Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Genetic Engineering' is associated with 70 posts.

Meet the New Boss . . . .

A “New York Times” sto­ry not­ed the make­up of Joe Biden’s team assem­bled to com­bat Covid-19, includ­ing ” . . . . Dr. Luciana Borio, a vice pres­i­dent at In-Q-Tel, which invests in intel­li­gence tech­nol­o­gy, was a mem­ber of Trump’s Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil until he dis­band­ed the office charged with respond­ing to pan­demics and bioter­ror­ism threats, Dr. Michael T. Oster­holm, the direc­tor of the cen­ter for infec­tious Dis­ease Research and Pol­i­cy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta, advised the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion after the 2001 anthrax attacks. . . .” As dis­cussed in FTR #718 (among oth­er pro­grams) In-Q-Tel (at which Dr. Luciano Borio serves as a vice-pres­i­dent) is the CIA’s high tech ven­ture cap­i­tal arm. In FTR #1139, we exam­ined the 2001 anthrax attacks as a pos­si­ble provo­ca­tion, gen­er­at­ing momen­tum for the inva­sion of Iraq and expan­sion of U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare capa­bil­i­ties. Oster­holm launched an enfee­bled rhetor­i­cal attack on Kris New­by’s expose of Lyme Dis­ease as a bio-weapon. We exam­ined Ms. New­by’s expose in FTR #‘s 1135, 1136 and 1137.


FTR #1160 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 20: An Ounce of Prevention, Part 5

The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of oper­a­tional links between the Nazi/GOP milieu ana­lyzed in FTR #1159 and ele­ments we have ana­lyzed in the con­text of the desta­bi­liza­tion of Chi­na. (For the con­ve­nience of the lis­ten­er and read­er, key points of that dis­cus­sion are includ­ed in the broad­cast and below in this descrip­tion.)

In FTR #‘s 1103, 1143, 1144, 1153 and 1154, we detailed the pres­ence of OUN/B‑connected ele­ments in Hong Kong and work­ing in a pro­pa­gan­da role vis a vis the Uighurs in Xin­jiang province. In Hong Kong, ele­ments of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and Pravy Sek­tor (Right Sec­tor) have been active in con­junc­tion with the “pro-democ­ra­cy” move­ment in Hong Kong (under the aus­pices of an EU NGO.)

Ger­man nation­al and End Times Chris­t­ian Adri­an Zenz, a fel­low with the Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion, has been the go-to fig­ure for West­ern media on the alleged per­se­cu­tion of the Uighurs in Xin­jiang Province. The Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion is a sub­sidiary ele­ment of the Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee and the OUN/B.

In pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we exam­ined in detail the activ­i­ty of Peter Daszak and his Eco­Health Alliance–an orga­ni­za­tion craft­ed to “pre­vent” future pan­demics, yet net­worked with the Pen­ta­gon and oth­er nation­al secu­ri­ty bod­ies in work dis­turbing­ly sug­ges­tive of bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

Join­ing Daszak in a com­mis­sion assem­bled by the pres­ti­gious British med­ical jour­nal The Lancet is Jef­frey Sachs, eco­nom­ic advis­er to Bernie Sanders and AOC and the prin­ci­pal eco­nom­ic advis­er to Russ­ian pres­i­dent Boris Yeltsin. Sachs’ advice drove the Russ­ian econ­o­my back to the Stone Age.

In this pro­gram we detail the strong, eugeni­cist over­lap between “main­stream” anti-abor­tion orga­ni­za­tions and their close­ly linked white suprema­cist col­leagues. Seek­ing to max­i­mize the birth rate of “Aryan” off­spring and their per­cent­age in the world’s pop­u­la­tion, they may be seen as being part of a polit­i­cal con­tin­u­um which includes the Third Reich.

” . . . . Coex­ist­ing in abor­tion oppo­si­tion is . . . . a white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy that only desires to pre­vent white women from obtain­ing abor­tions, but uses uni­ver­sal oppo­si­tion to abor­tion as a prag­mat­ic screen for its goals. As Kath­leen Belew, author of Bring the War Home: The White Pow­er Move­ment in Para­mil­i­tary Amer­i­ca, told The Nation in an inter­view in Sep­tem­ber, for white suprema­cists, ‘oppos­ing abor­tion, oppos­ing gay rights, oppos­ing fem­i­nism, in white pow­er dis­course, all of this is tied to repro­duc­tion and the birth of white chil­dren.’ . . . Tim Bish­op, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the white nation­al­ist Aryan Nations, said, ‘Lots of our peo­ple join [the anti-abor­tion move­ment]…. It’s part of our Holy War for the pure Aryan race.’ . . . . ”

Cen­tral to our analy­sis is a spec­u­la­tive, yet ter­ri­fy­ing biotech­no­log­i­cal element–gene dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy. We have spo­ken about this in numer­ous pre­vi­ous pro­grams.

