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“Polit­i­cal language…is designed to make lies sound truth­ful and mur­der respectable, and to give an appear­ance of solid­i­ty to pure wind.”

— George Orwell, 1946

EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24

ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24

Mr. Emory’s research into the ori­gins of Covid-19 should check out the 55 sec­ond Twit­ter video embed­ded in this post. 

Mr. Emory has launched a new Patre­on site. Vis­it at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory

FTR#1277 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR#1278 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: Focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on an extreme­ly omi­nous devel­op­ment, these pro­grams set forth a new “War on Can­cer,” launched by the Biden admin­is­tra­tion. The pri­ma­ry ratio­nale for the devel­op­ment of a new fed­er­al agency, this new orga­ni­za­tion appears to be a medical/scientific iter­a­tion of DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Omi­nous­ly, it may well be the suc­ces­sor to Richard Nixon’s “War on Can­cer,” which did not defeat can­cer, but did serve as the appar­ent plat­form for the devel­op­ment of bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons, AIDS in par­tic­u­lar.

The Third Reich’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram was masked as a can­cer research facil­i­ty.

Mod­eled after DARPA, head­ed by a DARPA alum­na whose CV inter­sects with that Agency’s appar­ent involve­ment with the devel­op­ment of Covid-19 and with an act­ing direc­tor who is also a for­mer employ­ee of that benight­ed orga­ni­za­tion, this new “health agency–ARPA‑H”, this agency will employ new, syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy tech­nol­o­gy.

Although that devel­op­ment is rep­re­sent­ed as human­i­tar­i­an, the struc­ture of the agency and the nation­al secu­ri­ty back­grounds of its lead­ing per­son­nel sug­gest strong­ly that this agency, too, will serve as a clan­des­tine plat­form for the next gen­er­a­tion of bio­log­i­cal weapon­ry.

The sec­ond pro­gram begins with a sig­na­ture point of information—a brief Twit­ter video of Pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs opin­ing that SARS Cov‑2 orig­i­nat­ed from a U.S. bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry. His frankly oblig­a­tory qual­i­fi­ca­tion that it was a “blun­der” is best under­stood as “busi­ness as usu­al” for a rel­a­tive­ly high-pro­file pub­lic fig­ure.

Were he to say oth­er­wise, he would be sub­ject to ret­ri­bu­tion, pos­si­bly dead­ly.

As it is now, he will sim­ply be ignored.

Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: An update on Philip Zelikow’s over­lap­ping roles in the 9/11 “inves­ti­ga­tion,” the real­iza­tion of PNAC’s defense rec­om­men­da­tions, as well as the “inquiry” into Covid-19; Review of Peter Thiel’s and Trump’s appar­ent­ly suc­cess­ful attempt at kneecap­ping the FDA; The numer­ous CIA and reac­tionary links to the devel­op­ment of Mod­er­na’s mRNA Omi­cron boost­er; A jel­ly­fish whose genome may very well yield infor­ma­tion for a syn­thet­ic biology/life exten­sion eugenic man­i­fes­ta­tion of inter­est to “Team Thiel;” The career of Antho­ny Fau­ci and its “bookends”–AIDS and Covid-19.

1.“Biden Picks Biotech Exec­u­tive to Lead New Bio­med­ical Research Agency” By Sheryl Gay Stol­berg; The New York Times; 09/12/2022

 . . . . Dr. Renee Wegrzyn is Pres­i­dent Biden’s choice to lead the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which is aimed at dri­ving bio­med­ical inno­va­tion.

Pres­i­dent Biden, sketch­ing out a vision for “bold approach­es” to fight­ing can­cer and oth­er dis­eases, announced on Mon­day that he had select­ed Dr. Renee Wegrzyn, a Boston biotech exec­u­tive with gov­ern­ment expe­ri­ence, as the direc­tor of a new fed­er­al agency aimed at pur­su­ing risky, far-reach­ing ideas that will dri­ve bio­med­ical inno­va­tion.

Mr. Biden made the announce­ment at the John F. Kennedy Pres­i­den­tial Library and Muse­um in Boston, on the 60th anniver­sary of the for­mer president’s “moon­shot” speech that ush­ered in an era of space trav­el. He used the occa­sion to reit­er­ate his call to “end can­cer as we know it” — the tag line for his own “can­cer moon­shot” ini­tia­tive. . . .

. . . . Mod­eled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the new agency is known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. (In the argot of Wash­ing­ton, where every agency has an acronym, the defense research agency is called DARPA and the health agency is ARPA‑H.) . . . .

. . . . Dr. Wegrzyn is a vice pres­i­dent for busi­ness devel­op­ment at Gink­go Bioworks and the head of inno­va­tion at Con­cen­tric by Gink­go, the company’s ini­tia­tive to advance coro­n­avirus test­ing and track the spread of the virus. She also worked at DARPA and its sis­ter agency, the Intel­li­gence Advanced Research Projects Activ­i­ty. . . .

. . . . The agency already has an act­ing deputy direc­tor, Adam H. Rus­sell, also a DARPA alum­nus, who has been lay­ing the tech­ni­cal infra­struc­ture and oth­er ground­work to get the new agency off the ground. . . .

. . . . In addi­tion to announc­ing his intent to appoint Dr. Wegrzyn, Mr. Biden issued an exec­u­tive order on Mon­day estab­lish­ing a biotech­nol­o­gy and bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing ini­tia­tive intend­ed to posi­tion the Unit­ed States as a leader in the field and to cen­ter drug man­u­fac­tur­ing in the coun­try. . . .

2a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renee_Wegrzyn

. . . . From 2003 to 2006, Wegrzyn worked as a post-doc­tor­al research fel­low at the Euro­pean Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­o­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry. From 2006 to 2008, she worked as the assay devel­op­ment group leader for Adlyfe, a biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny based in Que­bec. In 2009, she was a senior sci­en­tist at Meso Scale Dis­cov­ery and in 2012, she was a fel­low at the Johns Hop­kins Cen­ter for Health Secu­ri­ty. From 2009 to 2016, she worked as a senior lead tech­nol­o­gist at Booz Allen Hamil­ton. From 2016 to 2020, she served as a pro­gram man­ag­er in the Bio­log­i­cal Tech­nolo­gies Office of DARPA, where she spe­cial­ized in syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy and biose­cu­ri­ty. Since 2018, she has been a senior advi­sor to the Nuclear Threat Ini­tia­tive.^[3] In 2020, she joined Gink­go Bioworks as vice pres­i­dent of busi­ness devel­op­ment.^[4]” . . . .

2b. An encore–perhaps–for Philip Zelikow is brack­et­ed by 9/11 and Covid-19. 

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Zelikow’s role in lead­ing the “Omis­sion Com­mis­sion” on the 9/11 attacks; Zelikow’s role in craft­ing the NSS paper for 2002, which insti­tu­tion­al­ized many of PNAC’s rec­om­men­da­tions; the rec­om­men­da­tion in PNAC’s “Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca’s Defens­es” paper for build­ing up Amer­i­ca’s BW capa­bil­i­ties; The role of the anthrax attacks in upgrad­ing Amer­i­ca’s BW capa­bil­i­ties; Dis­cus­sion of Steven Hat­fil­l’s prox­im­i­ty to the anthrax attacks of 2001; The tar­get­ing of Sen­a­tors Leahy and Daschle with anthrax letters–they were balk­ing at autho­riz­ing the Patri­ot Act.

“Chances Fad­ing For An Inquiry on Covid Effort” by Sheryl Gay Stol­berg. The New York Times; 12/13/2022.

. . . . Mr. [Philip] Zelikow now leads the Covid Com­mis­sion Plan­ning Group, a pri­vate­ly fund­ed effort involv­ing about three dozen inde­pen­dent experts who have spent the bet­ter part of the past two years con­duct­ing research to lay the ground-work for a nation­al inquiry. The group, which has held sev­er­al hun­dred inter­views, grew tired of wait­ing for Con­gress and plans to pub­lish its find­ings in a book this spring, Mr. Zelikow said. He declined to dis­cuss details. . . .

