Live Avian Flu Virus Placed in Baxter Vaccine Materials Sent to 18 Countries

• Is Big Pharma trying to heal us or kill us ? Toronto Sun reports :
  
  The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.
  
  And an official of the World Health Organization’s European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International’s research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria.
  
  “At this juncture we are confident in saying that public health and occupational risk is minimal at present,” medical officer Roberta Andraghetti said from Copenhagen, Denmark.
  
  “But what remains unanswered are the circumstances surrounding the incident in the Baxter facility in Orth-Donau.” The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabelled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company. The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.
  
  The contamination incident, which is being investigated by the four European countries, came to light when the subcontractor in the Czech Republic inoculated ferrets with the product and they died. Ferrets shouldn’t die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses.
  
  Public health authorities concerned about what has been described as a “serious error” on Baxter’s part have assumed the death of the ferrets meant the H5N1 virus in the product was live. But the company, Baxter International Inc., has been parsimonious about the amount of information it has released about the event.
  
  On Friday, the company’s director of global bioscience communications confirmed what scientists have suspected. “It was live,” Christopher Bona said in an email.
  
  The contaminated product, which Baxter calls “experimental virus material,” was made at the Orth-Donau research facility. Baxter makes its flu vaccine — including a human H5N1 vaccine for which a licence is expected shortly — at a facility in the Czech Republic.
  
  People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled in the Orth-Donau facility. That is a dangerous practice that should not be allowed to happen, a number of experts insisted. Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences.
  
  While H5N1 doesn’t easily infect people, H3N2 viruses do. If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people. That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created. There is no suggestion that happened because of this accident, however. “We have no evidence of any reassortment, that any reassortment may have occurred,” said Andraghetti.
  
  “And we have no evidence of any increased transmissibility of the viruses that were involved in the experiment with the ferrets in the Czech Republic.”
  
  Baxter hasn’t shed much light — at least not publicly — on how the accident happened. Earlier this week Bona called the mistake the result of a combination of “just the process itself, (and) technical and human error in this procedure.” He said he couldn’t reveal more information because it would give away proprietary information about Baxter’s production process.
  
  Andraghetti said Friday the four investigating governments are co-operating closely with the WHO and the European Centre for Disease Control in Stockholm, Sweden.
  
  “We are in very close contact with Austrian authorities to understand what the circumstances of the incident in their laboratory were,” she said.
  
  “And the reason for us wishing to know what has happened is to prevent similar events in the future and to share lessons that can be learned from this event with others to prevent similar events. … This is very important.”
  
• Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor writes in Vaccines as Biological Weapons? Live Avian Flu Virus Placed in Baxter Vaccine Materials Sent to 18 Countries :
  
  Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc.has just been caught shipping live avian flu viruses mixed with vaccine material to medical distributors in 18 countries. The “mistake” (if you can call it that, see below…) was discovered by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The World Health Organization was alerted and panic spread throughout the vaccine community as health experts asked the obvious question: How could this have happened?
  ……..
  Or, put another way, Baxter is acting a whole lot like a biological terrorism organization these days, sending deadly viral samples around the world. If you mail an envelope full of anthrax to your Senator, you get arrested as a terrorist. So why is Baxter — which mailed samples of a far more deadly viral strain to labs around the world — getting away with saying, essentially, “Oops?”But there’s a bigger question in all this: How could this company haveaccidentally mixed LIVE avian flu viruses (both H5N1 and H3N2, the human form) in this vaccine material?
  
  Was the viral contamination intentional?
  The shocking answer is that this couldn’t have been an accident. Why? Because Baxter International adheres to something called BSL3(Biosafety Level 3) – a set of laboratory safety protocols that prevent the cross-contamination of materials. As explained on Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosaf…):
  
  “Laboratory personnel have specific training in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents, and are supervised by competent scientists who are experienced in working with these agents. This is considered a neutral or warm zone. All procedures involving the manipulation of infectious materials are conducted within biological safety cabinets or other physical containment devices, or by personnel wearing appropriate personal protective clothing and equipment. The laboratory has special engineering and design features.”

• It is bad enough that governments all over the world have been warning about the likely pandemic flu. Now we find out we cannot trust Big Pharma to handle such bio-hazardous material in a safe manner.

• Who knows whether it was intentional? But I sure would like to know what really happened? And I sure would like to see the people responsible fired!
  
• Paul J. Watson adds in ‘Accidental’ Contamination Of Vaccine With Live Avian Flu Virus Virtually Impossible :
  
  Czech newspapers are questioning if the shocking discovery of vaccines contaminated with the deadly avian flu virus which were distributed to 18 countries by the American company Baxter were part of a conspiracy to provoke a pandemic.
  
  The claim holds weight because, according to the very laboratory protocols that are routine for vaccine makers, mixing a live virus biological weapon with vaccine material by accident is virtually impossible.
  
  “The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses,” reports the Canadian Press.
  
  Baxter flu vaccines contaminated with H5N1 – otherwise known as the human form of avian flu, one of the most deadly biological weapons on earth with a 60% kill rate – were received by labs in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Slovenia.
  
  Initially, Baxter attempted to stonewall questions by invoking “trade secrets” and refused to reveal how the vaccines were contaminated with H5N1. After increased pressure they then claimed that pure H5N1 batches were sent by accident. This was seemingly an attempt to quickly change the story and hide the fact that the accidental contamination of a vaccine with a deadly biological agent like avian flu is virtually impossible and the only way it could have happened was by wilful gross criminal negligence.
  ….
  According to a compiled translation from Czech newspaper stories, the media over there is asking tough questions about whether the contamination was part of a deliberate attempt to start a pandemic.
  
  “Was this just a criminal negligence or it was an attempt to provoke pandemia using vaccination against flu to spread the disease – as happened with the anti-B hepatitis vaccination with vaccines containing the HIV virus in US? – and then cash for the vaccines against H5N1 which Baxter develops? How could on Earth a virus as H5N1 come to the ordinary flu vaccines? Don’t they follow even basic precautions in the american pharma companies?” states the translation.
  
  The fact that Baxter mixed the deadly H5N1 virus with a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses is the smoking gun. The H5N1 virus on its own has killed hundreds of people, but it is less airborne and more restricted in the ease with which it can spread. However, when combined with seasonal flu viruses, which as everyone knows are super-airborne and easily spread, the effect is a potent, super-airbone, super deadly biological weapon.
  ….
  Spreading bird flu would create an instantaneous surge of demand for bird flu vaccines. The profits that vaccine companies such as Baxter International could reap out of such a panic are astronomical.
  
  In addition, as we have previously reported, those that have a stake in the Tamiflu vaccine include top globalists and BIlderberg members like George Shultz, Lodewijk J.R. de Vink and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
  
  Authorities in both Europe and the U.S. have openly detailed plans for martial law, quarantine and internment should a bird flu pandemic occur.
  
  The other motivation, as we have exhaustively documented on this website for years, is the fact that elites throughout history have openly stated that they want to see a world population reduction of around 80 per cent. Shocking stories like this take the plausibility of that narrative out of the realms of conspiracy theory and into the dangerous reality of conspiracy fact.
  …..
  This is not the first time that vaccine companies have been caught distributing vaccines contaminated with deadly viruses. In 2006 it was revealed that Bayer Corporation had discovered that their injection drug, which was used by hemophiliacs, was contaminated with the HIV virus. Internal documents prove that after they positively knew that the drug was contaminated, they took it off the U.S. market only to dump it on the European, Asian and Latin American markets, knowingly exposing thousands, most of them children, to the live HIV virus. Government officials in France went to prison for allowing the drug to be distributed. The documents show that the FDA colluded with Bayer to cover-up the scandal and allowed the deadly drug to be distributed globally. No Bayer executives ever faced arrest or prosecution in the United States.
  
