pharmaceuticals); Bionetics Research Labs; and Anderson Hospital & Tumor Institute.
The 1971 text of Special Virus-Cancer Program also noted that "there are now over 100 viruses which are known to cause virtually all kinds of cancer in every major group of animal including non-human primates." Through this research it was discovered that AIDS-like viruses could be used for pre-cancer diagnosis. A mouse Leukemia type-C virus which was adapted to grow in human cells, if innoculated into a human, could seek out and detect inactive human Sarcoma viruses. The down side to this procedure was that humans then became the mixers for "mutant" Leukemia and Sarcoma viruses, or retroviruses.
Horowitz suggested that the AIDS epidemic’s simultaneous emergence in Central Africa and New York during the late 1970’s (and later Ebola) was the result of a mass innoculation program originating from experimental monkey-virus-contaminated vaccines supplied by the Litton and Merck network of researchers.
World Health Organization: Vaccine Tests in Africa
The World Health Organization (WHO) is often at the center of these controversies. WHO helps developing countries establish national biological control laboratories and sets standards for development, manufacture, distribution and administration of essentially all pharmaceuticals used throughout the world.
In 1969 the U.S. Department of Defense requested $10 million from Congress to perform studies on immune-system-destroying agents for germ warfare defense. According to WHO records, in 1970 studies were conducted on viruses that were capable of altering the immunologic response capacity of T-Lymphocytes (immunity T-cells). Prior to that, WHO had issued a 5-year research report on advances in virology experimentation relating primarily to the causal relationship between viruses and human cancer. The report stated that Russian and American researchers had learned how the human immune system can be "bolstered or destroyed by old and newly developed germs."
The WHO also applied administrative leadership and funding for several programs designed to evaluate specific disease vulnerabilities of minority groups - from American Indians to African natives - through collection and analysis of gene pools and blood supplies.
In 1970 the WHO and the Vaccine Development Committee endorsed an African smallpox immunization program with a budget of $14 million for use in Zaire and neighboring countries. By today’s standards, that would amount to about $70 million, a huge budget for innoculations on a faraway undeveloped continent. It is noteworthy that AIDS was non-existent in Africa prior to 1975 - and Ebola was not recorded until 1976. Both originate from the same area in Zaire. Moreover, noted Horowitz, Merck Laboratories, the U.S. Army, USAID, the National Cancer Institute and Litton Bionetics were all focused on "vaccines and studies in which cancer-causing [retro] viruses were isolated and transported from Africa to the U.S. and visa versa."
Quarantine Trials
A telling article by WHO consultants in March 1970 presciently warned of grave psychological consequences if a biological attack occurred in the U.S.: "The response to a chemical or biological attack may require precautionary or other measures on such a scale that extraordinary means of social control will have to be introduced, and these may remain in force long after the need for them has passed. Thus an attack may lead to social changes out of all proportion to the actual damage done."
The 1993 book, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston unwittingly corroborates the WHO consultants’ prediction of "extraordinary means of social control."
During the 1976 Ebola outbreak in Kinshasa, the World Health Organization and public officials sent the Army in to enforce quarantines; roadblocks were set up, hospital staff were quarantined inside the hospital, planes and boats were not allowed in or out, communications were cut off, and anyone trying to leave the city was shot. "Virus hunter" Dr. Karl M. Johnson, former head of Special Pathogens Branch of Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, had been Chief of the WHO team in Kinshasa during the outbreak. At his home in Big Sky, Montana, where he now does consulting work on "hot zones," Johnson rhetorically observed, "A virus can be useful to a species by thinning it out...."
Ebola Outbreak in Reston, Virginia
The notion that AIDS and Ebola are synthetic by-products of genetic engineering, or "black biology," is not dissuaded in The Hot Zone. During the 1989 Ebola outbreak at the primate quarantine building in Reston, Virginia, four monkey caretakers became infected with Ebola virus, yet none of those American workers became sick. Author Preston inadvertently revealed his inner suspicions, or offered a subliminal hint, when he wrote: " --- However, something eerie and perhaps sinister occurred. All four men eventually tested positive for Ebola Reston virus. They had all been infected with the agent. The virus had entered their bloodstreams and multiplied in their cells. Ebola proliferated in their bodies. It cycled in them. It carried on its life inside the monkey workers. But it did NOT make them sick, even while it multiplied inside them. If they had headaches or felt ill, none of them could recall it. Eventually the virus cleared from their systems naturally, disappeared from their blood, and as of this writing, none of the men was affected by it."
Why would Preston consider the immunity of the four Americans to Ebola virus "eerie" or "sinister"? Perhaps because thousands of black Africans contracted the hemorragic virus in Africa, and died slowly while their organs liquified and blood poured from every orifice of their body. Yet the American monkey handlers, working for Hazelton Research, who received treatment at Fairfax Hospital by Fort Detrick scientists, remained healthy. Wrote Preston: "The workers at Reston had symptomless Ebola virus. Why didn’t it kill them? To this day, no one knows the answer to that question."
Ebola Not Found in Nature
Another corroborative chapter in The Hot Zone recounts a Spring 1988 joint U.S. Kenya expedition comprised of Fort Detrick and Kenyan scientists to the Rift Valley where the Kinshasa Highway, or AIDS Highway as it is called in Africa, passes by Mount Elgin, the origin of both the Ebola and AIDS virus outbreaks. They found no trace of the Ebola virus in any part of the natural environment. "Exactly where the virus came from is one of the great mysteries ---" noted Preston.
Ebola: A Russian Bio-Weapon
Simultaneously, on yet another continent, in April 1988, Dr. Nikolai Ustinov, a forty-four year old scientist at a virology-research facility in Western Siberia pricked his finger with a needle and contracted the Ebola virus. He had been studying its potential as a bio-weapon that could be loaded into special biological warheads on the MIRV missiles that were aimed at the United States. At the time, the Soviet missile warheads were designed for strategic genetically engineered strains of smallpox virus, anthrax, and Black death which was resistant to antibiotics.
The deputy chief at the Biopreparat facility, Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, known today in America as Ken Alibek, attempted to obtain the special immune serum from the Ministry of Defense, but bureaucratic delays prevented its arrival in Siberia until it was too late. After moving to the United States in 1992, Alibek told American officials the Ebola strain had been obtained by Soviet intelligence, but he didn’t know where it came from, maybe Marburg, Germany, he said.
The Soviets froze Ustinov’s blood and body parts and kept the Ustinov Ebola strain alive and replicating in the Biopreparat lab called Vector. They named the strain Variant U, after Ustinov, and mass produced it in simple bio-reactors. They dried Variant U, processed it into an inhalable dust, resembling pink talcum powder, then tested the airborne weapon on animals in special explosion-test chambers. Just one to five microscopic particles of Variant U lodged in the lungs of a monkey was equal in lethality to eight thousand spores of weapons-grade anthrax.
Variant U was on the verge of becoming a strategic bio-weapon, ready to be loaded into MIRV warheads, when the Soviet Union fell apart and Russian scientists left to work in other countries. The Biopreparat facility had employed 25,000 people and consisted of forty sprawling research and production facilities. It worked both sides of the street: curing diseases and inventing new ones. When government funding decreased dramatically and scientists lost their jobs, Ken Alibek came to the United States. He said other biologists may have gone to China, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya, some carrying freeze-dried Variant U Ebola with them. No one kept track of them.
Hantavirus in Russia?
In a March 9, 1998 New Yorker magazine article entitled, Annals of War - Bioweaponeers, by Richard Preston, Alibek discussed accidental contamination of the soil outside a bio-factory at Omutninsk. Wild rodents living in the woods outside the factory had become chronically infected with the Schu-4 military strain of tularemia, a bacterium that causes a type of pneumonia, which was being developed in the plant. It was a hot, lethal strain that came from the United States: an American biological weapon that the Soviets had managed to obtain. The mutant bacteria had "jumped species," from its natural host to rodents. People catch tularemia easily from rodents, noted Preston.
Just recently, in April 1998, health officials have begun monitoring mice populations near Colorado Springs in the United States. The Associated Press reported a 17-year-old boy who lived on a ranch west of Colorado Springs, died on April 18th of Hantavirus. The press described Hantavirus as "a rare pneumonia-like disease [which] is contracted by ingesting airborne dust particles of the feces, urine or saliva of tiny deer mice."
Aged: Targets of Bio-War
The world’s most serious known bio-weapon outbreak occurred in the Ural Mountains east of Moscow at Yekaterinburg. In April 1979, the military microbiology lab there known as Compound 19, emitted a cloud of human inhalation anthrax spores that spread downwind killing 68 people and contaminating livestock and food sources. A subsequent study from Harvard University, based on research at the scene, noted the absence of any victims under the age of 24. In February 1998, the Washington Post reported that a news conference in Moscow revealed the 1979 leak did not release anthrax, but some kind of "new biological weapon" that was designed to target middle-aged men.
Bio-Terrorism Comes in Many Forms
Establishing the truth about U.S., Iraqi, or Russian biological weapons programs is ambiguous because research on defensive means, such as vaccines, and on offensive weapons involves identical equipment. If a scientist is developing a defensive vaccine, he must test it against a virulent agent. And even small quantities of these virulent organisms can be grown to significant quantities in a few weeks and moved around the country in portable bio-reactors.