. . . . “Nine-eleven was a nation­al con­vul­sion that was shared with vary­ing inten­si­ty across the coun­try, and every­body basi­cal­ly agreed it was shock­ing and ter­ri­ble,” said Tara O’Toole, a for­mer offi­cial in the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Depart­ment who is a senior fel­low at In-Q-Tel, a ven­ture fund backed by the C.I.A. . . . . 

3. “RNA for Moderna’s Omi­cron Boost­er Man­u­fac­tured by CIA-Linked Com­pa­ny” by Whit­ney Webb; Unlim­it­ed Hang­out; 08/17/2022

RNA for Moderna’s Omi­cron Boost­er Man­u­fac­tured by CIA-Linked Com­pa­ny
Since late last year, mes­sen­ger RNA for Moderna’s COVID-19 vac­cines, includ­ing its recent­ly refor­mu­lat­ed Omi­cron boost­er, has been exclu­sive­ly man­u­fac­tured by a lit­tle known com­pa­ny with sig­nif­i­cant ties to US intel­li­gence.

Ear­li­er this week, the Unit­ed King­dom became the first coun­try to approve Moderna’s refor­mu­lat­ed ver­sion of its COVID-19 vac­cine, which claims to pro­vide pro­tec­tion against both the orig­i­nal form of the virus and the sig­nif­i­cant­ly less lethal but more trans­mis­si­ble Omi­cron vari­ant. The prod­uct was approved by the UK’s Med­i­cines and Health­care Prod­ucts Reg­u­la­to­ry Agency (MHRA) with the sup­port of the UK government’s Com­mis­sion on Human Med­i­cines.

Described by UK offi­cials as a “sharp­ened tool” in the nation’s con­tin­ued vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign, the refor­mu­lat­ed vac­cine com­bines the pre­vi­ous­ly approved COVID-19 vac­cine with a “vac­cine can­di­date” tar­get­ing the Omi­cron vari­ant BA.1. That vac­cine can­di­date has nev­er been pre­vi­ous­ly approved and has not been the sub­ject of inde­pen­dent study. The MHRA approved the vac­cine based on a sin­gle, incom­plete human tri­al cur­rent­ly being con­duct­ed by Mod­er­na. The com­pa­ny pro­mot­ed incom­plete data from that tri­al in com­pa­ny press releas­es in June and July. The study has yet to be pub­lished in a med­ical jour­nal or peer reviewed. No con­cerns have been raised by any reg­u­la­to­ry agency, includ­ing the MHRA, regard­ing Moderna’s past his­to­ry of engag­ing in sus­pect and like­ly ille­gal activ­i­ty in past prod­uct tri­als, includ­ing for its orig­i­nal COVID-19 vac­cine.

…

How­ev­er, unlike the company’s orig­i­nal COVID-19 vac­cine, the genet­ic mate­r­i­al, or mes­sen­ger RNA (mRNA), for this new vac­cine, includ­ing the new­ly for­mu­lat­ed genet­ic mate­r­i­al meant to pro­vide pro­tec­tion against the Omi­cron vari­ant, is being man­u­fac­tured, not by Mod­er­na, but by a rel­a­tive­ly new com­pa­ny that has received hard­ly any media atten­tion, despite its overt links to US intel­li­gence. Last Sep­tem­ber, it was qui­et­ly announced that a com­pa­ny called Nation­al Resilience (often referred to sim­ply as Resilience) would begin man­u­fac­tur­ing the mRNA for Mod­er­na COVID-19 vac­cine prod­ucts. Under the terms of the mul­ti-year agree­ment, “Resilience will pro­duce mRNA for the Mod­er­na COVID-19 vac­cine at its facil­i­ty in Mis­sis­sauga, Ontario, for dis­tri­b­u­tion world­wide.”

“Rein­vent­ing Bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing”

Nation­al Resilience was found­ed rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, in Novem­ber 2020, and describes itself as “a man­u­fac­tur­ing and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to broad­en­ing access to com­plex med­i­cines and pro­tect­ing bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­ply chains against dis­rup­tion.” It has since been build­ing “a sus­tain­able net­work of high-tech, end-to-end man­u­fac­tur­ing solu­tions with the aim to ensure the med­i­cines of today and tomor­row can be made quick­ly, safe­ly, and at scale.” It fur­therplans to “rein­vent bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing” and “democ­ra­tize access to med­i­cines,” name­ly gene ther­a­pies, exper­i­men­tal vac­cines and oth­er “med­i­cines of tomor­row.”

In pur­suit of those goals, the com­pa­ny announced it would “active­ly invest in devel­op­ing pow­er­ful new tech­nolo­gies to man­u­fac­ture com­plex med­i­cines that are defin­ing the future of ther­a­peu­tics, includ­ing cell and gene ther­a­pies, viral vec­tors, vac­cines, and pro­teins.” It was found­ed with the report­ed inten­tion “to build a bet­ter sys­tem for man­u­fac­tur­ing com­plex med­i­cines to fight dead­ly dis­eases” as a way to improve post-COVID “pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness.”

The com­pa­ny ini­tial­ly mar­ket­ed its man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties as “the Resilience plat­form”, and offers prin­ci­pal­ly “RNA Modal­i­ties”, includ­ing RNA devel­op­ment for vac­cines, gene edit­ing and ther­a­peu­tics; and “Virus Pro­duc­tion”, includ­ing viral vec­tors, oncolyt­ic virus­es (i.e. a virus engi­neered to pref­er­en­tial­ly attack can­cer cells), virus­es for use in vac­cine devel­op­ment and gene-edit­ed virus­es for unspec­i­fied pur­pos­es. It is worth not­ing that, to date, many con­tro­ver­sial “gain-of-func­tion” exper­i­ments have jus­ti­fied mod­i­fy­ing virus­es for the same pur­pos­es as described by Nation­al Resilience’s Virus Pro­duc­tion capa­bil­i­ties. In addi­tion, Nation­al Resilience offers prod­uct for­mu­la­tions and oth­er modal­i­ties, such as bio­log­ics and cell ther­a­pies, to its clien­tele and the “Virus Pro­duc­tion” of its web­site has since been removed.

Nation­al Resilience, being such a young com­pa­ny, has very few clients and there is lit­tle pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion on its man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties aside from the company’s web­site. The firm only acquired its first com­mer­cial man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in March 2021, locat­ed in Boston, MA and pur­chased from Sanofi, fol­lowed short­ly there­after by the acqui­si­tion of anoth­er sep­a­rate plant locat­ed in Mis­sis­sauga, Ontario, Cana­da. Makeovers were announced for the plants, but lit­tle is pub­licly known about their progress. Pri­or to the acqui­si­tions, the com­pa­ny had been sub­leas­ing a Bay area facil­i­ty in Fre­mont, Cal­i­for­nia. Reporters were puz­zled at the time as to why a com­pa­ny with rough­ly 700 employ­ees at the time had acquired a total of 599,00 square feet of man­u­fac­tur­ing space after hav­ing only emerged from stealth less than 6 months pri­or.

In April 2021, Nation­al Resilience acquired Olo­gy Bioser­vices Inc., which had received a $37 mil­lion con­tract from the US mil­i­tary the pre­vi­ous Novem­ber to devel­op an advanced anti-COVID-19 mon­o­clon­al anti­body treat­ment. This acqui­si­tion also pro­vid­ed Nation­al Resilience with its first Biosafe­ty Lev­el 3 (BSL‑3) lab­o­ra­to­ry and the abil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture cell and gene ther­a­pies, live viral vac­cines and vec­tors and oncolyt­ic virus­es.

Despite being in the ear­li­est stages of devel­op­ing its “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties, Nation­al Resilience entered into a part­ner­ship with the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da in July of last year. Per that agree­ment, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment plans to invest CAD 199.2 mil­lion (about $154.9 mil­lion) into Nation­al Resilience’s Ontario-based sub­sidiary, Resilience Biotech­nolo­gies Inc. Most of those funds are des­tined for use in expand­ing the Ontario facil­i­ty that Resilience acquired last March and which is now man­u­fac­tur­ing the mRNA for Moderna’s COVID-19 prod­ucts. Canada’s Min­is­ter of Inno­va­tion, Sci­ence and Indus­try, François-Philippe Cham­pagne, assert­ed at the time that the invest­ment would “build future pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness” and help “to grow Canada’s life sci­ence ecosys­tem as an engine for our eco­nom­ic recov­ery.” More recent­ly, in 2022, the com­pa­ny has announced a few new clients – Take­da, Opus Genet­ics and the US Depart­ment of Defense.