• See also :
  
  Alex Jones – Weaponized Avian Flu ?
  US Air Force Study Suggests 2009 Influenza Pandemic in 1996
  Is the World Heading Towards Pandemic Avian Flu ?
  Bayer Exposed (HIV Contaminated Vaccine)!

History of Bird Flu and the Illuminati Depopulation Agenda by Dr. True Ott

Watch part 2-12

Swine Flu, the CIA and Fidel Castro

by Lincoln Cushing‚ Apr. 29‚ 2009

Everyone is terrified about the current outbreak of swine flu. Daily photos of Mexican citizens with medical face masks highlight the enormous danger of a pandemic. The terms “swine flu” and “swine fever” are often used interchangeably, and it appears that medically they are one and the same. What’s scary about this outbreak is the crossover of a virus from animal to human – something supposed to be “rare.” According to Monday's SF Chronicle, swine flu is “a form of influenza type A that typically is very infectious - but not deadly - in pigs and is rarely passed on to humans … The new strain is an unusual combination of viruses that typically infect birds, pigs and humans separately. It's a form of influenza, known as H1N1, that humans have been exposed to before, but never this particular strain.”

Yet few are aware that the United States government, acting through the CIA and anti-communist exile operatives, once was involved in deliberately introducing exactly such a disease into Cuba for the purposes of destabilizing the Cuban economy and encouraging domestic opposition to Fidel Castro.

The story first appeared January 10, 1977 on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. Sourced from Newsday, the headline was “1971 Mystery - CIA Link to Cuban Pig Virus Reported.” Note the assertion that such diseases cannot cross over to humans:

“With at least the tacit backing of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officials, operatives linked to anti-Castro terrorists introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba in 1971.

Six weeks later, an outbreak of the disease forced the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic.

The 1971 outbreak, the first and only time the disease has hit the Western Hemisphere, was labeled the 'most alarming event' of 1971 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. African swine fever is a highly contagious and usually lethal viral disease that infects only pigs and, unlike swine flu, cannot be transmitted to humans.”

Bay Area journalist and all-around muckraker Warren Hinckle later included this story in his 1981 title The Fish is Red – The Story of the Secret War Against Castro. In it he described this event, one of many by the CIA to undermine Cuba. His account places the incident a year earlier, but the basic event elements remained the same:

“In March 1970 a U.S. intelligence officer passed along a vial of African swine fever virus to a terrorist group. The vial was taken by fishing trawler to Navassa Island, which had been used in the past by the CIA as an advance base, and was smuggled into Cuba, Six weeks later Cuba suffered the first outbreak of the swine fever in the Western Hemisphere; pig herds were decimated, causing a serious shortage of pork, the nation’s dietary staple. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization called it the 'most alarming event' of the year and futilely tried to track down “how the disease had been transmitted.”

So, while it’s appropriate to be concerned about the risks of this outbreak, the United States government should refrain from criticizing the public health practices at our neighbor to the South.

Lincoln Cushing is the co-author of the recently-released Agitate! Educate! Organize! American Labor Posters, Cornell University Press.

Catherine Austin Fitts: Purpose of Flu Vaccine is Depopulation

Catherine Austin Fitts
Solari
July 29, 2009

I believe one of the goals of the swine flu vaccine is depopulation. Perhaps it is the goal of a swine flu epidemic as well, whether bio-warfare or hype around a flu season.

These days, I keep remembering my sense of urgency leaving the Bush Administration in 1991. We had to do something to turn around the economy and gather real assets behind retirement plans and the social safety net. If not, Americans could find themselves deeply out on a limb. I felt my family and friends were in danger. They did not share my concern. They had a deep faith in the system.

As my efforts to find ways of reengineering government investment in communities failed to win political support, Washington and Wall Street moved forward with a debt bubble and globalization that was horrifying in its implications for humanity.

Overwhelmed by what was happening, I estimated the end result. My simple calculations guessed that we were going to achieve economic sustainability on Earth by depopulating down to a population of approximately 500 million people from our then current global population of 6 billion. I was a portfolio strategist used to looking at numbers from a very high level. Those around me could not fathom how all the different threads I was integrating could lead to such a conclusion. To me, we had to have radical change in how we governed resources or depopulate. It was a mathematical result.

A year later, in 1999, a very capable investment and portfolio strategist asked me if he could come have a private lunch with me in Washington. We sat in a posh restaurant across from the Capitol. He said quietly that he had calculated out where the derivatives and debt bubble combined with globalization were going. The only logical conclusion he could reach was that significant depopulation was going to occur. He said his estimates led to an approximate population of 500 million. I said very quietly, “that’s my estimate too.” I will never forget the look of sadness that crossed his face. I was amazed to find someone else who understood.

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Obama Keeps Military “Shadow Government” Plan

ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
The New York Times
July 29, 2009

WASHINGTON — A shift in authority has given military officials at the White House a bigger operational role in creating a backup government if the nation’s capital were “decapitated” by a terrorist attack or other calamity, according to current and former officials involved in the decision.

The move, which was made in the closing weeks of the administration of President George W. Bush, came after months of heated internal debate about the balance of power and the role of the military in a time of crisis, participants said. Officials said the Obama administration had left the plan essentially intact.

Under the revamped structure, the White House Military Office, which reports to the office of the White House chief of staff, has assumed a more central role in setting up a temporary “shadow government” in a crisis.

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Screening the Politics Out of the Iraq War

David Sterritt
Counterpunch
July 27, 2009

The Hurt Locker, the widely praised movie about American soldiers on a bomb squad in Iraq, has arrived in theaters with enough rave reviews to fill two dozen quote ads. While the film is excellent in some respects, its politics are worrisome – not because they’re wrong, but because there are no politics in a film about the most politically fraught conflict in recent memory. And the eagerness of critics to overlook or excuse this bothers me just as much.

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow from a screenplay by Mark Boal, the movie focuses on a three-man bomb-disposal unit that plies its trade with a savvy balance of skill, nerve, and machismo. Careening from one crisis to another, the story is a nonstop succession of suspense episodes, made extra harrowing by the actions of the main character, a danger addict who defuses deadly bombs as enthusiastically as other people play video games, putting missions and lives in needless jeopardy. As the rave reviews have rightly noted, The Hurt Locker is ingeniously acted, edited with razor-sharp timing, and shot with great attention to naturalistic detail. It also has a highly authentic atmosphere, since Boal based the script on his experience as an embedded journalist with an Iraq unit like this. His earlier work includes the Playboy article “Death and Dishonor,” about the murder of an Iraq war veteran near Fort Benning, Georgia, in 2003, which inspired Paul Haggis’s film In the Valley of Elah – the first of two 2007 pictures (the other was Brian De Palma’s postmodern Redacted) that brought forceful antiwar messages into multiplexes everywhere.

How times have changed. The Hurt Locker beats those movies for hair-raising action, but it comes up extremely short in the politics department. In a New Yorker interview, Boal said he didn’t want the characters “standing up and giving speeches” because “you’re probably not thinking about the geopolitics of oil when you’re standing over a bomb.” Does that mean audiences shouldn’t think about geopolitics either? Boal has also compared the picture to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Apocalypse Now, telling a Writers Guild of America website that both movies have an episodic format that’s true to the existential realities of war. Maybe so, but Coppola’s film packs an enormous number of ideas (some insightful, some not) into its ambitious storyline. By contrast, each episode of The Hurt Locker is a marvelously wrought specimen of suspense-movie technique, and that’s all it is, apart from a few isolated scenes.