Bio-terrorism comes in many forms: A hantavirus leak into the general population from a secret bio-research facility; a super-mutant antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus found in hospitals; contaminated experimental vaccines injected into Gulf War soldiers; genocide in Africa; pharmaceutical profiteers creating retroviruses, then making millions on "miracle" cures and vaccines; a terrorist suitcase left in a New York subway; military bio-quarantine containments and social controls; and last but not least, the threat of biological warfare.
Remedies
Education is the only defense against new emerging viruses. Even the most sophisticated predator virus is still subject to natural law. It degenerates and falls apart when exposed to sunlight (ultra-violet rays). Simple household bleach can eradicate any virus from a contaminated area. (Bleach was used by the Fort Detrick Army team to decontaminate the Reston monkey house and the bio-suits afterwards). Human skin is virus-proof; the vulnerable areas of the body are eyelids, lips, mucous membranes and open cuts, all of which can be covered or protected with readily available bio-hazard equipment, most of which is commonly used in hospitals.
Perhaps a quote published in Richard Preston’s March 9, 1998 New Yorker article entitled Annals of War - Bioweaponeers, by Dr. Peter Jahrling, chief scientist at USAMRIID (Ft. Detrick), offers some hope --- "I don’t think anyone could knock out New York City with a genetically engineered bug, but someone might be able to knock out a few people and thereby make an incredible panic."
Contact: Stormbird8@aol.com
Note: See related story: Bio-Hazard Protections
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bio-Hazard Protections
By Stormbird8@aol.com
Remedies
It is likely the new millenium will be called the Biological Age. The children of 2000 A.C. face an invisible challenge, a new life form created in laboratories by scientists standing on the edge of existence, shaking their fists at Heaven. As ancient man survived predator dinosaurs with his wits and the tools at hand, so have Americans emerged from the Nuclear Age unscathed. Perhaps with the demise of T- Rex, man felt compelled to create his own deadly challenges through technology. The most recent discovery, genetically engineered viruses, are above all subject to natural law, because they are the most fundamental and fragile of all life forms.
Education is the only defense against these new emerging viruses. Even the most sophisticated predator-virus DNA material degenerates and falls apart when exposed to sunlight (ultra-violet rays). Viruses like dry, "dead air" (enclosed air spaces), and dust and darkness. They have difficulty surviving exposure to moisture, sunlight and fresh air. They can be eradicated from any contaminated area with simple household bleach, and they must enter the body through injections, open cuts, eyelids, lips, or mucous membranes, all of which can be covered or protected with readily available bio-protective gear, most of which is commonly used in hospitals.
Virus-proof surgical masks, eye goggles, face shields, surgical gloves, scrub suits, plastic caps, and much more can be purchased at most medical supply stores. Doctors and dentists use them daily. *See list at bottom of this article.
Protective Gear
In his book "The Hot Zone," Richard Preston describes in detailed layman's terms the equipment and procedures used by the USAMRIID bio-hazard team from Fort Detrick to decontaminate the Reston Primate Quarantine Unit during an Ebola virus outbreak in 1989. The Reston "deconn" was a field operation, conducted entirely outside a contained Level-4 bio-lab. Ebola is considered a Level-4 (90% fatality) "hot" agent, which can be inhaled into the lungs.
Other known field operations include an expedition by Ft. Detrick scientists into the Rift Valley in Africa to locate the suspected source of Ebola virus in remote Kitum Cave, Mount Elgin. The scientists camped outside the cave and used field bio-protective equipment to enter the cave and take samples from rocks, animals and insects. Ebola was not found in the cave, or anywhere else in the natural environment. Nevertheless, the equipment used provides valuable information to those who are interested.
The equipment worn at Kitum Cave in 1988 included orange colored "Racal" bio-suits, which are positive pressure space suits with battery powered air supplies; used primarily at that time by Ft. Detrick scientists in field work with extreme bio-hazardous airborne viruses. The suit was fully portable, with a self-contained breathing apparatus. Military gas masks with virus filters fitted over hoods were used to enter the cave.
The military bio-hazard operation in Reston, Virginia in 1989 included much of the stockpiled gear used at Kitum Cave. In this instance, bio-protective gear used to enter the Ebola contaminated monkey house included light-weight Racal suits, battery packs, rubber gloves (over surgical gloves), surgical scrub suits (under bio-suits), flashlights, blunt scissors, plastic bottles, bio-hazard bags, and most importantly "hand-pumped garden sprayers for spraying bleach" on bio-suits and objects that needed to be "deconned" [decontaminated] as they exited the monkey house.
The procedure went as follows: The team put on surgical scrub suits, then entered a storage room used for a staging area inside the monkey building. The suits were orange field biological Racal suits, commonly used with airborne biological agents. The pressurized suit has a clear, soft plastic bubble for a helmut. Air pressure was supplied by an electric motor that sucks air from the outside and passes it through "virus filters," then injects it into the suit. This keeps the suit under positive pressure so that any airborne virus particles will have a hard time flowing into it. It protects the entire body from virus, surrounding the body with super-filtered air.
Next the rubber gloves were put on and taped with military sticky tape to the sleeves of the suits. On their feet, they wore sneakers, and over the sneakers they pulled bright yellow rubber boots. The support team taped the boots to the legs of the suits to make an airtight seal above the ankle. The electric blower was switched on and the suits puffed up. The military brown sticky tape was used during the operation to tape shut any rips that occurred in the suit. This prevented the suits from losing pressure and getting contaminated inside.
The rule inside the monkey house storage room airlock was that both doors, the far door and the near door, could never be opened at the same time. This to prevent a back-flow of contaminated air from flowing into the staging room. The batteries that pressurized the suit had a life span of 6 hours. When the team emerged from the monkey house into the airlock, the support team sprayed the team members for five minutes with bleach. The suits were placed in bags and the bags sprayed with bleach. Everything that went down the drain had bleach poured after it to prevent Ebola from getting into the sewer system.
In 1993 author Richard Preston trekked up Mt. Elgin to Kitum Cave in deepest Africa. The following description of "field" procedures and equipment he used in this remote area is outstanding in value to the reader and entirely unique in detail.
It reads as follows: (Excerpted) "I unzipped my backpack and withdrew my gear and laid it on the rocks. I had assembled the components of a Level-4 field biological space suit. It was not a pressurized suit - not an orange Racal suit. It was a neutral- pressure whole-body suit with a hood and full-face respirator. The suit itself was made of Tyvek, a slick, white fabric that is resistant to moisture and dust.
"I laid out a pair of green rubber gauntlet gloves, yellow rubber boots, a black mask with twin purple [virus] filters. The mask was a silicone rubber North respirator mask with a Lexan faceplate, for good visibility, and the purple filters were the kind that stop a virus. I placed a roll of sticky tape on the rocks. A plastic shower cap - ten cents apiece at Woolworths. Flashlight, head lamp ---
"I stepped into the suit, feet first, pulled it up to my armpits, and fed my arms into the sleeves. I stretched the shower cap over my head, then pulled the hood of the suit down over the shower cap. I zipped up the front of the suit, from crotch to chin. I taped the front zipper of the suit, taped the wrists of my gloves to the suit, taped the cuffs of the boots to the suit ---" Preston then attached an electric miners lamp on his head.
When Preston exited the cave, he deconned himself as follows: He took a plastic laundry tub and filled it with water from a nearby waterfall. Then he poured a gallon of bleach into it. Then he stepped into the tub, placed his gloved hands into the liquid and scooped it over his capped head and face mask.
Using a toilet brush, he scrubbed his boots and legs. Then he dropped his flashlight and headlamp into the bleach mixture, took off his face-mask and dunked it along with the purple virus filters. Then he peeled off his green gauntlet gloves, then stepped out of his Tyvek suit, peeling the sticky tape off as he went. The whole suit, together with the yellow boots, went into the bleach. "It was a stew of bio-hazard gear," he said. The suit and gear was double-bagged, washed outside with bleach, then bagged again, then bleached again.
An incredible feat by a courageous researcher, yet no less complicated than deep sea diving or sledding the Alaskan wilderness in the dead of winter. Both require special protective clothing and a knowledge of the elements. Few would enter the wilderness or the sea unprepared. Today's microbes are an inescapable element, the most basic of all creation, that will challenge us in the coming years, just as computer technology challenged us over a decade ago. No one is helpless in the wake of emerging viruses, education is the key. A quote by Louis Pasteur sums it up best: "Chance favors the prepared mind."
Government Warning
On April 22, 1998, author Richard Preston went before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding chemical and biological weapons threats to America. He presciently underlined the need for the United States to stockpile the smallpox vaccine, noting there was currently only 7 million usable doses on hand. "Experts believe that in any terrorist release of smallpox, even a small one, the virus is so contagious that it would be necessary to vaccinate at least 20 to 30 million Americans to stop the outbreak," said Preston.
He further reported that the U.S. Army had developed a new way to make smallpox vaccine very cheaply and in large quantities, but it needed to be tested and approved. Enough smallpox vaccine for every citizen - 270 million doses - could be stored in a small building the size of a garage, and the vaccine would remain potent for decades. "By having plenty of vaccine ready," he said, "we effectively remove smallpox as a good weapon from the arsenal of a would-be terrorist."
Preston warned the Senate that the smallpox virus would be easy to make in large quantities by a terrorist. "I'm not going to say exactly how to do it, but basically you can grow it in glass bottles the size of wine bottles. A room full of these bottles constitutes a national biological-weapons laboratory. Virtually any nation can have such a facility, and hide it easily. All you need is a master seed strain and a few Ph.D. scientists and perhaps $200,000 worth of equipment, which can be bought on the open market. Have scientists left Russia bringing their expertise and master seed strains of smallpox with them, or other bioweapon seed strains?", he asked the Senate.