Accord­ing to Nation­al Resilience’s exec­u­tives, the company’s ambi­tions appar­ent­ly go far beyond man­u­fac­tur­ing RNA and virus­es. For instance, Resilience CEO Rahul Singhvi has claimed that the com­pa­ny is seek­ing to build “the world’s most advanced bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing ecosys­tem.” Yet, Singhvi has declined to offer much in the way of specifics when it comes to exact­ly how the com­pa­ny plans to become the planet’s most elite bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny.

In an inter­view with The San Fran­cis­co Busi­ness Times, Singhvi states that Resilience is look­ing to fill its mas­sive man­u­fac­tur­ing plants with “tech­nolo­gies and peo­ple that can set and apply new stan­dards for man­u­fac­tur­ing cell ther­a­pies and gene ther­a­pies as well as RNA-based treat­ments.” Pri­or to Resilience, Singhvi was CEO of NovaVax and an oper­at­ing part­ner at Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing, which played a major role in the cre­ation and rise of Mod­er­na.

Singhvi has fur­ther insist­ed that Nation­al Resilience is “not a ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­ny, not a con­trac­tor and not a tools com­pa­ny” and instead aims “to boost pro­duc­tion using the new ther­a­peu­tic modal­i­ties” such as RNA-based treat­ments, which have become nor­mal­ized in the COVID-19 era. Where­as con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ers “are like kitchens, with pots and pans ready for any recipe,” “what we’re try­ing to do is fix the recipes,” Singhvi has explained. One mem­ber of Resilience’s board of direc­tors, for­mer FDA Com­mis­sion­er and Pfiz­er Board mem­ber Scott Got­tlieb, has described the com­pa­ny as seek­ing to act as the equiv­a­lent of Ama­zon Web Ser­vices for the biotech­nol­o­gy indus­try.

Essen­tial­ly, Resilience bills itself as offer­ing solu­tions that will allow “futur­is­tic” med­i­cines, includ­ing mRNA vac­cines, to be pro­duced more quick­ly and more effi­cient­ly, with the appar­ent goal of monop­o­liz­ing cer­tain parts of the bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing process. It also appears poised to become the man­u­fac­tur­er of choice for mRNA vac­cines and exper­i­men­tal ther­a­peu­tics in the event of a future pan­dem­ic, which some pub­lic health “phil­an­thropists” like Bill Gates have said is immi­nent.

Per­haps the company’s most note­wor­thy ambi­tion relates to their claims that they sup­port clients through the gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­to­ry process. Giv­en the company’s empha­sis on speedy mass pro­duc­tion of exper­i­men­tal gene ther­a­pies, its stat­ed inten­tion of get­ting the “futur­is­tic” med­ical prod­ucts it man­u­fac­tures to mar­ket as quick­ly as pos­si­ble seems at odds with the slow­er, tra­di­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry process­es. Indeed, one could eas­i­ly argue that the approvals of mRNA vac­cines for the first time in human his­to­ry dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis were only pos­si­ble because of the major relax­ing of reg­u­la­to­ry pro­ce­durse and safe­ty test­ing due to the per­ceived urgency of the sit­u­a­tion.

Resilience seems intent on see­ing that phe­nom­e­non repeat itself. As pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, the com­pa­ny claims to allow for the set­ting and appli­ca­tion of “new stan­dards for man­u­fac­tur­ing cell ther­a­pies and gene ther­a­pies” and also says it plans to become a “tech­nol­o­gy-aggre­gat­ing stan­dards bear­er that helps ther­a­pies come to mar­ket more effi­cient­ly.” It pre­vi­ous­ly offered on its web­site “reg­u­la­to­ry sup­port” and “strat­e­gy con­sult­ing” to clients, sug­gest­ing that it would seek to medi­ate between clients and gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tors in order to ful­fill its goal of hav­ing the prod­ucts it man­u­fac­tures tak­en to mar­ket more quick­ly. In addi­tion, upon launch, the com­pa­ny claimed it planned to obtain unspec­i­fied “reg­u­la­to­ry capa­bil­i­ties.” If so, it is cer­tain­ly notable that for­mer top Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) offi­cials are either on the company’s board or, as will be not­ed short­ly, played a major role in the company’s cre­ation.

The Peo­ple Behind Resilience

Resilience was co-found­ed by Biotech ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Robert Nelsen, who is known for lis­ten­ing “to science’s ear­li­est whis­pers, even when data are too ear­ly for just about any­one else.” Nelsen was one of the ear­li­est investors in Illu­mi­na, a Cal­i­for­nia-based gene-sequenc­ing hard­ware and soft­ware giant that is believed to cur­rent­ly dom­i­nate the field of genomics. As men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous Unlim­it­ed Hang­out inves­ti­ga­tion, Illu­mi­na is close­ly tied to the DARPA-equiv­a­lent of the Well­come Trust known as Well­come Leap, which is also focused on “futur­is­tic” and tran­shu­man­ist “med­i­cines.” Nelsen is now chair­man of Nation­al Resilience’s board, which is a “Who’s Who” of big play­ers from the US Nation­al Secu­ri­ty State, Big Phar­ma and Phar­ma-relat­ed “phil­an­thropy.”

How­ev­er, while Nelsen has been giv­en much of the cred­it for cre­at­ing Resilience, he revealed in one inter­view that the idea for the com­pa­ny had actu­al­ly come from some­one else – Luciana Borio. In July of last year, Nelsen revealed that it was while talk­ing to Borio about “her work run­ning pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness on the NSC [Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil]” that had “helped lead to the launch of Nelsen’s $800 mil­lion bio­log­ics man­u­fac­tur­ing start­up Resilience.”

At the time of their con­ver­sa­tion, Borio was the vice pres­i­dent of In-Q-tel, the ven­ture cap­i­tal arm of the CIA that has been used since its cre­ation in the ear­ly 2000s to found a num­ber of com­pa­nies, many of which act as Agency fronts. Pri­or to In-Q-Tel, she served as direc­tor for med­ical and biode­fense pre­pared­ness at the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and had pre­vi­ous­ly been the act­ing chief sci­en­tist at the FDA from 2015 to 2017.

Borio is cur­rent­ly a senior fel­low for glob­al health at the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, a con­sul­tant to Gold­man Sachs, a mem­ber of the Bill Gates-fund­ed vac­cine alliance CEPI, and a part­ner at Nelsen’s ven­ture cap­i­tal firm ARCH Ven­ture Part­ners, which funds Resilience. Nelsen’s ARCH pre­vi­ous­ly fund­ed Nanosys, the com­pa­ny of the con­tro­ver­sial sci­en­tist Charles Lieber. Around the time of her con­ver­sa­tion with Nelsen that led to Resilience’s cre­ation, Borio was co-writ­ing a pol­i­cy paper for the Johns Hop­kins Cen­ter for Health Secu­ri­ty that rec­om­mend­ed link­ing COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus with food stamp pro­grams and rent assis­tance as a pos­si­ble means of coerc­ing cer­tain pop­u­la­tions to take the exper­i­men­tal vac­cine.

Borio is hard­ly Resilience’s only In-Q-Tel con­nec­tion, as the CEO of In-Q-Tel, Chris Dar­by, sits on the company’s board of direc­tors. Dar­by is also on the board of direc­tors of the CIA Offi­cers Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion. Dar­by was also recent­ly a mem­ber of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Com­mis­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (NSCAI), where mem­bers of the mil­i­tary, intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and Sil­i­con Valley’s top firms argued for the need to reduce the use of “lega­cy sys­tems” in favor of AI-focused alter­na­tives as a nation­al secu­ri­ty imper­a­tive. Among those “lega­cy sys­tems” iden­ti­fied by the NSCAI were in-per­son doc­tor vis­its and even receiv­ing med­ical care from a human doc­tor, as opposed to an AI “doc­tor.” The NSCAI also argued for the removal of “reg­u­la­to­ry bar­ri­ers” that pre­vent these new tech­nolo­gies from replac­ing “lega­cy sys­tems.”