From all appearances, Boal and Bigelow are operating from the same premise that motivated Steven Soderbergh when he made Che – that war movies are built on physicality and violence, and thinking only slows down the action. (It’s a good thing Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick didn’t feel that way; we wouldn’t have the rich complexity of Full Metal Jacket or The Thin Red Line.) This is an oddly self-limiting position, given the huge supply of important issues at stake. What groups and individuals are planting those explosives all over Baghdad and beyond? Don’t they put life and limb at risk as audaciously as the bomb-squad soldiers do? What motivations – political, nationalistic, religious, philosophical – shape their strategies and shore up their morale? And why, in this equality-conscious Hollywood era, does the film push Iraqis into the margins, using them as only as momentary foils for the American guys, and two-dimensional foils at that? Questions, questions, none of which Boal and Bigelow take on.

And so it goes. David Edelstein recognizes the political shallowness of The Hurt Locker near the end of his New York review, then promptly endorses it. “Last but maybe foremost are the politics—or lack of them,” he writes, commendably bringing up the problem. “The question of what the hell these good men are doing,” he continues, “in a culture they don’t understand with a language they don’t speak surrounded by people they can’t read hangs in the air but is never actually called.” So far, so good, until he asks the rhetorical question, “Or is that why this movie rises above its preachy counterparts?” This raises two non-rhetorical questions in my mind: What qualities make those counterparts preachy, as opposed to informative or provocative? And what counterparts are we talking about, anyway? The critic gives no clue. Over at the Village Voice, meanwhile, Scott Foundas rightly notes that some film-festival viewers tagged The Hurt Locker “apolitical,” and then he executes the same maneuver as Edelstein, saying those comments only show that the film “is mercifully free of ham-fisted polemics” and is content to “immerse us in an environment.” I’m as anti-ham-fist as the next moviegoer, but there would have been plenty of room in that environment for some progressive polemics.Nor have they been raised by most critics, who’ve been so thrilled by the picture that immediate, visceral responses have outgunned reflective, cerebral ones. Dana Stevens of Slate wraps up a rave by sayingThe Hurt Locker is “without question the most exciting and least ideological movie yet made” about the Iraq war, as if excitement sans ideology – any ideology – were the formula for top-grade cinema. Numerous reviewers find the film’s vagueness about geopolitics, and even geography, a plus rather than a minus. “It so happens that The Hurt Locker takes place in Iraq,” writes Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly. “But geography is almost beside the point.” Kenneth Turan says in the Los Angeles Times that “it’s unfair to burden The Hurt Locker with the Iraq label” since there’s “no sense of winning or losing a war here, no notion of making a difference or achieving lofty geopolitical aims,” echoing Boal’s dubious distinction between movies that actually think and movies that just move. Politics don’t even occur to Roger Ebert, who calls The Hurt Locker “a great film, an intelligent film, a film shot clearly so that we know exactly who everybody is and where they are and what they’re doing and why.” Has the bar for great, intelligent films slipped so low that a movie qualifies by being comprehensible?

In another mostly perceptive article, New York Times critic A.O. Scott calls Bigelow “one of the few directors for whom action-movie-making and the cinema of ideas are synonymous,” saying you may “emerge from The Hurt Locker shaken, exhilarated and drained, but you will also be thinking.” Thinking about what, however? “Not necessarily about the causes and consequences of the Iraq war,” Scott hastens to add. Scott’s conclusion is a let-down, but at least he explicitly faults the movie’s political limitations, saying that the filmmakers’ concentration on moment-to-moment experience is “a little evasive.” Take out the “little” and the point would be better made.

David Denby’s review in The New Yorker is also both insightful and problematic. The Hurt Locker is not political, he writes, “except by implication—a mutual distrust between American occupiers and Iraqi citizens is there in every scene.” Again the film’s political shortfall – its politics are only implicit, and they encompass nothing more profound or sweeping than distrust – is nothing to fret about. “The specialized nature of the subject is part of what makes [the film] so powerful,” Denby continues, “and perhaps American audiences worn out by the mixed emotions of frustration and repugnance inspired by the war can enjoy this film without ambivalence or guilt.” I’m not sure “enjoy” is exactly what Denby meant to say in this context, but I am sure that movie-movie pleasure is not the best contribution a war-themed film can make to a culture that’s politically challenged to begin with.

The reviewers I’ve quoted are among the best in the business, writing about movies and moviemaking with flair, intelligence, and expertise. Which is why their responses to The Hurt Locker – and there are plenty more that would illustrate my case – need thinking about by anyone concerned with today’s cultural politics. Academic critics have been analyzing films along political lines for decades, sometimes astutely but rarely in the popular venues (or plain-speaking language) that reach and affect widespread audiences. Precisely because its action-movie suspense and high-octane visuals make The Hurt Locker a credible competitor in the summer-blockbuster sweepstakes, its political void represents a sorely missed opportunity for its makers, who could have used this platform to deepen public discourse on the continuing Iraq misadventure and the Afghanistan quagmire that grows muddier by the day. Journalistic reviewers could have done the same, not by overlooking its excellence as a suspense movie but by spotlighting the political absence that keeps its excellence strictly on the surface. Nobody benefits when critics are as apolitical as the films they criticize.

Big Brother Is Watching Your Blackberry

CHRISTIAN STOCKER
ABC News
July 27, 2009

Don’t look now, but no matter where you go, you’re connected. We — or most of us, at least — have opened our front doors to large corporations, hardware manufacturers, software firms and search engines. We have allowed them to rifle through our jacket pockets and handbags. And now they can do as they wish with us, or do the bidding of the powers-that-be — in the form of a totalitarian government, for example.

Don’t believe it? Well, consider a recent incident involving the Internet bookseller Amazon and two works by — ironically enough — George Orwell. Amazon had been selling the titles, “1984″ and “Animal Farm,” to owners of its Kindle reader, the special e-book device the bookseller developed. However, it turned out that the publishers of the Orwell books didn’t own the electronic rights to the works. And so, to the surprise of buyers, Amazon erased the two books — which had been paid for and delivered — from the electronic reader. Amazon’s readers had unwittingly purchased pirate copies, it turned out.

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New York Proposes Mandatory Vaccinations for Health Care Workers

Barbara Benson
Crain’s New York Business
July 27, 2009

The state Department of Health is proposing mandatory flu vaccines for all health care workers in the state. The new rule would apply not just to staff, but to anyone who potentially comes into direct contact with patients. That includes contract workers, students and volunteers.

The proposal, which is still in draft form, would apply to everyone working in hospitals, diagnostic and treatment centers, certified home health agencies, long-term home health care programs, AIDS home care programs, licensed home care services agencies, and hospices. A separate rule is pending in the Legislature that applies to nursing home workers.

The state health department’s move is an acknowledgment that voluntary flu vaccination efforts don’t work. But it wasn’t clear if the regulation would be implemented before any vaccination for the H1N1 flu virus is manufactured.

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NGO Suggests Elderly Should Be the First to Go in a Pandemic

ALISON CAMPSIE
The Herald
July 27, 2009

Elderly people with swine flu should be treated as the lowest priority for antiviral drugs in a bid to preserve stocks for the younger population, according to new research.

The controversial view was published yesterday by an Italian scientist who claimed that distributing drugs such as Tamiflu to those over 65 has little effect on the spread of the infection or on mortality rates.

Age Concern said last night that older people were at high risk of complications if infected with swine flu and should receive antiviral treatment.