Government Preparedness -Year 2000
On February 4-5, 2000 the Western Regional Bio-Terrorism Conference was held at the La Jolla Marriott Hotel in San Diego, California. The conference was sponsored by the County of San Diego, University of California - San Diego School of Medicine, and John Hopkins Center for Civilian BioDefense Studies in association with Science Applications International Corporation.
The conference cost $125 per person, per day and was open to the general public, though it was not advertised to the public until opening day, and then no location was disclosed. Rooms A through E were devoted to the conference with an adjacent Exhibits Hall. Some of the materials displayed on exhibit tables originated from the following sources:
(1) Center for Civilian BioDefense - Johns Hopkins University (www.hopkins-biodefense. org)
(2) BioDefense Quarterly - Publication of Johns Hopkins University
(3) Center for COMMUNITY Disaster Preparedness & Response (www.pathogenix.com)
(4) Amateur Rescuer - Disaster Preparedness & Response Magazine (info@pathogenix.com)
(5) Manual on Western Regional Conference on Bio-Terrorism (161-pages)
(6) Bio-Terrorism Participant Listing - 19-pages of names, title, city, specialty, who participated in the conference.
(7) C.E.R.T. - Community Emergency Response Team - advertised as "regular" folks that had been trained by the local fire department to assist them, the police and other disaster relief crews in time of disaster. The brochure said, "Becoming a CERT member enables you to care for yourself, your family, and neighbors in the event of a disaster."
A professional audio-tape package enclosed within a bound folder, along with the conference manual, was sold at a table outside the auditorium. The audio-tapes for the entire conference could be purchased from Castle Communications. (619) 688-7112. E-mail: castlecom@aol.com. The entire collection cost $99.00 + tax + $10. S&H.
An enthusiastic fireman who was manning a booth inside the Exhibit Hall noted that bio-terrorism is "sweeping the nation like a firestorm." He said everyone in government, first responders, and military were urgently training for bio-defense.
Across the aisle an empty booth displayed individual, airtight, clear bio-tents where sick civilians would be placed under field conditions in the event of a large biological outbreak. These tents would be used to quarantine civilians after the hospitals were filled to capacity and infected people were sent to containment areas. It didn't require much imagination to envision an entire stadium filled with civilians inside bio-tents being treated by doctors and nurses wearing bio space-suits.
The conversation with the fireman went as follows:
CS: "What type of bio-equipment is your department using?"
Fireman: "The standard Tyvek Bio-Suits and Chem-Bio respirators."
CS: "Do the respirators have twin-purple virus filters?"
Fireman: "I haven't heard of that."
CS: "Thousands of virus cells can live inside one bacteria cell. A bacteria filter won't keep a virus out. What kind of containment procedures have you developed for a Hot Zone?"
Fireman: "Well, we [the firemen] won't actually be in the front line, in the Hot Zone. The first line of defense will be handled by the Military."
CS: "Oh, so the sick and dying civilians will be passed on to the first responders by the Military?"
Fireman: "Yes, they will handle the containment."
CS: "Have you ever heard of an actual containment situation?"
Fireman: "No."
CS: "Well, during the 1976 Ebola outbreak in Kinshasa, Africa, the military contained an entire city. The hospitals, doctors, nurses, were quarantined. No ships, no planes, no person was allowed in or out. Anyone attempting to leave the area was shot. The phone lines were shut down - no calls in or out."
Fireman: "What's your point?"
CS: "I plan to write to the participants at this conference, asking for names of manufacturers of bio-suits and respirators with virus-filters. Most Israeli citizens were provided respirators during the Persian Gulf War. That's a pretty good deterrent against a bio-terrorism outbreak --- in Israel."
Fireman: "Well, that would put a burden on U.S. manufacturers of bio-suits and respirators; currently they're backlogged and trying to keep up with government orders."
CS: "Well, then they need to upgrade their production. If the equipment costs $3,000 now, it could cost $20,000 after the first outbreak."
Fireman: Nodding. "Yeah someone stands to make a lot of money after an outbreak."
CS: "Have any of the speakers at this conference addressed Civilian Preparedness, i.e., civilian bio-suits and respirators?"
Fireman: Hesitating, as if a lightbulb had been turned on in his mind. "Well, no."
CS: "I'll bet all the participants at this conference have bio-suits and respirators, don't they?"
The fireman chose not to respond.
Anthrax Vaccines Unreliable
On March 9, 2000, Rep. Christopher Shays released a report calling for suspension of the anthrax mandatory immunization program for U.S. troops. He had found the DOD Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program to be unsustainable in its present form due to "unreliable vaccine supply, uncertain program safety and unproven efficacy against the validated threat."
An excerpt of Shays report read as follows: "Designed in the 1950s and 60s, the vaccine was licensed in 1970 for protection against cutaneous (through the skin) anthrax infection. Before the Gulf War, it had not been widely used. After the war, DOD scientists acknowledged the vaccine caused adverse reactions and contained inconsistent amounts of the desired antigenic protein. They also knew it was unsuitable for broad military use due to the elaborate, arbitrarily established inoculation schedule of six shots over 18 months, plus annual boosters. DOD began, but did not aggressively pursue, research and testing on a purer, safer vaccine and an optimal shot course."
If the U.S. government is unable to produce a reliable anthrax vaccine for military troops, where does that leave American civilians?
Clearly, the recent anthrax scare was a wake-up call to Americans and their elected officials to address the issue of civilian bio-hazard protection. In October, experts in the field of biological warfare repeatedly announced on national media that anthrax was nothing to worry about and the government had the situation under control. But what if the organism had been a weaponized contagion?
The employees of American Media Inc. [AMI] in Boca Raton, Florida were filmed standing in long lines waiting for Cipro antibiotics. None of the experts interviewed on T.V. mentioned what would have occurred if those employees had been exposed to a "contagious" organism for which no vaccine existed, such as gene-spliced smallpox or ebola. In fact, they would have infected each other while standing in line.
Ironically as the AMI employees waited for antibiotics, wearing no protective gear whatsoever, not even a surgical mask, the hazmat response team was filmed shuffling back and forth in the background, between the AMI building and the staging area, wearing white Tyvek bio-suits and respirator mask with faceplate and twin-purple virus filters --- the kind that stop a virus.
Why has no one publicly outlined exactly what would be done with infected civilians in the event of a large-scale, contagious outbreak? How would vaccines or antibiotics be distributed to thousands of people who would have only 1-3 days to receive treatment before the disease progressed beyond the point of survival. Currently experts are openly advising civilians to "go to a hospital" if they are in a hot zone, or effected area. Nothing more has been forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the newly created Office of Homeland Security [OHS] is preparing to spend millions to increase government stockpiles of outdated vaccines for "naturally occurring" anthrax and smallpox, gambling that a bio-terrorist would not use another type of germ, or even a lab created, airborn mutant for which there are no current vaccines.
Only those who survive the disease can provide antibodies to make vaccines and it would take years to develop enough vaccine to treat large populations. These designer viruses can be genetically altered at will, thus it would be pointless to manufacture vaccines for every virus capability. Only a vaccine that kills all viruses would be effective in today's biological arsenal, and that hasn't been developed yet.
So What is the Answer?
The immediate answer is hiding in plain view. Most of the magazine and television coverage during the October anthrax scare depicted hazmat teams running around in bio-suits while TV anchormen and victims of anthrax-laced letters stood in the forefront being interviewed. One anchorman wearing ordinary street clothing looked behind him at a space-man swabbing for anthrax spores and said on camera, "What am I doing here?"
To date, the only segment of the population which has no access to emergency biohazard equipment are civilians. First responders, firemen, police, hospitals, military, and even Congress have direct access to bio-suits and respirators. Yet, civilians are deprived of this same protection, despite the fact it is their tax money that is paying for this gear.
Bio-experts say it's ridiculous to purchase gas masks. They're right. Common gas masks do not protect against viruses, they protect against gas and chemicals, and most surplus stores sell antiquated and leaky gas masks anyway. Nevertheless, the experts could suggest other methods of protection, even if it is minimal, but they refuse to educate civilians on how to survive a bio attack before it occurs, or where to buy protective equipment, because it might cause a panic.
On October 25, the Center for Disease Control [CDC] published a report on the Internet entitled "Interim Recommendations for the Selection and Use of Protective Clothing and Respirators Against Biological Agents." The web address is: www.bt.cdc.gov/DocumentsApp/Anthrax/Protective/10242001Protect.asp. The recommendations were technical in nature, suggesting the use of half-mask or full facepiece air-purifying respirators with particulate filter efficiencies ranging from N95 to P100 as a minimum level of protection.
For maximum protection against a lethal unidentified bio-weapon the CDC recommended the following: Emergency first responders should use "self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) respirators with a full facepiece operated in the most protective, positive pressure (pressure demand) mode during emergency responses. This type of SCBA provides the highest level of protection against airborne hazards when properly fitted to the user’s face and properly used. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) respirator policies state that, under those conditions, SCBA reduces the user’s exposure to the hazard by a factor of at least 10,000."
Manufacturers of NIOSH-approved [certified], pressure-demand SCBA respirators and Level A protective suits sell only to first responders, military, and government agencies. This equipment is not available to civilians, but OSHA-approved mine safety respirators [P-100 particulate] might be.