Anoth­er notable board mem­ber, in dis­cussing Resilience’s intel­li­gence ties, is Drew Oet­ting. Oet­ting works for Cer­berus Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, the firm head­ed by Steve Fein­berg who pre­vi­ous­ly led the President’s Intel­li­gence Advi­so­ry Board under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Cer­berus is notably the par­ent com­pa­ny of Dyn­Corp, a con­tro­ver­sial US nation­al secu­ri­ty con­trac­tor tied to numer­ous scan­dals, includ­ing scan­dals relat­ed to sex traf­fick­ing in con­flict zones. Oet­ting is also part of the CIA-linked Thorn NGO osten­si­bly focused on tack­ling child traf­fick­ing that was the sub­ject of a pre­vi­ous Unlim­it­ed Hang­out inves­ti­ga­tion.

Oet­ting is also the co-founder of 8VC, a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm that is one of the main investors in Resilience. 8VC’s oth­er co-founder is Joe Lons­dale and Oet­ting “start­ed his career” as Lonsdale’s chief of staff. Lons­dale is the co-founder, along­side Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, of Palan­tir, a CIA front com­pa­ny and intel­li­gence con­trac­tor that is the suc­ces­sor to DARPA’s con­tro­ver­sial Total Infor­ma­tion Aware­ness (TIA) mass sur­veil­lance and data-min­ing pro­gram. In addi­tion, Oet­ting pre­vi­ous­ly worked for Bill Gates’ invest­ment fund.

Also worth not­ing is the pres­ence of Joseph Robert Ker­rey, for­mer US Sen­a­tor for Nebras­ka and a for­mer mem­ber of the con­flict-of-inter­est-rid­den 9/11 Com­mis­sion, on Resilience’s board. Ker­rey is cur­rent­ly man­ag­ing direc­tor of Allen & Co., a New York invest­ment bank­ing firm which has host­ed an annu­al “sum­mer camp for bil­lion­aires” since 1983. Allen & Co. has long been a major play­er in net­works where orga­nized crime and intel­li­gence inter­sect, and is men­tioned repeat­ed­ly through­out my upcom­ing book One Nation Under Black­mail. For instance, Charles and Her­bert Allen, who ran the firm for decades, had con­sid­er­able busi­ness deal­ings with orga­nized crime king­pins and front­men for noto­ri­ous gang­sters like Mey­er Lan­sky, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Bahamas. They were also busi­ness part­ners of Leslie Wexner’s men­tors A. Alfred Taub­man and Max Fish­er as well as asso­ciates of Earl Bri­an, one of the archi­tects of the PROMIS soft­ware scan­dal – which saw orga­nized crime and intel­li­gence net­works coop­er­ate to steal and then com­pro­mise the PROMIS soft­ware for black­mail and clan­des­tine intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing pur­pos­es. Allen & Co. was a major investor in Brian’s busi­ness inter­ests in the tech­nol­o­gy indus­try that Bri­an used in attempts to bank­rupt the devel­op­ers of PROMIS, Inslaw Inc. and to mar­ket ver­sions of PROMIS that had been com­pro­mised first by Israeli intel­li­gence and, lat­er, the CIA.

In addi­tion to these intel­li­gence-linked indi­vid­u­als, the rest of Resilience’s board includes the for­mer CEO of the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, Susan Desmond-Hell­mann; for­mer FDA Com­mis­sion­er and Pfiz­er board mem­ber, Scott Got­tlieb; two for­mer exec­u­tives at John­son & John­son; for­mer pres­i­dent and CEO of Teva Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals North Amer­i­can branch, George Bar­rett; Cal­Tech pro­fes­sor and board mem­ber of Alpha­bet (i.e. Google) and Illu­mi­na, Frances Arnold; for­mer exec­u­tive at Genen­tech and Mer­ck, Patrick Yang; and Resilience CEO Rahul Singhvi./b>. . . .

To Boost or Not to Boost

It is cer­tain­ly telling that the nor­mal­ly pub­lic­i­ty hun­gry Mod­er­na has said so lit­tle about its part­ner­ship with Resilience and that Resilience, despite its ambi­tious plans, has also avoid­ed the media lime­light. Con­sid­er­ing Moderna’s his­to­ry and Resilience’s con­nec­tions, there may be more to this part­ner­ship that meets the eye and con­cerned mem­bers of the pub­lic would do well to keep a very close eye on Resilience, its part­ner­ships, and the prod­ucts it is man­u­fac­tur­ing.

4a. “This Jel­ly­fish Can Live For­ev­er. Its Genes May Tell Us How.” by Veronique Green­wood; New York Times; 9/106/2022.

Fleets of tiny translu­cent umbrel­las, each about the size of a lentil, waft through the waters of the Mediter­ranean Sea. These minia­ture jel­ly­fish, known as Tur­ri­top­sis dohrnii, wave and grasp with their pale ten­ta­cles, bring­ing plank­ton to their mouths like many oth­er jel­ly­fish species adrift in the glow­ing water.

But they have a secret that sets them apart from the aver­age sea crea­ture: When their bod­ies are dam­aged, the mature adults, known as medusas, can turn back the clock and trans­form back into their youth­ful selves. They shed their limbs, become a drift­ing blob and morph into polyps, twig­gy growths that attach to rocks or plants. Grad­u­al­ly, the medusa buds off the polyp once again, reju­ve­nat­ed. While a preda­tor or an injury can kill T. dohrnii, old age does not. They are, effec­tive­ly, immor­tal.

Now, in a paper pub­lished Mon­day in The Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, sci­en­tists have tak­en a detailed look at the jellyfish’s genome, search­ing for the genes that con­trol this remark­able process. By exam­in­ing the genes active at dif­fer­ent phas­es of the life cycle, the researchers got a glimpse of the del­i­cate orches­tra­tion of the jellyfish’s reju­ve­na­tion.

Gath­er­ing enough T. dohrnii to study their genomes can be dif­fi­cult. Only one sci­en­tist, Shin Kub­o­ta at Kyoto Uni­ver­si­ty in Japan, has suc­cess­ful­ly main­tained a colony in the lab over the long term. (He has also writ­ten and per­formed songs inspired by his tiny sub­jects.)

4b. Peter Thiel favored “kneecap­ping the FDA” in order to bring Big Phar­ma’s prod­ucts to mar­ket soon­er, in full aware­ness of the col­lat­er­al dam­age that would result from this.

” . . . . For Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion com­mis­sion­er, he [Thiel] attempt­ed to nom­i­nate can­di­dates who shared his belief that the FDA’s main role—regarding tri­als for drugs—was unnec­es­sary. One of Thiel’s allies in this cru­sade, and his top pick to lead the FDA, was Bal­a­ji Srini­vasan, the Stan­ford com­put­er sci­ence lec­tur­er and cryp­tocur­ren­cy entre­pre­neur who’s invest­ed along­side Thiel in Cur­tis Yarvin’s com­pa­ny and shared Thiel’s views. . . . ‘For every thalido­mide,’ he tweet­ed, “many dead from slowed approvals.” . . . . Thiel had argued much the same. . . .”

Note that the FDA’s reg­u­la­to­ry “red light” on the use of thalido­mide saved the U.S. from the birth defects night­mare expe­ri­enced by Europe.

We note in that regard that Thiel comes from an “I.G.” back­ground, to coin a term. As not­ed in FTR #718, Thiel’s father was a chem­i­cal engi­neer from Frank­furt, the cap­i­tal of I.G.

The Con­trar­i­an by Max Chafkin; Pen­guin Press [HC]; Copy­right 2021 by Max Chafkin; ISBN 9781984878533; p9. 253–254.

. . . . For Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion com­mis­sion­er, he [Thiel] attempt­ed to nom­i­nate can­di­dates who shared his belief that the FDA’s main role—regarding tri­als for drugs—was unnec­es­sary.

The con­sen­sus view among drug devel­op­ers, even many in Sil­i­con Val­ley, has been that “you don’t want to put indi­vid­u­als at risk,” said Zach Wein­berg, the cofounder of Flat­iron Health, a Sil­i­con Val­ley-backed med­ical research firm that is now owned by the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant Roche. “Peter Thiel’s view is that will slow things down. His whole game is if a few peo­ple get hurt and that cre­ates progress, he’s will­ing to take that trade.” 