However, halting the prescription of the drugs for the over 65s could be the most effective way to save lives and prevent illness, the report by Stefano Merler, of the Bruno Kessler Foundation, an Italian research organisation found.

The research was carried out to establish the most effective way to distribute antivirals after it emerged that Italy has only enough Tamiflu to prescribe 12% of the population, around half of the supply recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Scotland has enough of the drug to cover 50% of the population, it was confirmed last night.

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The history of the synthetic H1N1 flu virus and a not-so-rosy future

Posted: 2009/05/25
From: Source

The history of the extraction of the genetic material from the corpses of victims of the 1918 Spanish influenza virus who were buried in Arctic permafrost is part `X-Files` and part `Jurassic Park.`

By Wayne Madsen

(WMR) -- After an unsuccessful 1951 mission, that involved U.S. biological warfare specialists, to extract 1918 Spanish flu genetic material in 1951 from a cemetery in the Inupiat Eskimo village of Brevig Mission, Alaska, scientists made another attempt, a successful one it turns out, in 1997.

Dr. Johan Hultin, from the State University of Iowa, successfully extracted genetic material from the corpse of an obese 30-something female who died from the Spanish flu in 1918, along with 85 percent of Brevig Mission’s (called Teller Mission in 1918) villagers in a single week. The pandemic killed at least 50 million people around the world.

Once the Spanish flu genetic material was obtained from the lungs, spleen, liver, and heart of the Eskimo woman’s corpse, scientists, in a scene reminiscent of the fictional movie “Jurassic Park,” in which genetic material from extinct dinosaurs is used to bring the creatures back to life, recreated the long-since dead 1918 Spanish flu in a U.S. government-funded laboratory. The woman’s organs were cut into one-inch cubes and shipped to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland, where the virus’s genetic RNA material was identified and the 1918 Spanish flu was successfully brought back to life.

The search for the frozen bodies of 1918 flu victims was not limited to Alaska. Another team of scientists, acting like Dr. Frankenstein’s “Igor,” set out to dig up the graves of miners who died from the flu in the remote Norwegian mining village of Longyearbyen in Spitsbergen, which lies north of the Arctic Circle.

WMR has learned from a research scientist who has been working on the recreation of the 1918 flu that the genetic material has been re-engineered to synthetically create what is now known as the A/H1N1 virus, or as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calls it, the “novel flu.”

The A/H1N1 influenza, which contains genetic material from two strains of swine flu, two strains of human flu, and a single strain of avian flu, has, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), infected, as of May 13, a total of 4,880 people in North America: 2,059 in Mexico; 2,535 in the United States, and 286 in Canada. There have been 56 reported deaths from the flu in Mexico, three in the United States, and one in Canada.

WMR has learned from an A/H1N1 researcher that the current “novel” flu strain is mutating rapidly in humans but no animals have contracted the virus. The enzyme in A/H1N1, as with all influenza A viruses, is called a polymerase. Scientists have calculated the molecular clock of A/H1N1 form the virus’s polymerase rate. Because of the rapid mutation of the virus and the fact that, unlike 1918, rapid global transportation is now the norm, scientists are predicting that the molecular clock of the A/H1N1 virus, coupled with modern transportation, means that almost all the countries of the world will experience an A/H1N1 outbreak within the next few months.

What is different about A/H1N1 is that, unlike other new strains of viruses that rapidly mutate upon emerging and then slow down mutation and then stop entirely, the “novel” or incorrectly-named “swine flu” is showing no signs yet of slowing down its mutation rate and that, according to scientists who worry about A/H1N1 being synthetically-generated, does not happen in nature.

In 2006, at a summit meeting in Cancun, Mexico, President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Mexican President Vicente Fox agreed for their nations to coordinate their response to avian flu, which was spreading in Asia. National Public Radio, on April 2, 2006, ran a segment on how bird flu wreaked havoc in 1918 in Brevig Mission. NPR’s Weekend Edition ran a report from Brevig Mission by Lori Townsend of Alaska Public Radio: “The grave has been opened twice by the same pathologist. In 1951, Johann Hultin convinced village elders to allow him to take tissue samples from bodies buried in permafrost. His lab attempts to map the virus were unsuccessful, but he returned in 1997, and when he did, he was once again given permission to re-open the grave.”

WMR has learned from a journalist from Anchorage who covered the 1997 grave exhumation that there was CIA personnel with the team of scientists. Inuit elders of Brevig Mission argued that digging up the graves of the flu victims would release evil spirits. However, money allegedly changed hands between the U.S. government research team and some of the elders, so permission to dig up the graves was granted.

NPR and Alaska Public Radio was reporting what was extracted from the 1918 flu victim’s corpse was the H5N1 avian flu virus, but that was erroneous. Or was it? If what was extracted from the dead woman’s body in Brevig Mission was used to synthetically create the current A/H1N1 virus, there is a strain of avian flu in the virus. But the current A/H1N1 virus also contains swine and human flu strains.

What has been relayed by the researcher is that the original 1918 virus was the H1N1 virus. In Bio-safety level 3 (BSL-s) laboratory work that was largely classified, the virus was artificially combined with common H3N2 and a minor gene splice from the H5N1 Eurasian avian flu strain.

The avian flu or H5N1 virus that struck Asia in 2006 contained some genetic mutations of the 1918 virus. And scientists researching pandemic flu strains have, since the recreation of the 1918 flu, been playing fast and loose with flu samples. On April 17, 2005, The Washington Post reported that Meridian Bioscience, which was under contract to the College of American Pathologists, accidentally distributed the pandemic H2N2/Japan flu strain, as part of a flu testing kit, to influenza laboratories around the world. WHO ordered the labs to immediately destroy the flu sample because it was worried about an accidental release of the pandemic virus, resulting in a global health crisis. In 1957, H2N2 killed a million people around the world.

The Post’s article, by Wendy Orent, states that scientists were working to create an artificial strain of the 1918 virus: “[Scientists] can combine some 1918 genes either with laboratory strains that have been adapted to grow in mice, which don’t normally catch human flu, or with ordinary human flu strains to yield new artificial strains. Then the researcher infects mice with his new strain. Strains using three of the 1918 genes are already known to kill mice.”

The same Post article quotes Peter B. Jahrling, the chief scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about the danger of the virus recreation research. Jahrling stated the research was like ”looking for a gas leak with a lighted match.” The article continues: “What concerns Jahrling and Brown, among others, is that experiments involving 1918 genes are not being carried out under the highest biosafety level, BSL-4. While most of the scientists use what is known as BSL-3 plus, or enhanced, conditions, they do not use space suits, chemical showers or gas-tight cabinets in their work.”

Lastly, the article has a stark warning regarding the 1918 flu reconstruction at the military laboratory in Rockville, research led by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger. The article states: “Even more disturbing is what may happen when Taubenberger publishes the remaining three gene sequences. Then the entire 1918 flu could be built from scratch by anyone, anywhere, who has sufficient resources and skill. It is quite conceivable that resurrected 1918 flu could someday be used as a bioterrorist agent.”

In a January 29, 2006, New York Times article by Jamie Shreeve, titled “Why Revive a Deadly Flu Virus?,” it is reported that the 1918 flu had been successfully revived. The article states: “In October, a team of scientists, [CDC’s Terrence] Tumpey among them, announced that they had recreated the extinct organism from its genetic code -- essentially the scenario played out in the movie ‘‘Jurassic Park,’’ albeit on a microbial scale. In the movie, the scientists’ self-serving revivification of dinosaurs leads to mayhem and death . . . How dangerous is the 1918 virus to today’s population? Its genetic code is now in public databases, where other researchers can download it to conduct experiments. Scientists from the University of Wisconsin and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada have already collaborated to reconstruct the virus from the publicly available sequence. How easy would it be for a bioterrorist to exploit the same information for malevolent ends?”