Today President Bush is desperate to shut down all terrorists worldwide in hopes of temporarily thwarting the use of biological weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. population. It would buy time to develop defensive measures for civilians, perhaps mass-produced protective equipment, or even development of immune boosting technology.
Dr. Ken Alibek, in his 1999 book "Biohazard," admits there is little current protection against today's emerging viruses, but points out that over the past two decades, scientists have vastly expanded their understanding of how the immune system works. "This knowledge can be exploited to provide a new form of medical defense against biological agents," he wrote.
Essentially, Alibek promotes the notion that immunology is the ultimate weapon against biowarfare, particulary non-specific immunity in which cytokine molecules stimulate the secretion of antibodies and prompt the growth and activation of a host of immune cells. Most cannot kill viruses or bacteria on their own, but they have been found to boost the immune system and enable patients to respond to previously unproductive treatments. They have also been shown to increase the effectiveness of T-lymphocytes including natural killer cells which destroy pathogenic bacteria and cells invaded by viruses.
Alibek concluded, "Nothing will replace the long-term protection provided by vaccines against specific diseases, but boosting the non-specific immune system may offer at least temporary protection from pathogenic agents and possibly go even further. If administered in the crucial first hours after an attack - when authorities are still trying to identify which agent was used and organize a medical response - such a booster could help contain the crisis. It is a long shot, but everything I know about biological weapons tells me that this is far more promising than attempts to rig office buildings and public monuments with detection devices or to stockpile vaccines." [pp 290].
The answer for civilians is clear: they're on their own, it's time to get bio-educated and improvise until the government gets its act together.
Dr. Alibek, who now focuses his research on bio-defense technology, told Fox News on October 20 that vitamin A and E supplements build up the immune system significantly. "For example," said Alibek, "vitamin A is a great anti-oxidant. We know that if you take vitamin E you significantly increase your immune system's response to various pathogens. If you take vitamin A, selenium, and some other supplements, your immune system is boosted."
The Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] publishes a preparedness manual on the Internet entitled: "Your Family Disaster Supplies Kit" [http://www.fema.gov/library/diskit.htm] which offers details for assembling a disaster supplies kit, including the six basics: "water, food, first aid supplies, clothing and bedding, tools and emergency supplies and special items." The manual advises people to "keep the items that you would most likely need during an evacuation in an easy-to-carry container."
But the manual does not address biological warfare preparations. Few publications do; bio-gear and procedures have not been tested under actual emergency conditions. Thus civilians can look to the medical community for improvisation on bio-protective gear in lieu of bio-suits and virus-proof respirators. Most medical supply stores, some pharmacies, hardware stores, and even Walmart carry the following gear which can be worn while standing in long lines to receive treatment during a bio outbreak.
It is important to keep in mind that some weaponized or powdered anthrax spores that have been reduced to five-microns or smaller can pass through a surgical mask. Some experts are suggesting the use of mine safety respirators [P-100 particulate] that reportedly can be purchased by civilians at some hardware stores or through an industrial supplier.
1. Shower caps. Can also be purchased in bulk at beauty supply stores.
2. Disposable vinyl surgical gloves. Quantity of 100 can be purchased in box.
3. Latex dishwashing gloves to be worn over surgical gloves.
4. Two-piece hooded vinyl rain-suits.
5. Rain boots.
6. Surgical scrub-suits to be worn under rain-suits.
7. Industrial protective eye-goggles and face shields, as worn by dentists.
8. Virus-proof, germ-filter surgical masks. Bulk quantity. [As worn by surgeons]
9. Mine safety respirator - P100 particulate.
10. Bleach - lots of it.
11. Common garden sprayer to decon gear and environment with bleach or disinfectant.
12. Large container to hold bleach for decontamination of gear before entering house. To stand in while spraying bleach from head to toe before removing gear and placing in container.
13. Large plastic trash bags for decontaminated throw-away gear.
14. Military sticky-tape to wrap around wrists, ankles, to seal all openings around rain-suit and boots.
15. Ultra-violet light to decontaminate rooms in house.
16. Household disinfectants, anti-bacterial cleaners for gear that can't be deconned by bleach.
17. Antibiotics such as doxycycline, amoxicillin, or cipro, if they can be obtained.
18. Three-week supply of water and food.
19. Other improvisation as necessary.
Perhaps a quote published in Richard Preston's "Annals of War - The Bioweaponeers" [New Yorker magazine - March 9, 1998] by Dr. Peter Jahrling, chief scientist at USAMRIID (Ft. Detrick), offers some hope --- "I don't think anyone could knock out New York City with a genetically engineered bug, but someone might be able to knock out a few people and thereby make an incredible panic."
-END-
I wrote this in 1998 and someone put it on the Internet.
www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/secret_projects2/project147.htm
Bio-Terrorism - Who and What is the Threat?
by Stormbird8@aol.com
November 1998
In the early 1940’s it was nuclear fission, today it is biological technology, an out of control Manhattan Project hemorrhaging sinuously upon the world scene like a nuclear mushroom, caught in the winds of scientific whimsy. Urgent U.S. defense preparations are underway to cope with this emerging technology, using strategic war plans computer systems, or artificial intelligence, to predict what the first fallout will be and where it will occur.
The discovery of synthetic lab-created retroviruses designed to attack the very nature of human immunity is in the hands of every major country in the world. So is the antidote. While the stalemate continues, people go about their ordinary lives, and governments ponder who will use it first; will it be used for good or evil? It can be used to seek out and detect cancer causing viruses, or as a biological weapon.
The technology is complicated for dissemination to the general public, civilians are not educated on the subject, thus fear of the unknown and unseen creates silent terror in a population. The New York Times reported on April 24th that Bill Clinton, after reading The Cobra Event, a fictional book based on scientific fact about a biological attack on New York City, immediately convened a panel of experts to brief him on preparations for biological warfare. A subsequent report suggested stockpiling vaccines, antibiotics and antidotes, and setting up mechanisms to make large quantities in a hurry.
A secret drill simulating a germ warfare attack in which a small pox hybrid virus was dropped along the Mexican-American border showed the U.S. government is unprepared to deal with such a crisis. Officials who participated in the drill soon found themselves overwhelmed by a panicked population, short of antibiotics and vaccines, hampered by antiquated quarantine laws, and unable to get trained, immunized medical personnel to the scene, the Times reported.
The technology IS scary, to be sure, and that doesn’t change the fact of its existence, however people can educate themselves on the options. Patrick Henry once said, (on the brink of the American revolution):
Excerpted
"We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts --- For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it."
Biology of a Recombinant Virus
Genetic engineering has brought forth cures for diseases and synthetic spray vaccines, while it paradoxically spawned deadly predator viruses that mutate at will and can jump species from a spider host to a mosquito, lizard, mouse, cat, monkey or human. The new hypermutant life form can even live inside a bacteria host and multiply until it explodes out of the cell and finds its way into the bloodstream.
Weapons-related genetic engineering, in military terms, is the creation of genetically altered viruses and bacteria in order to enhance their power as weapons. This can be done by altering an organism’s DNA, or its genetic code, which is found in every cell and in every virus particle in existence. In high schools in the United States today, students are taught how to do genetic engineering. They learn how to create new variants of (safe) bacteria which are resistant to antibiotics. One genetic engineering kit for high-school students costs forty-two dollars and is sold through the mail.
In 1990 and 1991, Russian scientists found a way to splice Venezuelan equine encephalitis (a brain virus) into the genome, or DNA, of smallpox. The result was a "recombinant chimera virus" called Veepox. In ancient Greek mythology, the chimera was a monster made of parts of different animals. Recombination means the mixing of genes from different organisms. Under a microscope, the Veepok looks like smallpox, but it isn’t. It is a new form of life.
Understanding the biology of a deadly Level-4 (90% fatality) virus, how it was conceived, and by whom, is the first step in combatting the effects of biological warfare. The books The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event by Richard Preston, an MIT and American Institute of Physics award winning science writer, provide clear scientific data on Level-4 viral outbreaks in the U.S. and Africa, and give valuable information on bio-hazard protection against these microorganisms.
The book, Emerging Viruses, by Dr. Leonard Horowitz, a Harvard graduate with a master of arts degree in health education and a master of public health degree in behaviorial science, suggests that the Ebola virus has become a biological weapon.
Spray Vaccines for Anthrax & Plague
The biotechnology revolution was launched when Dr. Joshua Lederberg, a professor at Rockefeller University, won the Nobel Prize in 1946 for discovering that bacteria can swap genes with each other. By 1970 huge bio programs, administered by the Rockefeller Foundation in cooperation with the CIA, provided experimental vaccines to millions of recipients worldwide. Today, Dr. Lederberg advises the government on biological weapons and the potential for bio-terrorism.
Currently, Rockefeller University in cooperation with SIGA Pharmaceuticals has developed a revolutionary nasal spray antidote for military defense applications. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding the research under the umbrella of the Department of Defense.
The nasal spray, called a "mucosal vaccine," is the latest breakthrough in vaccine technology. It is a rapidly deployable defense against biological warfare agents such as anthrax and plague, and can be administered by a soldier, civilian, or even a child. No needles or shots are necessary. This genetically engineered commensal delivers an antigen (stimulates the production of antibodies) from a variety of pathogens (cause of disease), viral or bacterial, to surfaces in the mouth, nasal passages, gastrointestinal and genital tracts. By combining a specific antigen with specific commensals (harmless bacteria that naturally inhabit the body’s mucosal surfaces), vaccines or other neutralizing agents are rapidly produced. It is not known, when, if ever, this spray vaccine will be marketed to the general population, but someone stands to make $billions, akin to a biological Bill Gates, if a bio-war outbreak occurs in the United States.