One of Thiel’s allies in this cru­sade, and his top pick to lead the FDA, was Bal­a­ji Srini­vasan, the Stan­ford com­put­er sci­ence lec­tur­er and cryp­tocur­ren­cy entre­pre­neur who’s invest­ed along­side Thiel in Cur­tis Yarvin’s com­pa­ny and shared Thiel’s views. . . . 

 . . . . “For every thalido­mide,” he tweet­ed, “many dead from slowed approvals.” . . . .

Thiel had argued much the same. . . .

. . . . the agency’s [FDA] refusal in the ear­ly 1960’s to approve thalido­mide, a sleep­ing pill, is regard­ed as one of the great admin­is­tra­tive suc­cess sto­ries. In Europe, where a less-reg­u­lat­ed mar­ket allowed thalido­mide to be pre­scribed to preg­nant women, thou­sands of babies were born with­out ful­ly formed limbs. . . .

. . . . Thiel’s oth­er choice to run the FDA was Jim O’Neill, who’d run the Thiel Foun­da­tion and had since worked as an investor at Mithril, Ajay Royan’s ven­ture cap­i­tal firm . . . . He also believed in rolling back the FDA man­dates about drug effi­ca­cy. . . .

5. After the pan­dem­ic, Thiel seemed pleased at that event, main­tain­ing that it had pro­ject­ed us into the future. ” . . . . ‘COVID-19 cre­at­ed a shift. There used to be this feel­ing that the future was being held back some­how. Changes that should have tak­en place long ago did not come because there was resis­tance. Now the future is set free.’ He was, it seemed, wel­com­ing the pan­dem­ic as a chance to reset soci­ety accord­ing to his ideals and plans. . . .”

The Con­trar­i­an by Max Chafkin; Pen­guin Press [HC]; Copy­right 2021 by Max Chafkin; ISBN 9781984878533; pp. 327–328.

. . . . How could any­one devot­ed to life exten­sion not be moved by so many pre­ventable deaths? By late March more than 550,000 Amer­i­cans had died from Covid, mak­ing the pan­dem­ic dead­lier than U.S. casu­al­ties in World War I and World War II com­bined. The Unit­ed States has suf­fered one of the worst per-capi­ta mor­tal­i­ty rates in the world. How had those grim fig­ures not moved him to break with Trump or to at last spend more ambi­tious­ly to help? . . . .

. . . . Thiel spoke to Die Welt­woche, a Swiss news­pa­per whose edi­tor Roger Kop­pel is a mem­ber of the country’s nation­al-con­ser­v­a­tive People’s Par­ty. Dur­ing an inter­view with Kop­pel, Thiel char­ac­ter­ized the dis­ease as a men­tal pathol­o­gy rather than a phys­i­cal one. “I see it as a psy­cho­log­i­cal indi­ca­tor that peo­ple know deep down: There is no way back to the old nor­mal,” he said.

He con­tin­ued: “COVID-19 cre­at­ed a shift. There used to be this feel­ing that the future was being held back some­how. Changes that should have tak­en place long ago did not come because there was resis­tance. Now the future is set free.” He was, it seemed, wel­com­ing the pan­dem­ic as a chance to reset soci­ety accord­ing to his ideals and plans. . . .

7c. “A Mes­sage to the Next Gen­er­a­tion of Sci­en­tists” by Antho­ny Fau­ci; The New York Times; 12/11/2022.

7d. “We Can Edit a Per­son­’s DNA. So Why Don’t We? by Fyo­dor Urnov; The New York Times; 12/11/2022.

7e. The pro­gram presents a sum­ma­ry intro­duc­tion of the pri­ma­ry sub­ject. After the [offi­cial] aban­don­ment by the U.S. of offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare research, the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion declared a “war on can­cer” in 1971. As part of the War on Can­cer Nixon turned Fort Det­rick (the Army’s top BW research cen­ter) over to the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute for its Viral Can­cer Project. The Viral Can­cer Project was inex­tri­ca­bly linked with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research and may well have served as a cov­er for ongo­ing BW work.

For the pur­pos­es of the present dis­cus­sion, it is worth not­ing that it was the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute’s VCP that was at the epi­cen­ter of AIDS research in the Unit­ed States.

“Can­cer War­fare: Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute and the Fort Det­rick Link” by Richard Hatch; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin Num­ber 39 (Win­ter 1991–92).

In 1969, Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon ordered a halt to offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare (BW) research and weapons stock­pil­ing by the Unit­ed States. The U.S. Army destroyed its tox­ins, virus­es, and bac­te­ria with heat and dis­in­fec­tants by May 1972; the dis­pos­al of the sci­en­tif­ic per­son­nel was not so sim­ple. Some of these biowar­riors went to the CIA.2 Oth­ers quick­ly found new sup­port from the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its Virus Can­cer Pro­gram (VCP).3 The NCI fund­ed and super­vised some of the same sci­en­tists, uni­ver­si­ties, and con­tract­ing corporations—ostensibly for can­cer research—which had con­duct­ed bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. Some of these med­ical research con­tracts ran simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. When the mil­i­tary work end­ed, the civil­ian pro­grams con­tin­ued to expand on the same crit­i­cal areas out­lined by Colonel Tigertt.

The NCI’s Viral Can­cer Program—a high­ly politi­cized pub­lic rela­tions effort—was launched in 1971 with great fan­fare as part of Nixon’s War on Can­cer. The stat­ed aim of the pro­gram was to orga­nize exper­i­ments aimed at find­ing can­cer-caus­ing virus­es.

Appar­ent­ly this agen­da was com­pat­i­ble with the incor­po­ra­tion into var­i­ous units of the VCP of pos­si­bly dozens of for­mer U.S. BW researchers who con­tin­ued to study top­ics with poten­tial mil­i­tary appli­ca­tion. Poten­tial can­cer-caus­ing virus­es were col­lect­ed, grown in huge amounts, and dis­trib­uted through the thou­sands of ani­mals were infect­ed exper­i­men­tal­ly, and the aerosol dis­tri­b­u­tion of car­cino­genic virus­es was stud­ied.

8. The VCP/NCI bio­log­i­cal war­fare con­nec­tion uti­lized strong con­nec­tions to uni­ver­si­ty research facil­i­ties. The Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry (man­aged by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia), as well as Fort Det­rick were pro­found­ly involved with the NCI’s VCP. The Cell Cul­ture Lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Naval Bio­sciences Facil­i­ty pro­vid­ed the seed stock for the pro­duc­tion of vast quan­ti­ties of car­cino­genic and immuno­sup­pres­sive virus­es that were gen­er­at­ed by the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute.

The pro­duc­tion of those virus­es for the NCI was over­seen by Drs. James Duff and Jack Gru­ber, both long­time vet­er­ans of Fort Det­rick and its bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

Two for­mer BW facil­i­ties would play a large part in VCP. The U.S. Army’s Fort Det­rick in Fred­er­ick, Mary­land had been the ‘par­ent research and pilot plant cen­ter for bio­log­i­cal warfare.’4 Dur­ing the ear­ly 1960s, the CIA paid the facil­i­ty $100,000 a year for BW and chem­i­cal agents and their deliv­ery sys­tems. In Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, the Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry was involved in ear­ly exper­i­ments with the plague and col­lab­o­rat­ed in mas­sive open-air tests of bio­log­i­cal war­fare ’sim­u­lants’ in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area in the 1950s. For­mer bio­log­i­cal war­fare spe­cial­ists from both of these cen­ters were deeply involved in all aspects of the VCP.

Reflect­ing a com­mon pat­tern of coop­er­a­tion, much of the mil­i­tary-relat­ed research took place at insti­tu­tions con­nect­ed with or direct­ly part of U.S. uni­ver­si­ties. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia is well known for its role in man­ag­ing the two main U.S. nuclear weapons lab­o­ra­to­ries, the Los Alam­os and Lawrence Liv­er­more Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ries. Less well-known is the fact that UC Berke­ley also helps man­age the Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NBL) — ear­li­er called the Naval Bio­log­i­cal Lab­o­ra­to­ry. This con­nec­tion became cen­tral to the VCP and con­tin­ued after the ban on offen­sive BW work.

