Looks like Russia reads SILVIEW.media and took seriously our recommendation to up those rookie leaks, here they are playing a more serious hand this time. 

Funny how the people demanding to be followed are always behind me.
NEWSWEEK

Archives of documents provided by the Russian government HERE and HERE.

UPDATE:

SOURCE

In the “comments section”, first the Western establishment propaganda via Newsweek:

Hunter Biden Accused by Russia of Helping Finance Ukraine Biolabs

BY KATIE WERMUS ON 3/24/22

The Russian government on Thursday accused Hunter Biden‘s investment fund of helping bankroll the Pentagon‘s alleged biolabs in Ukraine.

Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops, said the investment firm Biden is connected to, Rosemont Seneca, has been implicated in financing the biological program in Ukraine, Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik reported.

“Incoming materials have allowed us to trace the scheme of interaction between U.S. government bodies and Ukraine’s biolabs,” Kirillov said. He added that Rosemont Seneca attracted attention due to an alleged “close relationship” between the fund and key suppliers for “Pentagon biolaboratories around the world.” According to the Ministry of Defense’s information, the fund has at least $2.4 billion in investment capital, Sputnik reported.

However, the U.S. government has previously investigated Sputnik as a propaganda outlet. The U.S. Department of State said in its January report that the Kremlin uses the organization, along with the state-funded Russia Today outlet, to try and spread disinformation and propaganda to audiences outside of Russia in order to “influence the public opinion and foreign policy in favor of the Kremlin’s political goals.”

The Russian Defense Ministry released a diagram on Thursday titled “Coordination of Biological Laboratories and Scientific Research Centers of Ukraine and the U.S.,” according to a translation from the Daily Beast. The chart detailed how Ukraine Biolabs are allegedly connected to U.S. agencies and other companies, including President Joe Biden‘s son.

The agency said it has found information for 31 Pentagon-funded biolabs that allegedly conduct illegal research. The Russian Defense Ministry released pictures of what it claims to be a Ukrainian document with a list of the laboratories that are suspected of being connected to U.S. funding for biological activities, according to Sputnik.

“The scale of the program is impressive,” Kirillov said in the Sputnik report, adding that along with the Pentagon, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were among those involved in the research.

Sputnik said U.S. officials and Western media initially denied that the biolabs existed but that a senior official in President Joe Biden’s administration later confirmed their presence. Meanwhile, Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard had previously said that the U.S. funds biolabs in Ukraine, not bioweapons labs.

Long before the invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials claimed that the U.S. had biolabs to study harmful weapons and diseases in the country. The Russian government started its claims again recently, which prompted White House press secretary Jen Psaki to say that the world needs to prepare for Russia to use these claims as a reason to use its own biological weapons in Ukraine.

Update 3/24/22, 4:25 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.

Russia Accuses Hunter Biden Funding Biolabs
The Russian government has accused Hunter Biden of helping bankroll the Pentagon’s alleged biolabs in Ukraine, which it said are used to research deadly pathogens. Above, Hunter Biden speaks at the World Food Program USA’s Annual McGovern-Dole Leadership Award Ceremony at Organization of American States on April 12, 2016, in Washington, D.C.PAUL MORIGI/ GETTY IMAGES FOR WORLD FOOD PROGRAM USA/GETTY IMAGES

But then New-Zealand’s Daily Telegraph shows Newsweek how it’s done:

HUNTER BIDEN’S INVESTMENT FUND CONNECTED TO FINANCING OF PENTAGON-FUNDED BIOLABS IN UKRAINE: MOD

In recent weeks, the Russian Defence Ministry has peeled back layers of information about 30+ Pentagon-funded biolabs feared to be engaged in dangerous and illegal research into deadly pathogens in Ukraine. US officials and media initially denied that the labs existed, but a senior Biden administration official later confirmed their presence.

An investment firm connected to US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden has been implicated in the financing of the Pentagon’s military biological programme in Ukraine, the head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops has announced, citing fresh documents.

“Incoming materials have allowed us to trace the scheme of interaction between US government bodies and Ukraine’s biolabs. The involvement in the financing of these activities by structures close to the current US leadership, in particular the Rosemont Seneca investment fund managed by Hunter Biden, draws attention to itself,” RCBD Troops chief Igor Kirillov said in a briefing Thursday.

Read More: Hunter Biden biolab revelations – The beginning of the end for the West’s fake Ukraine narrative

According to the MoD’s information, the fund has at least $2.4 billion in investment capital. “At the same time, a close relationship has been established between the the fund and key contractors of the US military, including Metabiota, which alongside Black & Veatch is one of the main suppliers of equipment for Pentagon biolaboratories around the world,” Kirillov added.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory – birthplace of the US atomic bomb, has served as one of the chief curators of the US military biological programmes in Ukraine, Kirillov said.

Hunter Biden biolabs news
Russian Defence Ministry presentation detailing coordination between Ukraine-based labs and US agencies and companies, including Hunter Biden and George Soros (far left), the US State Department, USAID, Gilead Sciences, SkyMount Medical, Metabiota, Black&Veatch, CH2M Hill, the US Embassy in Ukraine (center) and the CDC, the National Laboratory at Los Alamos and the universities of Tennessee, Alaska, Florida, New Mexico and Virginia (right). Below, ties are shown to the Lugar Center in Georgia, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health and associated centers and institutes, and teh Ukrainian Defence Ministry’s epidemiological departments. © Photo : Russian Defence Ministry.

USAID, Soros Foundations, CDC Also Involved, MoD Says

“The scale of the programme is impressive. Along with the Pentagon, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are directly involved in its implementation,” the officer said. “Scientific supervision is carried out by leading research organizations, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which developed nuclear weapons for the Manhattan Project. All of this activity has been carried out under the direct control of the Pentagon.”

Kirillov accompanied his presentation with new Ukrainian-language documents detailing the operations of laboratories suspected of involvement in US-funded military biological activities, including a detailed listing of 31 laboratories across 14 settlements.

Hunter Biden news
List of laboratories. © Photo : Russian Defence Ministry.
Hunter Biden Ukraine news
List of laboratories. © Russian Defence Ministry.

“This document was signed by deputy state secretary of the cabinet of ministers of Ukraine Viktor Polishchuk. The legal basis for its signature was an agreement on cooperation to prevent the spread of technologies, pathogens and information which can be used to develop biological weapons. The registration card identifies the customer: the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and also includes a list of bio facility sites,” the officer said.

The MoD also released a document from the office of the secretary of defense approving Project Concept UP-2, described as a ‘multi-pathogen mapping’ project which “includes molecular fingerprinting of pathogens endemic to Ukraine and strain transfer.”

The 2008 document was signed by Richard Douglas, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense during the George W. Bush administration, and Arthur Hopkins, a deputy assistant to the Secretary of Defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programmes.

US Ukraine labs news
Document. © Photo : Russian Defence Ministry.

Ukrainian Troops Used as Guinea Pigs

Kirillov provided other new details on US military biological activities in Ukraine in his presentation, citing documents detailing the testing of unlicensed pharmaceutical products which did not pass licensing procedures in the US and Canada on Ukrainian military personnel under a programme known as ‘Deep Drug’.

“Documents confirm an attempt to test previously untested drugs on Ukrainian military personnel [under the] Deep Drug screening system for pharmaceuticals which have not passed the licensing procedure in the United States and Canada. The special cynicism of the US sponsors of the programme lies in the fact that the developer -Skymount Medical Group, offered to purchase the system on a commercial basis, even though employees of the Ukrainian defence ministry were used as volunteers” for its testing, Kirillov said.

US Defense Departmnet biolabs news
Document. © Photo : Russian Ministry of Defence.

Kirillov also that over 4,000 individuals were involved in research under the previously detailed Project UP-8, and that according to a Bulgarian media investigation, 20 Ukrainian servicemen died and 200 hospitalized during experiments in the Kharkov laboratory alone.

The officer suggested that such practices were nothing new, recalling that in 2010, authorities in Indonesia terminated biological research activity being conducted by the US Naval Medical Center in Jakarta over numerous violations and a refusal by US authorities to inform the Indonesian government about the results of their research.

Kirillov also revealed that Pentagon-affiliated pharmaceutical firm Gilead has been involved in the testing of its products in Ukraine and Georgia.

Hunter Biden news

Industrial-Scale Export of Biosamples

Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops have established that the US and its allies have exported about 16,000 biosamples from Ukraine as part of their military biological activities in the country. “Such large-scale screening of the natural immunity of the population was likely carried out in order to select biological agents that are most dangerous for the population of a particular region,” Kirillov said.

The officer pointed to the taking of blood samples from 4,000 servicemen in Lvov, Kharkov, Odessa and Kiev for antibodies to hantaviruses under Project UP-8, and an additional 400 samples probing for antibodies to the Crimean-Congo fever virus. He added that in addition to tissue and blood serum samples, dangerous pathogens and their carriers were exported abroad from Ukraine. Over 10,000 samples were sent to the Lugar Center in Georgia alone, according to Kirillov, with labs in the UK and the Leffler Institute in Germany also serving as recipients, subjecting not only Ukraine but the entire region to dangers.

New COVID

Kirillov warned that the spread of pathogenic biomaterials in Ukraine could lead to a new pandemic, saying that in the Russian military’s view, “the current situation involving the spread of pathogenic biomaterials from Ukraine to European countries can cause death and create a hotbed of epidemiological instability the scale of which would be comparable to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The officer pointed to the Pentagon’s record of causing health scares involving deadly pathogens, recalling that betwen 2005 and 2015, live anthrax spores were accidentally sent from the US Army Dugway Proving Ground to 194 addressees in ten different countries.
Anthrax Insects

Krillov also pointed to suspected US interest in the means of transmitting anthrax through insects. “The interest of US military biologists in the study of insect vectors in the locations of cattle burial grounds appears not have been accidental, with researchers analyzing the results of an outbreak of anthrax in Yamal in 2016, during which cases of transmission of the disease through flies and horseflies were recorded,” he said.

Ukraine biolab news

International Investigation Needed

The officer echoed concerns voiced by China’s foreign ministry earlier this month about the real purpose of the 336 labs scattered across 30 countries being operated with US funding and other forms of support, and suggested that in light of the new information which has been disclosed, an international investigation is in order.

Thursday’s revelations by the MoD follow a separate document dump last week containing frightening details on some of the research feared engaged in at US-funded laboratories scattered across Ukraine, such as work studying the transmission of diseases through bats, ‘Project Flu-Fly-Way’, studying how wild migratory birds might be used as vectors to transmit avian influenza, and others.

The Russian military started disclosing details on the scale and scope of the US-funded network of biolabs in Ukraine on 6 March, reporting, citing documents, that the Ukrainian health ministry had given the order to scrub incriminating evidence on research into deadly pathogens including anthrax, the plague, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases.

US officials and media dismissed the Russian allegations, releasing “fact check” pieces explaining that the “false claim of US biolabs in Ukraine [is] tied to [a] Russian disinformation campaign.” These same officials and outlets were forced to change their tune after US undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland confirmed that the biolabs existed, and that the US was “quite concerned” that Russian troops might take control of the facilities.

“The scale of the program is impressive. In addition to the military department, the US Agency for International Development, the George Soros Foundation, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention are directly involved in its implementation. Scientific curation is carried out by leading research organisations, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which develops nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project,” he said.

And this is how we’ve done so far:

THE BIOLABS, CHERNOBYL AND FUKUSHIMA HAVE SURPRISING THINGS IN COMMON AND THEY ARE HARDLY ACCIDENTAL

UKRAINE BIOLABS: OF COURSE FACT CHECKERS LIED ABOUT THIS TOO

HUNDREDS DEADLY BIOLABS WITH DISASTROUS SECURITY RECORDS, RAN BY CDC AND PHARMAFIA IN YOUR BACKYARD

US RAN GRUESOME BIOWEAPON RESEARCH IN OVER 25 COUNTRIES. WUHAN, TIP OF AN ICEBERG

EPILOGUE

Once we pull it out you better pick up on it quickly, I told you we’re in the business of dictating future MSM headlines. But without the sugar glazing. 🙂

To be continued?
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! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them

Imagine being a legit theory for years, then being downgraded to “conspiracy theory”, only to bounce back even stronger less than a year later

DESIGNER BUGS: HOW THE NEXT PANDEMIC MIGHT COME FROM A LAB

“Why we need to take the threat of bioengineered superbugs seriously.”

By R. Daniel Bressler and Chris Bakerlee  Dec 6, 2018, Vox

This story is part of a group of stories called

Finding the best ways to do good.

This week, diplomats from around the world are meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, as part of an annual gathering of state parties for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The BWC has an important mandate: It prohibits the 182 countries that have signed on and ratified the convention from developing, producing, and stockpiling biological weapons.

The BWC, and the biosecurity community broadly, has historically been more focused on existing pathogens with clear potential to be used as biological weapons, such as anthrax and the agents causing botulism and Q fever. In addition, health security experts are worried about the “next big one” — the next global pandemic. Pandemic diseases are often zoonotic, meaning they jump from animals to humans. Zoonotic diseases like EbolaZika, SARS, and HIV are created when, say, the wrong pig meets up with the wrong bat — and then meets the wrong human.

The emergence of such diseases depends a great deal on spontaneous genetic mutations and circumstantial factors. So here’s a scary thought: Possible future pandemics may not depend on the chance meeting of different animal species and chance mutations, but may be deliberately designed instead. New tools from the field of synthetic biology could endow scientists with the frightening ability to design and manufacture maximally dangerous pathogens, leapfrogging natural selection.

The threat is very much on the minds of security officials. This past May, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS) led an exercise involving former US senators and executive branch officials on how the country would respond to an international outbreak of an engineered pathogen. In this fictional scenario, a terrorist group constructed a virus that was both deadly and highly contagious. More than a year into the made-up pandemic, the worldwide death toll was soaring past 150 million, the Dow Jones had fallen by 90 percent, and there was a mass exodus from cities amid famine and unrest.

In biotech, the story of the past several decades has been one of exponential progress. Just 75 years ago, we were not even confident that DNA was the primary material governing genetic heredity. Today, we are able to readwrite, and edit genomes with increasing ease.

But biotechnologies are dual-use — they can be used for both good and ill. We fear that with even just current capabilities, an engineered pandemic could join the growing list of seismic changes made possible by biotechnological advances. Sufficiently capable actors could work to resurrect the deadliest pathogens of the past, like smallpox or Spanish flu, or modify existing pathogens such as bird flu to be more contagious and lethal. As genome engineering technologies become more powerful and ubiquitous, the tools necessary for making these modifications will become increasingly accessible.

This leads to the terrifying specter of independent actors intentionally (or unintentionally) engineering pathogens with the potential to inflict worse harm than history’s deadliest pandemics. No obvious physical or biological constraints preclude the construction of such potent biological weapons. According to biosecurity expert Piers Millett, “If you’re deliberately trying to create a pathogen that is deadly, spreads easily, and that we don’t have appropriate public health measures to mitigate, then that thing you create is amongst the most dangerous things on the planet.”

Mitigating this risk is shaping up to be one of the major challenges of the 21st century — not only because the stakes are high, but also because of the myriad obstacles standing between us and a solution.

The technologies that help us might also hurt us

Natural pandemics can be horrific and catch us completely off guard. For example, three years elapsed between the first officially documented US AIDS cases in 1981 and the identification of HIV as its cause. It took another three years to develop and approve the first drug treating HIV. While antiretroviral treatments now allow those living with HIV to manage the disease effectively (that is, if they can afford the treatment), we still lack a promising HIV vaccine.

Yet as ill-equipped as we may be to fight newly emergent natural pathogens, we are even less prepared to cope with engineered pathogens. In the coming decades, it may become possible to create pathogens that fall well outside the range of infectious agents modern medicine has learned to detect, treat, and contain.

Worse yet, malicious actors might build disease-causing microbes with features strategically tailored to thwart existing health security measures. So while advances in the field of synthetic biology will make it easier for us to invent therapeutics and other technologies that can defend us from pandemics, those very same advances may allow state and nonstate actors to design increasingly harmful pathogens.

For example, new gene-synthesis technologies loom large on the horizon, allowing for the automated production of longer DNA sequences from scratch. This will be a boon for basic and applied biomedical research — but it also will simplify the assembly of designer pathogens.

U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds, Laboratory For Testing Biological And Chemical Weapons
A technician at the Smartman Laboratory facility at the US Army’s Dugway Proving Ground on August 15, 2017, in Dugway, Utah. Workers at this facility handle some of the deadliest biological and chemical agents on earth.

Compared to other weapons of mass destruction, engineered pathogens are less resource-intensive. Although malicious actors would currently need university-grade laboratories and resources to create them, a bigger obstacle tends to be access to information. The limits of our knowledge of biology constrain the potential of any bioengineering effort. Some information, like how to work proficiently with a specific machine or cell type, can be acquired only through months or years of supervised training. Other information, like annotated pathogen genome sequences, may be easy to access through public databases, such as those maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

If information such as pathogen genome sequences or synthetic biology protocols is available online, this could make it much easier for malicious actors to build their own pathogens. But even if they’re not online, hackers can also steal sensitive information from the databases of biotechnology companies, universities, and government laboratories.

Preventing damage from engineered pathogens is complicated by the fact that it takes only one lapse, one resourceful terrorist group, or one rogue nation-state to wreak large-scale havoc. Even if the majority of scientists and countries follow proper protocols, a single unilateral actor could imperil human civilization.

