Swine Flu Smoking Gun? CDC was Combining Flu Viruses in 2004

Sherry Baker

April 29, 2009

Last week, when what is now called a "swine flu" was first reported to be infecting and killing some people in Mexico, health officials noted it was a strain of flu never before seen. In fact, it is technically incorrect to call this simply a "swine" flu. Analyses showed it's a mixture of swine, human and avian viruses, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Moreover, it is genetically different from the fully human H1N1 seasonal influenza virus that has been circulating globally for the past few years. Bottom line: the new flu virus contains DNA from avian, swine viruses (including elements from European and Asian viruses) and human viruses.

So did this curious mixture just develop naturally, out of the blue? Is it the result of inhumane farming practices, as the Humane Society of the United States (

Well, maybe. But let's go back and look at the facts to see if any other scenario could be possible.

First of all, there's the troublesome detail that the virus has elements that come from multiple continents. Then there's the fact that true swine flu is only rarely transmissible to humans -- this flu is spreading human-to-human, most likely because it contains DNA from human flu.

Could someone have deliberately mixed these viruses together? Is that possible? Absolutely.

Was this virus mixing being done artificially in the lab, or had it already been done? Yes.

Who was blending potentially viruses in labs? Were those horrible generic boogie men known to Americans far and wide as "terrorists" doing it? There's no proof of bioterrorism at work here yet. However, there is evidence the United States government has been working on concocting new flu virus blends.

So could the hysteria-provoking, new swine flu have escaped from a lab?

Or was it deliberately released as some kind of test? When these kinds of questions are asked, the knee-jerk reaction of the mainstream media

(MSM) is to giggle and talk about "conspiracy theories" and to joke about wearing tinfoil hats.

But here's the potential smoking gun, the facts that suggest a potential source of the pandemic could be CDC labs. And at the very least, this possibility deserves thoughtful examination and research.

The University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) is hardly a place most Americans have heard about and, apparently, the Center's web site has news the MSM isn't familiar with, either. But information they published years ago has now taken on an urgent importance. CIDRAP, along with the Canadian newspaper Canadian Press (CP), revealed back in 2004 that the CDC was launching experiments designed to mix the H5N1 (avian) virus and human flu viruses. The goal was to find out how likely it was such a "reassortant" virus would emerge and just how dangerous it might be. Of course, it's logical to wonder if they also worked with the addition of a swine flu virus, too.

Here's some background from the five-year-old report by the University of Minnesota research center: "One of the worst fears of infectious disease experts is that the H5N1 avian influenza virus now circulating in parts of Asia will combine with a human-adapted flu virus to create a deadly new flu virus that could spread around the world. That could happen, scientists predict, if someone who is already infected with an ordinary flu virus contracts the avian virus at the same time. The avian virus has already caused at least 48 confirmed human illness cases in Asia, of which 35 have been fatal. The virus has shown little ability to spread from person to person, but the fear is that a hybrid could combine the killing power of the avian virus with the transmissibility of human flu viruses. Now, rather than waiting to see if nature spawns such a hybrid, US scientists are planning to try to breed one themselves

-- in the name of preparedness."

And CDC officials actually confirmed the government had plans for the research. The CIDRAP News folks did a great job covering this important issue, which was apparently mostly ignored by the MSM back in 2004, and CIDRAP News wrote to the CDC for information. This e-mail produced an answer from CDC spokesman David Daigle who admitted the CDC was working on the project in two ways. "One is to infect cells in a laboratory tissue culture with H5N1 and human flu viruses at the same time and then watch to see if they mix. For the human virus, investigators will use A (H3N2), the strain that has caused most human flu cases in recent years," the CIDRAP story stated. This co-infection approach was described as slow and labor-intensive. However, it was a way to produce a new virus that appeared to be closer to what develops in nature.

There was another, faster way CDC scientists could create the mix, too.

Called reverse genetics, it involves piecing together a new virus with genes from the H5N1 and H3N2 viruses. Reverse genetics had already been used successfully to create H5N1 candidate vaccines in several laboratories, the CDC's Daigle wrote. "Any viable viruses that emerge from these processes will be seeded into animals that are considered good models for testing how flu viruses behave in humans... The aim will be to observe whether the animals get sick and whether infected animals can infect others," he revealed in his e-mail.

What's more, the CP reported the CDC had already made hybrid viruses with H5N1 samples isolated from patients in Hong Kong in 1997, when there was the first outbreak of that virus, dubbed the "Hong Kong flu".

It is not clear if the results of that research were ever published.

Back in 2004, Dr. Nancy Cox, then head of the CDC's influenza branch, would tell the CP only: "Some gene combinations could be produced and others could not."