Well before Pres­i­dent Nixon ordered the con­ver­sion of the U.S. Army BW cen­ter at Fort Det­rick to civil­ian uses in 1971, this mil­i­tary facil­i­ty was coop­er­at­ing close­ly with UC.

From 1953 to 1968, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, while man­ag­ing the NBL, now at the Naval Sup­ply Cen­ter, also had BW con­tracts with the U.S. Army.5 After U.S treaty oblig­a­tions would have pre­vent­ed open research on mass pro­duc­tion of dan­ger­ous virus­es with­out a med­ical “cov­er”; the VCP pro­vid­ed an ide­al excuse to study “scale-up” problems.6

One of the first new pri­or­i­ties of the Fort Det­rick facil­i­ty after the ban was “the large scale pro­duc­tion of onco­genic [can­cer-caus­ing] and sus­pect­ed onco­genic viruses.“7 With­in a year, the NCI began mass pro­duc­tion and with­in one fif­teen month peri­od end­ing in June 1977, the VCP pro­duced 60,000 liters of can­cer-caus­ing and immuno­sup­pres­sive virus­es.

Through­out the 1970s, U.S. “defen­sive” BW efforts were increas­ing­ly aimed at the research and devel­op­ment of viral dis­ease agents.8

The “seed stocks” for this mas­sive pro­duc­tion of virus­es came from the Cell Cul­ture Lab­o­ra­to­ry (CCL); the CCL was “phys­i­cal­ly locat­ed at the Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NBL)” in Oak­land, California.9 Because this lab­o­ra­to­ry was financed in part by the NCI and linked to UC, it would become a clear­ing­house and cen­tral repos­i­to­ry for vast quan­ti­ties of poten­tial­ly can­cer-caus­ing tis­sues and the tis­sues that might con­tain them. Thus, after the ban, the Naval Bio­sciences Lab at UC con­tin­ued exper­i­men­ta­tion on bio­log­i­cal agents, but under the guise of “defen­sive” research.

The VCP con­tract ran con­cur­rent­ly with the NBL’s work on bubon­ic plague, Rift Val­ley and menin­gi­tis. The NBL did oth­er research for the Fort Det­rick, before the 1972 ban on offen­sive work. The NBL also per­formed “much of the orig­i­nal research into bio­log­i­cal war­fare dur­ing World War II.” At some NBL work was “list­ed only in Pen­ta­gon research bulletins.“11

The NBL/Cell Cul­ture Lab­o­ra­to­ry project was super­vised for the VCP by Drs. James Duff and Jack Gruber.12 Duff had been at Fort Det­rick for 12 years join­ing the NCI. His biog­ra­phy lists research into clostrid­i­um bot­u­linum toxins.13 Bot­u­linum tox­ins cause bot­u­lism and are among the most tox­ic sub­stances known. It was dur­ing Duff’s tenure at Fort Det­rick that the U.S. Army stock­piled bot­u­linum tox­in weapons.14 There, too, the inten­sive study of psit­ta­co­sis, or “par­rot fever,” result­ed in the acci­den­tal infec­tion of at least 12 workers15 while Duff was work­ing there. After serv­ing for eight years at Fort Det­rick, Gru­ber moved to the NCI. His biog­ra­phy lists work on “arthro­pod-borne viruses.”16 The U.S. stock­piled BW weapons based on one arthro­pod-borne virus and stud­ied many oth­ers. He soon became Chair of the Pro­gram Resources and Logis­tics Advi­so­ry Group of the VCP, where he helped coor­di­nate projects involv­ing pro­duc­tion of virus­es, pro­vi­sion of test ani­mals and the ‘bio­haz­ard safe­ty pro­gram.’ 17 In 1984, Gru­ber became head of the Can­cer Eti­ol­o­gy Divi­sion of the NIH.

Idem.

9. The aer­i­al trans­mis­sion of dead­ly path­o­gen­ic agents was a major focal point of the NCI’s VCP, appar­ent­ly over­lap­ping BW research projects. Two oth­er key researchers for the NCI, Drs. Alfred Hell­man and Mark Chatigny also had bio­log­i­cal war­fare research back­grounds, includ­ing work with aer­i­al trans­mis­sion of path­o­gen­ic agents.

The field of “aer­o­bi­ol­o­gy,” or the trans­mis­sion of dis­ease organ­isms through the air, is essen­tial­ly an out­growth of BW research. The mil­i­tary objec­tive of expos­ing many peo­ple to a bio­log­i­cal war­fare agent and the ready sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to infec­tion by inhal­ing these agents make aerosol weapons the most prac­ti­cal form of trans­mis­sion. The NCI also stud­ied aerosol trans­mis­sion of virus­es inten­sive­ly. One such study, FS-57 “Aerosol Prop­er­ties of Onco­genic Virus­es,” was fund­ed at more than $100,000 a year. After the ban on offen­sive BW research, the NCI and the Office of Naval Research joint­ly spon­sored NBL exper­i­ments on the “Aerosol Prop­er­ties of Poten­tial­ly Onco­genic Viruses.“18 The NCI jus­ti­fied its aerosol research because its sci­en­tists often han­dled sus­pect can­cer virus­es in a high­ly con­cen­trat­ed form. A lab acci­dent could release a mist of virus; NCI need­ed to under­stand and antic­i­pate the dan­ger. How the Navy jus­ti­fied its inter­est is unknown, but if a new can­cer-caus­ing BW agent was dis­cov­ered, it would like­ly be deliv­ered as an aerosol.

The line between aerosol and bio­log­i­cal war­fare research was often fine. The NCI project offi­cer and for­mer U.S. Air Force virol­o­gist, Dr. Alfred Hell­man, worked with Mark Chatigny, a research engi­neer at NBL and mem­ber of the NCI bio­haz­ards work group from the NBL.19 Hell­man also over­saw the 1971 $100,000 NBL study on the “phys­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of viral aerosols..” In 1961, the NBL had done sim­i­lar research for Fort Det­rick on the “sta­bil­i­ty and vir­u­lence of BW aerosols.“20 Chatigny’s NBL research into aerosol dis­tri­b­u­tion of virus­es would con­tin­ue into the 1980s. Such over­lap­ping of pur­pos­es rais­es seri­ous ques­tions about the wis­dom of plac­ing con­trol of VCP virus­es under the NBL.

Idem.

10. More about the aerosol stud­ies, over­lap­ping the NCI VCP and involv­ing research done by uni­ver­si­ties:

While UC Berke­ley appears to have been at the heart of aerosol BW research, it was by no means alone. Oth­er uni­ver­si­ties col­lab­o­rat­ed with the BW effort while work­ing on the VCP in par­al­lel. From 1955 to 1965, the Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Med­i­cine con­duct­ed research for Fort Det­rick into the aerosol trans­mis­sion of BW agents includ­ing tularemia and Q fever.21 In some of these stud­ies, pris­on­ers from the Ohio State Pen­i­ten­tiary were used as guinea pigs. Between 1952 and 1969, the affil­i­at­ed Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty Research Foun­da­tion had eight con­tracts with the U.S. Army for BW research. Tularemia (“rab­bit fever”) and Q fever were ulti­mate­ly stock­piled by the U.S. Army.22

Before he worked with UC, Dr. Hell­man super­vised an NCI con­tract for Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty. Designed to study the aerosol trans­mis­sion of can­cer-caus­ing virus­es, this research start­ed in 1965 and con­tin­ued at least until 1972. The prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor for this work, Dr. Richard Griese­mer, would even­tu­al­ly suc­ceed in giv­ing tumors to mice and mon­keys. Griese­mer then went to work briefly at the Oak Ridge Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, part of the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy nuclear research sys­tem. After his stint at Oak Ridge, Griese­mer returned to NCI, where he head­ed the NCI Bioas­say pro­gram, which test­ed chem­i­cals sus­pect­ed of caus­ing can­cer. This mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar pro­gram was so bad­ly man­aged that epi­demics forced the killing of near­ly 90,000 test ani­mals and test­ing of sus­pect­ed car­cino­genic chem­i­cals fell far behind schedule.23

Many oth­er uni­ver­si­ties promi­nent in the U.S. BW pro­gram, such as Johns Hop­kins, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta, were also heav­i­ly involved in the VCP. Since the BW work per­formed by these uni­ver­si­ties remains clas­si­fied, the exact rela­tion between VCP and bio­log­i­cal war­fare research remains murky.