Long Term Effects of Experimental Vaccines
Other commensal vectors may soon be used to vaccinate children against influenza in 1999. Doctors tested the vaccine, called FluMist, on 1,602 children ages 15 months to 6 years in 1996. One percent of the children receiving the vaccine spray developed influenza, compared to 18 percent in the untreated group. The long-term "fall out" effects of these experimental vaccines are still unknown.
The effects of older vaccines may only just now be surfacing in baby-boomers today as their immune systems weaken and dormant viruses emerge. According to The Health Century by Edward Shorter, Ph.D., Americans are paying a heavy price, particularly those innoculated with Sabin oral polio vaccines prior to 1964, as recipients of 40 different simian (monkey) virus contaminants, called SV40, produced by Merck Laboratories in the 1950’s.
During interviews for his book, Dr. Shorter audiotaped Dr. Maurice Hilleman, director at Merck vaccine division. Hilleman said he notified Albert Sabin of his concerns that the SV40 virus might have long-term effects such as cancerous tumors. In 1961, the SV40 contaminated polio vaccines were pulled off the shelves at Merck after studies showed it might in fact be carcinogenic to humans. No mention of the cancer connection was made in the press until 1962. By then millions of children had received both the Salk inactivated polio vaccine and Sabin’s live virus vaccine, produced in contaminated Rhesus monkey kidney cells.
Years later, in December 1986, when asked why the press was silent on this issue, an elderly Albert Sabin replied, " --- There’s too much scaring the public unnecessarily. Oh, your children were injected with cancer virus and all that. That’s not very good."
In March 1996, new evidence was presented by Dr. W. John Martin, professor of pathology at the University of Southern California, at the Twentieth Century Plagues symposium in Los Angeles and San Francisco, that SV40 gene sequences had been found in childhood choroid plexus brain tumors. Martin noted that chronic fatigue syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, and other behavior-linked illnesses "may be an inadvertent consequence of stealth virus vaccine contaminants" derived from simian viruses. Stealth viruses are unique cell-destroying viruses that are not recognized by the human immune system. These viruses cause persistent infections because they are missing specific genes which ordinarily evoke an immune response.
In his 1997 book, Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola, Nature, Accident or Intentional?, Dr. Leonard Horowitz notes, " --- Anyone who received polio vaccines prior to 1964 is at risk of carrying SV40 and spreading it to others at home or in the community. The virus is apparently circulating now throughout the human race."
NOTE: ABC News on February 19, 1999 noted that the current issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute reported that simian SV-40 virus has been found in 10% of the baby-boomer population who received live polio vaccine prior to 1963.
Origins of AIDS & Ebola
Dr. Horowitz’s book mainly explores evidence that AIDS and Ebola viruses were byproducts of a genetic engineering program, conducted by Merck and other government funded labs to develop and test effects of bio-war viruses. One source from which his theory was derived was a five volume text entitled Virology which noted that during the late 1960’s researchers advanced a new theory of evolution - that through future research of viral evolution (retroviruses) a "genetically superior race of humans could be synthetically evolved."
AIDS For Profit
The irony of this scheme, according to Horowitz, was that the lab (Merck Department of Virus Cell Biology) allegedly responsible for the AIDS contaminated Hepatitus B vaccine injected into 1,083 New York homosexuals, may also reap billions of dollars in future revenues from developing and marketing AIDS-related drugs for T-cell disorders.
Aids-like Viruses used for pre-cancer diagnosis?
Horowitz found buried in the basement of the Davis Library at the University of North Carolina a book entitled Special Virus-Cancer Program, published by the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Md. which detailed a $35 million collaborative program structured for the purpose of proving that viruses are the causative (etiological) agents of cancer - and certain AIDS-like retroviruses can be used for pre-cancer diagnosis by seeking out and detecting inactive human cancer viruses.
The text covered the period from 1970 to 1971, the critical period during which Bionetics Research Labs, a Division of Litton Industries, had created numerous AIDS-like retroviruses. Observed Horowitz: "Litton Bionetics had not only been involved in the development of AIDS-like, Marburg-like, and Ebola-like viruses, but had been innoculating simian monkeys with these mutant horrors as early as 1962, and had shipped the infected monkeys to labs around the world, including the ones in which the Marburg and Reston [Ebola] outbreaks occurred." (There had been an Ebola outbreak at a vaccine factory in Marburg, Germany and another at a primate quarantine unit in Reston, Virginia, owned by Hazelton Research).
A few of the collaborative labs involved in the Special Virus-Cancer Program were listed as Hazelton Research Labs; Merck Institute (pharmaceuticals); Bionetics Research Labs; and Anderson Hospital & Tumor Institute.
The 1971 text of Special Virus-Cancer Program also noted that "there are now over 100 viruses which are known to cause virtually all kinds of cancer in every major group of animal including non-human primates." Through this research it was discovered that AIDS-like viruses could be used for pre-cancer diagnosis. A mouse Leukemia type-C virus which was adapted to grow in human cells, if innoculated into a human, could seek out and detect inactive human Sarcoma viruses. The down side to this procedure was that humans then became the mixers for "mutant" Leukemia and Sarcoma viruses, or retroviruses.
Horowitz suggested that the AIDS epidemic’s simultaneous emergence in Central Africa and New York during the late 1970’s (and later Ebola) was the result of a mass innoculation program originating from experimental monkey-virus-contaminated vaccines supplied by the Litton and Merck network of researchers.
World Health Organization: Vaccine Tests in Africa
The World Health Organization (WHO) is often at the center of these controversies. WHO helps developing countries establish national biological control laboratories and sets standards for development, manufacture, distribution and administration of essentially all pharmaceuticals used throughout the world.
In 1969 the U.S. Department of Defense requested $10 million from Congress to perform studies on immune-system-destroying agents for germ warfare defense. According to WHO records, in 1970 studies were conducted on viruses that were capable of altering the immunologic response capacity of T-Lymphocytes (immunity T-cells). Prior to that, WHO had issued a 5-year research report on advances in virology experimentation relating primarily to the causal relationship between viruses and human cancer. The report stated that Russian and American researchers had learned how the human immune system can be "bolstered or destroyed by old and newly developed germs."
The WHO also applied administrative leadership and funding for several programs designed to evaluate specific disease vulnerabilities of minority groups - from American Indians to African natives - through collection and analysis of gene pools and blood supplies.
In 1970 the WHO and the Vaccine Development Committee endorsed an African smallpox immunization program with a budget of $14 million for use in Zaire and neighboring countries. By today’s standards, that would amount to about $70 million, a huge budget for innoculations on a faraway undeveloped continent. It is noteworthy that AIDS was non-existent in Africa prior to 1975 - and Ebola was not recorded until 1976. Both originate from the same area in Zaire. Moreover, noted Horowitz, Merck Laboratories, the U.S. Army, USAID, the National Cancer Institute and Litton Bionetics were all focused on "vaccines and studies in which cancer-causing [retro] viruses were isolated and transported from Africa to the U.S. and visa versa."
Quarantine Trials
A telling article by WHO consultants in March 1970 presciently warned of grave psychological consequences if a biological attack occurred in the U.S.: "The response to a chemical or biological attack may require precautionary or other measures on such a scale that extraordinary means of social control will have to be introduced, and these may remain in force long after the need for them has passed. Thus an attack may lead to social changes out of all proportion to the actual damage done."
The 1993 book, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston unwittingly corroborates the WHO consultants’ prediction of "extraordinary means of social control."
During the 1976 Ebola outbreak in Kinshasa, the World Health Organization and public officials sent the Army in to enforce quarantines; roadblocks were set up, hospital staff were quarantined inside the hospital, planes and boats were not allowed in or out, communications were cut off, and anyone trying to leave the city was shot. "Virus hunter" Dr. Karl M. Johnson, former head of Special Pathogens Branch of Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, had been Chief of the WHO team in Kinshasa during the outbreak. At his home in Big Sky, Montana, where he now does consulting work on "hot zones," Johnson rhetorically observed, "A virus can be useful to a species by thinning it out...."
Ebola Outbreak in Reston, Virginia
The notion that AIDS and Ebola are synthetic by-products of genetic engineering, or "black biology," is not dissuaded in The Hot Zone. During the 1989 Ebola outbreak at the primate quarantine building in Reston, Virginia, four monkey caretakers became infected with Ebola virus, yet none of those American workers became sick. Author Preston inadvertently revealed his inner suspicions, or offered a subliminal hint, when he wrote: " --- However, something eerie and perhaps sinister occurred. All four men eventually tested positive for Ebola Reston virus. They had all been infected with the agent. The virus had entered their bloodstreams and multiplied in their cells. Ebola proliferated in their bodies. It cycled in them. It carried on its life inside the monkey workers. But it did NOT make them sick, even while it multiplied inside them. If they had headaches or felt ill, none of them could recall it. Eventually the virus cleared from their systems naturally, disappeared from their blood, and as of this writing, none of the men was affected by it."