And some wounds can be self-inflicted. Between 2004 and 2010, there were more than 700 incidents of loss or release of “select agents and toxins” (i.e., scary stuff) from US labs. In 11 instances, lab workers acquired bacterial or fungal infections. In one instance, a shipment of a harmful fungus was lost — and, according to the FBI, destroyed — in transit. In a world in which well-meaning but sometimes careless biologists are creating dangerous organisms in the lab, such accidental release events could prove even more frightening.

A global problem

Like naturally occurring pandemics, engineered pandemics will not respect national borders. A contagious pathogen released in one country will emigrate. Actions that protect against engineered pathogens are an example of a global public good: Since a deadly engineered pathogen would adversely affect countries around the world, doing something to prevent them is a service that benefits the whole world.

A fundamental challenge of global public goods is that they tend to be underprovided. With global public goods, individual countries prefer to free ride over unilaterally providing global public goods if they can get away with it.

This doesn’t mean that countries won’t do anything to provide global public goods; they just won’t do as much as they should. For example, a country such as the United States will consider the potential damage an engineered pathogen could wreak on its 325 million people, and it will take actions to prevent this from happening. However, the actions it takes won’t be as extensive as they would be if it were to consider the toll an engineered pathogen could take on the planet’s 7.6 billion people.

To address this dilemma, world leaders created the Biological Weapons Convention in the 1970s. The BWC has the important goal of constraining bioweapons development; in practice, it has been ineffective at verifying and enforcing compliance.

Unlike the BWC, the major nuclear and chemical weapons treaties have extensive formal verification mechanisms. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), effective since 1970, verifies the compliance of signatories through the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has a staff of about 2,560. The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), effective since 1997, verifies compliance through the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013. It has a staff of 500. By contrast, the Implementation Support Unit for the BWC, the convention’s sole administrative body, currently has just four employees.

And bioweapons have specific characteristics that make verification and enforcement difficult compared to chemical and nuclear weapons.

Consider nuclear technology. Nuclear power plants require low levels of uranium enrichment (typically around 5 percent), whereas nuclear weapons require highly enriched uranium (typically above 90 percent). Highly enriched uranium requires large industrial facilities with precise centrifuges. When granted access, it is comparatively easy for inspectors to determine when a facility is being used for the production of highly enriched uranium.

Partly for these reasons, no country has ever developed nuclear weapons while being a party to the NPT. Of the nine nuclear weapons nations, the US, USSR (whose weapons are now exclusively owned by Russia), UK, France, China, and likely Israel had nuclear weapons before the treaty was enforced. India (first test in 1974) and Pakistan (first test in 1998) never signed the NPT. North Korea withdrew from the treaty in 2003, three years before its first nuclear test in 2006.

In contrast, bioengineered organisms require fewer resources and smaller facilities to make, and it is harder to readily distinguish between organisms that are being developed for scientific purposes from those that are being developed with malicious intent.

Historically, the BWC does not have a good track record of preventing the possession of bioweapons. The Soviet Union maintained a large bioweapons program after it signed on to the BWC in 1975. The South African apartheid regime held bioweapons in the 1980s and ’90s while being a party to the BWC.

Fearing that invasive verification by the BWC could compromise sensitive intellectual property and hurt the competitiveness of its cutting-edge biotechnology sector, the US chose to withdraw from negotiations at the BWC’s Fifth Review Conference in 2001. The US later rejoined those negotiations, but serious measures to improve the BWC’s verification and enforcement mechanisms have not been implemented, and the agreement remains largely ineffective.

Despite this concern about the invasiveness of verification, there is a growing consensus that the BWC must become more effective. The 2015 Bipartisan Report of the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, chaired by Joe Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate, and Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security under George W. Bush, called for the vice president and the secretary of state to chair a series of meetings with relevant Cabinet members and experts to come to an agreement on verification protocols that would satisfy US concerns while adequately enforcing compliance with the treaty. The study led to the introduction of the National Biodefense Strategy Act of 2016, which is still awaiting a vote.

In September 2018, the Trump administration released a National Biodefense Strategy, though this document contained little specific information on how the US would strengthen the BWC and didn’t mention Cabinet-level meetings chaired by the vice president, as was recommended by the blue ribbon panel.

US Marines And New York Fire Fighters Take Part In Chemical Incident Drill In Penn Station
Emergency personnel walk down the aisle of an Amtrak train during a biological preparedness drill being led by members of the Chemical Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF), a unit in the United States Marine Corps, at Penn Station during the early morning hours on September 22, 2012, in New York City. 

Some have questioned the seriousness of the threat posed by bioweapons. For example, in his recent book, Harvard University professor Steven Pinker suggests that “Bioterrorism may be [a] phantom menace.” He claims that terrorists wouldn’t weaponize pandemic pathogens, since their goal is typically “not damage but theater.” Others have suggested that even if terrorists wanted to engineer a pathogen as a weapon, they’d lack the requisite biological knowledge and practical know-how to get the job done.

While it is true (and quite fortunate) that these factors reduce at least the present risk of a biological attack, it is cold comfort. In the coming decades, it will only become easier for nonstate actors to acquire and deploy powerful biotechnologies for ill. And beyond terrorists, state actors also pose serious risks.

For example, Japan launched devastating bioattacks against China during World War II. Japanese Unit 731 dropped bombs filled with swarms of plague-infested fleas on Chinese cities, likely killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. The unit’s commander, Shiro Ishii, found plague to be a potent weapon because it could present itself as a natural epidemic and kill large numbers of people through person-to-person transmission.

In addition, the US had a bioweapons program from 1943 to 1969 that, among other things, made propaganda videos bragging about testing biological weapons on human subjects. The Soviet Union’s covert bioweapons program that it maintained after signing on to the BWC had more employees at its peak in the 1980s than Facebook currently has.

We don’t know what we don’t know — but here’s what we can do

Many questions remain unanswered when it comes to the potentially catastrophic risks posed by engineered pathogens. For example, what is the full spectrum of microbes that cause human disease? And which types of microbes would most likely be used as bioweapons? Research centers such as the Center for Health Security at Hopkins, the Future of Humanity Institute, and the Nuclear Threat Initiative are working hard to answer such questions.

But just because we don’t have answers to all the questions — and don’t even know all the questions to begin with — doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can do to mitigate our risks.

Thinking and acting globally

For starters, we should develop a process to address advancements in biotechnology in the BWC. Currently, the BWC lacks a dedicated forum where the treaty implications of new developments in biotechnology can be discussed. Other international agreements like the CWC have dedicated scientific advisory boards to track and respond to new science and technological changes. The BWC has no such board.

There’s some movement on this issue — the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted an event in Geneva earlier this week to discuss how the BWC can evolve to address rapid advances in biotechnology. Still, it is crucial to establish a permanent institutional capacity within the BWC to address biotechnological change.

This all connects to another priority: give the BWC’s Implementation Support Unit more resources. The four-person implementation support unit, the convention’s sole administrative body, has immense responsibilities that far exceed its current resources. These responsibilities include supporting and assisting nations as they implement the treaty, administering a database of assistance requests, facilitating communication between the parties, and much more.

But the resources remain minuscule, especially compared to other international treaties. The annual cost allocated to BWC meetings and its implementation support unit is less than 4.5 percent of the cost allocated to the CWC. This inadequate budget sends a grim signal about how seriously the world is currently taking the growing risks from bioweapons.

Another global priority should be finding ways to regulate dual-use gene synthesis technologies. To facilitate their research, biologists regularly order short, custom pieces of DNA from companies that specialize in their manufacture. In 2009, the International Gene Synthesis Consortium proposed guidelines for how gene synthesis companies should screen customers’ orders for potentially dangerous chunks of DNA, such as those found in harmful viruses or toxin genes. Most companies voluntarily follow these guidelines, and they represent 80 percent of the global market.

However, even companies currently applying recommended screening procedures only test whether ordered sequences match those of known pathogens. An engineered pathogen with a novel genome could potentially slip past this filter.

Presently, the gene synthesis market is expanding internationally and synthesis costs are falling. It is urgent that governments both independently and multilaterally act to mandate proper screening of sequences and customers. As Kevin Esvelt of MIT writes, “adequately screening all synthesized DNA could eliminate the most serious foreseeable hazards of biotech misuse by nonstate actors.”

Dealing with biorisk on the ground and in the lab

Beyond developing new global standards and practices, we need to adopt more flexible countermeasures to face off the threat of bioengineered pathogens. As noted in a recent CHS report, “One of the biggest challenges in outbreak response, particularly for emerging infectious diseases, is the availability of reliable diagnostic assays that can quickly and accurately determine infection status.”

Diagnostics based on cutting-edge genome sequencing methods could provide detailed information about all the viruses and bacteria present in a blood sample, including even completely novel pathogens. Meanwhile, as genome sequencing technology becomes less expensive, it could be more widely applied in clinics to provide unprecedented real-time insights into genetic diseases and cancer progression.

We also need to invest more in developing antivirals that hit a wider range of targets. Such broad-spectrum drugs may stand a better chance of slowing the proliferation of an engineered bug than treatments specific to single known pathogens.

And we should also develop “platform” technologies that allow rapid vaccine development. Currently, the process of designing, testing, and manufacturing a vaccine to prevent the spread of a new pathogen takes years. Ideally, we could immunize all at-risk individuals within months of identifying the pathogen. Accelerating vaccine development will require us to innovate new and likely unconventional technologies, such as vectored immunoprophylaxis or nucleic acid vaccines.

Even as we pursue and accelerate such research, we should also be mindful of the possibility of self-inflicted wounds. To avert a terrible accident, the international biomedical community should establish firmer cultural guardrails on the research into pathogens.

Currently, career advancement, financial gain, and raw curiosity motivate biologists at all levels to push the envelope, and we all stand to gain from their efforts. However, these same incentives can sometimes lead researchers to take substantial and perhaps unjustified risks, such as evolving dangerous strains of influenza to be more contagious or publishing instructions for cultivating a close cousin of the smallpox virus. It’s important for biologists to do their part to promote a culture in which this adventurous intellectual spirit is tempered by caution and humility.

Encouragingly, synthetic biology luminaries like Esvelt and George Church of Harvard University are doing just that, pioneering technological safeguards to mitigate accidental release risks and advocating policies and norms that would make 21st-century biology a less perilous pursuit. As the tools of synthetic biology spread to other disciplines, their example is one that others should follow.

Underlying the prescriptions above is the need to approach the problem with the sense of urgency it warrants. As our biotechnological capabilities grow, so too will the threat of engineered pathogens. An engineered pandemic won’t announce itself with a towering mushroom cloud, but the suffering of the individuals it touches will be no less real.

R. Daniel Bressler is a PhD candidate in the sustainable development program at Columbia University. His research is at the intersection of dual-use technologies, environmental change, and the capacity for collective action in the international system to deal with these issues. Find him on Twitter @DannyBressler1.

Chris Bakerlee is a PhD candidate in molecules, cells, and orgamisms at Harvard University, where he uses genetic engineering to study how evolution works. Find him on Twitter @cwbakerlee.

BONUS

SOURCE

Below are screenshots of the edits made by Vox.

Below are screenshots from Vox’s 2020 articles.

Vox was founded in April 2014 by Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Melissa Bell. Prior to founding Vox, Ezra Klein was a former Washington Post columnist where he worked as the head of Wonkblog, a public policy blog. Vox is run by Vox Media, a digital publishing network founded by Jerome Armstrong, Tyler Bleszinski, and Markos Moulitsas.

According to its website, Vox Media’s portfolio includes 13 other brands: Vox, New York Magazine, The Verge, The Cut, Eater, Vulture, The Strategist, Polygon, SB Nation, Intelligencer, Curbed, Grub Street, and Recode.” – Tech StartUps

“Think outside the Vox”

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To be continued?
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Dr. Malone was so damn right when he said we’re barely scratching the surface on the biolabs topic.
And so was I when I insisted you should pay special attention to the research on insects that’s been going on not only in the US funded labs in Ukraine and Georgia, but all over the world, including US soil.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA WELCOMES YOU TO YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE YOU HAVEN’T EVEN FATHOMED YET

THE CHERNOBYL & FUKUSHIMA RESEARVH INITIATIVE BY DTRA, THE US AGENCY FUNDING THE UKRAINE BIOLABS

SUMMARY OF THE INITIATIVE AND ITS RESEARCH

                                           (for a PDF version of this text click here)

The Chernobyl Research Initiative began formal research activities in Ukraine in 2000, Belarus in 2005, and Fukushima, Japan, in July, 2011. To date, the group has conducted more than 35 research expeditions to Chernobyl and 16 expeditions to Fukushima.

USC’s Chernobyl Research Initiative was the first and currently is the only research group to utilize a multidisciplinary approach to address the health and environmental outcomes of radiation effects in free-living natural populations. This has permitted the investigation of both acute (short term) and chronic (long term and multi-generational) exposures.

The Chernobyl Research Initiative is also currently the only research team studying plants and animals in both Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Key funding sources have included the Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust, the CNRS (France), the National Science Foundation, and the National Geographic Society. Subsequently, additional funding sources have included the Civilian Research Development Foundation (CRDF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Qiagen GmbH, the Fulbright Foundation, the University of South Carolina Office of Research and the College of Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Finland, and gifts from private citizens.

To date, more than 90 scientific publications have resulted from this initiative, most in the past 10 years (see link above for publications). This research has been highlighted in many newspaper reports and television programs including the New York Times, The Economist, Harpers, the BBC, CNN, CBS’s 60 Minutes, and Miles O’Brian of PBS News Hour (see links above for media coverage).

The team has pioneered the use of ecological, genetic and dosimetric technologies in order to unravel the health and environmental consequences of chronic low-dose exposure resulting from the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. These have included massively replicated ecological censuses of natural populations of birds, mammals and insects to investigate population and demographic effects; DNA sequencing and genotoxicity testing to assess short and long term genetic damage to individuals living in the wild; and the use of miniature dosimeters attached to wild animals and field measurements of whole body burdens of radioisotopes in birds and mammals to obtain accurate estimates of realized external and internal radiation doses to animals living under natural conditions. Recently, the group has expanded to include epidemiological and genetic studies of human populations (especially children) living in Chernobyl-affected regions of Ukraine.

Key results include the discovery of tumors, cataracts and damaged sperm in birds from high radiation areas of Chernobyl, and impacts on biodiversity in Fukushima. Exciting new results include the discovery that some species of birds may have developed resistance to the effects of radiation and effects on neurological development in small mammals in both Chernobyl and Fukushima.

These two disasters differ in the time since the events, and the amount and diversity of radionuclides that were released, although the predominant source of radiation is cesium-137 in both locations.

DTRA in Fukushima – Operation Tomodachi by the agency funding Ukrainian biolabs

We are seeking funding to support the following ongoing and planned future research activities of the Chernobyl + Fukushima Research Initiative:

1)Continued monitoring of Fukushima populations of birds, small mammals, and insects in order to test for changes in population sizes (abundances) and numbers of species (biodiversity) through time.

2)Continued monitoring of barn swallows and rodents (mice and voles) populations for cancers, survival, reproduction, and genetic damage in Fukushima and Chernobyl (in collaboration with the CNRS, France, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, the Wild Bird Society of Japan, the National Institute of Forestry, Japan, and the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland).

3)Initiate a new project to study effects of radiation on tree growth and soil microbial activity in Fukushima (in collaboration with Chubu University, Nagoya, Japan).

4)Initiate a new project to investigate effects of radiation growth, fertility, and genetic damage in cows living in highly radioactive regions of Fukushima (in collaboration with the Fukushima Cattle Ranchers Association).

5)Initiate a new project to examine mutation rates in humans using whole genome DNA sequencing. Initially this project will focus on families living in contaminated regions of Ukraine. The project is in collaboration with the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital at McGill University, the Center of Radiological Research at Columbia University, and the Institute for Radiation Medicine in Kiev, Ukraine.

6)Continued development of new methods for measurement of dose and genetic damage in wild populations of animals.

7)Coordination of an international consortium of independent scientists to provide unbiased evidenced-based information concerning the health and environmental risks related to nuclear accidents. This group will compile, evaluate, and interpret the current scientific and medical literature and develop a literature suitable for public distribution via the print and internet media, as well as public presentations in Japan and internationally.

Highlights from research published by the Chernobyl Research Initiative include the following:

•Population sizes and numbers of species (i.e. biodiversity) of birds, mammals, insects, and spiders are significantly lower in areas of high contamination in Chernobyl.

•For many birds and small mammals, life spans are shorter and fertility is depressed, in areas of high contamination.

•In Fukushima, only birds, butterflies, and cicadas showed significant declines during the first summer following the accident. Other groups were not negatively affected.  Now, five years later, effects on birds have increased.

•There is considerable variability among species in their sensitivity to radionuclides. Many species are not affected, and a few species even appear to increase in numbers in areas of high contamination in both Chernobyl and Fukushima, presumably in response to competitive release (i.e. more available food and shelter) and fewer predators.

•Many species show evidence of genetic damage stemming from acute exposures and the differences observed between Fukushima and Chernobyl suggests some species may show the consequences of mutation accumulation over multiple generations.

•Some individuals and species show no evidence of genetic damage in relation to radiation exposure and some even show evidence of evolutionary adaptation to the effects of radiation through increased antioxidant activity, which may provide protection against ionizing radiation.