” . . . . Gene dri­ves have been dubbed an ‘extinc­tion tech­nol­o­gy’ and with good rea­son: gene dri­ve organ­isms are cre­at­ed by genet­i­cal­ly engi­neer­ing a liv­ing organ­ism with a par­tic­u­lar trait, and then mod­i­fy­ing the organism’s repro­duc­tive sys­tem in order to always force the mod­i­fied gene onto future gen­er­a­tions, spread­ing the trait through­out the entire pop­u­la­tion. . . .”

” . . . . the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion (BMGF) is forc­ing dan­ger­ous gene dri­ve tech­nolo­gies onto the world. BMGF is either the first or sec­ond largest fun­der of gene dri­ve research (along­side the shad­owy U.S. mil­i­tary organ­i­sa­tion Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA] ). . . .”

Just imag­ine what such technology–applied to human repro­duc­tive capacity–could do when deployed by fas­cist and Nazi ele­ments in the military/medical estab­lish­ment!

The emer­gence of such a devel­op­ment is being facil­i­tat­ed:

” . . . . a pri­vate PR firm called Emerg­ing Ag, was paid US$1.6 mil­lion by the BMGF. Part of their work involved coor­di­nat­ing the ‘fight back against gene dri­ve mora­to­ri­um pro­po­nents,’ as well as run­ning a covert advo­ca­cy coali­tion to exert influ­ence on the Unit­ed Nations Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty (CBD), the key body for gene dri­ve gov­er­nance. After calls in 2016 for a glob­al mora­to­ri­um on the use of gene dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy, the CBD sought input from sci­en­tists and experts in an online forum. Emerg­ing Ag recruit­ed and coor­di­nat­ed over 65 experts, includ­ing a Gates Foun­da­tion senior offi­cial, a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) offi­cial, and gov­ern­ment and uni­ver­si­ty sci­en­tists, in an attempt to flood the offi­cial UN process with their coor­di­nat­ed inputs. . . .”

At the con­clu­sion of the pro­gram we present a very dis­turb­ing hypo­thet­i­cal con­cept: we fear that the effort to find viral pathogens around the world and make them more infec­tious via gain-of-func­tion manip­u­la­tions is intend­ed to real­ize a glob­al, eugeni­cist, exter­mi­na­tion­ist and white suprema­cist agen­da by cre­at­ing pan­demics in the Third World, prof­it enor­mous­ly by mak­ing vac­cines to treat those pan­demics and intro­duce gene dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy into those pop­u­la­tions via the vac­cines in order to dimin­ish repro­duc­tion in those pop­u­la­tions.

The mRNA and DNA vac­cines being pro­duced by the DARPA-sup­port­ed Mod­er­na and Inovio firms should be con­sid­ered in con­nec­tion with this night­mar­ish work­ing hypoth­e­sis. 


Supplement to FTR #‘s 1157, 1158 and 1159

This post sup­ple­ments and is intend­ed to call atten­tion to FTR #‘s 1157, 1158 and 1159. A con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant arti­cle about Peter Daszak (right) and the Eco­Health Alliance pro­vides trou­bling insights into the uneven pro­fes­sion­al track record of Daszak and the pro­found involve­ment of the orga­ni­za­tion he heads with the Pen­ta­gon and oth­er U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment insti­tu­tions. Exem­pli­fy­ing Eco­Health Alliance’s work is a Pen­ta­gon con­tract with Tan­za­nia, research­ing CCHF–Crimean-Congo Hem­or­rhag­ic Fever. ” . . . . Eco­Health Alliance has a $5‑million Pen­ta­gon con­tract, ‘Crimean-Con­go Hem­or­rhag­ic Fever: Reduc­ing an Emerg­ing Health Threat in Tan­za­nia.’  Crimean-Con­go Hem­or­rhag­ic Fever (CCHF) is a tick-borne dis­ease, orig­i­nal­ly only infect­ing ani­mals. . . . There was only ever one case of CCHF in Tan­za­nia, and that was in 1986. . . . Gain-of-func­tion research on CCHF is being con­duct­ed at the U.S. Depart­ment of Agriculture’s Nation­al Bio and Agro-Defense Facil­i­ty (NBAF) . . . . (The Nation­al Bio and Agro Defense Facil­i­ty will take over the mis­sion of the Plum Island Ani­mal Dis­ease Cen­ter and become the lead facil­i­ty for For­eign Ani­mal Dis­ease research.) . . .”


FTR #‘s 1157, 1158 and 1159–Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Parts 17, 18 and 19: An Ounce of Prevention, Parts 2, 3 and 4

A note­wor­thy devel­op­ment in the Covid-19 “op” con­cerns the selec­tion of experts to over­see The Lancet’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the ori­gins of the SARS CoV‑2.

In FTR #1156, we looked at the involve­ment of known U.S. intel­li­gence cut-outs–notably USAID–and their fund­ing of pro­grams osten­si­bly aimed at pre­vent­ing epi­demics. Those pro­grams involved the “Gain-of-Func­tion” muta­tion of bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es, cre­at­ing nov­el “chimeric” virus­es that nev­er exist­ed before.