The CP's report noted that the World Health Organization (WHO) had been "pleading" for laboratories to do this blending-of-viruses research. The reason? If successful, these flu mixes would back up WHO's warnings about the possibility of a flu pandemic. In fact, Klaus Stohr, head of the WHO's global flu program at the time, told the CP that if the experiments were successful in producing highly transmissible and pathogenic viruses, the agency would be even more worried -- but if labs couldn't create these mixed flu viruses, then the agency might have to ratchet down its level of concern.

The 2004 CIDRAP News report addressed the obvious risks of manufacturing viruses in labs that, if released, could potentially spark a pandemic.

However, the CDC's Daigle assured the Minnesota research group the virus melding would be done in a biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) laboratory. "We recognize that there is concern by some over this type of work. This concern may be heightened by reports of recent lab exposures in other lab facilities," he told CIDRAP. "But CDC has an incredible record in lab safety and is taking very strict precautions."

Five years later, we must ask more questions. Were those safety measures enough? Was the CDC creating or testing any of these virus mixes in or near Mexico? What other potentially deadly virus combinations has the US government created? Don't US citizens, as taxpayers who funded these experiments, have a right to know? And for all the residents of planet earth faced with a potentially deadly global epidemic, isn't it time for the truth?

For more information:

"New flu is a genetic mix",

"CDC to mix avian, flu viruses",

"CDC to conduct avian flu pandemic experiements",

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Pandemic Nonsense: Flying Pig Flu

By Patrick Wood and Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD April 28, 2009

Are globalist fear-mongers driving the media to panic the public into universal healthcare solutions? Or federally-mandated vaccinations?

By definition, a "pandemic" is an epidemic that is geographically widespread. Fear-mongers are always careful to add the innuendo that millions of people could and probably will die, as in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 that killed between 20 and 100 million people worldwide.

Excuse me, but how does the death of even a few hundred equate to 20 million?

Mexico, not the usual Southeast Asia, is the origin of the latest flu outbreak. It has spread in limited numbers to several continents. Almost all of the deaths, limited as they are, are in Mexico. The ratio of deaths to infections is very small.

Again, how does this outbreak even remotely qualify as a pandemic?

Answer: It does not!

Scientists and virus researchers are baffled because the genetic makeup of the virus contains elements of human, swine and bird flu from three geographic regions: North America, Europe and Asia. Until now, this has been unknown in nature, but not theoretically impossible. (see New flu combines pig, bird, human virus and Mexico Seeks to Stop Spread of Deadly Flu)

Because of its unique genetic makeup, this writer proposes calling it the "flying pig flu", or FPF, instead.

This writer is hardly qualified to write with authority about the scientific side of viruses. However, after reading several authoritative papers on swine and avian flu, several observations can be made.

In the world of virus experts, there are two types of researchers:

Observers and Experimenters.

Observers

Most researchers are highly trained scientific observers. These "Sherlock Holmes" scientists examine the pathology of virus development.

Where did it originate? What animals or human were involved? Did the infected humans handle animals? Are certain strains limited to geography? You get the idea.

Without good observers, we would know little about the source or spread of different viral strains.

There are several good Internet resources where the findings of research observers are published. (For instance, see H5N1 - Ultimate News on

mutation)

We should be thankful for astute observers who can untangle mysteries that would otherwise not be understood.

Experimenters

A minority of researchers are experimenters. This group is worrisome.

Experimenters establish their playground in trying to create different types of viruses in order to measure their effect on test animals.

Such was the case at Baxter AG, when such an experiment was "accidentally" released as a live virus in a vaccine distributed to 18 countries. (See Baxter: Product contained live bird flu virus). In this case, the live H5N1 virus (avian flu) was combined with the much more contagious (human) H3N2 virus.

Experts say that it is almost impossible for Baxter to make such a grievous error by accident. Czech newspapers, where the story was originally broken, suggest it was a rogue employee or a mole that purposely mixed the virus' together, but nothing has been proven as yet.

Baxter is now under great suspicion that it is attempting to foment a pandemic that would bring hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to supply its normal H5N1 vaccine.

Another example is the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.

In a 2004 report, CDC to mix avian, human flu viruses in pandemic study, it was noted that,

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will soon launch experiments designed to combine the H5N1 virus and human flu viruses and then see how the resulting hybrids affect animals. The goal is to assess the chances that such a "reassortant" virus will emerge and how dangerous it might be."

Critics worried that such a "franken-virus" could itself cause a pandemic if it escaped from its creators. The CDC's only response is that their facilities were more secure than others who had experienced breaches of some sort in years past.