Idem.

11. Yet anoth­er com­po­nent of the NCI/VCP/BW con­nec­tion was the incor­po­ra­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies in the research pro­grams. The Pfiz­er com­pa­ny pro­duced virus­es for the NCI’s VCP, includ­ing the immuno­sup­pres­sive Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus dis­cussed in the next major sec­tion of the pro­gram.

The pat­tern of over­lap­ping mil­i­tary BW and NCI work was par­al­leled by the rela­tion­ship between indus­tri­al con­trac­tors and the VCP. Charles Pfiz­er and Com­pa­ny, Inc., a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal firm, had a con­tract with the NCI which includ­ed pro­duc­tion of “a large quan­ti­ty of a vari­ety of virus­es” for the VCP.24 The immuno­sup­pres­sive Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus was grown in large quan­ti­ty, and oth­er ani­mal can­cer virus­es were adapt­ed to grow in human cell lines. Dur­ing the same time period—1961 to 1971—the NCI con­trac­tor, Pfiz­er, con­duct­ed a secret study for the U.S. Army “into the growth and cul­ture media for unspec­i­fied... bio­log­i­cal agents.“25

In addi­tion, from 1968 to 1970, Pfiz­er had a con­tract for Scale Pro­duc­tion and Eval­u­a­tion of Staphy­lo­coc­cal Entero­tox­oid B” for the U.S. Army BW program.26 Staphy­lo­coc­cal entero­tox­oid is a pro­tec­tive vac­cine against a bac­te­r­i­al tox­in which was part of the U.S. arse­nal. The pro­duc­tion of vac­cine against a stock­piled BW weapon must be con­sid­ered an offen­sive BW project Accord­ing to MIT sci­en­tists Harlee Strauss and Jonathan King, “These steps—the gen­er­a­tion of a poten­tial BW agent, devel­op­ment of a vac­cine against it, test­ing of the effi­ca­cy of the vaccine—are all com­po­nents that would be asso­ci­at­ed with an offen­sive BW program.“27 Clear­ly, with­out an anti­dote or vac­cine to pro­tect attack­ing troops, the util­i­ty of a stock­piled BW agent would be seri­ous­ly lim­it­ed.

Idem.

12. Among the most sig­nif­i­cant and alarm­ing aspects of the NCI’s VCP pro­gram is the fact that, when Fort Det­rick was con­vert­ed to the Fred­er­ick Can­cer Research Cen­ter, it was admin­is­tered by Lit­ton Bio­net­ics, a biotech­nol­o­gy sub­sidiary of Lit­ton Indus­tries. Lit­ton was a major defense con­trac­tor and a fre­quent vehi­cle for covert oper­a­tions.

Pri­or to assum­ing stew­ard­ship of Fort Det­rick for the NCI, Lit­ton Bio­net­ics had employed Dr. Robert Gal­lo (the “dis­cov­er­er” of HIV).

 . . . One of Bio­net­ics Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries’ most impor­tant NCI con­tracts was a mas­sive virus inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram that began in 1962 and and ran until at least 1976, and used more than 2,000 mon­keys. Dr. Robert Gal­lo, the con­tro­ver­sial head of the cur­rent U.S. AIDS research pro­gram at NCI and the chief of its tumor cell biol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry, and Dr. Jack Gru­ber, for­mer­ly of VCP and then NIH, were project offi­cers for the inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram. . . .”

Among the pri­ma­ry focal points of Lit­ton Bio­net­ics’ research was the Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus, a simi­an retro­virus that induces immuno­sup­pres­sion in pri­mates. HIV is a retro­virus.

Pres­i­dent Nixon’s 1971 announce­ment that Fort Det­rick would be con­vert­ed to a cen­ter for can­cer research could not be imme­di­ate­ly imple­ment­ed. First, BW agents stored there, such as the anti-crop agent rice blast, had to be destroyed. The build­ings were then decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed and the facil­i­ties were turned over to the NCI, which renamed the facil­i­ty the Fred­er­ick Can­cer Research Cen­ter; Lit­ton-Bio­net­ics was named as the prime con­trac­tor. A major play­er in the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex, the cor­po­ra­tion worked exten­sive­ly on the dis­per­sion of BW agents from planes, and includ­ed U.S. Air Force con­tracts for “the super­son­ic deliv­ery of dry bio­log­i­cal agents.”28 From 1966 to 1968, Bio­net­ics Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries (which became Lit­ton-Bio­net­ics in 1973) held two con­tracts with the U.5. Army BW program.29 At the same time, it held major con­tracts with the NCI.30 One of Bio­net­ics Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries’ most impor­tant NCI con­tracts was a mas­sive virus inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram that began in 1962 and and ran until at least 1976, and used more than 2,000 mon­keys. Dr. Robert Gal­lo, the con­tro­ver­sial head of the cur­rent U.S. AIDS research pro­gram at NCI and the chief of its tumor cell biol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry, and Dr. Jack Gru­ber, for­mer­ly of VCP and then NIH, were project offi­cers for the inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram. The mon­keys were inject­ed with every­thing from human can­cer tis­sues to rare virus­es and even sheep’s blood in an effort to find a trans­mis­si­ble can­cer. Many of these mon­keys suc­cumbed to immuno­sup­pres­sion after infec­tion with the Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus, the first known immuno­sup­pres­sive retro­virus  one of a class of virus­es that includes the human immun­od­e­fi­cien­cy virus.

Idem.

13. Of para­mount impor­tance in this inves­ti­ga­tion is the fact that the NCI’s VCP pro­gram involved numer­ous exper­i­ments and oper­a­tions designed at get­ting organ­isms to “jump species.” Promi­nent researchers famil­iar with these efforts expressed alarm and the con­vic­tion that such work should be out­lawed, lest it lead to the cre­ation of new, dead­ly organ­isms that would infect humans.

Obvi­ous­ly, this broad­cast and the line of inquiry approached in Mr. Emory’s decades-long inves­ti­ga­tion of AIDS as a man-made dis­ease high­light the possibility/probability/near cer­tain­ty that HIV is just such an organ­ism.

In 1976, Dr. Sey­mour Kalter, a promi­nent NCI sci­en­tist and for­mer mil­i­tary med­i­cine expert, report­ed on exper­i­ments so dan­ger­ous that oth­er sci­en­tists pub­licly asked for an end to such work.32 By blend­ing the genet­ic mate­r­i­al of virus­es caus­ing can­cers in mice and baboons, he cre­at­ed a new virus which could cause can­cer in dogs, mon­keys and even chim­panzees. Because it could attack chim­panzees, oth­er sci­en­tists feared it could spread to genet­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar human beings. The new virus was a prod­uct of some of the first crude genet­ic “recom­bi­na­tion” exper­i­ments. Lawrence Loeb and Ken­neth Tartof of the Insti­tute for Can­cer Research in Philadel­phia, Penn­syl­va­nia, went even fur­ther in call­ing for change and called for a ban on such poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous exper­i­men­ta­tion.