The osten­si­ble pur­pose was to “pre­vent” future epi­demics. We won­dered in FTR #1156 if those osten­si­ble epi­dem­ic “pre­ven­tion” pro­grams may have masked epi­dem­ic prop­a­ga­tion pro­grams, rather like Unit 731.

Peter Daszak of the Eco­Health Alliance was select­ed to lead the project.

His per­spec­tive would, on the sur­face, appear to be less than objec­tive, in as much as he cham­pi­oned the very type of GOF exper­i­ments that are at the cen­ter of this inquiry.

Of inter­est, as well, is the selec­tion of Jef­frey Sachs, an econ­o­mist, mem­ber of the [Bernie] Sanders Insti­tute, eco­nom­ic advis­er to Bernie Sanders, eco­nom­ic advis­er to AOC and, most impor­tant­ly, head of the [part­ly] gov­ern­ment financed Har­vard Insti­tute of Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment which (as advis­ers to Boris Yeltsin) drove the Russ­ian econ­o­my back to the Stone Age.

Sachs has no med­ical or sci­en­tif­ic cre­den­tials.

A con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant arti­cle about Daszak and the Eco­Health Alliance pro­vides trou­bling insights into the uneven pro­fes­sion­al track record of Daszak and the pro­found involve­ment of the orga­ni­za­tion he heads with the Pen­ta­gon and oth­er U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment insti­tu­tions.

Eco­Health Alliance looks dis­turbing­ly like an orga­ni­za­tion that fronts for ele­ments and indi­vid­u­als involved with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

“Peter Daszak, Pres­i­dent of Eco­Health Alliance, is a top sci­en­tif­ic col­lab­o­ra­tor, grantwriter and spokesper­son for virus hunters and gain-of-func­tion/­d­ual-use researchers, in labs both mil­i­tary and civil­ian.

Daszak works with dozens of high-con­tain­ment lab­o­ra­to­ries around the world that col­lect pathogens and use genet­ic engi­neer­ing and syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy to make them more infec­tious, con­ta­gious, lethal or drug-resis­tant. These include labs con­trolled by the U.S. Depart­ment of Defense, in coun­tries in the for­mer Sovi­et Union, the Mid­dle East, South East Asia and Africa.

Many of these labs are staffed by for­mer bio­log­i­cal weapons sci­en­tists. (See Arms Watch’s reports.) Before the Bio­log­i­cal Weapons Con­ven­tion was rat­i­fied, this research was called what it is: bio­log­i­cal weapons research. Now, it’s euphemisti­cal­ly called gain-of-func­tion or dual-use research. 

Gain-of-func­tion research to alter coro­n­avirus­es for the infec­tion of humans goes back to 1999 or ear­li­er, years before the first nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break. On behalf of the U.S. gov­ern­ment, often the mil­i­tary, Daszak scours the globe for ani­mal pathogens and brings them back to the lab to be cat­a­logued, inves­ti­gat­ed and manip­u­lat­ed. . . .”