Why would the CDC risk world exposure to an artificially created virus?

According to the above report, it was done in the name of preparedness.

As mentioned above, experimenters are a worrisome lot. Real world experience indicates that they are generally overconfident in their scientific prowess and in their abilities to contain the unpredictable fruit of their experiments.

Conclusion

There are some big problems with the current outbreak of flying pig flu.

If there has been foul play, it may never be brought to light. Still, tough questions need to be asked:

* While it is not unknown for pigs to become infected with the H5N1 virus, the result has always been a less-lethal and less-contagious virus than avian flu by itself. Why is this epidemic so obviously contagious?

* How would genetic code from three continents find its way into a single strain in Mexico City?

* Is this virus an escaped experiment from a project gone awry?

* If man-made and not accidentally released, then who released it, and why?

As we contemplate these questions, watch the stock prices of major pharma companies skyrocket as they gear up to sell billions in vaccines.

Watch governments as they declare mandatory vaccination programs. Watch the Obama administration as it railroads universal healthcare through Congress.

Indeed, flying pig flu may be just the right name for whatever is responsible for this particular flu outbreak.

In the meantime, we can reopen this case when pigs fly or when 10 million or so people have died, whichever comes first.

Special Guest Opinion from Dr. Russell Blaylock [Editor's note: My friend, Dr. Russell Blaylock, is a board certified neurosurgeon, author and lecturer. An expert on nutrition and vaccines, he is also editor of the widely distributed Blaylock Wellness Report.

Dr. Blaylock graciously submitted the following comments for August Review readers. I highly recommend his newsletter.]

I was in the military during the first swine flu scare in 1976.

At the time it became policy that all soldiers would be vaccinated for swine flu. As a medical officer I refused and almost faced a court martial, but the military didn't want the bad publicity. Despite the assurance by all the experts in virology, including Dr. Sabin, the epidemic never materialized.

What did materialize were 500 cases of Gullian-Barre paralysis, including 25 deaths-not due to the swine flu itself, but as a direct result of the vaccine. At the time President Gerald Ford, on advice from the CDC, called for vaccination of the entire population of the United States.

Today, some 33 years later, we are hearing the same cries of alarm from a similar lineup of virology experts.

The pharmaceutical companies are busy designing a vaccine for the swine flu in hope that this administration will make the vaccine mandatory before another vaccine-related disaster can ruin their party.

And as before, a number of equally qualified experts are calling for calm, based on a number of carefully conducted studies. To no one's surprise, they too are being ignored by the media and government planners.

According to science reports, this current strain of flu is H1N1. It can be forcibly inoculated into pigs, but it has been shown not to spread among the pig population. This means that the danger of a swine-based epidemic is small.

There are several strains of this flu virus however, including H1N1, H1N2, H3N1, H3N2 and H2N3. What the science has shown is that when the virus passes through the pig, it becomes less virulent-that is, it is less likely to cause serious disease in people. With each passage, it becomes even weaker.

Since this is not the answer that the pseudo-scientists wanted, they next announced that it is "possible" that the pigs could be infected with both the bird flu (strain H5N1) and the swine flu (strain H1N1), resulting in a mutant, highly virulent strain that could lead to a pandemic.

Note this is pure speculation and that no scientist has ever performed this trick. It is purely hypothetical-like global warming. CDC virologists claim that in the past they performed a similar virological trick, but they never published their results and thus have kept the data close to the vest.

In science, especially medical science, speculation is taboo. But, politicized scientists perform this bit of smoke and mirrors all the time.

So, you may ask, "What about all the people dying in Mexico?"

Overcrowding, poor nutrition and overall poor immunity, all of which are indigenous to Mexico, are a certain prescription for death from almost any infection. [Note that despite 46 cases of this very same flu in the United States there have been no deaths. This is because Americans, comparatively, have better nutrition and medical care.]

Like SARS and bird flu before it, this swine flu scare is a lot of nonsense.

Just take your high dose vitamin D3 (5000 IU a day), eat a healthy diet and take a few immune boosting supplements (such as beta-1, 3/1, 6

glucan) and you will not have to worry about this flu.

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Engineering Warfare: A Close Look at Biological and Chemical Warfare

Nicholas Wurschmidt

February 20, 2008

viruses

In this article, we will take a closer look at biological and chemical warfare from a global perspective as well as the use of pesticides and insecticides and how they helped pioneer these deadly toxins used in modern warfare and bio-terrorism as we know it today. I want to discuss the different types of diseases and viruses that are commonly used and researched today and of the past. I also want to discuss what kind of chemical weapons are used in modern warfare. We shall take a quick look at the science of genetic modification and engineering to create a virus from scratch using the most rudimentary tactics and the diseases that pose the largest threat to man-kind.