The article details how the 1918 genetic material was extracted and who worked on the project: “The resurrection of the 1918 influenza virus was a team effort engaging the resources of the C.D.C. in Atlanta, an obscure military pathology lab outside Washington, D.C., an esteemed group of influenza experts at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and one elderly Swede. Though the story has been told before, it is impossible not to begin with the Swede. In 1950, Johan Hultin, then a 25-year-old graduate student at the University of Iowa, was searching for a Ph.D. topic when he heard a visiting virologist say that the only way to solve the mystery of the 1918 pandemic would be to recover the virus from a victim who had been buried in permafrost.”

There has been yet another secretive U.S. government group involved in researching bio-warfare agents like influenza. Known simply as JASON, the group consists of civilian scientists, the top experts in their fields and a number of Nobel laureates, who meet periodically and issue reports, many of which are classified. JASON has been in existence for 40 years and is thought to be a follow-on to the Manhattan Project, the top secret scientific group that created the atomic bomb during World War II. In fact, some of JASON’s earliest members helped to design both the atomic and hydrogen bombs. Its first three members were scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the home of the Manhattan Project.

Operating under the aegis of the MITRE Corporation, a federally-funded contracting entity, JASON scientists primarily met in the highly-secured Building 29 at 3550 General Atomics Court in San Diego. The location is the address of the Torrey Pines Institute. Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), JASON also has links, according to distribution lists on JASON reports, to the CIA. The CIA maintains an element called the IC [Intelligence Community] JASON Program under the Chief Technical Officer. Traditionally, JASON self-selects its members from a number of academic disciplines. However, JASON almost lost its funding a few years ago, when, after issuing a report critical of the Bush administration’s ballistic missile defense program, DARPA attempted to force three new members, obviously political overseers, on to the JASON membership rolls. DARPA’s chief, Tony Tether, pulled funding for JASON, forcing the group for the first time since its inception in 1959 to look for another Pentagon sponsor. The ballistic missile defense program, also called Star Wars II, was a personal pet project of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

JASON survived when DARPA’s parent orgzniation, the Pentagon’s Directorate for Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), provided JASON with direct funding, an indication of the power enjoyed by the secretive JASON organization. JASON also has other federal government sponsors, including the Department of Energy.

JASON is also very much involved in issues of biological warfare.JASON produced a report on Civilian Biodefense in January 2000, which was highly redacted when released. Even the names of the report’s authors and the information on four bio-warfare scenarios is completely blacked out, except for a discussion of a 1947 smallpox incident in Scenario Two. The report also states that the CIA’s Clandestine Measurement and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT) Operations Center and Counter-Proliferation Center were interested in biological weapons intelligence collection and signatures. A section of the report on “Managing Civilian Response” to a bio-war attack is also completely redacted, as is a section on domestic intelligence. A page on the anthrax threat references “psychological BW [biological weapons] warfare.” The JASON report was completed almost two years before anthrax attacks all but suspended the work of Congress after 9/11 and saw the quick passage of the USAPATRIOT Act.

The JASON report also discusses the mining of medical data, including patient billing records, to find out if a disease outbreak has occurred and how far and what direction it is spreading by examining “spatiotemporal patterns,” including “averaging statistics for humans traveling globally.”

In fact, the JASON Civilian Biodefense report mirrors, in many respects, the analysis being currently conducted by medical intelligence (MEDINT) agencies around the world on the outbreak and spread of A/H1N1. And that begs the question: is A/H1N1, artificially-developed by U.S. government scientists, the real thing or a test run for something much worse?

SIDEBAR:

The JASON report on bio-war discusses “managing civilian response.” That also appears be a major concern of the CDC on A/H1N1 at the present time judging from the following internal CDC memo obtained by WMR (note that “swine flu” is being referred to as the “novel H1N1 flu”):

From: CDC Announcements
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 10:31 AM
To: CDC All - [REDACTED]

Subject: Public Inquires Regarding Novel H1N1 Flu – CDC-INFO

Public Inquires Regarding Novel H1N1 Flu – CDC-INFO

The CDC National Contact Center, CDC-INFO, is available to assist CDC programs in responding to calls and emails related to the novel H1N1 flu. CDC-INFO maintains current content for phone and email responses; maintains records of calls/emails; collects and analyzes quality assurance and customer satisfaction data; and provides on-demand reports for program partners.

If the general public is contacting you with questions related to the novel H1N1 outbreak, we encourage you to direct those inquires you receive to CDC-INFO. CDC-INFO representatives are available to respond to inquiries 24 hours, 7 days a week via email and phone, in English and Spanish. Emails should be forwarded tocdcinfo@cdc.gov. Telephone inquiries may be routed to 1-800-CDC-INFO (1-800-232-4636).

If you have any questions regarding this email, or for assistance in routing public inquiries, please contact eocjiccdcinfo@cdc.gov.

CDC-INFO’s Novel H1N1 Flu Response

Since April 22, 2009, CDC-INFO has answered more than 29,000 phone and email inquiries from the general public and health care professionals in support of CDC’s novel H1N1 flu response. As of Friday, May 8, 2009, the average hold time for phone calls related to novel H1N1 flu was less than 5 seconds. To date, the states with the highest number of phone inquiries are: California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Georgia.

On Thursday, April 30, 2009, CDC-INFO answered the highest number of inquiries on a single topic in its 4-year history, with 3,127 calls and emails answered related to the novel H1N1 outbreak.

As of May 5, 2009, 75 percent of survey respondents gave CDC-INFO their highest satisfaction rating for the novel H1N1 flu-related services they received.

Supporting CDC’s Mission

The CDC-INFO National Contact Center (1800-CDC-INFO orcdcinfo@cdc.gov) supports CDC’s mission by providing a single trusted source of accurate, timely, consistent, and science-based information for the general public, healthcare providers and public health partners. Information is available on more than 400 CDC health and safety topics, disease prevention, and health promotioninformation through phone, TTY, and email. CDC-INFO provides critical health information to vulnerable populations, including those without access to CDC’s internet resources or those with low health literacy.

National Survey Finds Six in Ten Americans Believe Serious Outbreak of Influenza in Fall

Harvard School of Public Health
July 16, 2009

Boston, MA–As part of a series about Americans’ response to the H1N1 flu outbreak, the Harvard Opinion Research Program at the Harvard School of Public Health is releasing a national poll that focuses on Americans’ views and concerns about the potential for a more severe outbreak of Influenza A (H1N1) in the fall or winter. The polling was done June 22-28, 2009.

Click here for the complete survey.

Click here for the charts.

Likelihood of Serious Outbreak

Approximately six in ten Americans (59%) believe it is very or somewhat likely that there will be widespread cases of Influenza A (H1N1) with people getting very sick this coming fall or winter. Parents are more likely than people without children to believe this will occur, with roughly two thirds of parents (65%) saying it is very or somewhat likely compared to 56% of people without children.