Why would Preston consider the immunity of the four Americans to Ebola virus "eerie" or "sinister"? Perhaps because thousands of black Africans contracted the hemorragic virus in Africa, and died slowly while their organs liquified and blood poured from every orifice of their body. Yet the American monkey handlers, working for Hazelton Research, who received treatment at Fairfax Hospital by Fort Detrick scientists, remained healthy. Wrote Preston: "The workers at Reston had symptomless Ebola virus. Why didn’t it kill them? To this day, no one knows the answer to that question."
Ebola Not Found in Nature
Another corroborative chapter in The Hot Zone recounts a Spring 1988 joint U.S. Kenya expedition comprised of Fort Detrick and Kenyan scientists to the Rift Valley where the Kinshasa Highway, or AIDS Highway as it is called in Africa, passes by Mount Elgin, the origin of both the Ebola and AIDS virus outbreaks. They found no trace of the Ebola virus in any part of the natural environment. "Exactly where the virus came from is one of the great mysteries ---" noted Preston.
Ebola: A Russian Bio-Weapon
Simultaneously, on yet another continent, in April 1988, Dr. Nikolai Ustinov, a forty-four year old scientist at a virology-research facility in Western Siberia pricked his finger with a needle and contracted the Ebola virus. He had been studying its potential as a bio-weapon that could be loaded into special biological warheads on the MIRV missiles that were aimed at the United States. At the time, the Soviet missile warheads were designed for strategic genetically engineered strains of smallpox virus, anthrax, and Black death which was resistant to antibiotics.
The deputy chief at the Biopreparat facility, Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, known today in America as Ken Alibek, attempted to obtain the special immune serum from the Ministry of Defense, but bureaucratic delays prevented its arrival in Siberia until it was too late. After moving to the United States in 1992, Alibek told American officials the Ebola strain had been obtained by Soviet intelligence, but he didn’t know where it came from, maybe Marburg, Germany, he said.
The Soviets froze Ustinov’s blood and body parts and kept the Ustinov Ebola strain alive and replicating in the Biopreparat lab called Vector. They named the strain Variant U, after Ustinov, and mass produced it in simple bio-reactors. They dried Variant U, processed it into an inhalable dust, resembling pink talcum powder, then tested the airborne weapon on animals in special explosion-test chambers. Just one to five microscopic particles of Variant U lodged in the lungs of a monkey was equal in lethality to eight thousand spores of weapons-grade anthrax.
Variant U was on the verge of becoming a strategic bio-weapon, ready to be loaded into MIRV warheads, when the Soviet Union fell apart and Russian scientists left to work in other countries. The Biopreparat facility had employed 25,000 people and consisted of forty sprawling research and production facilities. It worked both sides of the street: curing diseases and inventing new ones. When government funding decreased dramatically and scientists lost their jobs, Ken Alibek came to the United States. He said other biologists may have gone to China, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya, some carrying freeze-dried Variant U Ebola with them. No one kept track of them.
Hantavirus in Russia?
In a March 9, 1998 New Yorker magazine article entitled, Annals of War - Bioweaponeers, by Richard Preston, Alibek discussed accidental contamination of the soil outside a bio-factory at Omutninsk. Wild rodents living in the woods outside the factory had become chronically infected with the Schu-4 military strain of tularemia, a bacterium that causes a type of pneumonia, which was being developed in the plant. It was a hot, lethal strain that came from the United States: an American biological weapon that the Soviets had managed to obtain. The mutant bacteria had "jumped species," from its natural host to rodents. People catch tularemia easily from rodents, noted Preston.
Just recently, in April 1998, health officials have begun monitoring mice populations near Colorado Springs in the United States. The Associated Press reported a 17-year-old boy who lived on a ranch west of Colorado Springs, died on April 18th of Hantavirus. The press described Hantavirus as "a rare pneumonia-like disease [which] is contracted by ingesting airborne dust particles of the feces, urine or saliva of tiny deer mice."
Aged: Targets of Bio-War
The world’s most serious known bio-weapon outbreak occurred in the Ural Mountains east of Moscow at Yekaterinburg. In April 1979, the military microbiology lab there known as Compound 19, emitted a cloud of human inhalation anthrax spores that spread downwind killing 68 people and contaminating livestock and food sources. A subsequent study from Harvard University, based on research at the scene, noted the absence of any victims under the age of 24. In February 1998, the Washington Post reported that a news conference in Moscow revealed the 1979 leak did not release anthrax, but some kind of "new biological weapon" that was designed to target middle-aged men.
Bio-Terrorism Comes in Many Forms
Establishing the truth about U.S., Iraqi, or Russian biological weapons programs is ambiguous because research on defensive means, such as vaccines, and on offensive weapons involves identical equipment. If a scientist is developing a defensive vaccine, he must test it against a virulent agent. And even small quantities of these virulent organisms can be grown to significant quantities in a few weeks and moved around the country in portable bio-reactors.
Bio-terrorism comes in many forms: A hantavirus leak into the general population from a secret bio-research facility; a super-mutant antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus found in hospitals; contaminated experimental vaccines injected into Gulf War soldiers; genocide in Africa; pharmaceutical profiteers creating retroviruses, then making millions on "miracle" cures and vaccines; a terrorist suitcase left in a New York subway; military bio-quarantine containments and social controls; and last but not least, the threat of biological warfare.
Remedies
Education is the only defense against new emerging viruses. Even the most sophisticated predator virus is still subject to natural law. It degenerates and falls apart when exposed to sunlight (ultra-violet rays). Simple household bleach can eradicate any virus from a contaminated area. (Bleach was used by the Fort Detrick Army team to decontaminate the Reston monkey house and the bio-suits afterwards). Human skin is virus-proof; the vulnerable areas of the body are eyelids, lips, mucous membranes and open cuts, all of which can be covered or protected with readily available bio-hazard equipment, most of which is commonly used in hospitals.
Perhaps a quote published in Richard Preston’s March 9, 1998 New Yorker article entitled Annals of War - Bioweaponeers, by Dr. Peter Jahrling, chief scientist at USAMRIID (Ft. Detrick), offers some hope --- "I don’t think anyone could knock out New York City with a genetically engineered bug, but someone might be able to knock out a few people and thereby make an incredible panic."
Contact: Stormbird8@aol.com
Note: See related story: Bio-Hazard Protections
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Bio-Hazard Protections
By Stormbird8@aol.com
Remedies
It is likely the new millenium will be called the Biological Age. The children of 2000 A.C. face an invisible challenge, a new life form created in laboratories by scientists standing on the edge of existence, shaking their fists at Heaven. As ancient man survived predator dinosaurs with his wits and the tools at hand, so have Americans emerged from the Nuclear Age unscathed. Perhaps with the demise of T- Rex, man felt compelled to create his own deadly challenges through technology. The most recent discovery, genetically engineered viruses, are above all subject to natural law, because they are the most fundamental and fragile of all life forms.
Education is the only defense against these new emerging viruses. Even the most sophisticated predator-virus DNA material degenerates and falls apart when exposed to sunlight (ultra-violet rays). Viruses like dry, "dead air" (enclosed air spaces), and dust and darkness. They have difficulty surviving exposure to moisture, sunlight and fresh air. They can be eradicated from any contaminated area with simple household bleach, and they must enter the body through injections, open cuts, eyelids, lips, or mucous membranes, all of which can be covered or protected with readily available bio-protective gear, most of which is commonly used in hospitals.
Virus-proof surgical masks, eye goggles, face shields, surgical gloves, scrub suits, plastic caps, and much more can be purchased at most medical supply stores. Doctors and dentists use them daily. *See list at bottom of this article.
Protective Gear
In his book "The Hot Zone," Richard Preston describes in detailed layman's terms the equipment and procedures used by the USAMRIID bio-hazard team from Fort Detrick to decontaminate the Reston Primate Quarantine Unit during an Ebola virus outbreak in 1989. The Reston "deconn" was a field operation, conducted entirely outside a contained Level-4 bio-lab. Ebola is considered a Level-4 (90% fatality) "hot" agent, which can be inhaled into the lungs.
Other known field operations include an expedition by Ft. Detrick scientists into the Rift Valley in Africa to locate the suspected source of Ebola virus in remote Kitum Cave, Mount Elgin. The scientists camped outside the cave and used field bio-protective equipment to enter the cave and take samples from rocks, animals and insects. Ebola was not found in the cave, or anywhere else in the natural environment. Nevertheless, the equipment used provides valuable information to those who are interested.
The equipment worn at Kitum Cave in 1988 included orange colored "Racal" bio-suits, which are positive pressure space suits with battery powered air supplies; used primarily at that time by Ft. Detrick scientists in field work with extreme bio-hazardous airborne viruses. The suit was fully portable, with a self-contained breathing apparatus. Military gas masks with virus filters fitted over hoods were used to enter the cave.
The military bio-hazard operation in Reston, Virginia in 1989 included much of the stockpiled gear used at Kitum Cave. In this instance, bio-protective gear used to enter the Ebola contaminated monkey house included light-weight Racal suits, battery packs, rubber gloves (over surgical gloves), surgical scrub suits (under bio-suits), flashlights, blunt scissors, plastic bottles, bio-hazard bags, and most importantly "hand-pumped garden sprayers for spraying bleach" on bio-suits and objects that needed to be "deconned" [decontaminated] as they exited the monkey house.
The procedure went as follows: The team put on surgical scrub suits, then entered a storage room used for a staging area inside the monkey building. The suits were orange field biological Racal suits, commonly used with airborne biological agents. The pressurized suit has a clear, soft plastic bubble for a helmut. Air pressure was supplied by an electric motor that sucks air from the outside and passes it through "virus filters," then injects it into the suit. This keeps the suit under positive pressure so that any airborne virus particles will have a hard time flowing into it. It protects the entire body from virus, surrounding the body with super-filtered air.