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

1.–EcoHealth Alliance con­tracts with the Pen­ta­gon in Tan­za­nia, South Africa, Geor­gia and Malaysia, as well as the U.S.
2.–” . . . . A recent Wired mag­a­zine arti­cle quot­ing Daszak described how a virus col­lect­ed in 2012 was found to be a 96-per­cent match to SARS-CoV­‑2 in 2020 . . . ‘a lack of fund­ing meant they couldn’t fur­ther inves­ti­gate the virus strain now known to be 96 per­cent genet­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar to the virus that caus­es Covid-19’ . . . .”
3.–Daszak’s claim that they could­n’t fur­ther inves­ti­gate that virus because of a lack of fund­ing is dubi­ous, in that recent grants to the orga­ni­za­tion are on top of ” . . . . $100.9 mil­lion that Eco­Health Alliance has received in gov­ern­ment grants and con­tracts since 2003. . . .”
4.–Daszak does not explain how that virus (dis­cov­ered in 2012) turned into SARS-CoV­‑2. ” . . . . Some sci­en­tists say it would take 50 years for RaTG13 [the virus in question–D.E.] to turn into SARS-CoV­‑2. . . .”
5.–Daszak is heav­i­ly net­worked with the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty: ” . . . . the Depart­ment of Home­land Security’s Nation­al Bio­sur­veil­lance Inte­gra­tion Cen­ter (NBIC)  . . . . gave Daszak’s Eco­Health Alliance a $2.2‑million con­tract (2016–2019) to cre­ate a ‘Ground Truth Net­work’ of ‘sub­ject mat­ter experts’ who could pro­vide ‘con­tex­tu­al infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to bio­log­i­cal events.’ . . . .”
6.–The intel­lec­tu­al and pro­fes­sion­al track record of Daszak and Eco­Health Alliance is porous. Eco­Health Alliance float­ed a canard about Ebo­la poten­tial­ly trav­el­ing to the U.S. ” . . . . an Eco­Health Alliance spokesper­son, spread a false (not to men­tion racist and xeno­pho­bic) nar­ra­tive, one that sub­se­quent­ly would be thor­ough­ly debunked, that bush­meat smug­gled to the U.S. from Africa could trans­mit Ebo­la to Amer­i­cans. . . .”
7.–Daszak missed the boat bad­ly with regard to SARS: ” . . . . It is com­mon­ly accept­ed that the SARS pan­dem­ic began in 2002, when humans caught a bat virus from civet cats at a wet mar­ket in Guang­dong, Chi­na. But Daszak and his col­lab­o­ra­tors admit they have no evi­dence to explain how the virus leapt from bats to civets to humans. . . .”
8.–” . . . . SARS-CoV was found in civets at the Guang­dong wet mar­ket, but civets aren’t the nat­ur­al reser­voir of this virus. Bats are. Only the civets at the market—and no farm-raised or wild civets—carried the virus. None of the ani­mal traders han­dling the civets at the mar­ket had SARS. . . .”
9.–” . . . . When Daszak and his col­lab­o­ra­tors at the WIV searched the cave in Yun­nan for strains of coro­n­avirus sim­i­lar to human ver­sions, no sin­gle bat actu­al­ly had SARS. Genet­ic pieces of the var­i­ous strains would have to be recom­bined to make up the human ver­sion. Adding to the con­fu­sion, Yun­nan is about 1,000 kilo­me­ters from Guang­dong. . . .”
10.–” . . . . So, how did virus­es from bats in Yun­nan com­bine to become dead­ly to humans, and then trav­el to civets and peo­ple in Guang­dong, with­out caus­ing any ill­ness­es along the way dur­ing this 1,000 kilo­me­ter trip? . . .”
11.–Daszak and the Eco­Health Alliance were deeply involved with a USAID and NIH fund­ed joint WIV/University of North Car­oli­na project we have cov­ered exten­sive­ly in past pro­grams. ” . . . . The two insti­tu­tions also worked as col­lab­o­ra­tors under anoth­er $2.6‑million grant, ‘Risk of Viral Emer­gence from Bats,’ and under Eco­Health Alliance’s largest sin­gle source of fund­ing, a $44.2 mil­lion sub-grant from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis for the PREDICT project (2015–2020). . . .”
12.–” . . . . It’s the $44.2‑million PREDICT grant that Eco­Health Alliance used to fund the gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ment by WIV sci­en­tist Zhengli Shi and the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill’s Ralph Bar­ic. Shi and Bar­ic used genet­ic engi­neer­ing and syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy to cre­ate a ‘new bat SARS-like virus . . . that can jump direct­ly from its bat hosts to humans.’ . . .”
13.–” . . . . The work . . . pub­lished in Nature in 2015 dur­ing the NIH’s mora­to­ri­um on gain-of-func­tion research, was grand­fa­thered in because it was ini­ti­at­ed before the mora­to­ri­um (offi­cial­ly called the U.S. Gov­ern­ment Delib­er­a­tive Process Research Fund­ing Pause on Select­ed Gain-of-Func­tion Research Involv­ing Influen­za, MERS and SARS Virus­es), and because the request by Shi and Bar­ic to con­tin­ue their research dur­ing the mora­to­ri­um was approved by the NIH. . . .”
14.–” . . . . As a con­di­tion of pub­li­ca­tion, Nature, like most sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, requires authors to sub­mit new DNA and RNA sequences to Gen­Bank, the U.S. Nation­al Cen­ter for Biotech­nol­o­gy Infor­ma­tion Data­base. Yet the new SARS-like virus Shi and Bar­ic cre­at­ed wasn’t deposit­ed in Gen­Bank until May 2020. . . .”
15.–” . . . . why is the gov­ern­ment focus­ing on just one of Eco­Health Alliance’s projects, when the orga­ni­za­tion has received $100.9 mil­lion in grants, pri­mar­i­ly from the Depart­ment of Defense, to sam­ple, store and study bat coro­n­avirus­es at labs around the world? Coro­n­avirus­es, both those that have been col­lect­ed from ani­mals and those that have been cre­at­ed through genet­ic engi­neer­ing and syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, at all of these labs should be com­pared with SARS-CoV­‑2. . . . .”
16.–” . . . . Daszak’s col­lab­o­ra­tors work­ing under con­tracts with the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices (HHS) aren’t allowed to con­duct gain-of-func­tion research unless specif­i­cal­ly approved to do so by the Poten­tial Pan­dem­ic Pathogen Care and Over­sight (P3CO) com­mit­tee. This com­mit­tee was set up as a con­di­tion for lift­ing the 2014–2017 mora­to­ri­um on gain-of-func­tion research. The P3CO com­mit­tee oper­ates in secret. Not even a mem­ber­ship list has been released. . . .”
17.–Exemplifying Eco­Health Alliance’s work is a Pen­ta­gon con­tract with Tan­za­nia, research­ing CCHF–Crimean-Congo Hem­or­rhag­ic Fever. ” . . . . Eco­Health Alliance has a $5‑million Pen­ta­gon con­tract, ‘Crimean-Con­go Hem­or­rhag­ic Fever: Reduc­ing an Emerg­ing Health Threat in Tan­za­nia.’  Crimean-Con­go Hem­or­rhag­ic Fever (CCHF) is a tick-borne dis­ease, orig­i­nal­ly only infect­ing ani­mals. . . . There was only ever one case of CCHF in Tan­za­nia, and that was in 1986. . . . Gain-of-func­tion research on CCHF is being con­duct­ed at the U.S. Depart­ment of Agriculture’s Nation­al Bio and Agro-Defense Facil­i­ty (NBAF) . . . . (The Nation­al Bio and Agro Defense Facil­i­ty will take over the mis­sion of the Plum Island Ani­mal Dis­ease Cen­ter and become the lead facil­i­ty for For­eign Ani­mal Dis­ease research.) . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The promi­nent role in the Sanders Insti­tute and AOC’s advi­so­ry team of Jef­frey Sachs, whose HIID team of advis­ers (with gov­ern­ment fund­ing) sent Rus­sia back to the Stone Age, eco­nom­i­cal­ly; the “hand­off” to Jef­frey Sachs and his HIID of Rus­sia and oth­er for­mer Sovi­et Republics by the Gehlen/GOP Nazis man­i­fest­ing through the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion; review of the oper­a­tional polit­i­cal con­tin­u­um stretch­ing from the Third Reich, through the OSS, the CIA and the GOP; review of the roles of Allen Dulles, William Casey, Resorts Inter­na­tion­al and Don­ald Trump in that con­tin­u­um. 