“These results suggest Americans are likely to support public health officials in prioritizing preparations for the possibility of a serious H1N1 outbreak in the fall or winter,” said Robert J. Blendon, Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Read entire article

A-H1N1 Synthetic Flu May Be Test For H5N1

By Wayne Madsen

Online Journal Contributing Writer

5-23-9

(WMR) -- The World Health Organization (WHO), after indicating it was prepared to raise the AH1N1 pandemic flu alert to Level 6, the agency's highest alert level, has now succumbed to political pressure from Britain, Japan, China, and other nations led by corporate-beholden governments to keep the alert level at Level 5. The nations opposed to a Level 6 alert argue that H1N1 should not be considered by the rate at which it is spreading but by how deadly it is. WMR has also learned that New York's Public Health Commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden, has been downplaying the threat from H1N1, even though the flu has claimed the life of an assistant principal of a public school in Queens. Ominously, the Obama administration has named Frieden to be the administrator of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. Political considerations by the White House, Gracie Mansion, and WHO headquarters in Geneva are overshadowing what could be a more deadly follow-on pandemic, according to an influenza research scientist who has been in contact with WMR. The AH1N1 virus has infected some 100 students in Kobe, Japan. Many of the students have no history of traveling abroad. There are plans underway to begin a mass vaccination against AH1N1. However, there are misgivings in the international research community about administering an AH1N1 vaccine. The fear is that once a vaccination against AH1N1 is started, the virus will re-assort itself into a hybrid H1N1/H5N1 strain or mutate into a new H5N1 strain. The current AH1N1 strain, as previously reported by WMR, contains synthetically gene-spliced strains of two forms of human flu viruses, two forms of swine flu viruses, and a single form of avian flu virus. What researchers have told us is that as long as the current AH1N1 can infect humans, it will not try to mutate. Even though there have been deaths from AH1N1, most of those infected are sick for up to four days, take Tamiflu or similar drugs, and recover with immunity from the hybrid or "novel" virus. The vaccination program will be a profit maker for such Big Pharma firms as Sanofi-Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline and Baxter International. However, with vaccinations, the AH1N1 virus will, of course, be rejected by human hosts and cases around the world will decrease. However, then, the virus will begin to mutate in order to successfully infect human hosts. And when that happens, the new, newly-mutated virus will become much more transmissible and more pathogenic. The nightmare scenario is that the new, mutated virus may take on the characteristics of H5N1 or the avian flu. The vaccines administered for AH1N1 will be ineffective against the new strain of H5N1 and the world may face a more deadly pandemic then the current AH1N1 outbreak. There are scientists at WHO who are aware of this scenario but their alarm has been suppressed by political and economic considerations. Our previous article stated: "scientists are predicting that the molecular clock of the A/H1N1 virus, coupled with modern transportation, means that almost all the countries of the world will experience an A/H1N1 outbreak within the next few months." That prediction appears to be correct. Since May 13, AH1N1 cases have spread to Japan, India, Chile, Turkey, Cuba, Ecuador, Ireland, and Thailand. The flu has also spread from southern China to Beijing.

Hybrid A/H1N1 flu tied to genetic trigger for larger, mutated version

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Jun 24, 2009, 00:17

(WMR) -- WMR previously reported on the genetic manipulation of the 1918 flu from tissue extracted from an Inuit woman who died from the pandemic in Alaska. On May 6, WMR reported: “WMR has obtained information from biological researchers that the 1918 Spanish flu genetic sequences were ‘manipulated’ in order to effect transmission capability.

The current H1N1 virus, called ‘swine flu,’ is reportedly a combination of two forms of human flu, two forms of swine flu (North American and Eurasian), and avian or bird flu . . . Two bio-safety laboratories have been associated with the genetic reverse engineering of not only A-H1N1, the current ‘swine flu’ strain, but also the deadly Ebola virus. They are the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada.”

WMR has now learned from virus researchers that the current A-H1N1 strain strongly appears tied to vaccinations for the seasonal form on influenza. The hybrid flu began in countries where seasonal vaccinations are commonplace and where A-H1N1 did not respond to the normal seasonal flu vaccination antibody, according to researchers studying the new virus.

What has some researchers alarmed is that the engineers of A-H1N1 purposely planned to make the virus non-responsive to any available vaccine. There is also a suspicion by researchers that the A-H1N1 vaccine under development will trigger a more deadly mutated form of the virus for which the A-H1N1 vaccine will be ineffective.

On May 19, WMR reported: “What researchers have told us is that as long as the current AH1N1 can infect humans, it will not try to mutate. Even though there have been deaths from AH1N1, most of those infected are sick for up to four days, take Tamiflu or similar drugs, and recover with immunity from the hybrid or ‘novel’ virus . . . However, with vaccinations, the AH1N1 virus will, of course, be rejected by human hosts and cases around the world will decrease. However, then, the virus will begin to mutate in order to successfully infect human hosts. And when that happens, the new, newly-mutated virus will become much more transmissible and more pathogenic. The nightmare scenario is that the new, mutated virus may take on the characteristics of H5N1 or the avian flu. The vaccines administered for AH1N1 will be ineffective against the new strain of H5N1 and the world may face a more deadly pandemic then the current AH1N1 outbreak. There are scientists at WHO who are aware of this scenario but their alarm has been suppressed by political and economic considerations.”

Public health officials in Brazil are reporting that the A/H1N1 virus is now in the process of mutating, confirming our earlier reports. A new variant of the pandemic virus is showing up in patients in Brazil making treatment more difficult.

On May 13, 2009, WMR reported: “Because of the rapid mutation of the virus and the fact that, unlike 1918, rapid global transportation is now the norm, scientists are predicting that the molecular clock of the A/H1N1 virus, coupled with modern transportation, means that almost all the countries of the world will experience an A/H1N1 outbreak within the next few months.”

The prediction about the rate of global infection is being borne out by reports of the virus now being reported in many more nations, including South Africa, Yemen, Qatar, India, and Morocco, as well as uncontained surges in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Utah, and Argentina.

In another suspicious turn of events, Ivorian national Konan Yao, a former researcher at the Winnipeg laboratory that has been involved in A/H1N1 research and who was arrested by the FBI at the U.S. border crossing on May 5 trying to sneak 22 vials of Ebola and HIV genetic material into the United States for his new job at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, near Washington, DC, was given his post-plea bargain sentence in federal court in Grand Forks, North Dakota, late last month: 17 days in prison which equated to time served and a $500 fine. Yao’s federal charge was “failure to present merchandise for inspection,” a lesser charge from the original “attempting to bring biological material into the United States without a permit.” Yao’s new job was at the NIH’s Biodefense Research Laboratory.

The federal prosecutor who cut the plea deal with Yao is Lynn Jordheim, the assistant U.S. attorney in Fargo, who also happens to be the U.S. Attorney’s office representative on the Anti-terrorism Advisory Council (ATAC) and Crisis Management Coordinator for the federal jurisdiction and, more intriguing, the “Confidential Human Source Coordinator.”

Doctors Warn: Avoid Genetically Modified Food

By Jeffrey M. Smith

On May 19^th, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) called on “Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM (genetically modified) foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks.”[1] They called for a moratorium on GM foods, long-term independent studies, and labeling. AAEM’s position paper stated, “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,” including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. They conclude, “There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation,” as defined by recognized scientific criteria. “The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies.”

More and more doctors are already prescribing GM-free diets. Dr. Amy Dean, a Michigan internal medicine specialist, and board member of AAEM says, “I strongly recommend patients eat strictly non-genetically modified foods.” Ohio allergist Dr. John Boyles says “I used to test for soy allergies all the time, but now that soy is genetically engineered, it is so dangerous that I tell people never to eat it.”

Dr. Jennifer Armstrong, President of AAEM, says, “Physicians are probably seeing the effects in their patients, but need to know how to ask the right questions.” World renowned biologist Pushpa M. Bhargava goes one step further. After reviewing more than 600 scientific journals, he concludes that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are a major contributor to the sharply deteriorating health of Americans.