•The bird species that are most likely to show declines in numbers in response to radiation are those that historically have shown increased mutation rates for other reasons possibly related to DNA repair ability or reduced defenses against oxidative stress.

•Deleterious effects of radiation exposure seen in natural populations in Chernobyl include increased rates of cataracts, tumors, growth abnormalities, deformed sperm, and albinism. 

Maps of Contaminated regions of Fukushima (left), Ukraine, Belarus and Russia (right), and Europe (below). Fukushima map courtesy of Shane Welch; other maps courtesy of the European Union.

•Neurological development is impacted as evidenced by depressed brain size in both birds and rodents and consequent effects on cognitive ability and survival have been demonstrated in birds.

•Tree growth and microbial decomposition in the soil are also depressed in areas of high radiation. 

•In Fukushima, the first signs of developmental abnormalities have been observed in birds in 2013, although significant genetic damage has not yet been documented for birds or rodents.

DTRA Chief: “We provided safe and secure storage for deadly pathogens in former USSR countries” 2009

Do I need to spell it out?
They are using these grounds for experiments.
Did they end up being experiment grounds by accident?
People in Chernobyl have been evacuated, but fauna and flora are hardly impacted by radiation.
Radiation does not discriminate by species.
You know who does that?
Viruses and bacteria.

DTRA 2008: “We design and test weapon systems and pathogens”
Notice anything interesting in this 2018 DTRA presentation?

DARPA IS A PENTAGON AGENCY WOKING FOR AGRICULTURE WITH GENETICALLY MODIFIED INSECTS THAT CAN POTENTIALLY BE WEAPONIZED. THEY SAY.

DARPA Presents Its “Insect Allies” Genetic Modification Program “for Agriculture”
“DARPA’s GMO insects program can be weaponized” – US scientists sounded the alarm years ago

WASHINGTON — DARPA, the Pentagon’s high-tech office, is working with the government of Ukraine to develop capabilities to help Kiev in its hybrid warfare challenge.

DARPA director Steven Walker, who recently took over that job after five years as the agency’s deputy, told reporters that he had personally visited the country in 2016 for talks with Ukrainian military, intel and industry leaders.

“We did have a good visit to the Ukraine,” Walker said Thursday at a breakfast hosted by the Defense Writer’s Group. “Yes, we have followed up with them, and through the U.S. European Command, we have started several projects with the Ukraine, mostly in the information space.”

“Not providing them weapons or anything like that, but looking at how to help them with information,” Walker added, before declining to go into further detail.

Ukraine has become a testing ground for hybrid warfare techniques from Russia and Russian-backed militant groups ever Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian territory in 2014, including disinformation campaigns. While that has allowed Moscow to test out new capabilities and techniques, it also provides an opportunity to develop counter techniques — which may benefit the U.S. and its allies in the long term.

“I think we’ve got to get better, as a country, in information warfare and how we approach info warfare,” Walker said. “I think there are capabilities there that we need to improve upon, and DAPRA is working in some of those areas.”

This is not the first tie between DARPA and Kiev. The Ukrainian government has hired Tony Tether, who led DARPA for the entirety of the George. W. Bush administration, to help lead a reorganization of their science and technology efforts, something Tether in a LinkedIn post said was necessary in part because so much of Ukraine’s S&T facilities were in the territory seized by Russia.

The former DARPA head has also consulted for the Ukroboronprom group, Ukraine’s largest defense contractor, and just a few weeks ago was added to the group’s supervisory board in a move that Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko called a “symbol of effective cooperation between Ukrainian and American partners.”

Tether is expected to try and recreate some of what make DARPA so successful in Ukraine, but Walker notes that many countries have tried to do that — and failed, in large part due to a cultural fear of giving workers the freedom to fail they need.

“When I talk to others about DARPA and why it works, many other cultures say ‘this couldn’t happen,’” Walker noted.

More broadly, Walker said part of what he wants to see at DARPA during his tenure is looking at increasing counterinsurgency capabilities.

“I think as more populations across the world move to larger and larger cities, we need to understand the three dimensionality of cites and how to operate in those very crowded, very three-dimensional spaces,” Walker said, noting DARPA is working on ways to sense and map underground tunnels and infrastructure.

Updated 3/1/18 at 1:45 PM EST to reflect the fact that after publication, DARPA confirmed that Walker visited Ukraine in 2016.

About Aaron Mehta

Aaron Mehta was deputy editor and senior Pentagon correspondent for Defense News, covering policy, strategy and acquisition at the highest levels of the Defense Department and its international partners.

DARPA Is Making Insects That Can Deliver Bioweapons, Scientists Claim

BY HANNAH OSBORNE ON 10/4/18 AT 2:00 PM EDT

gettyimages-139677923
The U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been accused of trying to create a new class of biological weapons that would be delivered via virus-infected insects. Aphids are one of the insects being used in the DARPA program.ISTOCK

The U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been accused of trying to create a new class of biological weapons that would be delivered via virus-infected insects.

The Insect Allies program was announced by DARPA in 2016. It is a research project that aims to protect the U.S. agricultural food supply by delivering protective genes to plants via insects, which are responsible for the transmission of most plant viruses. Scientists believe loading the bugs up with viruses that would offer plants protective benefits could be one way of ensuring food security in the event of a major threat.

In an editorial published in the journal Science, a group of researchers led by Richard Guy Reeves, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, says Insect Allies isn’t exactly what it says it is. Instead, they claim DARPA is potentially developing insects as a means of delivering a “new class of biological weapon.”

How Does Insect Allies Work?

There are many threats that could impact upon food security. This includes environmental disasters, natural pathogens and intentional attacks. Crop failure, for whichever of these reasons, has the potential to have devastating consequences—wheat and maize, for example, are relied upon by hundreds of millions across the globe for their basic nutritional needs.

ConceptArtInsectAlliesOctober32016v4FINAL619-316
Scientists with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are looking at introducing genetically modified viruses that can edit chromosomes directly, like using insects to transmit genetically modified material into plants.DARPA

Genetically altering a species to make it more resilient comes with problems. Introducing alterations directly into a species’ chromosome is slow, as the alteration must be passed down through generations before it takes hold.

Instead, scientists with DARPA are looking at introducing genetically modified viruses that can edit chromosomes directly in fields—these are known as horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents (HEGAAs).

The DARPA program is using the principles of HEGAAs but, unlike traditional methods of dispersal—like spraying fields with them—it wants to spread them through insects. At the moment, maize and tomato plants are being used in experiments and the insects being used for dispersal are leafhoppers, aphids and whiteflies.

“Insect Allies aims to develop scalable, readily deployable, and generalizable countermeasures against potential natural and engineered threats to mature crops,” Blake Bextine, DARPA Program Manager for Insect Allies, told Newsweek. “The program is devising technologies to engineer and deliver these targeted therapies on relevant timescales—that is, within a single growing season. To do so, Insect Allies researchers are building on natural, efficient, and highly specific plant virus and insect vector delivery systems to transfer modified, protective genes to plants.”

Why Biological Weapons?

Reeves and his colleagues offer a number of assertions about why Insect Allies could end up being a means of bioweapon dispersal. Firstly, they question the very nature of the project—the use of insects. Why, they say, are insects so integral? What is the problem with spraying HEGAAs?

The team says Insect Allies “appears very limited in its capacity to enhance U.S. agriculture or respond to national emergencies…. As a result, the program may be widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery.”

Potentially, the viruses being introduced could do harm instead of good. The insects could be used to disperse agents that would prevent seeds from growing. “HEGAA weapons could be extremely transmissible to susceptible crop species, particularly where insects were used as the means of delivery,” they write. “Chromosomal editing would be targetable to particular crop varieties dependent on their genome sequence (presumably those varieties not grown by the deploying parties).”

gettyimages-935444786
Maize, one of the crops being tested by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is relied upon by millions of people for basic nutrition. Scientists believe loading the bugs up with viruses that would offer plants protective benefits could be one way of ensuring food security in the event of a major threat.ISTOCK

The development of an insect-based system, according to the authors, points to “an intention to develop a means of delivery of HEGAAs for offensive purposes.” The technology, they say, could quickly be simplified and used to develop a whole new class of biological weapons. “In our view, the program is primarily a bad idea because obvious simplifications of the work plan with already-existing technology can generate predictable and fast-acting weapons, along with their means of delivery, capable of threatening virtually any crop species,” they wrote.

The team calls for more transparency from DARPA as the Insect Allies progresses. However, it also says the potential to weaponize this technology is already out there. They say weapons programs are driven by the perceived activities of competitors—maybe the Insect Allies program is a response to intelligence about another nation’s capabilities.

Furthermore, “the mere announcement of the Insect Allies Program, with its presented justifications, may motivate other countries to develop their own capabilities in this arena—indeed, it may have already done so…. Reversal of funding for this DARPA project…would not in itself close the particular Pandora’s box that HEGAAs or their insect dispersal may represent.”

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DARPA Making Weaponized Insects?

DARPA denies the assertions made by Reeves and his colleagues. “DARPA is producing neither biological weapons nor the means for their delivery,” a spokesman told Newsweek. “We do accept and agree with concerns about potential dual use of technology, an issue that comes up with virtually every new powerful technology.” He said these concerns are the reason Insect Allies has been structured in the way it is—supposedly as a transparent and university-led research project that encourages communication. “We also have numerous, layered safeguards in place to maintain biosecurity and ensure the systems we’re developing function only as intended,” the DARPA spokesperson added.

Bextine reiterated this point. Researchers working with DARPA are allowed to publish their results and work with different agencies. The experiments they carry out are done so in biosecure greenhouses. “At no point in the program is DARPA funding open release of Insect Allies systems,” Bextine said.

He said he disagrees with the conclusion of the editorial in Science, saying technology and research that deals with food security and gene editing “have a higher bar than most for transparency”—and Insect Allies, he says, meets these high standards.

Responding to the queries relating to delivery—why spraying technology cannot be used—Bextine said these are just not up to the challenge, especially when it comes to responding at a large scale to the most severe threats.

“Many existing methods for protecting crops are inefficient, expensive, imprecise, or destructive to plants, may require significant infrastructure, and often provide only limited efficacy,” he said. “Sprayed treatments are impractical for introducing genetic modifications on a large scale and potentially infeasible if the spraying technology does not access the necessary tissues with specificity. Meanwhile, traditional selective breeding methods for introducing protective traits into plants require years to propagate, nowhere near the speed required to prevent a fast-moving threat from developing into a crisis.”

He added that DARPA would never receive funding for the next generation of aerial spraying technology. The development of this new technology is dependent on industry and other research funders. “Instead, we reach for fundamentally new ways of delivering more precise, efficacious treatments through systems that can be readily adapted to confront a range of potential threats.

“Emerging biotechnologies—and especially the cutting-edge research being performed on Insect Allies—are pushing science into new territories. DARPA is proud to be taking a proactive role in working with stakeholders to inform a new framework for considering how the benefits of these technologies can be most safely realized.”

US military plan to spread viruses using insects could create ‘new class of biological weapon’, scientists warn

Agency says it is trying to genetically modify crops, but experts think this goal is ‘simply not plausible’

The Independent, 05 October 2018 11:16

US military plan to spread viruses using insects could create ‘new class of biological weapon’, scientists warn

Insects could be turned into “a new class of biological weapon” using new US military plans, experts have warned.

The Insect Allies programme aims to use bugs to disperse genetically modified (GM) viruses to crops.

Such action will have profound consequences and could pose a major threat to global biosecurity, according to a team that includes specialist scientists and lawyers.

However, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which is responsible for developing military technologies in the US, says it is merely trying to alter crops growing in fields by using viruses to transmit genetic changes to plants.

In theory, this rapid engineering would allow farmers to adapt to changing conditions, for example by inserting drought-resistance genes into corn instead of planting pre-engineered seeds.

But this seemingly inoffensive goal has been slammed by the scientists, who say the plan is simply dangerous and that insects loaded with synthetic viruses will be difficult to control.

They also say that despite being in operation since 2016 and distributing $27m in funds to scientists, Darpa has failed to properly justify the existence of such a programme.

Research programme with potential for dual use: scientists fear that the Insect Ally programme by the US could encourage other states to increase their own research activities in the field of biological warfare (MPG/D.Duneka)
Research programme with potential for dual use: scientists fear that the Insect Ally programme by the US could encourage other states to increase their own research activities in the field of biological warfare (MPG/D.Duneka) (MPG/ D. Duneka)

“Given that Darpa is a military agency, we find it surprising that the obvious and concerning dual-use aspects of this research have received so little attention,” Felix Beck, a lawyer at the University of Freiburg, told The Independent.

Dr Guy Reeves, an expert in GM insects at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, said that there has been hardly any debate about the technology and the programme remains largely unknown “even in expert circles”.

He added that despite the stated aims of the programme, it would be far more straightforward using the technology as a biological weapon than for the routine agricultural use suggested by Darpa.

“It is very much easier to kill or sterilise a plant using gene editing than it is to make it herbicide or insect-resistant,” explains Reeves.

Experiments are reportedly already underway using insects such as aphids and whiteflies to treat corn and tomato plants.

Mr Beck said he and fellow experts were not suggesting that the US military wanted to create biological weapons, but that the proposed agricultural uses are “simply not plausible for a number of reasons”.

Firstly, they note that if farmers wanted to use genetically modified viruses to improve their crops, there is no reason not to use conventional spraying equipment.

They also noted that despite Darpa stating that no insects used should survive longer than two weeks, if such safeguards were not in place “the spread could in principle be unlimited”.

Mr Beck added: “The quite obvious question of whether the viruses selected for development should or should not be capable of plant-to-plant transmission – and plant-to-insect-to-plant transmission – was not addressed in the Darpa work plan at all”.

Air Force fails to acknowledge mysterious meteor that crashed to Earth near US military base

Making their case in the journal Science, the team noted that if Insect Allies’ research cannot be justified, it could be perceived as breaching the UN’s Biological Weapons Convention.

“Because of the broad ban of the Biological Weapons Convention, any biological research of concern must be plausibly justified as serving peaceful purposes,” explained Professor Silja Voeneky, a specialist in international law at Freiburg University.

“The Insect Allies Program could be seen to violate the Biological Weapons Convention, if the motivations presented by Darpa are not plausible.

“This is particularly true considering this kind of technology could easily be used for biological warfare.”

To prevent any suspicion and to avoid encouraging other nations to develop their own technologies in this area, the authors of the study have called for more transparency from Darpa if it intends to pursue such programmes.

A spokesperson from Darpa defended the programme, explaining that using insects to apply these gene altering treatments could provide advantages over sprays.

“Most importantly in this context, sprayed treatments are impractical for introducing protective traits on a large scale and potentially infeasible if the spraying technology cannot access the necessary plant tissues with specificity, which is a known problem,” they said.

“If Insect Allies succeeds, it will offer a highly specific, efficient, safe, and readily deployed means of introducing transient protective traits into only the plants intended, with minimal infrastructure required.”

LMFAO

Ukroboronprom Appoints Former DARPA Head as Supervisory Board Member

Ukroboronprom Appoints Former DARPA Head as Supervisory Board Member

Anthony Tether, Former Head of US DARPA was appointed as member of UOP Supervisory Board (Image: Ukroboronprom)

Ukraine’s state run Ukroboronprom has appointed former head of US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Anthony Tether as member of UOP Supervisory Board.

Anthony Tether has been in charge of Ukroboronprom long-term development for over a year and a half. He assists in implementing UOP development strategy, implementation of reforms, corporatization, and international audit. The former head of DARPA contributed to strengthening Ukroboronprom’s export potential and investment development. Under his chairmanship, the State General Advanced Research and Development Agency (GARDA, the prototype of the American DARPA) was created, the company said in a statement Thursday.

“As a member of the Supervisory Board, Anthony Tether will help Ukroboronprom to implement the reform strategy and international audit,” said Roman Romanov, Ukroboronprom Director General.

Earlier, Mykhaylo Zhurovs’kyy – the rector of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute named after I. Sikorsky” – was elected as Chairman of the Supervisory Board. Lieutenant General Yaroslav Skal’ko, former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Air Force, was elected as Vice-Chairman.

On January 31, the Ukroboronprom Supervisory Board – after a long-term meeting -took key decisions on the activities of the Concern. During the meeting, UOP management report was heard; strategic directions for UOP development, corporatization process of UOP enterprises-participants, the international audit, the system of effective anti-corruption measures, creation of an advisory body and other issues were discussed.

Ukraine to Create DARPA-like Defence Research Agency

Ukraine to Create DARPA-like Defence Research Agency

Ukriane will soon set up its General Advanced Research & Development Agency (GARDA), modeled along the American Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at Igor the Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI).

This was stated by UKROBORONPROM Director General Pavlo Bukin during his speech at the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, during the parliamentary hearings “National Innovation System: State and Legislative Development”.

“It was decided to create an agency of advanced technologies based on the DARPA model, to implement technologies in the defense industry. Mykhaylo Zhurovs’kyy – the rector of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute named after I. Sikorsky” – agreed that the agency will be based at this very university. I am sure this decision will contribute to the greatest effect”, stressed Pavlo Bukin.

At the same time, he mentioned that the issue of innovative technologies development is connected with the necessity of legislative changes that would improve the mechanisms of financing such projects.

“The legal framework for innovation in Ukraine is sufficiently developed, but some aspects need to be improved, as they hamper financing. When it comes to research institutes and design bureaus – their resources are limited. It is necessary to legislatively create a mechanism for innovation activity financing and preferential taxation, “- said UKROBORONPROM Director General Pavlo Bukin from the rostrum of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.