FTR #1156 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 16: An Ounce of Prevention . . . .

In past pro­grams, we have briefly not­ed that mil­i­tary and [osten­si­bly] civil­ian pro­grams offi­cial­ly involved with “epi­dem­ic pre­ven­tion” might con­ceal clan­des­tine bio­log­i­cal war­fare appli­ca­tions designed to cre­ate epi­demics.

This pro­gram fur­ther devel­ops that inquiry

The offi­cial dis­tinc­tion between “offen­sive” and “defen­sive” bio­log­i­cal war­fare research is aca­d­e­m­ic.

In that con­text, one should note that the offi­cial title of Unit 731, the noto­ri­ous Japan­ese bio­log­i­cal war­fare unit was “the Epi­dem­ic Pre­ven­tion and Water Purifi­ca­tion Depart­ment of the Kwan­tung Army.”

Note­wor­thy in that gen­er­al con­text is the obser­va­tion by Jonathan King (pro­fes­sor of mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy at MIT), that Pen­ta­gon research into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing to bio­log­i­cal war­fare could be masked as vac­cine research, which sounds “defen­sive.”

In FTR #1130, we not­ed the role of four-star gen­er­al Gus­tave Per­na in Trump’s “Oper­a­tion Warp Speed,” insti­tut­ed by Gen­er­al Mark Mil­ley, Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Whether the pro­gram serves as cov­er for mil­i­tary research seems a rea­son­able ques­tion to ask, under the cir­cum­stances.

In our last pro­gram, we weighed New York Times colum­nist Charles Blow’s thoughts about a white-suprema­cist minor­i­ty grouped around the GOP. Blow saw those inter­ests work­ing to pre­serve their priv­i­lege in a num­ber of respects.

This pro­gram asks, in effect, if the glob­al equiv­a­lent of Blow’s male­fac­tors might be doing some­thing sim­i­lar with the Covid-19 “op” and relat­ed, over­lap­ping clan­des­tine oper­a­tions. How might the inter­ests we saw in FTR #1128

Select­ed excerpts of a Whit­ney Webb arti­cle pro­vide insight into the pos­si­ble offen­sive nature of pro­grams osten­si­bly aimed at pre­vent­ing epi­demics. Like Unit 731 (see above), “Epi­dem­ic Pre­ven­tion” may well be mask­ing “epi­dem­ic cre­ation.”

In con­nec­tion with that pos­si­bil­i­ty, the DARPA focus on gene-dri­ving tech­nol­o­gy is fright­en­ing and fraught with dev­as­tat­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Whether or not gene-dri­ving impacts DARPA assist­ed Covid-19 vac­cine devel­op­ment by Mod­er­na and Inovio, the Pen­ta­gon under­writ­ing of these firms is of con­cern.

Some inter­est­ing points raised by Dr. Daniel R. Lucey are par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant in light of the infor­ma­tion we have devel­oped in the past about gain of func­tion exper­i­ments.

Lucey’s points of inquiry–although not dis­cussed in this article–are par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant when con­sid­ered in con­junc­tion with the joint U.S./Chinese pro­gram to inves­ti­gate bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es, a pro­gram whose Amer­i­can fund­ing appa­ra­tus involved USAID, a fre­quent front for CIA oper­a­tions.

The gain of func­tion exper­i­ments we dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 1116, 1117 and 1121 involv­ing adapt­ing the H5N1 avian flu virus to fer­rets is worth con­tem­plat­ing in the con­text of infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that the SARS Cov‑2 virus is par­tic­u­lar­ly infec­tive for fer­rets.

Was part of the mod­i­fied H5N1 flu virus adapt­ed to SARS Cov‑2?