Pregnant women and babies at great risk

Among the population, biologist David Schubert of the Salk Institute warns that “children are the most likely to be adversely effected by toxins and other dietary problems” related to GM foods. He says without adequate studies, the children become “the experimental animals.”[2]

The experience of actual GM-fed experimental animals is scary. When GM soy was fed to female rats, most of their babies died within three weeks—compared to a 10% death rate among the control group fed natural soy.[3] The GM-fed babies were also smaller, and later had problems getting pregnant.[4]

When male rats were fed GM soy, their testicles actually changed color—from the normal pink to dark blue.[5] Mice fed GM soy had altered young sperm.[6] Even the embryos of GM fed parent mice had significant changes in their DNA.[7] Mice fed GM corn in an Austrian government study had fewer babies, which were also smaller than normal.[8]

Reproductive problems also plague livestock. Investigations in the state of Haryana, India revealed that most buffalo that ate GM cottonseed had complications such as premature deliveries, abortions, infertility, and prolapsed uteruses. Many calves died. In the US, about two dozen farmers reported thousands of pigs became sterile after consuming certain GM corn varieties. Some had false pregnancies; others gave birth to bags of water. Cows and bulls also became infertile when fed the same corn.[9]

In the US population, the incidence of low birth weight babies, infertility, and infant mortality are all escalating.

Food designed to produce toxin

GM corn and cotton are engineered to produce their own built-in pesticide in every cell. When bugs bite the plant, the poison splits open their stomach and kills them. Biotech companies claim that the pesticide, called Bt—produced from soil bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis—has a history of safe use, since organic farmers and others use Bt bacteria spray for natural insect control. Genetic engineers insert Bt genes into corn and cotton, so the plants do the killing.

The Bt-toxin produced in GM plants, however, is thousands of times more concentrated than natural Bt spray, is designed to be more toxic,[10] has properties of an allergen, and unlike the spray, cannot be washed off the plant.

Moreover, studies confirm that even the less toxic natural bacterial spray is harmful. When dispersed by plane to kill gypsy moths in the Pacific Northwest, about 500 people reported allergy or flu-like symptoms. Some had to go to the emergency room.[11]^,[12]

The exact same symptoms are now being reported by farm workers throughout India, from handling Bt cotton.[13] In 2008, based on medical records, the Sunday India reported, “Victims of itching have increased massively this year . . . related to BT cotton farming.”[14]

GMOs provoke immune reactions

AAEM states, “Multiple animal studies show significant immune dysregulation,” including increase in cytokines, which are “associated with asthma, allergy, and inflammation”—all on the rise in the US.

According to GM food safety expert Dr. Arpad Pusztai, changes in the immune status of GM animals are “a consistent feature of all the studies.”[15] Even Monsanto’s own research showed significant immune system changes in rats fed Bt corn.[16] A November 2008 by the Italian government also found that mice have an immune reaction to Bt corn.[17]

GM soy and corn each contain two new proteins with allergenic properties,[18] GM soy has up to seven times more trypsin inhibitor—a known soy allergen,[19] and skin prick tests show some people react to GM, but not to non-GM soy.[20] Soon after GM soy was introduced to the UK, soy allergies skyrocketed by 50%. Perhaps the US epidemic of food allergies and asthma is a casualty of genetic manipulation.

Animals dying in large numbers

In India, animals graze on cotton plants after harvest. But when shepherds let sheep graze on Bt cotton plants, thousands died. Post mortems showed severe irritation and black patches in both intestines and liver (as well as enlarged bile ducts). Investigators said preliminary evidence “strongly suggests that the sheep mortality was due to a toxin. . . . most probably Bt-toxin.”[21] In a small follow-up feeding study by the Deccan Development Society, all sheep fed Bt cotton plants died within 30 days; those that grazed on natural cotton plants remained healthy.

In a small village in Andhra Pradesh, buffalo grazed on cotton plants for eight years without incident. On January 3^rd, 2008, the buffalo grazed on Bt cotton plants for the first time. All 13 were sick the next day; all died within 3 days.[22]

Bt corn was also implicated in the deaths of cows in Germany, and horses, water buffaloes, and chickens in The Philippines.[23]

In lab studies, twice the number of chickens fed Liberty Link corn died; 7 of 20 rats fed a GM tomato developed bleeding stomachs; another 7 of 40 died within two weeks.[24] Monsanto’s own study showed evidence of poisoning in major organs of rats fed Bt corn, according to top French toxicologist G. E. Seralini.[25]

Worst finding of all—GMOs remain inside of us

The only published human feeding study revealed what may be the most dangerous problem from GM foods. The gene inserted into GM soy transfers into the DNA of bacteria living inside our intestines and continues to function.[26] This means that long after we stop eating GMOs, we may still have potentially harmful GM proteins produced continuously inside of us. Put more plainly, eating a corn chip produced from Bt corn might transform our intestinal bacteria into living pesticide factories, possibly for the rest of our lives.

When evidence of gene transfer is reported at medical conferences around the US, doctors often respond by citing the huge increase of gastrointestinal problems among their patients over the last decade. GM foods might be colonizing the gut flora of North Americans.

Warnings by government scientists ignored and denied

Scientists at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had warned about all these problems even in the early 1990s. According to documents released from a lawsuit, the scientific consensus at the agency was that GM foods were inherently dangerous, and might create hard-to-detect allergies, poisons, gene transfer to gut bacteria, new diseases, and nutritional problems. They urged their superiors to require rigorous long-term tests.[27] But the White House had ordered the agency to promote biotechnology and the FDA responded by recruiting Michael Taylor, Monsanto’s former attorney, to head up the formation of GMO policy. That policy, which is in effect today, denies knowledge of scientists’ concerns and declares that no safety studies on GMOs are required. It is up to Monsanto and the other biotech companies to determine if their foods are safe. Mr. Taylor later became Monsanto’s vice president.

Dangerously few studies, untraceable diseases

AAEM states, “GM foods have not been properly tested” and “pose a serious health risk.” Not a single human clinical trial on GMOs has been published. A 2007 review of published scientific literature on the “potential toxic effects/health risks of GM plants” revealed “that experimental data are very scarce.” The author concludes his review by asking, “Where is the scientific evidence showing that GM plants/food are toxicologically safe, as assumed by the biotechnology companies?”[28]

Famed Canadian geneticist David Suzuki answers, “The experiments simply haven’t been done and we now have become the guinea pigs.” He adds, “Anyone that says, ‘Oh, we know that this is perfectly safe,’ I say is either unbelievably stupid or deliberately lying.”[29]

Dr. Schubert points out, “If there are problems, we will probably never know because the cause will not be traceable and many diseases take a very long time to develop.” If GMOs happen to cause immediate and acute symptoms with a unique signature, perhaps then we might have a chance to trace the cause.

This is precisely what happened during a US epidemic in the late 1980s. The disease was fast acting, deadly, and caused a unique measurable change in the blood—but it still took more than four years to identify that an epidemic was even occurring. By then it had killed about 100 Americans and caused 5,000-10,000 people to fall sick or become permanently disabled. It was caused by a genetically engineered brand of a food supplement called L-tryptophan.