Next the rubber gloves were put on and taped with military sticky tape to the sleeves of the suits. On their feet, they wore sneakers, and over the sneakers they pulled bright yellow rubber boots. The support team taped the boots to the legs of the suits to make an airtight seal above the ankle. The electric blower was switched on and the suits puffed up. The military brown sticky tape was used during the operation to tape shut any rips that occurred in the suit. This prevented the suits from losing pressure and getting contaminated inside.
The rule inside the monkey house storage room airlock was that both doors, the far door and the near door, could never be opened at the same time. This to prevent a back-flow of contaminated air from flowing into the staging room. The batteries that pressurized the suit had a life span of 6 hours. When the team emerged from the monkey house into the airlock, the support team sprayed the team members for five minutes with bleach. The suits were placed in bags and the bags sprayed with bleach. Everything that went down the drain had bleach poured after it to prevent Ebola from getting into the sewer system.
In 1993 author Richard Preston trekked up Mt. Elgin to Kitum Cave in deepest Africa. The following description of "field" procedures and equipment he used in this remote area is outstanding in value to the reader and entirely unique in detail.
It reads as follows: (Excerpted) "I unzipped my backpack and withdrew my gear and laid it on the rocks. I had assembled the components of a Level-4 field biological space suit. It was not a pressurized suit - not an orange Racal suit. It was a neutral- pressure whole-body suit with a hood and full-face respirator. The suit itself was made of Tyvek, a slick, white fabric that is resistant to moisture and dust.
"I laid out a pair of green rubber gauntlet gloves, yellow rubber boots, a black mask with twin purple [virus] filters. The mask was a silicone rubber North respirator mask with a Lexan faceplate, for good visibility, and the purple filters were the kind that stop a virus. I placed a roll of sticky tape on the rocks. A plastic shower cap - ten cents apiece at Woolworths. Flashlight, head lamp ---
"I stepped into the suit, feet first, pulled it up to my armpits, and fed my arms into the sleeves. I stretched the shower cap over my head, then pulled the hood of the suit down over the shower cap. I zipped up the front of the suit, from crotch to chin. I taped the front zipper of the suit, taped the wrists of my gloves to the suit, taped the cuffs of the boots to the suit ---" Preston then attached an electric miners lamp on his head.
When Preston exited the cave, he deconned himself as follows: He took a plastic laundry tub and filled it with water from a nearby waterfall. Then he poured a gallon of bleach into it. Then he stepped into the tub, placed his gloved hands into the liquid and scooped it over his capped head and face mask.
Using a toilet brush, he scrubbed his boots and legs. Then he dropped his flashlight and headlamp into the bleach mixture, took off his face-mask and dunked it along with the purple virus filters. Then he peeled off his green gauntlet gloves, then stepped out of his Tyvek suit, peeling the sticky tape off as he went. The whole suit, together with the yellow boots, went into the bleach. "It was a stew of bio-hazard gear," he said. The suit and gear was double-bagged, washed outside with bleach, then bagged again, then bleached again.
An incredible feat by a courageous researcher, yet no less complicated than deep sea diving or sledding the Alaskan wilderness in the dead of winter. Both require special protective clothing and a knowledge of the elements. Few would enter the wilderness or the sea unprepared. Today's microbes are an inescapable element, the most basic of all creation, that will challenge us in the coming years, just as computer technology challenged us over a decade ago. No one is helpless in the wake of emerging viruses, education is the key. A quote by Louis Pasteur sums it up best: "Chance favors the prepared mind."
Government Warning
On April 22, 1998, author Richard Preston went before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding chemical and biological weapons threats to America. He presciently underlined the need for the United States to stockpile the smallpox vaccine, noting there was currently only 7 million usable doses on hand. "Experts believe that in any terrorist release of smallpox, even a small one, the virus is so contagious that it would be necessary to vaccinate at least 20 to 30 million Americans to stop the outbreak," said Preston.
He further reported that the U.S. Army had developed a new way to make smallpox vaccine very cheaply and in large quantities, but it needed to be tested and approved. Enough smallpox vaccine for every citizen - 270 million doses - could be stored in a small building the size of a garage, and the vaccine would remain potent for decades. "By having plenty of vaccine ready," he said, "we effectively remove smallpox as a good weapon from the arsenal of a would-be terrorist."
Preston warned the Senate that the smallpox virus would be easy to make in large quantities by a terrorist. "I'm not going to say exactly how to do it, but basically you can grow it in glass bottles the size of wine bottles. A room full of these bottles constitutes a national biological-weapons laboratory. Virtually any nation can have such a facility, and hide it easily. All you need is a master seed strain and a few Ph.D. scientists and perhaps $200,000 worth of equipment, which can be bought on the open market. Have scientists left Russia bringing their expertise and master seed strains of smallpox with them, or other bioweapon seed strains?", he asked the Senate.
Government Preparedness -Year 2000
On February 4-5, 2000 the Western Regional Bio-Terrorism Conference was held at the La Jolla Marriott Hotel in San Diego, California. The conference was sponsored by the County of San Diego, University of California - San Diego School of Medicine, and John Hopkins Center for Civilian BioDefense Studies in association with Science Applications International Corporation.
The conference cost $125 per person, per day and was open to the general public, though it was not advertised to the public until opening day, and then no location was disclosed. Rooms A through E were devoted to the conference with an adjacent Exhibits Hall. Some of the materials displayed on exhibit tables originated from the following sources:
(1) Center for Civilian BioDefense - Johns Hopkins University (www.hopkins-biodefense. org)
(2) BioDefense Quarterly - Publication of Johns Hopkins University
(3) Center for COMMUNITY Disaster Preparedness & Response (www.pathogenix.com)
(4) Amateur Rescuer - Disaster Preparedness & Response Magazine (info@pathogenix.com)
(5) Manual on Western Regional Conference on Bio-Terrorism (161-pages)
(6) Bio-Terrorism Participant Listing - 19-pages of names, title, city, specialty, who participated in the conference.
(7) C.E.R.T. - Community Emergency Response Team - advertised as "regular" folks that had been trained by the local fire department to assist them, the police and other disaster relief crews in time of disaster. The brochure said, "Becoming a CERT member enables you to care for yourself, your family, and neighbors in the event of a disaster."
A professional audio-tape package enclosed within a bound folder, along with the conference manual, was sold at a table outside the auditorium. The audio-tapes for the entire conference could be purchased from Castle Communications. (619) 688-7112. E-mail: castlecom@aol.com. The entire collection cost $99.00 + tax + $10. S&H.
An enthusiastic fireman who was manning a booth inside the Exhibit Hall noted that bio-terrorism is "sweeping the nation like a firestorm." He said everyone in government, first responders, and military were urgently training for bio-defense.
Across the aisle an empty booth displayed individual, airtight, clear bio-tents where sick civilians would be placed under field conditions in the event of a large biological outbreak. These tents would be used to quarantine civilians after the hospitals were filled to capacity and infected people were sent to containment areas. It didn't require much imagination to envision an entire stadium filled with civilians inside bio-tents being treated by doctors and nurses wearing bio space-suits.
The conversation with the fireman went as follows:
CS: "What type of bio-equipment is your department using?"
Fireman: "The standard Tyvek Bio-Suits and Chem-Bio respirators."
CS: "Do the respirators have twin-purple virus filters?"
Fireman: "I haven't heard of that."
CS: "Thousands of virus cells can live inside one bacteria cell. A bacteria filter won't keep a virus out. What kind of containment procedures have you developed for a Hot Zone?"
Fireman: "Well, we [the firemen] won't actually be in the front line, in the Hot Zone. The first line of defense will be handled by the Military."
CS: "Oh, so the sick and dying civilians will be passed on to the first responders by the Military?"
Fireman: "Yes, they will handle the containment."
CS: "Have you ever heard of an actual containment situation?"
Fireman: "No."
CS: "Well, during the 1976 Ebola outbreak in Kinshasa, Africa, the military contained an entire city. The hospitals, doctors, nurses, were quarantined. No ships, no planes, no person was allowed in or out. Anyone attempting to leave the area was shot. The phone lines were shut down - no calls in or out."
Fireman: "What's your point?"
CS: "I plan to write to the participants at this conference, asking for names of manufacturers of bio-suits and respirators with virus-filters. Most Israeli citizens were provided respirators during the Persian Gulf War. That's a pretty good deterrent against a bio-terrorism outbreak --- in Israel."
Fireman: "Well, that would put a burden on U.S. manufacturers of bio-suits and respirators; currently they're backlogged and trying to keep up with government orders."
CS: "Well, then they need to upgrade their production. If the equipment costs $3,000 now, it could cost $20,000 after the first outbreak."
Fireman: Nodding. "Yeah someone stands to make a lot of money after an outbreak."
CS: "Have any of the speakers at this conference addressed Civilian Preparedness, i.e., civilian bio-suits and respirators?"
Fireman: Hesitating, as if a lightbulb had been turned on in his mind. "Well, no."
CS: "I'll bet all the participants at this conference have bio-suits and respirators, don't they?"
The fireman chose not to respond.