There is a real danger to our generation and even more-so to up-and-coming generations as the populations grow exponentially and governments grow more and more powerful and look for ways to reduce population size and or keep the masses in line. These threats can be seen in scare tactics across the globe and I want to inform you on the validity of these different areas so you may better understand what very-near future may come.

Biological weapons (BWs) deliver toxins and microorganisms, such as viruses and bacteria, so as to deliberately inflict disease among people, animals, and agriculture. Biological attacks can result in destruction of crops, temporarily discomforting a small community, killing large numbers of people, or other outcomes. Several differences set BWs apart from other weapons of mass destruction like nuclear and chemical weapons. The release of an agent is not immediately detectable.

There are systems that detect biological agents, but most have a delay between acquiring the agent and identifying it. The effects of an attack also are not immediately detectable. People may become exposed to an agent soon after its release, but the infection requires time to cause illness (the incubation period). Thus, one of the first indicators of a BW attack could be disease outbreaks. The effect of Biological Weapons, disease, can continue after its release. If a transmissible agent, such as the smallpox or Ebola virus, infects a person at the site of its release, that person could travel and spread the agent to others. This would result in secondary infections at areas far from initial release and unprepared for the disease.

Biological weapons have been a problem for society ever since their first recorded use in the sixth century B.C. According to the U.S.

government, the earliest recorded uses of biological weapons goes back to the ancient Assyrians and the ancient Greeks, who used medicinal herbs to wreak havoc before the Christian era began. Another early adopter was the Mongol horde, which threw plague-infested corpses over the walls of a Crimean fortress they happened to be besieging in the 14th century. This was perhaps history's most devastating use of biological warfare, seeing as it may have caused the Great Plague in addition to very effectively wiping out its target.

Biological weapons have a long history of use. In 1346, the invading Tartar army catapulted the bodies of plague victims into the Crimean Peninsula city of Kaffa and infected its citizens. Granted, there's a limit to the effective delivery of plague corpses, especially in the age of intercontinental ballistic missiles. In 1763, British troops under General Jeffrey Amherst gave the Delaware Indians blankets used by people with smallpox, possibly infecting the susceptible native population. Japan contaminated food and released plague-infected ticks during their conflict with China during World War II. The 2001 anthrax letter attacks in the United States infected 22 people and killed five.

As you can see, the use of biological weapons has occurred sporadically for centuries, culminating in sophisticated research and testing programs run by several countries. Biological weapons proliferation is a serious problem that is increasing the probability of a serious bioterrorism incident. The accidental release of anthrax from a military testing facility in the former Soviet Union in 1979 and Iraq's admission in 1995 to having quantities of anthrax, Botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin ready to use as weapons have clearly shown that research in the offensive use of biological agents continued, despite the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. Of the seven countries listed by the U.S.

Department of State as sponsoring international terrorism, at least five are suspected to have biological warfare programs. There is no evidence at this time, however, that any state has provided biological weapons expertise to a terrorist organization.

A wide range of groups or individuals might use biological agents as instruments of terror. At the most dangerous end of the spectrum are large organizations that are well-funded and possibly state-supported.

They would be expected to cause the greatest harm because of their access to scientific expertise, biological agents, and most importantly, dissemination technology, including the capability to produce refined dry agent, deliverable in milled particles of the proper size for aerosol dissemination. The Aum Shinrikyo in Japan is an example of a well-financed organization that was attempting to develop biological weapons capability. However, they were not successful in their multiple attempts to release anthrax and Botulinum toxin. On this end of the spectrum, the list of biological agents available to cause mass casualties is small and would probably include one of the classic biological agents. The probability of occurrence is low; however, the consequences of a possible successful attack are serious.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization handbook dealing with biological warfare defense lists 39 agents, including bacteria, viruses, rickettsiae, and toxins, that could be used as biological weapons.

Examining the relationship between aerosol infectivity and toxicity versus quantity of agent illustrates the requirements for producing equivalent effects and narrows the spectrum of possible agents that could be used to cause large numbers of causalities. For example, the amount of agent needed to cover a 100-km2 area and cause 50% lethality is 8 metric tons for even a "highly toxic" toxin such as ricin versus only kilogram quantities of anthrax needed to achieve the same coverage.

Thus, deploying an agent such as ricin over a wide area, although possible, becomes impractical from a logistics standpoint, even for a well-funded organization.