If other GM foods are contributing to the rise of autism, obesity, diabetes, asthma, cancer, heart disease, allergies, reproductive problems, or any other common health problem now plaguing Americans, we may never know. In fact, since animals fed GMOs had such a wide variety of problems, susceptible people may react to GM food with multiple symptoms. It is therefore telling that in the first nine years after the large scale introduction of GM crops in 1996, the incidence of people with three or more chronic diseases nearly doubled, from 7% to 13%.[30]

To help identify if GMOs are causing harm, the AAEM asks their “members, the medical community, and the independent scientific community to gather case studies potentially related to GM food consumption and health effects, begin epidemiological research to investigate the role of GM foods on human health, and conduct safe methods of determining the effect of GM foods on human health.”

Citizens need not wait for the results before taking the doctors advice to avoid GM foods. People can stay away from anything with soy or corn derivatives, cottonseed and canola oil, and sugar from GM sugar beets—unless it says organic or “non-GMO.” There is a pocket Non-GMO Shopping Guide, co-produced by the Institute for Responsible Technology and the Center for Food Safety, which is available as a download, as well as in natural food stores and in many doctors’ offices.

If even a small percentage of people choose non-GMO brands, the food industry will likely respond as they did in Europe—by removing all GM ingredients. Thus, AAEM’s non-GMO prescription may be a watershed for the US food supply.

International bestselling author and independent filmmaker Jeffrey M. Smith is the Executive Director of the Institute for Responsible Technology and the leading spokesperson on the health dangers of GMOs. His first book, Seeds of Deception is the world’s bestselling book on the subject. His second, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, identifies 65 risks of GMOs and demonstrates how superficial government approvals are not competent to find most of them. He invited the biotech industry to respond in writing with evidence to counter each risk, but correctly predicted that they would refuse, since they don’t have the data to show that their products are safe.
www.ResponsibleTechnology.org,
info@responsibletechnology.org

[1] http://www.aaemonline.org/gmopost.html

[2] David Schubert, personal communication to H. Penfound, Greenpeace Canada, October 25, 2002.

[3] Irina Ermakova, “Genetically modified soy leads to the decrease of weight and high mortality of rat pups of the first generation. Preliminary studies,” Ecosinform 1 (2006): 4–9.

[4] Irina Ermakova, “Experimental Evidence of GMO Hazards,” Presentation at Scientists for a GM Free Europe, EU Parliament, Brussels, June 12, 2007

[5] Irina Ermakova, “Experimental Evidence of GMO Hazards,” Presentation at Scientists for a GM Free Europe, EU Parliament, Brussels, June 12, 2007

[6] L. Vecchio et al, “Ultrastructural Analysis of Testes from Mice Fed on Genetically Modified Soybean,” European Journal of Histochemistry48, no. 4 (Oct–Dec 2004):449–454.

[7] Oliveri et al., “Temporary Depression of Transcription in Mouse Pre-implantion Embryos from Mice Fed on Genetically Modified Soybean,”48th Symposium of the Society for Histochemistry, Lake Maggiore (Italy), September 7–10, 2006.

[8] Alberta Velimirov and Claudia Binter, “Biological effects of transgenic maize NK603xMON810 fed in long term reproduction studies in mice,” Forschungsberichte der Sektion IV, Band 3/2008

[9] Jerry Rosman, personal communication, 2006

[10] See for example, A. Dutton, H. Klein, J. Romeis, and F. Bigler, “Uptake of Bt-toxin by herbivores feeding on transgenic maize and consequences for the predator Chrysoperia carnea,” Ecological Entomology 27 (2002): 441–7; and J. Romeis, A. Dutton, and F. Bigler, “Bacillus thuringiensis toxin (Cry1Ab) has no direct effect on larvae of the green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea (Stephens) (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae),”Journal of Insect Physiology 50, no. 2–3 (2004): 175–183.

[11] Washington State Department of Health, “Report of health surveillance activities: Asian gypsy moth control program,” (Olympia, WA: Washington State Dept. of Health, 1993).

[12] M. Green, et al., “Public health implications of the microbial pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis: An epidemiological study, Oregon, 1985-86,”Amer. J. Public Health 80, no. 7(1990): 848–852.

[13] Ashish Gupta et. al., “Impact of Bt Cotton on Farmers’ Health (in Barwani and Dhar District of Madhya Pradesh),” Investigation Report, Oct–Dec 2005.

[14] Sunday India, October, 26, 2008

[15] October 24, 2005 correspondence between Arpad Pusztai and Brian John

[16] John M. Burns, “13-Week Dietary Subchronic Comparison Study with MON 863 Corn in Rats Preceded by a 1-Week Baseline Food Consumption Determination with PMI Certified Rodent Diet #5002,” December 17, 2002 http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto/content/sci_tech/prod_safety/fullratstudy.pdf

[17] Alberto Finamore, et al, “Intestinal and Peripheral Immune Response to MON810 Maize Ingestion in Weaning and Old Mice,” J. Agric. Food Chem., 2008, 56 (23), pp 11533–11539, November 14, 2008

[18] See L Zolla, et al, “Proteomics as a complementary tool for identifying unintended side effects occurring in transgenic maize seeds as a result of genetic modifications,” J Proteome Res. 2008 May;7(5):1850-61; Hye-Yung Yum, Soo-Young Lee, Kyung-Eun Lee, Myung-Hyun Sohn, Kyu-Earn Kim, “Genetically Modified and Wild Soybeans: An immunologic comparison,” Allergy and Asthma Proceedings 26, no. 3 (May–June 2005): 210-216(7); and Gendel, “The use of amino acid sequence alignments to assess potential allergenicity of proteins used in genetically modified foods,” Advances in Food and Nutrition Research 42 (1998), 45–62.

[19] A. Pusztai and S. Bardocz, “GMO in animal nutrition: potential benefits and risks,” Chapter 17, Biology of Nutrition in Growing Animals, R. Mosenthin, J. Zentek and T. Zebrowska (Eds.) Elsevier, October 2005

[20] Hye-Yung Yum, Soo-Young Lee, Kyung-Eun Lee, Myung-Hyun Sohn, Kyu-Earn Kim, “Genetically Modified and Wild Soybeans: An immunologic comparison,” Allergy and Asthma Proceedings 26, no. 3 (May–June 2005): 210-216(7).

[21] “Mortality in Sheep Flocks after Grazing on Bt Cotton Fields—Warangal District, Andhra Pradesh” Report of the Preliminary Assessment,April 2006, http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp

[22] Personal communication and visit, January 2009.

[23] Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, Yes! Books, Fairfield, IA USA 2007

[24] Arpad Pusztai, “Can Science Give Us the Tools for Recognizing Possible Health Risks for GM Food?” Nutrition and Health 16 (2002): 73–84.

[25] Stéphane Foucart, “Controversy Surrounds a GMO,” Le Monde, 14 December 2004; referencing, John M. Burns, “13-Week Dietary Subchronic Comparison Study with MON 863 Corn in Rats Preceded by a 1-Week Baseline Food Consumption Determination with PMI Certified Rodent Diet #5002,” December 17, 2002 http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto/content/sci_tech/prod_safety/fullratstudy.pdf

[26] Netherwood et al, “Assessing the survival of transgenic plant DNA in the human gastrointestinal tract,” Nature Biotechnology 22 (2004): 2.

[27] See memos at www.biointegrity.org

[28] José Domingo, “Toxicity Studies of Genetically Modified Plants : A Review of the Published Literature,” Critical reviews in food science and nutrition, 2007, vol. 47, n^o8, pp. 721-733

[29] Angela Hall, “Suzuki warns against hastily accepting GMOs”, The Leader-Post (Canada), 26 April 2005.

[30] Kathryn Anne Paez, et al, “Rising Out-Of-Pocket Spending For Chronic Conditions: A Ten-Year Trend,” Health Affairs, 28, no. 1 (2009): 15-25