Anthrax Vaccines Unreliable
On March 9, 2000, Rep. Christopher Shays released a report calling for suspension of the anthrax mandatory immunization program for U.S. troops. He had found the DOD Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program to be unsustainable in its present form due to "unreliable vaccine supply, uncertain program safety and unproven efficacy against the validated threat."
An excerpt of Shays report read as follows: "Designed in the 1950s and 60s, the vaccine was licensed in 1970 for protection against cutaneous (through the skin) anthrax infection. Before the Gulf War, it had not been widely used. After the war, DOD scientists acknowledged the vaccine caused adverse reactions and contained inconsistent amounts of the desired antigenic protein. They also knew it was unsuitable for broad military use due to the elaborate, arbitrarily established inoculation schedule of six shots over 18 months, plus annual boosters. DOD began, but did not aggressively pursue, research and testing on a purer, safer vaccine and an optimal shot course."
If the U.S. government is unable to produce a reliable anthrax vaccine for military troops, where does that leave American civilians?
Clearly, the recent anthrax scare was a wake-up call to Americans and their elected officials to address the issue of civilian bio-hazard protection. In October, experts in the field of biological warfare repeatedly announced on national media that anthrax was nothing to worry about and the government had the situation under control. But what if the organism had been a weaponized contagion?
The employees of American Media Inc. [AMI] in Boca Raton, Florida were filmed standing in long lines waiting for Cipro antibiotics. None of the experts interviewed on T.V. mentioned what would have occurred if those employees had been exposed to a "contagious" organism for which no vaccine existed, such as gene-spliced smallpox or ebola. In fact, they would have infected each other while standing in line.
Ironically as the AMI employees waited for antibiotics, wearing no protective gear whatsoever, not even a surgical mask, the hazmat response team was filmed shuffling back and forth in the background, between the AMI building and the staging area, wearing white Tyvek bio-suits and respirator mask with faceplate and twin-purple virus filters --- the kind that stop a virus.
Why has no one publicly outlined exactly what would be done with infected civilians in the event of a large-scale, contagious outbreak? How would vaccines or antibiotics be distributed to thousands of people who would have only 1-3 days to receive treatment before the disease progressed beyond the point of survival. Currently experts are openly advising civilians to "go to a hospital" if they are in a hot zone, or effected area. Nothing more has been forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the newly created Office of Homeland Security [OHS] is preparing to spend millions to increase government stockpiles of outdated vaccines for "naturally occurring" anthrax and smallpox, gambling that a bio-terrorist would not use another type of germ, or even a lab created, airborn mutant for which there are no current vaccines.
Only those who survive the disease can provide antibodies to make vaccines and it would take years to develop enough vaccine to treat large populations. These designer viruses can be genetically altered at will, thus it would be pointless to manufacture vaccines for every virus capability. Only a vaccine that kills all viruses would be effective in today's biological arsenal, and that hasn't been developed yet.
So What is the Answer?
The immediate answer is hiding in plain view. Most of the magazine and television coverage during the October anthrax scare depicted hazmat teams running around in bio-suits while TV anchormen and victims of anthrax-laced letters stood in the forefront being interviewed. One anchorman wearing ordinary street clothing looked behind him at a space-man swabbing for anthrax spores and said on camera, "What am I doing here?"
To date, the only segment of the population which has no access to emergency biohazard equipment are civilians. First responders, firemen, police, hospitals, military, and even Congress have direct access to bio-suits and respirators. Yet, civilians are deprived of this same protection, despite the fact it is their tax money that is paying for this gear.
Bio-experts say it's ridiculous to purchase gas masks. They're right. Common gas masks do not protect against viruses, they protect against gas and chemicals, and most surplus stores sell antiquated and leaky gas masks anyway. Nevertheless, the experts could suggest other methods of protection, even if it is minimal, but they refuse to educate civilians on how to survive a bio attack before it occurs, or where to buy protective equipment, because it might cause a panic.
On October 25, the Center for Disease Control [CDC] published a report on the Internet entitled "Interim Recommendations for the Selection and Use of Protective Clothing and Respirators Against Biological Agents." The web address is: www.bt.cdc.gov/DocumentsApp/Anthrax/Protective/10242001Protect.asp. The recommendations were technical in nature, suggesting the use of half-mask or full facepiece air-purifying respirators with particulate filter efficiencies ranging from N95 to P100 as a minimum level of protection.
For maximum protection against a lethal unidentified bio-weapon the CDC recommended the following: Emergency first responders should use "self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) respirators with a full facepiece operated in the most protective, positive pressure (pressure demand) mode during emergency responses. This type of SCBA provides the highest level of protection against airborne hazards when properly fitted to the user’s face and properly used. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) respirator policies state that, under those conditions, SCBA reduces the user’s exposure to the hazard by a factor of at least 10,000."
Manufacturers of NIOSH-approved [certified], pressure-demand SCBA respirators and Level A protective suits sell only to first responders, military, and government agencies. This equipment is not available to civilians, but OSHA-approved mine safety respirators [P-100 particulate] might be.
Today President Bush is desperate to shut down all terrorists worldwide in hopes of temporarily thwarting the use of biological weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. population. It would buy time to develop defensive measures for civilians, perhaps mass-produced protective equipment, or even development of immune boosting technology.
Dr. Ken Alibek, in his 1999 book "Biohazard," admits there is little current protection against today's emerging viruses, but points out that over the past two decades, scientists have vastly expanded their understanding of how the immune system works. "This knowledge can be exploited to provide a new form of medical defense against biological agents," he wrote.
Essentially, Alibek promotes the notion that immunology is the ultimate weapon against biowarfare, particulary non-specific immunity in which cytokine molecules stimulate the secretion of antibodies and prompt the growth and activation of a host of immune cells. Most cannot kill viruses or bacteria on their own, but they have been found to boost the immune system and enable patients to respond to previously unproductive treatments. They have also been shown to increase the effectiveness of T-lymphocytes including natural killer cells which destroy pathogenic bacteria and cells invaded by viruses.
Alibek concluded, "Nothing will replace the long-term protection provided by vaccines against specific diseases, but boosting the non-specific immune system may offer at least temporary protection from pathogenic agents and possibly go even further. If administered in the crucial first hours after an attack - when authorities are still trying to identify which agent was used and organize a medical response - such a booster could help contain the crisis. It is a long shot, but everything I know about biological weapons tells me that this is far more promising than attempts to rig office buildings and public monuments with detection devices or to stockpile vaccines." [pp 290].
The answer for civilians is clear: they're on their own, it's time to get bio-educated and improvise until the government gets its act together.
Dr. Alibek, who now focuses his research on bio-defense technology, told Fox News on October 20 that vitamin A and E supplements build up the immune system significantly. "For example," said Alibek, "vitamin A is a great anti-oxidant. We know that if you take vitamin E you significantly increase your immune system's response to various pathogens. If you take vitamin A, selenium, and some other supplements, your immune system is boosted."
The Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] publishes a preparedness manual on the Internet entitled: "Your Family Disaster Supplies Kit" [http://www.fema.gov/library/diskit.htm] which offers details for assembling a disaster supplies kit, including the six basics: "water, food, first aid supplies, clothing and bedding, tools and emergency supplies and special items." The manual advises people to "keep the items that you would most likely need during an evacuation in an easy-to-carry container."
But the manual does not address biological warfare preparations. Few publications do; bio-gear and procedures have not been tested under actual emergency conditions. Thus civilians can look to the medical community for improvisation on bio-protective gear in lieu of bio-suits and virus-proof respirators. Most medical supply stores, some pharmacies, hardware stores, and even Walmart carry the following gear which can be worn while standing in long lines to receive treatment during a bio outbreak.
It is important to keep in mind that some weaponized or powdered anthrax spores that have been reduced to five-microns or smaller can pass through a surgical mask. Some experts are suggesting the use of mine safety respirators [P-100 particulate] that reportedly can be purchased by civilians at some hardware stores or through an industrial supplier.
1. Shower caps. Can also be purchased in bulk at beauty supply stores.
2. Disposable vinyl surgical gloves. Quantity of 100 can be purchased in box.
3. Latex dishwashing gloves to be worn over surgical gloves.
4. Two-piece hooded vinyl rain-suits.
5. Rain boots.
6. Surgical scrub-suits to be worn under rain-suits.
7. Industrial protective eye-goggles and face shields, as worn by dentists.
8. Virus-proof, germ-filter surgical masks. Bulk quantity. [As worn by surgeons]
9. Mine safety respirator - P100 particulate.
10. Bleach - lots of it.
11. Common garden sprayer to decon gear and environment with bleach or disinfectant.
12. Large container to hold bleach for decontamination of gear before entering house. To stand in while spraying bleach from head to toe before removing gear and placing in container.
13. Large plastic trash bags for decontaminated throw-away gear.
14. Military sticky-tape to wrap around wrists, ankles, to seal all openings around rain-suit and boots.
15. Ultra-violet light to decontaminate rooms in house.
16. Household disinfectants, anti-bacterial cleaners for gear that can't be deconned by bleach.
17. Antibiotics such as doxycycline, amoxicillin, or cipro, if they can be obtained.
18. Three-week supply of water and food.
19. Other improvisation as necessary.
Perhaps a quote published in Richard Preston's "Annals of War - The Bioweaponeers" [New Yorker magazine - March 9, 1998] by Dr. Peter Jahrling, chief scientist at USAMRIID (Ft. Detrick), offers some hope --- "I don't think anyone could knock out New York City with a genetically engineered bug, but someone might be able to knock out a few people and thereby make an incredible panic."
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