The potential impact on a city can be estimated by looking at the effectiveness of an aerosol in producing downwind casualties. The World Health Organization in 1970 modeled the results of a hypothetical dissemination of 50 kg of agent along a 2-km line upwind of a large population center. Anthrax and tularemia are predicted to cause the highest number of dead and incapacitated, as well as the greatest downwind spread. A government study estimated that about 200 pounds of anthrax released upwind of Washington, D.C., could kill up to 3 million people. Here is a list of all of the recognized Biological Weapons.

Traditional biological warfare agents and agents associated with biocrimes and bioterrorism

Pathogens

* Bacillus anthracisb

* Ascaris suum

* Brucella suis

* Bacillus anthracisb

* Coxiella burnetiib

* Francisella tularensis

* Giardia lamblia

* Smallpox

* HIV

* Viral encephalitides

* Rickettsia prowazekii

* Viral hemorrhagic feversb(typhus)

* Yersinia pestisb

* Salmonella Typhimurium

* Salmonella typhi

* Shigella species

* Schistosoma species

* Vibrio cholerae

* Viral hemorrhagic

* fevers (Ebola)b

* Yellow fever virus

* Yersinia enterocolitica

* Yersinia pestisb

Toxins

* Botulinumb

* Ricinb

* Cholera endotoxin

* Staphylococcal enterotoxin B

* Diphtheria toxin

* Nicotine

* Ricinb

* Snake toxin

* Tetrodotoxin

Anti-crop agents

* Rice blast

* Rye stem rust

* Wheat stem rust

(Includes agents which were used, acquired, attempted to acquire, involved in a threat of use or an expressed interest in using. Reprinted with permission from Carus WS. Table 6: Biological agents involved. In:

Carus WS. Bioterrorism and biocrimes: the illicit use of biological agents in the 20th Century. Working Paper, Center for Counterproliferation Research, National Defense University. August 1998, revised March 1999.)

Now We Need to Take a Look at Chemical Warfare

A chemical agent is a substance which is intended for use in military operations to kill, seriously injure or incapacitate a person because of its physiological effects. This definition does not include riot control agents, herbicides, smoke or flame. When a chemical agent is used in a wartime situation, it is generally used to effect the ability of the enemy combatants to fight to be weakened either by slowing the combatant down with protective gear or through diminishing their health. Most chemical agents are not used with the strict intention to kill. There are three categories of chemical agents. There are Nerve Agents, Blister Agents and Choking Agents. The nerve agents are a group of particularly toxic chemical warfare agents. They were developed just before and during World War II and are related chemically to the organ phosphorus insecticides. The principle agents in this group are:

* GA - tabun

* GB - sarin

* GD - soman

* GF - cyclosarin

* VX - methylphosphonothioic acid

The "G" agents tend to be non-persistent whereas the "V" agents are persistent. Some "G" agents may be thickened with various substances in order to increase their persistence, and therefore the total amount penetrating intact skin. At room temperature, GB is a comparatively volatile liquid and therefore non-persistent. GD is also significantly volatile, as is GA though to a lesser extent. VX is a relatively non-volatile liquid and therefore persistent. It is regarded as presenting little vapor hazard to people exposed to it. In the pure state, nerve agents are colorless and mobile liquids. In an impure state, nerve agents may be encountered as yellowish to brown liquids.

Some nerve agents have a faint fruity odor.

GB and VX doses which are potentially life-threatening may be only slightly larger than those producing least effects. Death usually occurs within 15 minutes after absorption of a fatal VX dosage. Although only about half as toxic as GB by inhalation, GA in low concentrations is more irritating to the eyes than GB. Symptoms appear much more slowly from a skin dosage than from a respiratory dosage. Although skin absorption great enough to cause death may occur in 1 to 2 minutes, death may be delayed for 1 to 2 hours. Respiratory lethal dosages kill in 1 to 10 minutes, and liquid in the eye kills almost as rapidly.

Blister or vesicant agents are likely to be used both to produce casualties and to force opposing troops to wear full protective equipment thus degrading fighting efficiency, rather than to kill, although exposure to such agents can be fatal. Blister agents can be thickened in order to contaminate terrain, ships, aircraft, vehicles or equipment with a persistent hazard. Vesicants burn and blister the skin or any other part of the body they contact. They act on the eyes, mucous membranes, lungs, skin and blood-forming organs. They damage the respiratory tract when inhaled and cause vomiting and diarrhea when ingested.

