Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
RealAu­dio

This pro­gram details some alarm­ing devel­op­ments in the fields of bio-technology and med­i­cine. Unwit­tingly (per­haps), these “advances” may have dev­as­tat­ing appli­ca­tions to the field of bio­log­i­cal warfare.

1. The British mag­a­zine New Sci­en­tist reported that Aus­tralian gene engi­neers had con­verted a mouse­pox virus into a deadly killer. (“Aussie Sci­en­tists Stum­ble Across the Dooms­day Bug” [Agence France Presse]; Yahoo! Asia News;1/11/2001.)

2. The mouse­pox virus is closely related to the human small­pox virus, and the inser­tion of the mol­e­cule inter­leukin 4 (IL-4) made the rodent ver­sion much dead­lier. (Idem.)

3. Specif­i­cally, the virus destroyed the immune sys­tems of the infected mice, and fit proved resis­tant to a vac­cine that would nor­mally pro­tect mice from infec­tion. (Idem.)

4. Sci­en­tists are afraid that, if IL-4 were added to the human small­pox virus, it could become much dead­lier. (Idem.)

5. Next, the broad­cast high­lights dis­cus­sion about a the­ory that AIDS may have resulted from the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of a polio vac­cine with HIV. (“Quest for the Ori­gin of AIDS” by William Carlsen; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle , 1/14/2001; pp. A1-A14.)

6. The arti­cle (first of two parts) gives some cre­dence to the the­ory advanced in the book The River by Edward Hooper. (Idem.)

7. The hypoth­e­sis appears to be the syn­the­sis of dis­tinct, but related hypotheses–that an epi­demic of soft tis­sue can­cers resulted from the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the polio vac­cine with a cancer-causing mon­key virus (SV40) and the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of an exper­i­men­tal hepatitis-B vac­cine with HIV.

8. Most of the pro­gram con­sists of excerpts of an inter­view with Ed Haslam, the author of Mary, Fer­rie and the Mon­key Virus: The Story of an Under­ground Med­ical Lab­o­ra­tory (Wordsworth Press, copy­right 1995.) In the inter­view, Ed effec­tively debunks Hooper’s hypoth­e­sis, and points out that the pub­li­ca­tion of The RiverUnited States. (The prob­a­bil­ity that AIDS stemmed from the appli­ca­tion of genetic engi­neer­ing to bio­log­i­cal war­fare is dis­cussed in numer­ous pro­grams noted below.) led to the destruc­tion of exist­ing stocks of the old polio vac­cine. Ed also debunks a bogus the­ory that AIDS had evolved as early as 1930, point­ing out that the “data” uti­lized to val­i­date that the­ory came from a chim­panzee in a U.S. Air Force lab­o­ra­tory in the United States. (The prob­a­bil­ity that AIDS stemmed from the appli­ca­tion of genetic engi­neer­ing to bio­log­i­cal war­fare is dis­cussed in numer­ous pro­grams noted below.)

9. After the Haslam inter­view, the broad­cast high­lights an alarm­ing genetic engi­neer­ing exper­i­ment. In the exper­i­ment, a jel­ly­fish gene was suc­cess­fully inserted into a mon­key egg, the egg was then fer­til­ized and the pro­tein cre­ated by the inserted gene was passed on to the young mon­key. (“Mon­key Born With Altered Cells in Gene Engi­neer­ing Exper­i­ment” by Gina Kolata; New York Times; 1/12/2001; pp. A1-A17.)

10. The stated pur­pose of the exper­i­ment was “to cre­ate colonies of mon­keys that had been genet­i­cally mod­i­fied to develop a human dis­ease.” (Idem.) In numer­ous pro­grams cited below, the dan­gers of bridg­ing the “species bar­rier” are cited. In par­tic­u­lar, pri­mate viruses and human ill­ness have been pos­i­tively linked by numer­ous cred­i­ble studies.

11. Next, the pro­gram sets forth infor­ma­tion about a genet­i­cally engi­neered vac­cine being mar­keted by the Bayer com­pany. The vac­cine is said to have anti-cancer prop­er­ties and acts on a gene that causes tumors. (“Bayer, Mil­len­nium Say Genomic Drug that They Devel­oped Fights Tumors” by Vanessa Fuhrmans; Wall Street Jour­nal; 1/11/2001; p. B4.) Mr. Emory points out that this same tech­nol­ogy could be used to cause tumors, and that the Bayer com­pany was for­merly part of the I.G. Far­ben com­pany that was the back­bone of the Third Reich.

12.The pro­gram con­cludes with exam­i­na­tion of claims that a vac­cine that inoc­u­lates chil­dren for measles, mumps and rubella can be dan­ger­ous. (“Report Over Vac­cine Sparks off Polit­i­cal Row, as Cam­paign­ers Say Fig­ures Will not Change their Oppo­si­tion;” York­shire Post; 1/13/2001.)