He named UGV “Phantom-2” development among UOP innovations. “This platform allows to destroy the enemy’s manpower and to transport the goods, and it has already passed the test abroad, and it can be considered to be a result of the activities of the State Concern and its design engineering bureaus,” said Pavlo Bukin.

Ukroboronprom head: Ukraine’s military industrial complex during hybrid warfare

By Roman Romanov, Dec 11, 2017
Roman Romanov is the director general of Ukrainian defense company Ukroboronprom.

Three years ago, Ukraine was facing an unexpected challenge – Russia’s military aggression. The annexation of Crimea and the first battles in Donbass were a total shock to the Ukrainian armed forces and the domestic defense industry. At that time, defense and law enforcement agencies were uncapable of performing their tasks; weapons and military equipment were not ready for operational use; and the military-industrial complex could not meet the needs of the Army.

Unfortunately, over the past 25 years, Ukrainian defense enterprises received no orders from the state – more than half of the plants were practically closed. The main types of the military equipment manufactured required Russian components.

Outlook 2018: Perspectives from global thought leaders

In 2014, we completely stopped our cooperation with the Russian defense industry, and Ukroboronprom received the task to provide the Army with necessary weapons and military equipment in the shortest possible time.

First of all, we formed a new team of Ukroboronprom managers, who managed to quickly make qualitative changes and introduce the best business and management practices. We replaced about half of the directors of Ukroboronprom enterprises, mainly those who failed to adapt their way of thinking to new realities; we initiated repair and overhaul of the military equipment – Ukroboronprom enterprises organized 55 mobile maintenance crews, restoring military equipment directly in the anti-terrorist operation zone.

Furthermore, we arranged the import of critical components and organized the repair and manufacture of modernized military equipment samples. Ukroboronprom heads for strategic partnership with Western countries and NATO-Ukraine defense-technical cooperation.

In 2015, Ukroboronprom began implementing a new strategic task – the State Defense Order. Ukroboronprom enterprises launched serial production of new military equipment samples. The Army began to receive sniper rifles, mortars, modernized tanks and new armored personnel carriers manufactured in Ukraine.

The next urgent task was set: to overcome the dependence on imported components from the Russian Federation. To solve this problem, we launched a large-scale import substitution program to attract domestic reserves and set up cooperation within the country with enterprises of any form of ownership.

Ukroboronprom representatives visited all regions of Ukraine, held meetings with governors and discussed the issues of attracting the region’s industry to cooperation with Ukroboronprom.

As a result, enterprises from all regions of Ukraine began to join the import-substitution program implementation. As of today, 414 small, medium and large enterprises of Ukraine and 200,000 specialists joined the process. In fact, Ukroboronprom has attracted the whole country to working on strengthening the Ukrainian Army and the development of the country’s economy.

Furthermore, we renewed the workforce, attracted scientific and educational potential of the country: memorandums of cooperation were signed with 48 Ukrainian universities. Today, we train young specialists: 8,000-plus students had their practical training at Ukroboronprom enterprises and almost 600 of them are already working at our plants.

Memorandums of cooperation were signed with 30 institutes of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Attracting talented Ukrainian scientists and young specialists resulted in 535 promising developments upon the anvil and 80 projects that are already being implemented at Ukroboronprom enterprises.

We set ourselves to the task of expanding partnerships and implementing NATO standards for all stages of armament life cycles. The work on the introduction of the AQAP 2000 series standards at Ukroboronprom enterprises is launched. The ISO 9001 system already operates at 73 percent for Ukroboronprom enterprises.

Ukroboronprom specialists actively participate in multinational projects of the NATO concept Smart Defence, as well as in the meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Joint Working Group on Defence-Technical Cooperation.

In 2016, the development of the Ukroboronprom reform strategy was launched. The state concern Ukroboronprom held a meeting of a specially established tendering committee, involving the specialist of the Independent Defence Anti-Corruption Committee of Transparency International Ukraine, to help select the international consulting company using a “competitive dialogue” procedure. Thus, the concern started the process of conducting an international audit. We launched the next stage of Ukroboronprom’s reform. Implementation of such a large-scale process – as international audit and transformation of Ukroboronprom’s enterprises into joint stock companies – will last for about two years.

As a result of military operations in the anti-terrorist operation area, 900-plus technical solutions were introduced and implemented by Ukroboronprom engineers in the armored vehicles operated by the Army, having significantly improved tactical and operational characteristics of the military equipment and taking into account hybrid war experience.

Today, the latest developments of our specialists are being used and tested in the anti-terrorist operation zone. A good example is the unmanned complex Spectator, developed by the specialists of state concern Ukroboronprom, together with scientists of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.” In May 2015, a contract for production was signed. And in January 2016, the first batch was transferred to Ukraine’s armed forces. This high-tech product has been successfully used in combat conditions for more than a year. The prototype of the new tactical UAV, Horlytsya, developed by the Ukrainian enterprises, successfully performed its first flight.

Hybrid war in the east of Ukraine forced us – taking into account combat experience – to develop unmanned equipment for performing various tasks on the battlefield without putting our soldiers’ lives at risk.

Ukroboronprom withstood the challenge of the war and in three years transferred about 16,000 units of weapons and military equipment to the military. Thanks to the work of the entire defense industry of Ukraine, our armed forces – from combat-ineffective units in 2014 – turned into a well-armed Army.

DARPA wants to alter human skin biomes to fight deadliest enemy: mosquitos

Researchers developing long-lasting topical cream that alters skin’s “microbiome” so troops can ward off disease-carrying insects.

Breaking Defense, March 07, 2022

Mosquitos potentially carry a range of deadly diseases, from malaria to yellow fever. (Photo by James Gathany/CDC. Public Domain.)

WASHINGTON: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency may have been created to develop cutting-edge technology to help the US take on the Soviet Union in the Cold War, but now it’s taking on another deadly enemy: mosquitos.

DARPA’s latest idea, now entering its second phase, is to get down to the molecular level to make a topical cream that would actually alter the “microbiome” of human skin to make it less appetizing to the disease-carrying insects.

“The ReVector program aims to precisely, safely, and efficiently reduce mosquito attraction and biting, and, subsequently, to help maintain the health of military personnel operating in disease-endemic regions,” the agency said in a release last month.

While tiny compared to the USSR and totally lacking artillery, the mosquito is the deadliest animal on the planet, responsible for spreading malaria, which kills more than 400,000 people every year, in addition to other deadly diseases. Throughout human history militaries have struggled with mosquito-borne maladies, from the million-plus cases that waylayed soldiers during the Civil War to the over 80,000 cases among US servicemembers in Vietnam.

Even though a vast majority of those survived, the disease disrupted the forces’ ability to fight, at times in critical moments. Army researchers currently estimate malaria infections are responsible for up to 21,000 lost work hours and between $1.2 and $4.4 million per year in evacuation and medical costs.

The treatment for malaria has progressed significantly in recent decades, but the ReVector program aims to stop the disease before it can get into the human body at all. The program’s first phase involved the development of technology to “modify human skin microbes” and the “volatile molecules” it produces, and testing the effect of those modifications on mosquitos.

“In Phase 2, the team plans to advance testing in animal models and move complex microbiome communities,” ReVector program manager Linda Chrisley said in the release.

The release explained that “ultimately, ReVector seeks to develop topical formulations that could be applied shortly before a mission with minimal equipment or training, and last for at least two weeks without reapplication, offering improved, sustained protection against disease vectors.”

DARPA is working with Stanford University researchers on the project, and the agency notes the research is reviewed by the US Food and Drug Administration and “if necessary” the Environmental Protection Agency “to ensure that technologies are effective and do not pose a threat to humans or the environment.”

PENTAGON UNIT A1266 STUDIES INSECTS AS BIOTERRORISM AGENTS ON RUSSIA’S DOORSTEPS:

Pentagon Biolabs – Russia has been long complaining about them – 2018 Investigative Documentary

Entomological Warfare?

DARPA has been working for several years on genetic editing of mosquitoes. Through its “Insect Allies” program, DARPA has been working, using CRISPR gene-editing and gene drive technologies, on manipulating the Aedes Aegypti mosquito. The US Department of Defense has spent at least $100 million in the controversial technology known as “gene drives” making the US military a top funder and developer of the gene-modifying technology. “Gene drives are a powerful and dangerous new technology and potential biological weapons could have disastrous impacts on peace, food security and the environment, especially if misused,” said Jim Thomas, co-director of ETC Group, an environment safety group. “The fact that gene drive development is now being primarily funded and structured by the US military raises alarming questions about this entire field.”

Entomological warfare is a type of biological warfare that uses insects to transmit diseases. The Pentagon, using DARPA research, has allegedly performed such entomological tests secretly in the Republic of Georgia and Russia. Is the DARPA development, together with Gates’ foundation and Oxitec, of the gene edited mosquitoes a covert program in entomological warfare?

The Pentagon presently has top security bio laboratories in 25 countries across the world funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under a $ 2.1 billion military program– Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP). They are in former Soviet Union countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, the Middle East, South East Asia and Africa. Among their projects, Phlebotomine sand fly species were collected under the heading, “Surveillance Work on Acute Febrile Illness,” in which all (female) sand flies were tested to determine their infectivity rate. A third project, also including sand flies collection, studied the characteristics of their salivary glands. This is weaponization research.

The controversial person picked by the Biden Administration to become the first Cabinet-level science advisor, Eric Lander, came from the MIT-Harvard Broad Institute. Lander is a specialist in gene drive and gene editing technologies and played a major role in the flawed US Human Genome Project. This is not the kind of science we need to be supporting. It is rather part of what is obviously a larger eugenics agenda and Bill Gates is again playing a key role.
SOURCE

BONUS:

US military to develop genetically modified plants to use as spies

New synthetic biology programme makes use of natural capabilities to gather intelligence

The Independent, 23 November 2017 16:55

The highly attuned sensory abilities of plants could be employed to gather intelligence for the military
The highly attuned sensory abilities of plants could be employed to gather intelligence for the military (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The US military wants to deploy plants as “the next generation of intelligence gatherers”.

Genetically modified plants could be employed as self-sustaining sensors to gather information in settings unsuitable for more traditional technologies.

The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is responsible for the development of emerging technologies in the US military, has called for scientists to submit ideas for how to harness the power of plants.

In the past, DARPA has produced information-gathering technologies such as the satellites and seismographs employed to ensure Soviet compliance with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

But in this new initiative, termed the Advanced Plant Technologies (APT) programme, the agency is looking to the natural world for help.

“Plants are highly attuned to their environments and naturally manifest physiological responses to basic stimuli such as light and temperature, but also in some cases to touch, chemicals, pests and pathogens,” said Dr Blake Bextine, the manager of the ATP programme.

“Emerging molecular and modelling techniques may make it possible to reprogramme these detection and reporting capabilities for a wide range of stimuli, which would not only open up new intelligence streams, but also reduce the personnel risks and costs associated with traditional sensors,” said Dr Bextine.

The idea is that plants’ natural capabilities can be co-opted to detect relevant chemicals, harmful microorganisms, radiation and electromagnetic signals.

Modifying the genomes of plants would enable the military to control the types of sensing they are doing, and also trigger certain responses that can be monitored remotely using existing hardware.

Technology already exists to monitor plants from the ground, air and even from space.

“Advanced Plant Technologies is a synthetic biology programme at heart,” said Dr Bextine.

“As with DARPA’s other work in that space, our goal is to develop an efficient, iterative system for designing, building, and testing models so that we end up with a readily adaptable platform capability that can be applied to a wide range of scenarios.”

Past experiments with plants that have been modified in this manner have resulted in organisms that have difficulty settling in the natural environment, where they would be deployed.

The additional strain placed on the modified plants by their new duties makes it difficult for them to survive and compete with surrounding plants. This will be a key area that the new programme seeks to address.

The “proposers day” is being held on 12 December in Arlington, Virginia. It will lay out the objectives of DARPA’s programme and take submissions for research projects that are relevant to the initiative.

Gene Edited Catastrophe in Brazil

New Eastern Outlook, 02.10.2019 Author: F. William Engdahl

A British-American gene-editing company has released millions of genetically modified mosquitoes containing a dominant lethal gene, each week for 27 months in the Bahia, Brazil region in a test to see if the gene-edited mosquitoes would mate with local mosquitoes carrying Zika, malaria or other mosquito-borne diseases. A new study documents the alarming fact that following an initial reduction of the target population of mosquitoes, after some months the “population which had been greatly suppressed rebounded to nearly pre-release levels.” Scientists to date have no idea what dangers are presented by the new mutations. This once more highlights the dangers of uncontrolled gene-editing of species.

According to a new published study in Nature Reports journal, genetically engineered mosquitoes produced by the biotech company, Oxitec, now part of the US company Intrexon, have escaped human control after trials in Brazil and are now spreading in the environment.

On paper the theory was brilliant. Strains of “yellow fever” male mosquitoes taken from Cuba and Mexico were altered using gene-editing to make it impossible for their offspring to survive. Oxitec then began a systematic release of tens of millions of the manipulated mosquitoes over more than two years in the the city of Jacobina in the region of Bahia in Brazil. The Oxitec theory was the altered mosquitoes would mate with normal females of the same type which carry infectious diseases like dengue fever, and kill them off in the process.

Unanticipated Outcome…’

A team of scientists from Yale University and several scientific institutes in Brazil monitored the progress of the experiment. What they found is alarming in the extreme. After an initial period in which the target mosquito population markedly declined, after about 18 months the mosquito population recovered to pre-release levels. Not only that, the paper notes that some of the mosquitos likely have “hybrid vigor,” in which a hybrid of the natural with the gene-edited has created “a more robust population than the pre-release population” which may be more resistant to insecticides, in short, resistant “super mosquitoes.”

The scientists note that, “Genetic sampling from the target population six, 12, and 27–30 months after releases commenced provides clear evidence that portions of the transgenic strain genome have been incorporated into the target population. Evidently, rare viable hybrid offspring between the release strain and the Jacobina population are sufficiently robust to be able to reproduce in nature…” They continue, “Thus, Jacobina Ae. aegypti are now a mix of three populations. It is unclear how this may affect disease transmission or affect other efforts to control these dangerous vectors.” They estimate that between 10% and 60% of the Bahia natural Ae. Aegypti mosquitoes now had some gene-edited OX513A genome. They conclude that “The three populations forming the tri-hybrid population now in Jacobina (Cuba/Mexico/Brazil) are genetically quite distinct, very likely resulting in a more robust population than the pre-release population due to hybrid vigor.”

This was not supposed to happen. Professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, Jeffrey Powell, senior author of the study, remarked on the findings: “The claim was that genes from the release strain would not get into the general population because offspring would die. That obviously was not what happened.” Powell went on to note, “But it is the unanticipated outcome that is concerning.”

A Gates Foundation Project

The Brazil study deals a major alarm signal on the uncontrolled release of gene-edited species into nature. It calls to mind the horror plot of Michael Crichton’s 1969 science fiction novel, Andromeda Strain. Only it is no novel.

The Oxitec mosquitoes were developed using a highly controversial form of gene-editing known as gene drive. Gene Drive, which is also being heavily funded by the Pentagon’s DARPA, combined with CRISPR gene-editing, aims to force a genetic modification to spread through an entire population, whether of mosquitoes or potentially humans, in just a few generations.

The scientist who first suggested developing gene drives in gene-editing, Harvard biologist Kevin Esvelt, has publicly warned that development of gene editing in conjunction with gene drive technologies has alarming potential to go awry. He notes how often CRISPR messes up and the likelihood of protective mutations arising, making even benign gene drives aggressive. He stresses, “Just a few engineered organisms could irrevocably alter an ecosystem.” Esvelt’s computer gene drive simulations calculated that a resulting edited gene “can spread to 99 percent of a population in as few as 10 generations, and persist for more than 200 generations.” This is very much what has now been demonstrated in the mosquito experiment in Brazil.

Notable is the fact that the Oxitec Brazil mosquito experiment was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In June, 2018 Oxitec announced a joint venture with the Gates Foundation, “to develop a new strain of Oxitec’s self-limiting Friendly™ Mosquitoes to combat a mosquito species that spreads malaria in the Western Hemisphere.” The Brazil results show the experiment is a catastrophic failure as the new strain is anything but self-limiting.

The Gates Foundation and Bill Gates have been backing development of the radical gene-editing technology and gene drive technology for more than a decade. Gates, a long-time advocate of eugenics, population control and of GMO, is a strong gene-editing promoter. In an article in the May/June 2018 magazine of the New York Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs, Gates hails gene editing technologies, explicitly CRISPR. In the article Gates argues that CRISPR and other gene-editing techniques should be used globally to meet growing demand for food and to improve disease prevention, particularly for malaria. In his article he adds, “there is reason to be optimistic that creating gene drives in malaria-spreading mosquitoes will not do much, if any, harm to the environment.

Every bit as alarming as the failure of the Brazil gene-editing mosquito experiment is the fact that this technology is being spread with virtually no prior health or safety testing by truly independent government institutions. To date the US Government relies only on industry safety assurances. The EU, while formally responsible to treat gene-edited species similarly to GMO plants, is reportedly trying to loosen the regulations. China, a major research center for gene-editing, has extremely lax controls. Recently a Chinese scientist announced an experiment in human gene-editing allegedly to make newborn twins resistant to HIV. Other experiments are proliferating around the world with gene-edited animals and even salmon. The precautionary principle has been thrown to the winds when it comes to the new gene-editing revolution, not a reassuring situation.