The vesicant agents include:

* HD - sulfur mustard, or yperite

* HN - nitrogen mustard

* L - lewisite (arsenical vesicants may be used in a mixture with HD)

* CX - phosgene (properties and effects are very different from other

vesicants)

HD and HN are the most feared vesicants historically, because of their chemical stability, their persistency in the field, the insidious character of their effects by attacking skin as well as eyes and respiratory tract, and because no effective therapy is yet available for countering their effects. Since 1917, mustard has continued to worry military personnel with the many problems it poses in the fields of protection, decontamination and treatment. It should be noted that the ease with which mustard can be manufactured and its great possibilities for acting as a vapor would suggest that in a possible future chemical war, HD will be preferred to HN.

Due to their physical properties, mustards are very persistent in cold and temperate climates. It is possible to increase the persistency by dissolving them in non-volatile solvents. In this way thickened mustards are obtained that are very difficult to remove by decontaminating processes. Exposure to mustard is not always noticed immediately because of the latent and sign-free period that may occur after skin exposure.

This may result in delayed decontamination or failure to decontaminate at all. Whatever means is used has to be efficient and quick acting.

Within 2 minutes contact time, a drop of mustard on the skin can cause serious damage. Chemical inactivation using chlorination is effective against mustard and lewisite, less so against HN, and is ineffective against phosgene oxime.

Chemical agents which attack lung tissue, primarily causing pulmonary edema, are classed as lung damaging agents. To this group belong:

* CG - phosgene

* DP - diphosgene

* Cl - chlorine

* PS - chloropicrin

The toxic action of phosgene is typical of a certain group of lung damaging agents. Phosgene is the most dangerous member of this group and the only one considered likely to be used in the future. Phosgene was used for the first time in 1915, and it accounted for 80% of all chemical fatalities during World War I. Phosgene is a colorless gas under ordinary conditions of temperature and pressure. Its boiling point is 8.2°C, making it an extremely volatile and non-persistent agent. Its vapor density is 3.4 times that of air. It may therefore remain for long periods of time in trenches and other low lying areas. In low concentrations it has a smell resembling new mown hay. The outstanding feature of phosgene poisoning is massive pulmonary edema. With exposure to very high concentrations death may occur within several hours; in most fatal cases pulmonary edema reaches a maximum in 12 hours followed by death in 24-48 hours. If the casualty survives, resolution commences within 48 hours and, in the absence of complicating infection, there may be little or no residual damage.

During and immediately after exposure, there is likely to be coughing, choking, a feeling of tightness in the chest, nausea, and occasionally vomiting, headache and lachrymation. The presence or absence of these symptoms is of little value in immediate prognosis. Some patients with severe coughs fail to develop serious lung injury, while others with little sign of early respiratory tract irritation develop fatal pulmonary edema. A period follows during which abnormal chest signs are absent and the patient may be symptom-free. This interval commonly lasts

2 to 24 hours but may be shorter. It is terminated by the signs and symptoms of pulmonary edema. These begin with cough (occasionally substantially painful), dyspnea, rapid shallow breathing and cyanosis.

Nausea and vomiting may appear.

As the edema progresses, discomfort, apprehension and dyspnea increase and frothy sputum develops. The patient may develop shock-like symptoms, with pale, clammy skin, low blood pressure and feeble, rapid heartbeat.

During the acute phase, casualties may have minimal signs and symptoms and the prognosis should be guarded. Casualties may very rapidly develop severe pulmonary edema. If casualties survive more than 48 hours they usually recover.

Scientists have now assembled the first synthetic virus. The U.S.

researchers built the infectious agent from scratch using the genome sequence for polio. Scientists are divided about whether a virus is alive. For those that think it is, then this synthetic artifact would constitute a simple form of life. Responding to criticisms that such research could lead to bioterrorists engineering new lethal viruses, the scientists behind the experiment said that only a few people had the knowledge to make it happen.

To construct the virus, the researchers say they followed a recipe they downloaded from the internet and used gene sequences from a mail-order supplier. Having constructed the virus, which appears to be identical to its natural counterpart, the researchers, from the University of New York at Stony Brook, injected it into mice to demonstrate that it was active. The animals were paralyzed and then died. The reason they did it was to prove that it can be done and it now is a reality. Dr. Eckard Wimmer is the leader of the biomedical research team and co-author of the study published in the journal Science. Dr. Wimmer stated this approach has been talked about, but people didn't take it seriously.

Now people have to take it seriously. Progress in biomedical research has its benefits and it has its down side. There is a danger inherent to progress in sciences. This is a new reality, a new consideration. The polio virus assembled in the laboratory is one of the simplest known viruses. It was very easy to do. The more dangerous smallpox virus would be complex and difficult to assemble. It would probably in the future be possible. Smallpox has been eradicated in the wild, but specimens are stored in the United States and in Russia. Assembling the polio virus showed that eradicating a virus in the wild might not mean it was gone forever because biochemists could now reconstruct those viruses from blueprints.

