From the Radio Free Michigan archives ftp://141.209.3.26/pub/patriot If you have any other files you'd like to contribute, e-mail them to bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu. ------------------------------------------------ "Plague Study gets intriguing as probing scientists find US-Korean link" by R. Prasannan India Tribune, Nov 5, 1994 Even as an infected India is convalescing is that on high doses of antibiotics, its few caring medical scientists are on a wild germ chase. The few indications of their findings are increasingly pointing to the proverbial foreign hand behind the pestilence. The suspicion now is whether the germ that infected India was a Korean war vintage military microbe tested last year in the United States. A group of doctors in Surat has even claimed that the epidemic was not the plague, but some disease caused by the huntavirus. They have not yet isolated the huntavirus, but claimed that the characteristics of a huntavirus attack had been observed. Interestingly the huntavirus is not known to have any natural habitat in India. It is a purely military microbe, suspected to have been first used by the US army against the North Koreans in the 1950s. Since then, little had been heard about the virus till last year when there were two mild outbreaks. One was in South Korea while the US was accusing North Korea of nuclear rowdyism and threatening a war. The other, which was earlier in May (confirmed by federal and state investigators in June), was in a town called Four Corners in the US southwest, a few miles from Fort Wingate, one of the US army's germ warfare centres which had been decommissioned a few months earlier. An enraged Congress appropriated $6 million to study the outbreak (the findings are still awaited). The only information with the Indian authorities (or what they are willing to reveal) is that it is named after the Hantaan river of Korea; that it has four strains called Hantaan, Puumala, Seoul and Prospect Hill; that the first three are human pathogens; and that huntavirus pulmonary syndrome is symptomatically similar to a pneumonic plague attack. According to the Indian authorities, the Korean war vintage germs must have been kept alive and experimented upon in the US army's germ warfare laboratories. Its first known test (known only later) outside the labs is believed to have been in July 1991 when 42 people in 12 states contracted huntavirus pulmonary syndrome and 26 of them died. Interestingly, more than half the the victims were American Indians which led to the charge that the white-dominated army was treating them as guinea pigs. Meanwhile, Indian intelligence agencies are looking into customs records to learn more about the entry of the disease. On August 15, the Delhi airport customs had apprehended two Germans--Herman Heinrich and Weigert Ludwig--for carrying more than 2,000 butterflies and months without any license. According to researchers, insects, animals or plants native to a region are the best modes to introduce any foreign organism into a country. Weed and crop pests are known to be introduced in this manner. In fact, the US army is believed to have introduced three organisms in a similar way into Panama in 1988-- the Aedes aegypti vector mosquitoes which proliferated quickly in the cities; brucellosis (an irregular fever that one contracts through infected food and milk products); and echninococcosis. In fact, the comparatively rapid recovery of India from the epidemic has also baffled scientists here. Whereas a natural plague outbreak usually lasts a season if not more, the recent epidemic had largely been controlled within a fortnight. According to experts, military microbes are 'designed' in such a way that they last in a virulent form for a short while and then are destroyed during dissemination. The idea behind such designing in actual warfare is to keep the place safe for occupation by one's own troops. That the US army had no qualms about testing its biological weapons on its own people had been known for long. A mass experiments was conducted in 1965 when microbes were released at the Washington national airport and in the New York subway system "to see how the bacteria survived and spread as people went about their normal routine". A 1968 nerve gas release in Utah killed about 6,000 sheep. What is of interest to India presently are the recent open-air tests conducted at Dugway Proving Ground and Fort Wingate. More than 170 such tests are suspected to have been conducted in these and other places, mainly to evaluate the performance of germ detecting gadgets. The organism that is supposed to have been field-tested in India is now believed to have been created through genetic engineering in the late 1980s, as part of a programme to create a new strain of influenza virus. The organism was tested in containment chambers at Fort Detrick last year, the last technological breakthrough being its aerosolisation. Only one last step remained--its field-testing among humans. Was that done in Surat? That aerosolisation of various other organisms had been achieved was a known secret even before the biological warfare conference in Geneva in 1991 at which a British scientist from Porton Down in Salisbury Plain (Britain's germ warfare lab) appeared with a small bottle of cloudy liquid containing Francisella tularensis. The germ, he said, would cause tularemia and the contents of the bottle could infect every person on the planet. Significantly, the US army is the second largest funder of biological research in the world--more than any of the pharmaceutical giants or the universities. This year's budget is $60 million. In fact, some of the university research programmes are also funded by the army; for instance, it was revealed in 1989 that the anthrax research programme of Curtis Thorne at the University of Massachusetts was fully funded by the army. (Thorne later gave up army funding and continued on his own). The entire programme comes under the US Army Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick (the present commandant is Maj. Gen. Phillip Russel) which has nine major research and development laboratories. Those which deal with military microbes are the Latterman Army Institute of Research at San Francisco (commanded by Donald Corby). the Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick (commander: Col. Ronald Williams) and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington DC (director: Col. C. F. Tyner). While very little is known about the scores of laboratories under Fort Detrick, the more open Walter Reed establishment is known to have at least 13 divisions, including an instrumentation division (headed by Dr. Bily Bass) which "designs, develops and constructs laboratory instruments apparatus not available elsewhere for research purposes". Apparently it was some of the instruments such as BIDS (biological integrated detection systems) developed by this division that the Atlanta-based Centre for Infectious Diseases, also run by the army, offered to dispatch to India with four epidemiologists. The Russians, who had a more advanced germ warfare research program during the communist days, had also been suspecting that some of the American germ warfare research was being conducted behind a veil of respectable pharmaceutical companies. When a Russian team, headed by Oleg Igntiev, arrived in the US nine months ago under the mutual inspection agreement, they insisted on seeing three sites--one at Terra Haute in Indiana, another at Groton in Connecticut and the third on Plum Island in New York. The first two were run by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer whose Indian subsidiary is one of the largest antibiotics manufacturers in the country. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The thousands of people who died recently from Cerebral Malaria ALL died on states bordering Pakistan. Coincidence, SUURREE I have a bridge I can sell you. From: Mahadevan.Shezian@lambada.oit.unc.edu (Mahadevan Shezian): >The outbreak of plague in Surat is traced to ISI campaign of destabilizing >India through its continuing campaign of proxy war, terrorism and >bombings. It has now recruited plague bacillus among the soldiers to >destroy India's bustling business center, Surat. Next to Bombay perhaps >Surat ranks high among India's commercial centres. When Bombay's stock >market was bombed in March '93, the government of India and its high >officials all rushed to cover up complicity of Pakistan. The foreign >minister of India even declared that there was no evidence of Pakistan's >involvement. But later due to overwhelming evidence to the contrary they >all had to eat their words while shooting patriotic citizens in Hubli and >other places. >The plague bacillus after its virtual eradication from the world scene, >was nurtured only in laboratories much like the small pox virus. Like >bacillus Anthrax which was used in biological warfare, this bacillus' >potential is now realised by Pakistan against India. > >This involvement may never come to light given the close cooperation >between Pakistan and trecherous elements in high places in the GOI. There >are many leaders and ministers in government acting as supply routes to >Islamic terrorists operating in Kashmir and Doda district of Jammu. And >the rest are busy carting away millions of poor people's money to swiss >banks. So the people are left to fend for themselves and they are again >and again falling victims to designs of India's enemies and indifference, >nay, virtual treason of the corrupt government of India run by pro >terrorist Congress Party. > >Source: Indian Nationalist News Network (INNN), London ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help@anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. 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