Currently Oxitec, which denies that the Brazil results show failure, is now trying to get regulatory approval from the US Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a similar experiment with the same gene-edited species in Texas and Florida. One of the people involved in the attempt, Texan Roy Bailey, is a Washington lobbyist and close friend of Randal Kirk, the billionaire CEO of Intrexon, owner of Oxitec. Bailey is also a major Trump fundraiser. Let’s hope that regulatory prudence and not politics decide the outcome

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

MORE RESOURCES

Genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in Florida and Texas beginning this summer
https://theconversation.com/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-could-be-released-in-florida-and-texas-beginning-this-summer-silver-bullet-or-jumping-the-gun-139710

Gates Foundation Oxitec Grant
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2018/06/OPP1181812

Gates Foundation and Oxitec Fight Malaria with Genetically-Modified Mosquitoes
https://www.labiotech.eu/industrial/gates-foundation-oxitec-malaria-mosquito/

Gates Foundation Awards $4.1 Million for Mosquito Engineering
https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/gates-foundation-awards-4.1-million-for-mosquito-engineering

Mosquitoes are the new syringe? Seattle lab nibbles at malaria vaccine
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/science/mosquitoes-are-the-new-syringe-seattle-lab-nibbles-at-malaria-vaccine/

Researchers Turn Mosquitoes Into Flying Vaccinators
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/03/researchers-turn-mosquitoes-flying-vaccinators

US Army & Gates Study Immunization Via Mosquito Bite With Radiation-attenuated Sporozoites (IMRAS)
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01994525

Who is the biggest killer on the planet?
http://www.hardydiagnostics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/The-Most-Deadly-Animals.pdf

EPA suspends enforcement of environmental laws amid coronavirus
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/489753-epa-suspends-enforcement-of-environmental-laws-amid-coronavirus

So yeah, nothing to worry here, just “health labs” and SPAs …

Thanks Fukushima Exposed for the great and timely contribution that decisively helped me complete this investigation!

To be continued?
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! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them

At first I wasn’t so sure these labs were even a stake in this war, I’m pretty sure Putin wouldn’t bomb them anyway, that poses huge risks to Russia too. But seeing the dumb and desperate counter-narrative efforts from US / UA, coupled with the latest press releases from Moscow., I know we’re over some major target.

BREAKING UPDATE: DANG!

China — “The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone. It should give a full account of its biomilitary activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral inspections.“

Chinese broadcaster CGTN: “China urges U.S. to disclose more details about biolabs in Ukraine

Only hours later, Victoria Nuland, US Undersecretary of State, replied. They’ve never reacted so promptly, definitely a massive burning issue to US:

Ukraine biolabs are real but Russian man bad – Victoria Nuland

LAST MINUTE

Xinhua news agency released this 3h prior to this update

Bat coronavirus found in U.S.-funded bio-lab in Ukraine: Russian Defense Ministry
“Dismissing the concerns about US biolabs in Ukraine is irresponsible” – China’s second shout to US

Looks like they are going to play ping-pong for a while, I’m not going to keep reporting every strike now, just the decisive ones.

In the meantime, one thing led to another and…

We were here before China and Nuland interrupted to confirm us:

Article like this one from Kyiv Post are meant to be used as credible source by Western ‘fact-checkers’ such as Politifact and their pitiful debunk attempts.
Because what is more reliable than word from the Deception Services of the incriminated part?!

Their strawman argument is rookie level, not much effort needed to tear it apart:

However, documents tell another story:

“Ukraine has no control over the military bio-laboratories on its own territory. According to the 2005 Agreement between the US DoD and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine the Ukrainian government is prohibited from public disclosure of sensitive information about the US program and Ukraine is obliged to transfer to the US Department of Defense (DoD) dangerous pathogens for biological research. The Pentagon has been granted access to certain state secrets of Ukraine in connection with the projects under their agreement. “

Dilyana Gaytandzhieva

https://www.rt.com/russia/551374-ukraine-biological-warfare-labs/

MFA = Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Russia reveals evidence of U.S.-funded bio-program in Ukraine

CGTN, 07-Mar-2022

Graphic shows part of U.S.-funded overseas bio-labs. /CGTN

Russian defense ministry spokesperson said on Sunday that evidence of a U.S.-financed military biological program developed in Ukraine has been revealed during Russia’s special operation on Ukraine.

The spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said, “In the course of the special military operation, evidence of the Kyiv regime’s hasty measures to conceal any traces of the military biological program, financed by the U.S. Department of Defense in Ukraine, has been revealed.”

Konashenkov pointed out that the employees of Ukrainian bio laboratories had provided information that especially hazardous pathogens: plague, anthrax, cholera, tularemia and other lethal diseases infecting agents had been urgently destroyed following the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine on February 24.

The defense ministry further informed that the results of the analysis of the documents will be shared in the near future.

“We will share the results of the analysis of the documents we have received in the near future. Some of them, in particular the Ukrainian health ministry’s instruction to destroy pathogens and certificates of completion from the Kharkov and Poltava bio laboratories we are publishing right now,” Konashenkov added.

A screenshot of The Rio Times’ online page.

U.S. embassy deletes files on Ukrainian bio-labs

According to a report of The Rio Times and a Twitter message posted by the Brazilian new agency’s investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, the American Embassy in Ukraine on February 26 removed all documents about Pentagon-financed bio-labs in Ukraine from its website. But they forgot to remove a document showing that the Pentagon is funding two new biolabs in Kyiv and Odesa.

One of the old labs financed by the U.S. in Ukraine is located in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city. In January 2016, at least 20 Ukrainian soldiers died there from a flu-like virus in two days while another 200 soldiers were hospitalized. However, the Ukrainian government did not provide details on the soldiers who died.

U.S.-funded overseas bio-labs concerns

The U.S. has set up over 200 bio-labs in 25 countries and regions across the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union, with 16 in Ukraine alone.

Some of the places where the labs are based have seen large-scale outbreaks of measles and other dangerous infectious diseases, triggering international concerns about the safety of U.S. overseas laboratories. – CGTN

We discussed Dyliana research and the biolab issue one year ago, but at least it didn’t take two, like the Covid masks hoax.


IN FACT, RUSSIA HAS COMPLAINED FOR YEARS THAT US IS CONDUCTING BIOWARFARE IN UKRAINE LABS AT THE BORDER. PROJECTS INVOLVED INSECT SPREADERS JUST LIKE IN BILL GATES AND DARPA’S CRAZIEST PLANS.

If US/UA were smart enough to deny the lab bombings, not the labs, this would’ve been a closed case to me.. But no… They are desperate to deny the whole shabazz…

And that’s borderline insane, given the abundance of evidence, see some examples below.

Another point Ukraine and Western narrative control is trying to push:
The labs work in accordance with Ukraine laws for biodefense and vaccine research.
But we know that the difference between bio-defense / vaccine research and bioweapon / biowarfare research is solely in INTENTION.
And to settle this problem, all they are offering is a declaration of positive intentions from the accused.

As I was writing this previous paragraph, I heard Shaggy singing “It Wasn’t Me” in my head, do you get this too?

You loved her epic expose on the American biolabs network around the world.
The Bulgarian one-woman-media-army did it again!
Dilyana Gaytandzhieva is a Bulgarian investigative journalist, Middle East correspondent and founder of Arms Watch. Over the last years she has published a series of revealing reports on weapons supplies to terrorists in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Her current work is focused on documenting war crimes and illicit arms exports to war zones around the world.

Documents expose US biological experiments on allied soldiers in Ukraine and Georgia

  January 24, 2022

The US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) program in the Republic of Georgia. Photo: Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia

While the US is planning to increase its military presence in Eastern Europe to “protect its allies against Russia”, internal documents show what American “protection” in practical terms means.

The Pentagon has conducted biological experiments with a potentially lethal outcome on 4,400 soldiers in Ukraine and 1,000 soldiers in Georgia. According to leaked documents, all volunteer deaths should be reported within 24 h (in Ukraine) and 48 h (in Georgia).

Both countries are considered the most loyal US partners in the region with a number of Pentagon programs being implemented in their territory. One of them is the $2.5 billion Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Biological engagement program which includes research on bio agents, deadly viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria being studied on the local population.

Project GG-21: “All volunteer deaths will be promptly reported”

The Pentagon has launched a 5-year long project with a possible extension of up to 3 years code-named GG-21: “Arthropod-borne and zoonotic infections among military personnel in Georgia”. According to the project’s description, blood samples will be obtained from 1,000 military recruits at the time of their military registration physical exam at the Georgian military hospital located in Gori.

The samples will be tested for antibodies against fourteen pathogens:

  • Bacillus anthracis
  • Brucella
  • CCHF virus
  • Coxiella burnetii
  • Francisella tularensis
  • Hantavirus
  • Rickettsia species
  • TBE virus
  • Bartonella species
  • Borrelia species
  • Ehlrichia species
  • Leptospira species
  • Salmonella typhi
  • WNV

The amount of blood draw will be 10 ml. Samples will be stored indefinitely at the NCDC (Lugar Center) or USAMRU-G and aliquots might be sent to WRAIR headquarters in US for future research studies. Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) is the largest biomedical research facility administered by the U.S. Department of Defense. The results of the blood testing will not be provided to the study participants.

Such a procedure cannot cause death. However, according to the project report, “all volunteer deaths will be promptly reported (usually within 48 h of the PI being notified)” to the Georgian Military Hospital and WRAIR.

According to the GG-21 project report, “all volunteer deaths will be promptly reported” to the Georgian military hospital and WRAIR, USA.

The soldiers’ blood samples will be stored and further tested at the Lugar Center, a $180 million Pentagon-funded facility in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi.

The Lugar Center has become notorious in the last years for controversial activitieslaboratory incidents and scandals surrounding the US drug giant Gilead’s Hepatitis C program in Georgia which has resulted in at least 248 deaths of patients. The cause of death in the majority of cases has been listed as unknown, internal documents have shown.

[Gilead makes Remdesivir – Silview Media]

The Georgian project GG-21 has been funded by DTRA and implemented by American military scientists from a special US Army unit code-named USAMRU-G who operate in the Lugar Center. They have been given diplomatic immunity in Georgia to research bacteria, viruses and toxins without being diplomats. This unit is subordinate to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR).

The Lugar Center is the $180 million Pentagon-funded biolaboratory in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi.
A diplomatic car with a registration plate of the US Embassy to Tbilisi in the car park of the Lugar Center. US scientists working at the Pentagon laboratory in Georgia drive diplomatic vehicles as they have been given diplomatic immunity. Photos: Dilyana Gaytandzhieva

Documents obtained from the US Federal contracts registry show that USAMRU-G is expanding its activities to other US allies in the region and is “establishing expeditionary capabilities” in Georgia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Latvia and any future locations. The next USAMRU-G project involving biological tests on soldiers is due to start in March of this year at the Bulgarian Military Hospital in Sofia.

Project UP-8: All deaths of study participants should be reported within 24 h

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has funded a similar project involving soldiers in Ukraine code-named UP-8: The spread of  Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus and hantaviruses in Ukraine and the potential need for differential diagnosis in patients with suspected leptospirosis. The project started in 2017 and was extended few times until 2020, internal documents show.

According to the project’s description, blood samples will be collected from 4,400 healthy soldiers in Lviv, Kharkov, Odesa and Kyiv. 4,000 of these samples will be tested for antibodies against hantaviruses, and 400 of them – for the presence of antibodies against Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus. The results of the blood testing will not be provided to the study participants.

There is no information as to what other procedures will be performed except that “serious incidents, including deaths should be reported within 24 hours. All deaths of study subjects that are suspected or known to be related to the research procedures should be brought to the attention of the bioethics committees in the USA and Ukraine.”

Blood samples from 4,000 Ukrainian soldiers will be tested for hantaviruses. Another 400 blood samples will be tested for CCHF under the DTRA-sponsored Ukrainian Project UP-8.
Project UP-8: “Serious incidents, including deaths should be reported within 24 hours. All deaths of study subjects that are suspected or known to be related to the research procedures should be brought to the attention of the bioethics committees in the USA and Ukraine.” Source: ukr-leaks.org

DTRA has allocated $80 million for biological research in Ukraine as of 30 July 2020, according to information obtained from the US Federal contracts registry. Tasked with the program is the US company Black &Veatch Special Projects Corp.

Another DTRA contractor operating in Ukraine is CH2M Hill. The American company has been awarded a $22.8 million contract (2020-2023) for the reconstruction and equipment of two biolaboratories:  the State Scientific Research Institute of Laboratory Diagnostics and Veterinary-Sanitary Expertise (Kyiv ILD) and the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection Regional Diagnostic Laboratory (Odesa RDL).

US personnel are indemnified for deaths and injuries to the local population

The DTRA activities in Georgia and Ukraine fall under the protection of special bilateral agreements. According to these agreements, Georgia and Ukraine shall hold harmless, bring no legal proceedings and indemnify the United States and its personnel, contractors and contractors’ personnel, for damage to property, or death or injury to any persons in Georgia and Ukraine, arising out of activities under this Agreement. If DTRA-sponsored scientists cause deaths or injuries to the local population they cannot be held to account.

Furthermore, according to the US-Ukraine Agreement, claims by third parties for deaths and injuries in Ukraine, arising out of the acts or omissions of any employees of the United States related to work under this Agreement, shall be the responsibility of Ukraine.

Subscribe to Dilyana’s Telegram channel using the link: https://t.me/armswatch

UPDATE MARCH 10 2022:

Klaus Schwab & Hunter Biden Connected To Ukraine Bio-Labs

As I was working on exposing these connections myself, Infowars moved faster and they did great job. I can vouch for almost every sentence there

Mind that not all dangerous virus research is illegal and needs outsourced.

HUNDREDS DEADLY BIOLABS WITH DISASTROUS SECURITY RECORDS, RAN BY CDC AND PHARMAFIA IN YOUR BACKYARD

Exactly one year before the Ukraine “invasion”, Grayzone obtained hard evidence that Reuters, BBC, Bellingcat and Zinc acted as intelligence operatives for UK against Russia. I don’t know how such activities are regarded by laws, national or international, but in my books, by common sense criteria, the hostility of their plan is nothing short of war. Same UK intelligence is most likely behind the Bucha false flag one year later.

epilogue

Once we pull it out you better pick up on it quickly, I told you we’re in the business of dictating future MSM headlines. But without the sugar glazing. 🙂

GO DEEPER DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

THE BIOLABS, CHERNOBYL AND FUKUSHIMA HAVE SURPRISING THINGS IN COMMON AND THEY ARE HARDLY ACCIDENTAL

To be continued?
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ORDER

In recent years, there has been a growing debate about what role foundations should play in global health governance generally, and particularly vis-a-vis the World Health Organization (WHO). Much of this discussion revolves around today’s gargantuan philanthropy, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and its sway over the agenda and modus operandi of global health. Yet such pre-occupations are not new. The Rockefeller Foundation (RF), the unparalleled 20th century health philanthropy heavyweight, both profoundly shaped WHO and maintained long and complex relations with it, even as both institutions changed over time

Backstage: the relationship between the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Health Organization, Part I: 1940-1960s by A.-E. Birn – 2013 The Royal Society for Public Health

According to the Rockefeller Foundation official website, John D. Rockefeller Sr.’s interest in health was in large part influenced by Frederick T. Gates, who was Rockefeller’s philanthropic advisor. Gates had a personal interest in medical research, and he believed strongly that it could be of universal benefit. In 1901, Gates persuaded Rockefeller to fund the creation of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research (RIMR) to research the causes, prevention and cures of disease.  While financial support for the RIMR was initially disbursed in small increments, by 1928 the organization had received $65 million in Rockefeller funding.

Born in 1853 to a Baptist minister, Gates was raised with a strong dedication to his faith. After graduating from the University of Rochester in New York in 1877 and the Rochester Theological Seminary in 1880, he was ordained as a Baptist minister and spent the next eight years as pastor of the Central Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In 1888 while working as Secretary for the American Baptist Education Society, Gates came to the attention of John D. Rockefeller (JDR). JDR was approached by Gates as part of a campaign to create a major Baptist university in the Midwest. Convinced by Gates’ arguments for such an institution, JDR became the principal benefactor of what became the University of Chicago in 1892.

JDR was impressed by Gates’ fundraising and planning skills and proposed that Gates come to manage his philanthropic and business activities.

From this position Gates established his legacy in the field of philanthropy. In 1897, inspired by the lack of medical research facilities in the U.S., Gates laid out a plan for opening an American medical research institution. This plan – his first major endeavor as Rockefeller’s philanthropic advisor – led to the creation of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. He also played an essential role in creating and organizing the General Education Board (GEB) in 1902 and the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission (RSC) for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease in 1909.

His most notable contribution to early philanthropy, however, was his role in the establishment of the Rockefeller Foundation (RF). It was Gates’ vision of a large, professionally staffed foundation that could work for the general purpose of “the welfare of mankind” that convinced JDR to provide the resources for the new foundation. During his time on the RF Board of Trustees, Gates encouraged a focus on health initiatives (setting an agenda that prevailed for decades) and oversaw early activities of the Foundation, including the development of the International Health Division (IHD) and the China Medical Board (CMB). He served a ten-year term on the RF Board of Trustees before retiring in 1923.