Following the terrorist and anthrax-by-mail attacks, U.S. officials became concerned about the threat of smallpox and arranged for the manufacture of enough vaccine to protect the U.S. population. He added that it was possible that viruses like Ebola could be assembled in laboratories, but there were only a few people in the world with that skill. Polio is on the brink of being eradicated worldwide and there are plans to stop inoculations against the disease after it disappears from nature. Dr. Wimmer said that this policy should be reconsidered.

Stopping vaccination could lead to a generation of people highly susceptible to polio, enhancing its appeal as a weapon. The World Health Organization is planning to stockpile vaccines against a return of polio and Dr. Wimmer said that policy should be followed everywhere.

Some say that the AIDS virus was engineered. There is a close connection between the rise of genetic engineering and mixing of viruses in the early 1970s and the outbreak of HIV in the late 1970s. This connection persists in the form of the many unprecedented "emerging diseases"

caused by "new viruses" that continue up to the present time.

In 1970 the discovery of a cell enzyme, called "reverse transcriptase"

by Howard Temin and David Baltimore, allowed molecular biologists to detect so-called retroviruses in some animal cancers. It was soon recognized that retroviruses could be found normally in the genes of many animal cells, and that scientists could manipulated these viruses to produce detrimental effects on the immune system. In "species jumping" laboratory experiments, many viruses were transferred between different animal species and were also adapted to human cells.

As part of President Richard Nixon's "War on Cancer," genetic engineering of viruses became an integral part of the now largely forgotten Special Virus Cancer Program, conducted under the auspices of the NCI. Nixon also transferred part of the Army's biological warfare unit at Fort Detrick, Maryland, over to the NCI, thereby allowing secret biowarfare experimentation to be carried out under cover of bona fide cancer research. All this virus transfer and molecular manipulation was a biologic disaster waiting too happen. This culminated in a historic conference entitled "Biohazards in Biological Research" held at Asilomar, near Pacific Grove in California in 1973. Despite the biologic dangers, it was decided to continue this research.

By the late-1970s the War against Cancer and the Virus Cancer Program proved a failure with no cancer-causing retroviruses found in humans.

The Program was winding down in 1978, at the exact time when government scientists were also enrolling thousands of gay men in New York City to serve as guinea pigs in the hepatitis B experiment that took place that same year at the New York Blood Centre in Manhattan. In 1979 the first cases of AIDS in gay men were reported from Manhattan. Five years later, Gallo, who had worked for the Virus Cancer Program, "discovered" the retrovirus that causes AIDS; and Duesberg, who also worked for the Virus Cancer Program, continues to declare that HIV is harmless.

The earliest AIDS cases in America can be clearly traced back to the time period when the hepatitis B experiment began at the New York Blood Centre. The Centre began injecting gay men with multiple doses of the experimental vaccine in November 1978. The inoculations ended in October 1979, less than two years before the official start of the epidemic.

Most importantly, the vaccine was developed in chimpanzees - the primate now thought to contain the "ancestor" virus of HIV. Also downplayed is the Centre's pre-AIDS connection to primate research in Africa and also to a primate centre in the New York City area. The final experimental vaccine was also made by Merck and the NIH from the pooled serum specimens of countless gay men who carried the hepatitis B virus in their blood.

The New York Blood Centre is the largest independent blood supplier and distributor in the USA. In 1970, Alfred M Prince, M.D., head of the New York Blood Centre Laboratory of Virology, began his hepatitis research with chimps housed at Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in downstate Tuxedo, NY. Until disbanded in 1997, Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery supplied New York area scientists with primates and primate parts for transplantation and virus research.

Founded in 1965, Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery was affiliated with New York University Medical Centre, where the first cases of AIDS-associated Kaposi's sarcoma were discovered in 1979. NYU Medical Centre researchers were also heavily involved in the development of the experimental hepatitis B vaccine, and the Centre received government grants and contracts connected with biological warfare research beginning in 1969, according to Dr. Leonard Horowitz, author of Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola (1996).

In 1974 Prince, with the support of Aaron Kellner, President of the New York Blood Centre moved the chimp hepatitis research to a new primate centre called Vilab II in Robertsfield, Liberia, in Africa. Chimps were captured from various parts of West Africa and brought to VILAB. The lab also prides itself by releasing "rehabilitated" chimps back into the wild. One cannot help but wonder if some of the purported "ancestors" of HIV in the African bush have their origin in chimpanzees held in African primate labs for vaccine and medical experimentation.