A key fac­tor spurring our sus­pi­cion con­cern­ing genet­ic-engi­neer­ing of one or more vari­ant of the Covid-19 virus con­cerns a 2015 Gain-of-Func­tion exper­i­ment. This should answer Dr. Lucey’s query.

“. . . . Ralph Bar­ic, an infec­tious-dis­ease researcher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill, last week (Novem­ber 9) pub­lished a study on his team’s efforts to engi­neer a virus with the sur­face pro­tein of the SHC014 coro­n­avirus, found in horse­shoe bats in Chi­na, and the back­bone of one that caus­es human-like severe acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human air­way cells and caused dis­ease in mice. . . . The results demon­strate the abil­i­ty of the SHC014 sur­face pro­tein to bind and infect human cells, val­i­dat­ing con­cerns that this virus—or oth­er coro­n­avirus­es found in bat species—may be capa­ble of mak­ing the leap to peo­ple with­out first evolv­ing in an inter­me­di­ate host, Nature report­ed . . . .”

Crit­ics have flagged Gain-Of-Func­tion research as dan­ger­ous. Pro­po­nents are not dis­suad­ed, includ­ing Peter Daszak. “. . . . But Bar­ic and oth­ers argued the study’s impor­tance. ‘[The results] move this virus from a can­di­date emerg­ing pathogen to a clear and present dan­ger,’ Peter Daszak, pres­i­dent of the Eco­Health Alliance, which sam­ples virus­es from ani­mals and peo­ple in emerg­ing-dis­eases hotspots across the globe, told Nature. . . .”

Of more than pass­ing inter­est is the dis­clo­sure that the project on bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es con­duct­ed in the Wuhan lab­o­ra­to­ry was a joint U.S./Chinese project, and that Ralph Bar­ic was a key Amer­i­can part­ner in the project.

This is the under­tak­ing about which we have report­ed and dis­cussed exten­sive­ly in the past! ” . . . . One of Dr Shi’s co-authors on that paper, Pro­fes­sor Ralph Bar­ic from North Car­oli­na Uni­ver­si­ty, said in an inter­view with ‘Sci­ence Dai­ly’ at the time: ‘This virus is high­ly path­o­gen­ic and treat­ments devel­oped against the orig­i­nal SARS virus in 2002 and the ZMapp drugs used to fight ebo­la fail to neu­tralise and con­trol this par­tic­u­lar virus.’ . . . .”

We note that the WIV project co-fund­ed by USAID involved genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es.

” . . . . Now Dr Richard Ebright, an infec­tious dis­ease expert at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty (USA), has alert­ed the pub­lic to evi­dence that WIV and US-based researchers were genet­i­cal­ly engi­neer­ing bat virus­es to inves­ti­gate their abil­i­ty to infect humans, using com­mon­ly used meth­ods that leave no sign or sig­na­ture of human manip­u­la­tion. Ebright flagged up a sci­en­tif­ic paper pub­lished in 2017 by WIV sci­en­tists, includ­ing Shi Zhengli, the virol­o­gist lead­ing the research into bat coro­n­avirus­es, work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Peter Daszak of the US-based Eco­Health Alliance. Fund­ing was shared between Chi­nese and US insti­tu­tions, the lat­ter includ­ing the US Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health and USAID. The researchers report hav­ing con­duct­ed virus infec­tiv­i­ty exper­i­ments where genet­ic mate­r­i­al is com­bined from dif­fer­ent vari­eties of SARS-relat­ed coro­n­avirus­es to form nov­el ‘chimeric’ ver­sions. . . .”

In May, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion ter­mi­nat­ed the fund­ing for the project. A key point of analy­sis was set forth by Dr. Chris­tine John­son: ” . . . . Virus sam­ples in labs are almost nev­er still infec­tious, after being frozen in nitro­gen dur­ing the col­lec­tion process and then inac­ti­vat­ed in the lab to pre­serve their genet­ic sequence. . . .


FTR #1155 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse, Now Part 15: Covid-19 Updates, Part 4

Con­tin­u­ing cov­er­age of the Covid-19 pandemic–almost cer­tain­ly a bio­log­i­cal war­fare project craft­ed by the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty establishment–the broad­cast cen­ters on the dual func­tion of “epi­dem­ic pre­ven­tion” and “epi­dem­ic cau­sa­tion” and sup­ple­ment­ing a Charles Blow op-ed piece in “The New York Times.”

Build­ing on the con­cept (dis­cussed many times in the past) that the dif­fer­ence between “offen­sive” and “defen­sive” bio­log­i­cal war­fare research is aca­d­e­m­ic, we note that cre­den­tialed observers have cit­ed Pen­ta­gon “vac­cine” research as a cov­er for offen­sive BW research. In addi­tion, we observe that numer­ous, over­lap­ping pro­grams osten­si­bly aimed at “pre­vent­ing” epi­demics may well mask efforts at gen­er­at­ing them.