Any lawsuit against the Rockefeller Foundation is a lawsuit against the ones who funded not only Mengele’s, but all the others’ grotesque Auschwitz experiments and are behind serious threats to humanity in the present.

Exopolitics

Rockefellers funded the Nazi experiments in the concentrations camps

Jews who know the history of WWII are aware that it was IG Farben, the pharmaceutical and chemical giant, which put Hitler into office and ran the camps.  And they know that the Rockefellers had half interest in IG Farben and IG Farben had half interest in the Rockefellers’ Standard Oil. 

But while they know that Auschwitz was the site of hideous forced human “medical experiments,” most Jews believe that the horrors of Nazi experiments ended in Nazi Germany.  

SOURCE

Rockefellers brought the Nazi doctors and researchers to the US

The Rockefellers and OSS (now the CIA) brought Nazi “doctors” and “researchers” to the US under a program called Operation Paperclip.  Nazis were given new identities, false passports, and inserted into medical institutions, and bioweapons, aerospace, military, and spy agencies here, and also were helped to escape to and do similar work for other countries and global agencies.  There is reason to believe based on the actions of those global agencies, that some also became part of the newly established UN – including WHO, UNICEF, and UNESCO. 

CIA’s Denial of Protecting Nazis is Blatant Lie

by Hank P. Albarelli Jr.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | 7 DECEMBER 2010

Leaks or revelations are often more compelling because of what they don’t reveal. Through Operation Paperclip, the U.S. organized a monumental transfer of black technology by actively recruiting Nazi criminals for employment by U.S. intelligence. Author H. P. Albarelli excavates the part that was missing from the recently-outed official report: the U.S. pointedly chose fervent Nazi scientists with experience in chemical, biological and radioactive warfare to become the architects of the CIA’s darkest military experiments with human guinea pigs, reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

On 11 November 1954, thirty-nine of the German-born scientists who entered the United States through Project Paperclip were sworn in as U.S. citizens. Military Intelligence “cleansed” the files of Nazi references. By 1955, more than 760 German scientists had been granted citizenship in the U.S. and given prominent positions in the American scientific community. Many had been longtime members of the Nazi party and the Gestapo, had conducted experiments on humans at concentration camps, had used slave labor, and had committed other war crimes.

Marvin Washington Brooks had been terribly ill for nearly three months.
A year prior in early-1952, he had been diagnosed with cancer and had been admitted as “a patient for treatment” to the University of Texas Medical School’s M.D. Anderson Hospital. Brooks had served as an infantryman in the Army during World War II. He had received a Purple Heart for being wounded during the Battle of the Bulge. Not long after he was admitted to the M.D. Anderson Hospital, Brooks began to receive weekly treatment from a team of physicians led by an older doctor with a heavy German accent and three distinctive scars across his face. Brooks was told the treatment could significantly affect his cancer in positive ways. But Brooks had become increasingly ill, with constant vomiting, weight and hair loss, and patchy skin with large areas appearing as if severely sunburned. Within about six months of the weekly treatment, Brooks was in constant pain. He died the first month of 1955, two days before what would have turned 47 years old. Brooks was never informed that he was one of 263 cancer patients who were secretly being experimented upon with “whole body irradiation.” Brooks, nor his wife or family, had ever been consulted about the experiments. Nor had Brooks, or anyone else, given the hospital permission to experiment on him. Nobody ever told Brooks, or anyone in his family, that the German physician who saw him weekly was Dr. Herbert Bruno Gerstner, a former Nazi doctor who had been secretly brought to the United States in 1949.

On November 17, 2010 the CIA’s Director of Public Affairs, George Little, wrote a short letter to the editor of the New York Times. Little, on behalf of the agency, protested a just published Times article that detailed CIA “interactions with former Nazi officials in the early years of the post World War II era.” Mr. Little wrote, “We would like to make clear that the agency at no time had a policy or a program to protect Nazi war criminals, or to help them escape justice for their actions during the war.”

The article provoking the CIA’s ire had appeared on the front page of the Times’ Sunday, November 14 edition. Written by reporter Eric Lichtblau, it was entitled “Nazi’s Were Given ’Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says”. The article focused on a 600-page “secret report” that had been produced by the U.S. Justice Department. The report, which Justice Department officials had suppressed from public release for years, details the American government’s importation into the U.S., following the end of World War II, of countless numbers of Nazis.

Written in a dry, bureaucratic style, the report recounts a number of examples of well-known Nazis to whom both the CIA and Department of State had provided both shelter and employment to, including Adolph Eichman, Otto Von Bolschwing, Dr. Josef Mengele, and Arthur Rudolph. To the purposes of this article, it is important to underscore here that the long-concealed report makes no mention whatsoever of the many Nazi scientists who specialized in chemical, biological and radioactive warfare and who were secretly relocated in the United States between the years 1946 and 1958.

For many readers, especially those unfamiliar with Project Paperclip, the New York Times article was stunning news. For those who were knowledgeable of the Pentagon’s and CIA’s long-overlooked aggressive efforts at recruiting and utilizing Nazi scientists the article was mostly old news, but its publication along with its accusatory finger pointing at the intelligence agency was encouraging.

While the intent here is not to cast aspersions on Mr. Little— who most likely has little knowledge about the subject in question, and was only issuing protestations at the behest of someone well above him, perhaps DCI Leon Panetta— it is to take strong exception with the CIA’s denial, and to offer ample evidence, taken from the agency’s own files among other government resources, that the denial is blatantly erroneous.

“Operation Paperclip” transferred to the U.S. over 1,600 Nazi scientists, largely escaping the Nuremberg trials. Men who were classified as ’ardent Nazis’ were chosen – just weeks after Hitler’s defeat – to become ’respectable’ U.S. citizens, some of whom are allegedly still working in places like Brookhaven labs, Cold Spring Harbor and Plum Island. Photo: Gen. Reinhard Gehlen (middle) and his SS united were hired, and swiftly became agents of the CIA when they revealed their massive records on the Soviet Union to the US.

Henry Kissinger, “Rockefeller’s best employee”, the Jew that brought Nazi murderers to the US

Kissinger And Rockefeller: Connections To The CIA And The Origins Of AIDS And Ebola

The following article was written in 1996 by Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz

Six years ago [i.e. 1990], most of you can recall, the highly publicized case of the Florida dentist who infected his patients with AIDS — the case of, the beautiful teenager, Kimberly Bergalis, who died shortly after testifying before Congress in a wheel chair. At the time I was serving as the chief professional advisor to the largest dental and medical catalog supply company in the world.

The day the story broke I was assigned to develop patient and professional Educational materials to help allay the public’s growing fear of visiting dental and medical offices in the age of AIDS.

You may recall how terrified most people became about a routine trip to the dentist at that time. So I began by investigating the Centers for Disease Control and prevention’s (CDCs) official investigation reports on the case. And to make a long story short, I found the reports to be scientifically bogus.

Henry Kissinger and Nelson Rockefeller, January 1975

I later learned that the government had covered-up key evidence in the tragedy in an effort the maintain the case an Unsolvable mystery.

In essence they had committed scientific fraud and misconduct and, in the process, concealed the most incriminating evidence against the dentist — a very bright, scientifically trained, ex-military dentist, who believed he was dying of a virus that the government had created.

Yes, you heard me correctly, a virus that the government had created.

Now, the problem I had was reconciling the fact that the dentist, though a psychopath, was no fool. And he held in his possession one of the most incriminating documents I had ever seen. A 1970 Department of Defense Appropriations request for $10 million for the development of immune system ravaging Viruses for germ warfare.

In fact, the document, which I lay before you today, reads like this: Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms.

Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease… A research program to explore the feasibility of this could be completed in approximately 5 years at a total cost of $10 million… It is a highly controversial issue and there are many who believe such research should not be undertaken lest it lead to yet another method of massive killing of large populations.”

In fact it was the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC) that had informed the Defense Department that this research was possible. Now, according to legal testimony given to government officials, this knowledge enraged the Florida dentist so much it moved him to intentionally inject his patients with HIV-tainted anesthetics.

In essence, he did what all organized serial killers love to do, express a vendetta, like the mail-bomber, play games with the authorities, trap them in a catch-22, whereby they’d be damned if they told the truth, and called him a serial killer, because the whole world would want to know motive, and every reporter would ultimately find out as I did, what drove him crazy and who he really hated and ultimately attacked.

And if they told a lie, or maintained the case, as they did, a mystery, it would hold America and all of health care hostage to irrational fear of routine health care in the age of AIDS.

Now all of this I documented in three published scientific reports and my last book “Deadly Innocence: The Kimberly Bergalis Case — Solving the Greatest Murder Mystery in the History of American Medicine.”

I present these publications and documents here for your critical examination. So Dr. Acer created a crime, a mystery, that couldn’t be solved, without implicating the government and causing a larger mystery to be investigated.

That is, the origin of AIDS and Ebola — the subject of my last three years of research, and why I have come before you today.

In fact, I investigated the Department of Defense’s germ warfare appropriations request and learned that the option to develop synthetic biological agents — bioweapons as alternatives to nuclear weapons — came from Dr. Henry Kissinger, who was gradually placed in his position of authority as National Security Advisor under Richard Nixon, the most powerful man in government, by Nelson Rockefeller and his affiliates at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Moreover, I traced where the money went. It went, in fact, to a firm called Litton Bionetics, a subsidiary of the mega-military contractor Litton Industries, whose President, Roy Ash, was being considered as an alternate to Henry Kissinger for the National Security Advisor post.

Instead, Roy Ash became Richard Nixon’s chairman of the Presidents Advisory Council on Executive Organizations, and Assistant to the President of the United States.

And Litton Industries was given over $5 billion in military contracts during the first term of the Nixon administration, $10 million of which went towards the development of AIDS-like viruses. A mere drop in the bucket. But before I tell you exactly what was done with your $10 million of taxpayer money, some background on Kissinger and Rockefeller’s influence is in order.

Among Henry Kissinger’s most influential patrons as he worked his way up the ladder of success to become Nixon’s Deputy to the President for National Security, was Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, the son of Standard Oil, that is Exxon, heir John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

The Rockefeller families involvement in the medical-industrial complex, health science research, and American politics is clearly important. Before World War II, major administration of medical research, or financing by federal agencies, had been generally opposed by Americas scientific community.

In fact, it was only during times of war that organizations like the NAS or the NRC received major funding. Both the NAS, established during the Civil War, and the NRC, set up during the First World War, were largely ignored in times of peace. Between 1900 and 1940, private foundations and universities financed most medical research.

According to Paul Starr, author of The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The rise of a sovereign profession and the making of a vast industry, the most richly endowed research center, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was established in New York in 1902 and by 1928 had received from John D. Rockefeller $65 million in endowment funds.

In contrast, as late as 1938, as little as $2.8 million in federal funding was budgeted for the entire U.S. Public Health Service.

Therefore, it is easy to see that Rockefeller family investment in health science research predated, and far surpassed, even the federal governments. More than the New Deal, the Second World War created the greatest boom in federal government and private industry support for medical research. Prior to the war, American science and medicine was heavily influenced by German models.

This precedent was bolstered during the 1930s when the Nazis purged Jewish scientists from German universities and biological laboratories. These changes, according to Starr, significantly altered the course of American health science and medicine.

Many of Germany’s most brilliant Jewish researchers immigrated to the United States just as the movement burgeoned to privatize war related biological and medical research. At this time, the Rockefeller led medical-industrial complex was fully poised to influence, and take advantage of, Congress first series of measures to promote cancer research and cancer control.

In 1937, the new federal legislation authorized the establishment of the National Cancer Institute under the National Institutes of Health, and, for the first time, the Public Health Service to make grants to outside researchers.

The Rockefellers exercised significant control over the outcomes of these grants and research efforts through the foundations they established. Following the war, Henry Kissinger, who had become General Alexander Bolling’s German translator and principle assistant.

(Bolling, of course, was the Godfather to the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency that ran “Project Paperclip,” the secret exfiltration of approximately 2,000 high level Nazis, about 900 of whom were military scientists and medical researchers, including Erich Traub, Hitler’s top biological weapons developer and virus expert. Bolling also served as a high ranking member of the Inter-American Defense Board, a Washington based group that delivered Walter Emil Schreiber, Hitler’s chief medical scientist, the “Angel of Death” Joseph Mengele, and his assistant, “the butcher of Lyon,” Klaus Barbie, among others, to safe Havens in South America where they worked on CIA projects.)

In fact it was Henry Kissinger’s job to seek and find such Nazis that might be of service to America, and Kissinger became the chief of Army Counter-Intelligence in this regard. He trained other agents to hunt down Nazis at the European Command Intelligence School in Oberammergau, not to be tried for war crimes necessarily, but rather to serve U.S. military rather than Russian interests.

It was this operation that principally spirited the creation of the CIA as a cover agency for the powerful Gehlen Org, the German intelligence agency run by Reinhard Gehlen — an organization whose power superseded even the Nazi SS because of its prewar connections with German military intelligence.

After Hitler, Gehlen served Allen Welsh Dulles, whose “Operation Sunshine” brought Nazis into the U.S. spy service. You may be interested to know who paid for the importation of Nazis into American central intelligence, the military, and industry?

Three groups:

1. The first was “The Sovereign Military Order of Malta” (SMOM), perhaps the most powerful reactionary segment of European aristocracy, that for almost a thousand years, starting with the crusades in the Twelfth Century, funded military operations against countries and ideas considered a threat to its power

2. Second was the Nazi war chest that was largely funneled through the Vatican and the Rockefeller owned Chase Manhattan Bank, whose Paris branch conducted business as usual throughout the Nazi occupation of France

3. Thirdly, some of us and our parents — American taxpayers. Moreover, during this period, the Council on Foreign Relations, along with the CIA, grew in power under the leadership of Nelson Rockefeller, and in 1955, while serving as President Eisenhower’s assistant for international affairs, Rockefeller invited Kissinger to discuss national security issues at the Quantico (Virginia) Marine Base

Following their meeting, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Kissinger, the diplomat became Rockefeller’s closest intellectual associate, and soon after, Kissinger authored several military proposals for Eisenhower to consider. Unimpressed, Eisenhower turned them down.

As a result, Rockefeller sent Eisenhower his resignation and then launched a Special Studies Project that explored the critical choices America faced militarily in the coming years. Kissinger agreed to direct this new project and published a 468-page book on his findings.

The treatise proposed that tactical nuclear weapons be developed and a bomb shelter [be built] in every house in preparation for limited thermonuclear war. The willingness to engage in nuclear war when necessary is part of the price of our freedom, Kissinger argued.

So those of you my age can recall the anxiety grade school students felt while drilling for possible nuclear attacks. You can thank Kissinger and the Rockefeller-led military industrialists for this “price for freedom.”

Eisenhower, you may remember, warned America that the gravest threat to world security, democracy, and even spirituality, was the growing military-industrial complex. And the Rockefellers and Kissinger played leading roles in its evil expansion.

Bent on creating what President Bush openly heralded as a “New World Order,” few people realize the current international alignment of economic powers is a direct result of actualizing Henry Kissinger’s contemporary manifesto tribute to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta entitled “The Meaning of History.”

In this Kissinger 1955 Harvard doctoral thesis he argues that the concept of peace on earth is naive. Peace must be secured by the creation of small wars around the planet on a continuing basis so as to maintain an international order of economic powers, and of course, keep the military industrialists happy.

In my latest book, “Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola — Nature, Accident, or Intentional?”, I traced Dr. Erich Traub’s movements to the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute, where he conducted experiments on animals to determine the lethal doses of more than forty strains of highly infectious viruses.

Within ten years, the Navy’s Biomedical Research Laboratory, in association with the University of California, along with Litton Bionetics, became a chief supplier of viruses and cell cultures for NCI researchers throughout the world.

Funding for this work was largely controlled by the NCI, Rockefeller and Sloan Foundations. A search through Sloan Foundation’s annual reports, on file in Manhattans New York Public Library, revealed nine ghastly and Incriminating reasons that, most incredibly, tied all the elements of my “Emerging Viruses” investigation together.

The Sloan Foundation:

1. supported black educational initiatives consistent with the COINTELPRO Black Nationalist Hate Group campaign (you may recall reports last year that in surveys of 1,000 Southern Christian African Americans, two-thirds reported their belief that the AIDS epidemic may be genocide, while one-third was convinced it was

2. the Sloan Foundation administered mass-media-public-persuasion experiments completely consistent with the CIA’s Project MKULTRA efforts to develop brainwashing technologies and drugs to affect large populations

3. funded much of the earliest cancer research involving the genetic engineering of mutant viruses

4. began major funding of the National Academy of Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (for neuroscience and molecular genetics research), the Salk Institute (for viral research), and the Scientists Institute for Public Information between 1968 and 1970

5. funded population control studies by Planned Parenthood-World Population, New York, N.Y.

6. funded the Community Blood Council of Greater New York, Inc., the council of doctors who established the infamous New York City Blood Bank which allowed more than 10,000 hemophiliacs and countless others to become infected with HIV because they allegedly didn’t want to spend $150 million to screen the blood

7. maintained Laurence S. Rockefeller, the director of the Community Blood Council of Greater New York the international blood bankers and the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, as chairman of the board of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and a trustee for the Sloan Foundation

8. gave in excess of $20,000 annually to the Council on Foreign Relations

9. maintained among its marketable securities, 16,505 shares of Chase Manhattan Bank stock (in 1967, which it apparently sold by 1970 probably to avoid conflict of interest charges) along with 24,400-53,000 shares issued by Merck & Co., Inc. (the company whose President, George W. Merck, was director of America’s biological weapons industry, and whose hepatitis B and polio jabs most plausibly transmitted AIDS throughout the world)

AIDS traced back to 50+ years old mRNA bioweapon experiments at Fort Detrick biolabs

Also in “Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola,” you will learn exactly what was done with the $10 million Congress gave the DOD for the development of AIDS-like viruses, because I published the relevant contracts.