The hepatitis B experiment, which inoculated over 1,000 healthy gay men, was a huge success with 96% of the men developing antibodies against the hepatitis virus. This high rate of success could not have been achieved if the men were immune suppressed, because immune suppressed people do not easily form antibodies to the vaccine. The experiment was followed by similar hepatitis B experiments using gay men in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Denver and St. Louis, beginning in March 1980 and ending in October 1981, the same year the epidemic became official.

In the mid-1980s the many blood specimens donated by the gay Manhattan men during the experiment were retrospectively examined for HIV infection by researchers at the NYBC. It was determined that 6% of the specimens donated in-between 1978 - 1979 was positive for HIV. By 1984 (the end of the study period) over 40% of the men tested positive for HIV.

The final fate of all the men in the experiment has never been revealed.

However, the blood donated by these men is the oldest HIV-positive blood tests on record in the United States. The full story of this experiment and its aftermath are contained in my two books on man-made AIDS: AIDS and the Doctors of Death (1988), and Queer Blood (1993). One fact is

obvious: There was no AIDS in America until the exact year the government began experimenting with gay men.

The most dangerous disease known to man is actually one that has not received much attention aside form the scare earlier this decade. It is the Avian Influenza. This is an infection caused by avian (bird) influenza (flu) viruses. There are many different subtypes of type "A"

influenza viruses. These subtypes differ because of changes in certain proteins on the surface of the influenza "A" virus (hem agglutinin [HA] and neuraminidase "NA" proteins). There are 16 known "HA" subtypes and 9 known NA subtypes of influenza "A" viruses. Many different combinations of "HA" and "NA" proteins are possible. Each combination represents a different subtype. All known subtypes of influenza "A" viruses can be found in birds.

Usually, "avian influenza virus" refers to influenza A viruses found chiefly in birds, but infections with these viruses can occur in humans.

The risk from avian influenza is generally low to most people, because the viruses do not usually infect humans. However, confirmed cases of human infection from several subtypes of avian influenza infection have been reported since 1997. Most cases of avian influenza infection in humans have resulted from contact with infected poultry (e.g., domesticated chicken, ducks, and turkeys) or surfaces contaminated with secretion/excretions from infected birds. The spread of avian influenza viruses from one ill person to another has been reported very rarely, and has been limited, inefficient and unsustained.

"Human influenza virus" usually refers to those subtypes that spread widely among humans. There are only three known A subtypes of influenza viruses (H1N1, H1N2, and H3N2) currently circulating among humans. It is likely that some genetic parts of current human influenza "A" viruses came from birds originally. Influenza "A" viruses are constantly changing, and they might adapt over time to infect and spread among humans. During an outbreak of avian influenza among poultry, there is a possible risk to people who have contact with infected birds or surfaces that have been contaminated with secretions or excretions from infected birds.

Symptoms of avian influenza in humans have ranged from typical human influenza-like symptoms (e.g., fever, cough, sore throat, and muscle

aches) to eye infections, pneumonia, severe respiratory diseases (such as acute respiratory distress), and other severe and life-threatening complications. The symptoms of avian influenza may depend on which virus caused the infection. Studies done in laboratories suggest that some of the prescription medicines approved in the United States for human influenza viruses should work in treating avian influenza infection in humans. However, influenza viruses can become resistant to these drugs, so these medications may not always work. Additional studies are needed to demonstrate the effectiveness of these medicines.

There are many other threats out there like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS, the "Superbug" staph infection or sexually transmitted diseases. None of this may ever come to fruition, or we could all die tomorrow in a freak accident. This paper is not to incite panic but to merely inform of the potential dangers we are faced with today, whether engineered by the very governments that protect and serve or whether nature will battle us with bacteria's and viruses. The preemptive strike is knowledge.

Works Cited:

NATO Handbook on the Medical Aspects of NBC Defensive Operations, "Part III - Chemical" - U.S. Department of Defense, Department of the Army, February 1996

NATO Handbook on the Medical Aspects of NBC Defensive Operations, "Part II - Biological" - U.S. Department of Defense, Department of the Army, February 1996

The Militarily Critical Technologies List Part II: Weapons of Mass Destruction Technologies (ADA 330102), "Biological Weapons Technology" - U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, February 1998

Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories, 4th Edition - U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, April 1999

Hooper, Edward, Aids and the polio vaccine, London Review of Books, Vol.

25, No. 7, 3 April 2003

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Peace and Divinity

Love is the Law

Max

The End of WAYS is NOT the End of DAYS!

"That's alls I can stand, and I can't stands no more!" -Popeye, The Sailorman

--

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775

--

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival."

"There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

-Winston Churchill

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