One of the most noto­ri­ous and advanced bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­grams in his­to­ry was Japan’s Unit 731, meld­ed into the U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram at the end of World War II. The pro­gram was offi­cial­ly labeled: “the Epi­dem­ic Pre­ven­tion and Water Purifi­ca­tion Depart­ment of the Kwan­tung Army.”

Revis­it­ing the con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant Whit­ney Webb arti­cle about Pen­ta­gon research into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es, we note:

1.–The DARPA research is osten­si­bly aimed at pre­vent­ing pan­demics but–very possibly–masking prepa­ra­tions for offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare projects.
2.–The Pen­ta­gon is research­ing  “gene-driving”–a biotech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment that can per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ic make­up of entire pop­u­la­tion groups and lead to the extinc­tion of oth­er groups.
3.–The Pen­ta­gon research is heav­i­ly net­worked with com­pa­nies using DNA and mRNA vac­cines for Covid-19.

The fun­da­men­tal point of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion in this pro­gram, and the next, con­cerns the use of “Epi­dem­ic Pre­ven­tion” to mask exter­mi­na­tion­ist offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­grams to entrench, expand or intro­duce a white-suprema­cist/­First World Dom­i­na­tion dynam­ic in the U.S. and abroad.

Is this the lega­cy of Unit 731, nom­i­nal­ly an “Epi­dem­ic Pre­ven­tion” pro­gram?!

A col­umn by Charles Blow cor­rect­ly notes that the right-wing is work­ing to “lock-in” pow­er. Blow’s obser­va­tion is far more impor­tant when the con­text is expand­ed to include the full-court press against Chi­na and the effects of Covid-19 in the U.S.

Not a super­pow­er at this point in time, Chi­na has made rapid, remark­able progress:

1.–In 1981, 88% of the Chi­nese pop­u­la­tion lived in pover­ty. That was down to 0.7% in 2015.
2.–The Chi­nese mid­dle class was 4% of their pop­u­la­tion in 2002. By 2018, that was up to 31% of their pop­u­la­tion.
3.–In 2000, just 2% of the Chi­nese pop­u­la­tion had access to the inter­net. That was up to 29% by 2009.

With the stun­ning progress made by Chi­na, in com­bi­na­tion with their enor­mous pop­u­la­tion, the nation will be a major pow­er in the future.

Because they are not white and because their sys­tem of state cap­i­tal­ism is at log­ger­heads with the neo-lib­er­al dog­ma to which the West is enthrall, that coun­try will be brought to heel. The anti-Chi­na push by the West is fun­da­men­tal­ly white suprema­cist in nature.

Pur­suant to dis­cus­sion of the Charles Blow col­umn, Mr. Emory reads the head­lines and bylines from a num­ber of New York Times arti­cles under­scor­ing how the pan­dem­ic is work­ing against two trends that Blow cites as inim­i­cal to con­tin­ued GOP con­trol.

The pan­dem­ic is bad­ly dam­ag­ing the for­tunes of urban cen­ters and edu­ca­tion, both at the pub­lic school and uni­ver­si­ty lev­els. In that regard, the pan­dem­ic is accom­plish­ing what the Charles Blow col­umn enun­ci­ates.

Some inter­est­ing points raised by Dr. Daniel R. Lucey are par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant in light of the infor­ma­tion we have devel­oped in the past about gain of func­tion exper­i­ments.

Lucey’s points of inquiry–although not dis­cussed in this article–are par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant when con­sid­ered in con­junc­tion with the joint U.S./Chinese pro­gram to inves­ti­gate bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es, a pro­gram whose Amer­i­can fund­ing appa­ra­tus involved USAID, a fre­quent front for CIA oper­a­tions.

The gain of func­tion exper­i­ments we dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 1116, 1117 and 1121 involv­ing adapt­ing the H5N1 avian flu virus to fer­rets is worth con­tem­plat­ing in the con­text of infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that the SARS Cov‑2 virus is par­tic­u­lar­ly infec­tive for fer­rets.

Was part of the mod­i­fied H5N1 flu virus adapt­ed to SARS Cov‑2?

Anoth­er sub­ject worth con­tem­plat­ing con­cerns Gilead Sci­ences, Tam­i­flu and the prog­nos­ti­ca­tions con­cern­ing a “twindem­ic” this fall, with influen­za and Covid-19 com­bin­ing to over­whelm the health sys­tem.

Might we see an enhanced H5N1 avian influen­za this fall, pro­vid­ing enor­mous prof­its to Gilead Sci­ences, which, as we saw in FTR #1138, made an enor­mous amount of mon­ey (for itself and for­mer Chair­man of the Board Don­ald Rums­feld) devel­op­ing Tam­i­flu to negate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an H5N1 pan­dem­ic?