You will learn that Dr. Robert Gallo, the famous NCI molecular biologist, pardoned by President Clinton last year for scientific fraud and misconduct, and credited with the discovery of the AIDS virus, set about to develop immune system ravaging, AIDS-like viruses, along with other Litton Bionetics researchers.

You will learn that they took monkey viruses that were humanly benign, recombined them with DNA, RNA, and enzymes from other animal viruses that caused leukemias, lymphomas, and sarcomas, and then to get them to jump species, they cultured these new mutant viruses in human white blood cells in some studies, and human fetal tissue cells in other studies, to produce immune-system-destroying, cancer-causing viruses that could enter humans and produce virtually identical effects to what the AIDS virus is currently doing in people around the world.

Indeed, it was contaminated live viral jabs that spread this disease and likely others, including chronic fatigue, certain leukemias, and possibly Gulf War Syndrome as well, to vast populations.

In fact, today’s live viral jabs, including the oral polio jab required by law be given to our children, are still littered with simian (monkey) virus contaminants since they are developed in monkey kidney cells, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration turns a blind eye to as many as 100 live monkey virus contaminants per jab dose, and is barred from telling health professionals and even health scientists this truth because of pharmaceutical industry dictated proprietary laws and non-disclosure agreements.

In the end, the research question I asked,

“Did these viruses, AIDS and Ebola, evolve naturally, were they accidentally produced, or were they intentionally created and deployed?”

I conclude, unquestionably, they are not natural. I leave you the reader, and concerned citizens of America and the world, to decide whether it was a horrible accident or treacherous covert population control experiment.

I ask all of you to consider the pain and cost of the current and coming plagues, including the escalating rates of virus-linked cancers like prostate and breast cancer, certain leukemia’s and lymphomas and other jab contaminant related illnesses including hyperactivity disorders in children and escalating sudden infant death rates.

I believe you will realize that the pain and cost of denial and indifference to this horrible reality is far greater than the toll your political action might cost. I therefore urge you to join our growing grassroots network of health consumers, professionals, scientists, patriots, and concerned citizens in our search for answers and solutions.

I urge you to help us pressure Congress for a full investigation of these published facts, and to allocate the funding needed to effect appropriate solutions to these urgent health care problems. Let me end by giving you, and our home viewers, two resources to contact in this effort.


“Jacobsen opens Operation Paperclip in November 1944, …. two American bacteriology experts pore over a cache of documents in the apartment of Dr. Eugene Haagen, a German virus expert. Within hours they find a chilling letter from Haagen to a colleague:

“Of the 100 prisoners you sent me, 18 died in transport. Only 12 are in a condition suitable for my experiments. I therefore request that you send me another 100 prisoners between 20 and 40 years of age … .”

“The letter proved that the Nazis were bent on creating biological weapons for use in warfare ….”The people carrying out this barbaric work were no minor Nazi thugs: Before the war, Haagen held a fellowship with the Rockefeller Foundation ….

From:  Book Review:  Operation paperclip:  The Secret Intelligence Program To Bring Nazi Scientists To America By Annie Jacobsen. See below book presentation by its author

A document I’ve just dug out from the RF archives shows that around the time they were salvaging Hitler’s scientists through Operation Paperclip, the Rockefellers were already deeply involved in eugenics, genetics, human reproduction too. For the near future I’m considering an article on this topic only.


How Rockefeller Foundation Shaped Modern Medicine in Communist China

This chapter comes in RF’s own words, it’s no secret, most of the truth is not hidden, it’s people running from it:
The China Medical Board (CMB) was created in 1914 as one of the first operating divisions of the Rockefeller Foundation (RF). Provided with a $12 million endowment and separately incorporated as CMB, Inc. when the Foundation was reorganized in 1928, the Board’s aim was to modernize medical education and to improve the practice of medicine in China.

Doctors graduating from Peking Union Medical College, Beijing (China), 1947

Surveying China

China was a long-standing interest of both John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (JDR Sr.), and his son. For decades they and their fellow Baptists had supported missionary work in Asia. Beginning in the early 1900s, Frederick Gates encouraged them to devote even more attention to that region. In 1908, five years before the Foundation was created, the Rockefellers funded a commission headed by Edward D. Burton, a University of Chicago professor of theology. He and other educators traveled to China to explore the potential for philanthropic work there. 

In its final report the Burton Commission argued that a Western-sponsored educational program in science and medicine for elite Chinese students could succeed, despite a difficult political climate. One of the first actions of the newly created RF was to organize a conference about China in New York in early 1914. The Foundation later dispatched two additional survey groups, the China Medical Commissions of 1914 and 1915, to gather more information about how such an educational program could operate.  

Following the model established by Abraham Flexner’s survey of U.S. medical education, the 1914 Commission set out to appraise medical education in both missionary and Chinese schools. It found appallingly low standards throughout the country. The report concluded that “the country is so vast, and the resources available for dealing with the problem are so limited as yet, that the need of outside assistance is still very great.” The CMB was formed to meet those challenges, and Wallace Buttrick was named its first director.

The Foundation’s approach to Chinese medical education would inevitably follow the general patterns for reforming U.S. medical education advocated in the 1910 Flexner report and most fully embodied in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Medical education in China would be scientifically rigorous and adhere to Western standards. And, in a decision with long-term consequences, instruction would occur in English. Consequently, the school could reach only a small, elite percentage of the population. Yet in a country of 400 million people then served by fewer than 500 well-trained doctors, such an approach stood to be criticized. Nevertheless, the CMB set out to build a medical school in China that it hoped to make the equal of Johns Hopkins.

The RF entered China with an ambitious goal: to build modern medical schools in both Peking and Shanghai. By purchasing the Union Medical College from the London Missionary Society in 1915, the Foundation took its first steps toward that goal. Over the next six years the Foundation assembled a faculty of fifty professors and upgraded and enlarged the facilities of what was soon called the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC). Particular attention was paid to the school’s architecture and campus plan. According to the RF’s 1917 Annual Report, “While the buildings will embody all the approved features of a modern medical center, the external forms have been planned in harmony with the best tradition of Chinese architecture. Thus they symbolize the purpose to make the College not something foreign to China’s best ideals and aspirations, but an organism which will become part of a developing Chinese civilization.”

PUMC opened its doors in 1919, under the de facto directorship of Roger S. Greene, resident director of CMB. The 70-acre campus would ultimately encompass more than 50 buildings, including a hospital, classrooms, laboratories, and residences. But in New York Rockefeller officials grew concerned about the mounting costs of PUMC and were soon forced to scrap their plans for Shanghai. From an initial construction estimate of $1 million in 1915, expenses ballooned to $8 million in capital expenditures by 1921. The operating budget more than doubled between its first year of operation and 1921. Nevertheless, the medical school and its new campus were deemed worth celebrating. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (JDR Jr.) led an impressive delegation to China for the 1921 dedication ceremonies.

PUMC’s initial contributions toward the improvement of medicine in China, though consequential, were inevitably limited in scale. Its graduating classes were small, in part because its standards remained high and its curriculum at the outset was exclusively in English. Between 1924 and 1943, PUMC produced only 313 doctors, more than half of whom would continue their studies abroad through CMB fellowships. Upon their return many of these doctors ultimately became leaders in medical administration, teaching and scientific research both before and after the Chinese Revolution.

PUMC also transformed the nursing profession in China. When PUMC opened, there were fewer than 300 trained nurses in the country, many of them affiliated with various missionary organizations and most of them male. Because the Chinese had never considered nursing to be an appropriate profession for women, the task of PUMC was both to train qualified women nurses and to elevate the status of the profession. Those responsibilities fell to a twenty-eight-year-old nurse from Johns Hopkins, Anna D. Wolf. She arrived in 1919 to create a training program for nurses and to organize the hospital’s nursing staff. Recruiting her initial faculty from the best U.S. nursing schools, she devised pre-nursing and nursing curricula. Within five years she established a school capable of meeting U.S. accrediting standards.  

John Grant, a professor of public health at PUMC from 1921 to 1934, sought to offer medical services beyond the campus walls. He collaborated with the city’s police in 1925 to create a public health station serving the 100,000 people living in Peking’s first ward, the neighborhood surrounding PUMC. As Grant knew, the station also provided learning opportunities for students at the university. He persuaded his faculty colleagues that PUMC students should spend a four-week rotation there.  

Grant’s interest in pursuing broader public health work in rural areas found responsive allies in New York. Selskar Gunn, who had worked with the International Health Division in Eastern Europe before joining RF’s Division of the Social Sciences, traveled to China in 1931 to assess the Foundation’s work. While there he met Yan Yangchu (known to his American associates as Jimmy Yen), a pioneer in mass education and leader of the Rural Reconstruction Movement, with which Grant was already working.  After several trips to China, Gunn produced a report that envisioned a coordinated program of basic education, health, and economic development.

Gunn was critical of PUMC and of RF’s and CMB’s disproportionate investment in it. By 1933 almost $37 million had been spent on an institution that would never solve China’s most pressing health problem: the severe shortage of trained medical personnel. A 1931 League of Nations Health Organization survey had concluded that China would need 50,000 physicians in order to have just one doctor per 8,000 people.

Few as they were, the cadre of professionals produced by PUMC would play important roles in shaping China’s health system. In 1946 an observer wrote to Raymond Fosdick, commenting on the small number of PUMC graduates. “Both doctors and nurses are in positions of leadership and many of them are effective in leadership…we found plenty of evidence that this small group had had an influence quite out of proportion to its size.”

But many in China had expected more. A Chinese Ministry of Education assessment of PUMC in the mid-1930s urged not only that enrollment be increased but also that more classroom instruction be in Chinese. Other recommendations soon followed: increase the courses in public health, parasitology, and bacteriology; teach Chinese medical terminology; and publish papers in both Chinese and English so that they would reach a larger audience.

Henry Houghton, who had directed PUMC during its formative years in the 1920s, returned in 1934 to address these criticisms. But by the mid-1930s relations with some departments of the Chinese government had soured. Tensions between the New York office and PUMC had led to the firing of Roger Greene, and there were continuing difficulties in transforming PUMC into a more fully Chinese institution. By 1937 Houghton and his colleagues were making substantial moves toward bilingual instruction, reducing the numbers of Western faculty, and placing Chinese professors in positions of departmental leadership. Plans for a graduate medical school were also under discussion with the Ministry of Education, but the Japanese invasion in 1937 interrupted this work.

Surviving War and Revolution

At PUMC limited teaching continued for a time even though some prominent faculty and staff fled in 1937 to southwest China to assist with war-related training and rural health programs. The school closed completely only after the U.S. declaration of war on Japan in December 1941. The Japanese occupied the grounds of PUMC, imprisoning Houghton for the war’s duration. Heroically, the nurses moved their school in its entirety to Chengdu and reopened there in 1942.  

PUMC resumed limited operations in 1947, but RF staff debated the Foundation’s role as nationalist and Communists factions fought for supremacy. Could they stay above the fray and continue their work? What was the Foundation’s role likely to be as a new political order took shape? Alan Gregg saw that Communism, which in the U.S. represented a challenge to capitalism, meant something else to the Chinese. Communism in China battled a feudal order. He concluded that this “puts American aid in combating Chinese Communism into some odd attitudes and curious commitments.”

In 1947, amid the uncertainty about PUMC’s future, the Foundation made a terminal grant of $10 million to the CMB. But in 1951 the People’s Republic of China nationalized PUMC and severed ties with the RF and CMB, Inc.

Between 1915 and 1951, the RF and CMB, Inc. spent well over $50 million on medical initiatives in China, nearly $45 million of it to establish PUMC. Other missionary hospitals benefited from smaller Foundation contributions. Fellowships helped doctors and nurses to travel abroad for advanced training. Medical texts were translated, and medical libraries were built. But the greatest RF legacy was PUMC and the enduring contributions its graduates have made to China’s health system. PUMC’s buildings, dedicated in 1921, still stand in the center of Beijing. A bust of JDR Sr. greets visitors to PUMC’s auditorium. The hospital still ranks as one of China’s most advanced. Today, the Chinese Academy of Medicine operates from the campus.


The Rockefeller Foundation and the birth of WHO

The launching of WHO in 1948 coincided with and helped stimulate the disbanding of the RF’s International Health Division (IHD) and the waning of the RF’s in international health. But, as we shall see, because the RF’s influence on international health’s institutions, ideologies, practices, and personnel was so pervasive from the 1910s through the 1940s, the WHO’s early years were imbued not only with the RF’s dominant technically-oriented disease-eradication model but also with its far more subordinate forays into social medicine, an approach grounded in political, economic, and social terms as much as the biomedical. – Source

During World War II, the LNHO was denuded of resources and staff (maintaining neutrality, while its rival, Paris-based Office International d’Hygie`ne Publique, in charge of sanitary conventions and surveillance, was accused of collaborating
with the Nazis).19 In 1943 the new US-sponsored and generously funded United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) largely absorbed and expanded upon
the LNHO’s functions through the massive provision of medical relief, sanitary services, and supplies in war-torn countries, with a staff of almost 1400 health professionals from some 40 countries and expenditures of up to $US80 million/year. UNRRA, too, had a deep RF imprint: it was devised and planned by IHD veteran Selskar Gunn, while IHD director Wilbur Sawyer became head of UNRRA health operations following his retirement from the RF in 1944.21 Not only were the LNHO and UNRRA the immediate precursors to WHO, they acted as a pipeline for WHO’s first generation of personnel. However, the hoped-for full transfer of funds to WHO upon UNRRA’s closing in 1947 consisted of a far more modest sum under five million dollars.

The Rockefeller Foundation pushed US into WHO

The RF was also invoked in the bitter US Congressional debate over joining WHO. Fearing that the country would repeat the error of not having joined the League of Nations, respected US Surgeon-General Thomas Parran (a presumed candidate for WHO director) gave impassioned testimony at the Senate on June 17, 1947: ‘Health has been termed by [RF President] Mr Raymond Fosdick as a ‘rallying point of unity’ in
international affairs. Cooperation . in the interest of health represents one of the most fruitful fields for international action. When one nation gains more of health it takes nothing away from any other nation. By learning how to work together in the interest of health, the lesson will be of value in other and more difficult fields.’
By this time the RF was busy mobilizing backstage in the context of unfolding Cold War rivalries. Rolf Struthers, Associate Director of the RF’s Medical Sciences Division, reported on his reconnaissance: ‘If U.S. insists on Parran . Russia will not join and it will not be a World Health Organization.’ This problem, together with the perception that Parran ‘does not enjoy wide support’ despite his distinction as a public health
leader, led IHD Director George Strode to suggest backing Chisholm ‘because he is thoroughly honest, understanding and deeply interested,’ although questions remained about his leadership effectiveness.
As late as March 12, 1948, the US Senate tabled a vote on WHO membership, leaving American public health leaders angry and embarrassed. The US finally joined WHO in July 1948 (almost three months after WHO’s April 7, 1948 ‘birthday’) following a compromise Joint Congressional resolution allowing the US to withdraw unilaterally from WHO on one year’s notice. Ironically, the USSR delegate formally proposed US
acceptance intoWHO, but it would be the USSR and Soviet bloc, not the US, that would later pull out of WHO (1949e1956).
With US membership settled, the RF began to judge the new organization’s first steps.

How the Rockefellers shaped the early WHO


Well into the 1950s the RF served in a retired emperor’s role, no longer the quotidian wielder of power but playing a crucial part behind the scenes in various ways. With the IHD’s impending demise, senior WHO administrators were keen that the RF’s Struthers spend a week in Geneva to get to know WHO technical staff, ‘learning both of their personalities and their fields of competence.’ Struthers found Chisholm ‘particularly anxious that the close association between the WHO and the RF’ continue, ‘both with the object of avoiding duplication of effort, and also that the RF was able to do some things which WHO could not do, and that our long experience, and objective and independent outlook were of value to the personnel of WHO.
A parade of RF officers was invited to serve on WHO expert committees, intensively so in the 1950s, and more sporadically in subsequent decades. After the IHD folded, RF staff wondered whether they should sit on WHO expert panels in areas that were no longer RF priorities, but DMPH director Warren assured them that such positions were useful for maintaining contacts, for example in malariology. Several RF nurses were asked to serve on the Expert Advisory Panel on Nursing, another colleague on the yellow fever panel in 1954, and so on. The RF was also involved in joint WHO/RF seminars in the early 1950s, supporting mostly travel costs to garner the interest of scientists in such areas as sanitary engineering.