The pro­duc­tion of malig­nant tumors in a vari­ety of pri­mate species sug­gests the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing virus­es that are onco­genic for humans… There­fore, we urge that all exper­i­ments involv­ing co-cul­ti­va­tion of known onco­genic virus­es with pri­mate virus­es be imme­di­ate­ly halt­ed until the safe­ty of such exper­i­ments are [sic] exten­sive­ly evaluated.33

Exper­i­ments per­formed under NCI con­tract includ­ed many dan­ger­ous viral inoc­u­la­tion pro­grams, like the pri­mate inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram run by Gal­lo and Gru­ber. So-called “species bar­ri­ers” were rou­tine­ly breached in efforts to find or cre­ate infec­tious can­cer virus­es. Virus­es native to one species were inject­ed into ani­mals from anoth­er species in hope of trig­ger­ing can­cers. Often the recip­i­ent ani­mal would be immuno­sup­pressed by radi­a­tion, drugs, or oth­er treat­ments. NIH pri­mate researchers were well aware that “the eco­log­i­cal nich­es of man and ani­mal cross with increas­ing fre­quen­cy, and this undoubt­ed­ly will cre­ate or uncov­er new problems.”34

At a 1975 NCI sym­po­sium, a par­tic­i­pant, Dr. J. Moor-Janows­ki admit­ted that “envi­ron­men­tal-moti­vat­ed, we moti­vat­ed groups begin to con­sid­er pri­mate lab­o­ra­to­ries as being a source of dan­ger.” He con­tin­ued to com­ment that “a [Euro­pean] pri­mate cen­ter was not able to begin oper­a­tions as a result of adverse pub­lic­i­ty they obtained because of Mar­burg dis­ease.” The speak­er was refer­ring to a 1967 out­break in Yugoslavia and West Ger­many of this viral dis­ease, which killed sev­er­al peo­ple. Tis­sues obtained from African Green mon­keys used in bio­med­ical work were the source of the mini-epi­dem­ic. Dr. Moor-Janows­ki sug­gest­ed that researchers should fight against tighter restric­tions on pri­mate exper­i­ments. 35

Idem.

14. In addi­tion, the NCI’s VCP was the foun­da­tion for pro­fes­sion­al inter­ac­tion between civil­ian med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic researchers and their coun­ter­parts in the mil­i­tary. One obvi­ous out­growth of this would be enhance­ment of the mil­i­tary per­son­nel’s knowl­edge and pro­fes­sion­al capa­bil­i­ties.

A major focal point of this military/civilian sym­po­sium was “Zoonoses”–diseases that jump from ani­mals to humans. The pro­gres­sion of HIV from mon­key virus to mutat­ed mon­key virus that attacks humans should be eval­u­at­ed in this con­text.

Under the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute aegis, VCP pro­vid­ed many oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­tact between for­mer BW spe­cial­ists and oth­ers in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty. For­mer BW spe­cial­ists Drs. Peter Gerone and Arnold Wedum were promi­nent mem­bers of the Bio­haz­ard Con­trol and Con­tain­ment Seg­ment of the VCP. Their posi­tions allowed them fre­quent con­tact with lab­o­ra­to­ries han­dling haz­ardous virus­es. Gerone and Wedum both worked for many years at Fort Det­rick; they were both spe­cial­ists in the air­borne trans­mis­sion of dis­eases. In the 1950s, Wedum was in charge of U.S. Army tests of tularemia (“rab­bit fever”) on human “vol­un­teers.” In Gerone’s BW research, he used pris­on­ers from the Fed­er­al Prison Camp at Eglin Air Force Base in Flori­da. This group of human guinea pigs was more for­tu­nate than Dr. Wedum’s; they were exposed only to cold virus­es. Gerone was award­ed the Army’s Mer­i­to­ri­ous Civil­ian Ser­vice Award for his efforts at Fort Det­rick.

The 1975 NCI spon­sored sym­po­sium on “Bio­haz­ards and Zoonot­ic Prob­lems of Pri­mate Pro­cure­ment, Quar­an­tine, and Research“36 illus­trates anoth­er aspect of NCI-mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion. Zoonoses—diseases that can be trans­mit­ted from ani­mals to humans—make up the major­i­ty of BW agents. The meet­ing brought togeth­er NCI researchers, nine mil­i­tary offi­cers from Major to Colonel and a civil­ian from the Edge­wood Arse­nal, a U.S. chem­i­cal war­fare facil­i­ty, also in Mary­land. The offi­cers were from the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases, the Defense Nuclear Agency and the Armed Forces Insti­tute of Pathol­o­gy. In addi­tion, Drs. Wedum, Duff, Gru­ber, and Gerone were all in atten­dance.

Gerone pre­sent­ed a paper on the “Bio­haz­ards of Exper­i­men­tal­ly Infect­ed Pri­mates”; he now head­ed Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty’s Delta Region­al Pri­mate Research Cen­ter. In pass­ing, he men­tioned aerosol haz­ards and rec­om­mend­ed “expos­ing ani­mals so that only the head is in con­tact with the aerosol” rather than using “whole body expo­sure.” Wedum had pre­vi­ous­ly briefed him on BW tests involv­ing just such expo­sure of mon­keys to aerosolized staphy­lo­coc­cal entero­tox­in; in these tests four Fort Det­rick work­ers still became ill through expo­sure to the ani­mals. Pre­sum­ably Gerone was also aware of a 1964 acci­dent when 15 Fort Det­rick work­ers inhaled aerosolized staphy­lo­coc­cal entero­tox­in B, “mil­ligram for mil­ligram, one of the most dead­ly agents ever studied.“37

In addi­tion to sym­posia which brought togeth­er mil­i­tary and civil­ian spe­cial­ists, the VCP uti­lized con­sul­tants with strong bio­log­i­cal war­fare back­grounds. At times, Dr. Stu­art Madin and Mark Chatigny from the NBL, Peter Gerone, and Arthur Brown were all list­ed as con­sul­tants to the NCI. Brown, the for­mer head of the Virus and Rick­ettsia Divi­sion of Fort Det­rick, had already been involved in a bla­tant instance of attempt­ed covert recruit­ment of micro­bi­ol­o­gists for BW research.

In 1966, Brown signed a let­ter solic­it­ing research.38 It asked sci­en­tists to sub­mit pro­pos­als to study the recom­bi­na­tion of bac­te­ria, but tried to dis­guise the true source of fund­ing-the Depart­ment of Defense. NCI sci­en­tist Karl Habel also signed the let­ter; Habel was “con­nect­ed with viral research at the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health.“39 The attempt to recruit micro­bi­ol­o­gists to work on recom­bi­na­tion of bac­te­ria fiz­zled after the fund­ing source was pub­licly exposed. That it was attempt­ed at all, shows that NIH sci­en­tists were will­ing to team up with the Fort Det­rick spe­cial­ists in covert oper­a­tions and that some were also will­ing to deceive their col­leagues into col­lab­o­rat­ing with them.

Idem.

15. The arti­cle con­cludes by sum­ma­riz­ing the pro­found and sus­pi­cious degree of over­lap between mil­i­tary BW research projects and the NCI’s VCP:

Research into virus­es dur­ing the War on Can­cer pro­vid­ed an ide­al cov­er for con­tin­u­ing bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. As Colonel Tigertt advised, the NCI project allowed the mass pro­duc­tion of virus­es, the devel­op­ment of means to enhance vir­u­lence, explo­ration of aerosol trans­mis­sion, and the pro­duc­tion of new recom­bi­nant dis­ease agents. These “civil­ian” projects ran con­cur­rent­ly with “mil­i­tary” projects in many cas­es. When polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy dic­tat­ed an end to overt U.S. BW research, the Viral Can­cer Pro­gram pro­vid­ed a means to con­tin­ue exper­i­ments that would oth­er­wise be dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy.

That the U.S. would covert­ly con­tin­ue a BW pro­gram should not be quick­ly dis­count­ed. Right up to the start of the VCP, U.S. covert oper­a­tors con­duct­ed clan­des­tine tests sim­u­lat­ing aerosol BW attacks. The NBL sup­plied per­son­nel, lab facil­i­ties, and equip­ment for a secret 1950 aerosol attack on San Fran­cis­co which result­ed in dos­ing almost every­one in the city with a BW agent “simulant.“40 Oth­er mil­i­tary exper­i­ments used spe­cial­ized cars and suitcases.41 The Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Divi­sion of the CIA, which oper­at­ed from Fort Det­rick, engaged in sim­i­lar covert tests using LSD and oth­er chem­i­cal under the MK-ULTRA pro­gram. Anoth­er CIA-SOD pro­gram, MK-NAOMI, col­lect­ed bio­log­i­cal tox­ins and disease.42

While Nixon ordered a sup­posed end to BW offen­sive efforts in 1969, the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency retained a secret BW and tox­in weapon capability.43 Giv­en this record of decep­tion in the U.S. BW pro­gram, the Viral Can­cer Pro­gram may well have used the search for a cure for can­cer as a cov­er to con­tin­ue its exper­i­ments on bio­log­i­cal war­fare.

Idem.