A subset of RF men also became involved in WHO work in the areas of medical education, healthcare policy, and community health and development (the first two being major foci of the RF’s new DMPH). Launched with vigour under Chisholm,
this back door support for social medicine, even as WHO’s disease campaigns were proliferating, included: RF officer John Grant participating as ‘observer’ to the 1952 Expert Committee on Professional and Technical Education and various public health expert meetings through the 1950s; RF Vice President Alan Gregg serving on the Expert Panel on Medical Education in 1952; and panel membership of several leftwing social medicine experts who had been supported by the RF, such as Stampar and Sigerist. The reports produced by these panels made powerful recommendations about the need to incorporate comprehensive, community-based social welfare approaches rather than a narrow focus on clinical care.
In this regard, John Maier, a DMPH staff member, noted that WHO and the RF were facing similar dilemmas. At a WHO European study conference of Undergraduate Training in Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Social Medicine, for example, Stampar although far more politically radical than his patrons outlined the difficulties caused by a ‘separation and antagonism between preventive and curative medicine’ and suggested calling medical schools ‘schools of health.
The RF’s effort to undo its longstanding compartmentalization of medicine and public health was partially linked to WHO, involving for example, RF support for several medical schools in Colombia, which in the 1960s informed WHO’s call for the teaching of community-based, preventive, social and occupational medicine as part of internationally accepted standards.
In the early 1950s, Grant was at the fulcrum of RF-WHO collaborative social medicine efforts. His commissioned paper on the ‘International Planning of Organization for
Medical Care,’ was presented before WHO’s Department of Advisory Services in 1951, informing the recommendations of related expert panels.77 This work emphasized the importance of regionalized health systems and village health committees. Later that year he was nominated by WHO to be a member (funded by the RF) of a three-person UN survey mission on community organization and development in India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Thailand, and the Philippines.
The survey, building on Grant’s prior scouting of inter-agency cooperation possibilities among WHO, UNICEF, and the US government to ‘rebuild’ Southeast Asia,78 highlighted the economic and social aspects of community programs, again stressing self-help efforts, in part as a means of fending off communism.

9 WHO’s European office was also keen to have Grant’s participation, inviting him on a study tour of Sweden, Scotland, and Belgium,80 and receiving almost $US50,000 from
the RF over three years to study personnel needs under Europe’s new health and social welfare laws. Grant observed that some believed that they were so far advanced, there was little room for improvement, with Norway and Sweden serving as paradoxical ‘exceptions to this attitude.’
By the mid-1950s, RF leaders believed that the RF need no longer be represented at every WHO meeting and ‘should maintain good relations and reasonably close contact.

Soon enough, WHO invitations for RF participation were turned down.
With its resources now focused elsewhere, the RF sought to rally other philanthropic players. It had already tested these waters in 1949, suggesting that WHO approach the Ford Foundation for a subsidy towards a new building, and in early 1951, the RF and the Kellogg Foundation each provided PASB with $US150,000 interest free loans to purchase a building to serve as headquarters.86 Kellogg also joined the RF in providing fellowships.
The role of the RF’s flagship fellowship program was an important ongoing issue. At first, the IHD sought to retain public health fellowships ‘in significant fields which are not major interests of WHO’ because of WHO’s tendency to let member countries select fields and individuals for fellowships, which might ‘preclude senior men who may be
developing newer areas. The RF also questioned WHO’s preference for fellowships to be held at non-US schools, a policy WHO justified by the large number of foreign students attending these institutions. Another problem was due to WHO’s poaching of fellows who had been trained specifically for RF projects. The RF called for mutual ‘consideration and unusual courtesies,’ meaning that WHO should ‘refrain from offering attractive employment’ to men destined for RF work.
Chisholm was so alarmed by these personnel raiding accusations that he sought RF permission to use the RF fellowship directory to recruit candidates for field projects.
The RF was careful not to bankroll WHO projects without participating in their design. DMPH director Warren was particularly troubled by a request that it work with WHO to
support Manila’s Institute of Hygiene, declaring, ‘the only categorical statement I can make is that we will not operate through WHO or any other intermediary.’ The DMPH ultimately granted $US20,000 but only to support visiting Johns Hopkins faculty. By 1952 it was mutually decided that there would be ‘no further joint projects, but that we will maintain a relatively close liaison’ in training courses in insect control and biological testing of insecticides.94 On the other hand, the RF sought to take advantage of WHO demonstration projects to organize particular studies.
Despite these changes, the RF remained on the pulse of WHO politics. Numerous Americans involved in WHO confided to RF staff about developments under Chisholm.
Some were concerned with decentralized regionalization; others believed that Henry Sigerist, self-exiled from Johns Hopkins back to Switzerland, was exerting ‘undue influence’ public health on Chisholm in regards to both national health insurance
and medical education reform.96 Grant, meanwhile, kept a close eye on social medicine developments and praised WHO’s increasing emphasis on program evaluation. But his critique of technical assistance in Thailand was met by defensive WHO staff intent on gaining RF understanding and approval.

In 1952, the big storm was around Norwegian Executive Board chair Karl Evang’s speech and motion on WHO’s recognition of and involvement in population studies and
control of reproduction. A ‘highly emotional controversy’ ensued over the following days, with France, Belgium, Ireland, and Italy threatening to resign from WHO. Following a ‘tense debate,’ these countries, facing ‘religious political pressure,’
defeated attempts at any technical discussions: Evang’s motion was not brought to a vote but advisory birth control work in India was allowed to continue.
This incident, which nearly broke WHO apart, also delineated an area for RF work that would not overlap with WHO efforts. Just a month later, John D Rockefeller III convened an invitation-only ‘Conference on Population Problems’ with top experts.He founded the Population Council shortly thereafter, separately from the RF because its own board was divided, thus partially (though not intentionally) shielding WHO from this problematic arena.



Another difficulty faced by the young WHO was financial.
In both 1953 and 1954, the US paid only $US8 million of $US12 million pledged, even while the UN had asked WHO to increase its technical assistance to member countries. With a $US30 million shortfall, WHO was forced to freeze spending.
One RF officer berated, ‘The WHO is just learning the wisdom of setting aside all funds for each project out of current budget.’105 RF staff also learned that WHO was fearful of the ‘empire-building aspects’ of UNICEF, which was more solidly (largely US) funded and ‘will tend to use its stronger autonomous position’ to build its own technical staff rather than rely on WHO as per the original agreement.
Concerns about the urgency of US support for WHO were so great that advocates approached the RF for help from all angles. Esteemed US public health man Frank Boudreau (who rose to deputy director of the LNHO and then executive director of the Milbank Memorial Fund), chair of the National Citizens Committee for World Health, appealed to Nelson Rockefeller107 to attend the National Conference on World Health in 1953. The Committee, set up in 1951 to generate public interest and support for international health and save the United Nations from the fate of the League of Nations,
already had Chisholm, Eleanor Roosevelt, the US SurgeonGeneral, and RF President Dean Rusk lined up as speakers at its conference, but the presence of a Rockefeller family member was deemed essential

The RF’s stamp on WHO was reinforced with the May 1953 election of Dr. Marcolino Candau as its director-general.
Candau had been an RF fellow and had worked with Soper in IHD’s Anopheles gambiae campaign in Brazil, then briefly served as his deputy at PASB. Initially there were close interactions. Grant learned early that Chisholm would be resigning in June 1953, after a single term. Because of Soper’s continued relations with former colleagues, the RF was privy to the internal battles and ‘considerable hard feelings’ over Chisholm’s successor. With British support for a Pakistani candidate and Vatican support for an Italian, ‘through Chisholm’s intervention, and after very close voting, Candau of Brazil was nominated, and presumably will be elected.’110 Soper ‘has confidence’ that Candau would ‘bring strong leadership to WHO Secretariat.

In October 1954, new RF President Dean Rusk invited Candau for lunch and a
‘relaxed discussion’ about WHO programs and ‘what a private organization might do in the world today in the field of medical education and medical care.’ Candau suggested RF support for education, research, and training in strong regional institutions such as Mexico’s Institute of Cardiology, the Sao Paulo and Santiago schools of public health, and the new Central American Institute of Nutrition. Rusk saved the ‘Mars bars’ question for after dessert: Candau’s position on birth control. After pretending he had to leave, Candau explained that he had been instructed to keep mum on this issue, though he was well aware of the ‘population-food problem’ and that other UN agencies were accusing WHO of ‘creating more problems than it was solving.’ As such, Candau argued, birth
control work was well-suited to private organizations.
Once the RF became satisfied with Candau’s agenda for WHO, more routine matters resumed. Tensions over fellowships resurfaced under Candau because the RF was getting growing numbers of WHO staff applications for fellowships that had not been approved institutionally. Candau lobbied several RF men, hoping for ‘sympathetic consideration’ so that a few outstanding fellows could become key personnel for permanent WHO positions, both at headquarters and regional offices. He also wrote DMPH director Warren, promising to screen all candidates, and hoping for continued
support: ‘It is fully realized that you cannot envisage continuing the granting of fellowships for an indefinite period.
We are, however, most grateful for your agreeing to assist WHO in the development of its staff during these early critical years.’120 RF staff suspected Candau wanted much of WHO staff trained at RF expense and ‘is now trying to hedge a bit on his agreement in the hope that he can wangle more fellowships than you had in mind..Hence, the training program would seem to be a more or less continuous process.
Warren concluded the discussion by promising: ‘As you know, we are anxious to do all we can to help you and your colleagues . develop a sound corps of well-trained people for permanent and long term work. [but] Because of limited funds, and need to train personnel closer to home, [we] will not support operating field personnel. For a few years, new RF-WHO fellowships again rose, going from 2 in 1953 to 8 in 1959, but by 1963 there was only 1, in 1964 2, and only 1 new RF fellow from WHO in 1968.123 By this time the WHA had approved major funding for fellowships,124 and the RF was no
longer needed.

The “Godfather of Genetics”. Also an eugenicist


In 1955 another conflict brewed around WHO’s job offer to the director of an RF-funded community health centre in France. John Maier, now an assistant RF division director,
wanted to draft a harsh letter to Candau about the matter but was told this was ‘inadvisable,’ and he would ‘simply have to grin and bear it.’126 Further confidential, high level discussions about the case called for informal approaches: ‘It was decided
that the RF was not justified in taking such a stand.on the basis that we should not try to play God.’
Around this juncture, the RF-WHO relationship began to grow more distant. The New York meeting with Rusk led to unofficial RF approval of Candau’s indefinite posting as
director-general, which lasted until 1973. Candau oversaw the establishment of WHO’s global malaria and smallpox eradication campaigns, a growing WHO bureaucracy, and a massive effort to provide public health training fellowships to over 50,000 health personnel from across the world.
Ironically, or perhaps due to this connection, the late 1950s and 1960s was the period of least interaction between the RF and WHO. To be sure, Soper was a central shaper of its malaria campaign, and Paul Russell and other RF men were involved. But the growth in membership of WHO following the liberation struggles of dozens of new nations in
Africa and Asia (and later, the Caribbean), accompanied by increasing bureaucratization, and the malaria effort e significantly financed by the US government (and a few others) through ‘voluntary’ contributions rather than regular member country dues, moved the RF further away from WHO’s centre stage. The RF’s period as prime advisor was over and WHO went from being swayed by the priorities and agenda of the foundation to becoming subject to powerful, far larger donors, most notably the United States, in the context of Cold War exigencies.
Certain collaborations did continue. In 1958 the RF granted $US25,000 for a WHO manual of operations.129 Joint efforts, such as $US250,000 in RF support for research to combat protein malnutrition carried out in 12 countries, involved WHO in an advisory capacity, among other agencies. In 1960 the RF’s new Division of Medical and Natural Sciences joined WHO to support a rural public health centre in Kenya and a School of Nursing in Congo Republic, as well as various efforts in medical education. As in the past, numerous RF-trained and supported experts from around the world rose to prominent positions at WHO.


But the RF began to turn down WHO requests as often as it accepted them, and focused on narrowly targeted efforts such as funding a WHO bibliography on hookworm.133 For its part, WHO was also reluctant to commit to co-sponsoring RF projects. When USAID administrator Leona Baumgartner suggested in 1963 that USAID, the RF, and WHO carry out a joint study on training of ancillary health personnel and staffing needs, Candau offered support of a WHO statistician but insisted ‘WHO cannot be considered as a Sponsoring Agency.’
Meanwhile, the RF had also changed tolerance of social medicine on the margins of its main efforts dwindled with Alan Gregg’s and John Grant’s respective retirement and death and amidst the continued red-baiting of the McCarthy era. For example, since his posting by the RF to Puerto Rico in 1954 to set up a coordinated medical and public health system of research and practice,36 Grant had been keen to make WHO aware ‘that their present categorical activities must be replaced by polyvalent permanent local organizations.
After four years, a possibility finally materialized only circuitously when the National Citizens Committee for the World Health Organization obtained grants from the RF, as well as the Milbank, Kellogg, and Avalon foundations and various industrial concerns, to fund key public health delegates to the 1958 WHA (held in Minneapolis) to travel to Puerto Rico to attend a series of professional sessions arranged by Grant and see the island’s ‘progressive public health and medical services.’136 But this was an anomalous episode: after 1954, the RF’s European office (a vital link to WHO) shrank by 90% and
public health RF programming moved even further away from public and international health (though support for bench research on arboviruses and other tropical diseases, and some community medicine efforts, continued apace).
From backstage to backdrop It is not surprising that the RF left such a deep impression on WHO, for the IHD was the most influential international health actor of the era. Before WWII, European powers were focused on their colonial networks, with inter-imperial commercial rivalries impeding strong international agencies, while the US government was testing its own international health leadership in the Americas. Thus by default and through its own protagonism, the RF was the de facto international health leader. Even after the IHD closed down shortly after WHO was founded, this was no disappearing act. The RF’s disease control ideology and approach to international health were infused into the agenda and practices of WHO. This took place both directly, through the discreet advice it purveyed and the generations of RF personnel and numerous RF fellows and grantees WHO employed and consulted, and indirectly, through the RF having shaped the international health scene via scores of in-country cooperative efforts over almost forty years and through its hand in designing and supporting major multilateral health institutions over several decades.
What is remarkable is that not only was the RF’s predominant technobiological paradigm adopted by WHO, but so was its modest entre´e into social medicine, advanced by a small contingent of left-leaning longtime IHD officers. This was
particularly marked during WHO’s early years, when Chisholm, himself not an RF man, opened the organization to this alternative perspective even as the RF’s main approach bore down on his administration. In those years, the RF was subtly ever present conveying both of its legacies, albeit at different scales.


How and why the RF subsequently became less visible at WHO also illuminates the constraints of shifting power blocs at WHO. The bulk of Candau’s period would mark a distancing between WHO and the RF, even as the RF’s disease control model had become fully entrenched at WHO, most visibly through the launching of the global malaria eradication campaign. On one level, this paradoxdCandau’s rise coinciding with the RF’s demise at WHO indicated that because its approach was firmly in place at WHO, the RF’s presence was superfluous.
On another level, this estrangement meant that some openings to social medicine enabled by the RFeWHO relationship now faded. While RF-sponsored advocates of social medicine remained on certain expert committees, the hard line of McCarthyism wiped out many American health leftists in particular. A notable target was health systems and policy expert Milton Roemer, who left the repressive context of the United States to work at WHO in 1950, only to lose his WHO appointment in 1953 after the US government revoked his passport due to his refusal to sign a loyalty oath.137 In the late
1950s and 1960s, some social medicine advocates involved in WHO came from other quarters, including Latin America and Africa. Sidney and Emily Kark, for example, who had innovated a successful community health centre model in South Africa (in part thanks to RF officer John Grant’s backing), participated in various WHO activities. But under Candau and with heightened Cold War rivalries at WHO sparked by the return to active membership of the Soviet bloc in the mid1950s, this health internationalist tenor was marginalized at WHO, only to resurface, as we shall see in Part II, starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The RF became but a backdrop not only at WHO but also on the international health scene writ large. Indeed, the subtitle of a 1959 US Senate report about the US and WHO, ‘Teamwork for Mankind’s Well-Being,’130 echoed, perhaps inadvertently, the RF’s 1913 motto: ‘For the Well-Being of Mankind throughout the World.’ This 150-page document cited the RF’s link to WHO on just two pages and only in regards to interagency research collaboration, with no mention of the RF’s pivotal prior role in setting the international health agenda.
The importance of the RF’s advocacy, legitimacy, and seed funding for projects diminished considerably after the US’s financial support of WHO efforts soared starting in 1956-7, in the wake of the influenza pandemic, the Soviet bloc rejoining
WHO, and US recognition of the potential of the malaria eradication campaign to combat communism. As such, the RF’s organizational power was waning even as its ideological approach to international health had become solidly institutionalized within WHO.

In sum, the Rockefeller Foundation had enormous bearing on WHO, just as it did on the overall international health arena: WHO’s very configuration was unthinkable without the RF. Yet as WHO found firm ground in the 1950s and the RF abandoned its primordial international health role, there was a tacit understanding that the RF would not interfere in day-to-day operations, even as WHO leaders and champions remained conscious of the RF’s underlying influence. After the US government brashly moved onto WHO’s turf at the height of the Cold War, particularly through its role in the global malaria eradication campaign, there was a further distancing between the RF and WHO.
As will be discussed in Part II, it was only in the 1970s that the relationship resumed, just when WHO began to question the RF’s disease campaign model, and, backed by the bulk of its member countries, it pursued a more community-grounded approach to primary health care amidst calls for a new antihegemonic economic order. By this time, the RF’s support for such social justice-oriented efforts was much narrowed in the context of the dominant ideological shift towards neoliberalism, and it played what many perceived as an antagonistic role in seeking to resurrect its disease control paradigm.

Backstage: the relationship between the Rockefeller
Foundation and the World Health Organization,
Part I: 1940se1960s by A.-E. Birn – 2013 The Royal Society for Public Health

To be continued?
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