A key fac­tor spurring our sus­pi­cion con­cern­ing genet­ic-engi­neer­ing of one or more vari­ant of the Covid-19 virus con­cerns a 2015 Gain-of-Func­tion exper­i­ment per­formed by Ralph Bar­ic, employed in a joint U.S./Chinese exper­i­ment part­ly financed by USAID (a front for CIA activ­i­ty in the past) and NIH (used by both CIA and the Pen­ta­gon in the past). In that project, Bar­ic: ” . . . . pub­lished a study on his team’s efforts to engi­neer a virus with the sur­face pro­tein of the SHC014 coro­n­avirus, found in horse­shoe bats in Chi­na, and the back­bone of one that caus­es human-like severe acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human air­way cells and caused dis­ease in mice. . . . The results demon­strate the abil­i­ty of the SHC014 sur­face pro­tein to bind and infect human cells, val­i­dat­ing con­cerns that this virus—or oth­er coro­n­avirus­es found in bat species—may be capa­ble of mak­ing the leap to peo­ple with­out first evolv­ing in an inter­me­di­ate host . . .” 

Of more than pass­ing inter­est is the dis­clo­sure that the project on bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es con­duct­ed in the Wuhan lab­o­ra­to­ry was a joint U.S./Chinese project, and that Ralph Bar­ic was a key Amer­i­can part­ner in the project.

This is the under­tak­ing about which we have report­ed and dis­cussed exten­sive­ly in the past! ” . . . . One of Dr Shi’s co-authors on that paper, Pro­fes­sor Ralph Bar­ic from North Car­oli­na Uni­ver­si­ty, said in an inter­view with ‘Sci­ence Dai­ly’ at the time: ‘This virus is high­ly path­o­gen­ic and treat­ments devel­oped against the orig­i­nal SARS virus in 2002 and the ZMapp drugs used to fight ebo­la fail to neu­tralise and con­trol this par­tic­u­lar virus.’ . . . .”


Reflections on “Epidemic Prevention” and “Vaccine Development”

In past pro­grams, we have briefly not­ed that mil­i­tary and [osten­si­bly] civil­ian pro­grams offi­cial­ly involved with “epi­dem­ic pre­ven­tion” might con­ceal clan­des­tine bio­log­i­cal war­fare appli­ca­tions designed to cre­ate epi­demics. The offi­cial dis­tinc­tion between “offen­sive” and “defen­sive” bio­log­i­cal war­fare research is aca­d­e­m­ic. Note­wor­thy in that gen­er­al con­text is the obser­va­tion by Jonathan King (pro­fes­sor of mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy at MIT), that Pen­ta­gon research into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing to bio­log­i­cal war­fare could be masked as vac­cine research, which sounds “defen­sive.” In FTR #1130, we not­ed the role of four-star gen­er­al Gus­tave Per­na in Trump’s “Oper­a­tion Warp Speed,” insti­tut­ed by Gen­er­al Mark Mil­ley, Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Whether the pro­gram serves as cov­er for mil­i­tary research seems a rea­son­able ques­tion to ask, under the cir­cum­stances. One should note that the offi­cial title of Unit 731, the noto­ri­ous Japan­ese bio­log­i­cal war­fare unit was “the Epi­dem­ic Pre­ven­tion and Water Purifi­ca­tion Depart­ment of the Kwan­tung Army.”


FTR #1139 The Anthrax Attacks, the Invasion of Iraq and Expansion of Biological Warfare Capabilities

As the title indi­cates, this pro­gram presents polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal foun­da­tion for the expo­nen­tial expan­sion of Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal war­fare infra­struc­ture fol­low­ing the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Impor­tant back­ground infor­ma­tion comes from the Whit­ney Webb arti­cle about DARPA spend­ing on bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es.

The Broad­cast­ing Board of Governors–a CIA “derivative”–and The Wash­ing­ton Times (owned by the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church) helped devel­op dis­in­for­ma­tion about SARS CoV‑2 com­ing from a Chi­nese Bio­log­i­cal War­fare lab. Both were instru­men­tal in hyp­ing the anthrax attacks as authored by Sad­dam Hus­sein, as well. The Wash­ing­ton Times also pre­sent­ed infor­ma­tion float­ed by Steven Hat­fill that fore­shad­owed sub­se­quent charges that Sad­dam Hus­sein was devel­op­ing bioweapons and was behind the 2001 anthrax attacks.

In addi­tion, the Project For a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry was advanc­ing an agen­da in which genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered bio­log­i­cal war­fare tech­nol­o­gy as essen­tial to con­tin­ued Amer­i­can glob­al dom­i­nance.

As will be seen below, a key func­tionary in the PNAC milieu was for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld, for­mer chair­man of the board of Gilead Sci­ences.

In FTR #‘s 1135, 1136 and 1137, we relied heav­i­ly on the Kris New­by’s Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons. In that book, Ms. New­by net­worked with a group of expe­ri­enced, Cold War bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­fes­sion­als whom she termed “the Brain Trust.” They were con­vinced that Fort Det­rick sci­en­tist Bruce Ivins–the “lone nut” who con­ve­nient­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide and was fin­gered as the sole per­pe­tra­tor of the 2001 anthrax attacks–was framed. ” . . . . Among oth­er sub­jects, they dis­cussed  . . . tech­ni­cal details on why they believed that their col­league Bruce Ivins had been framed as the anthrax mail­er . . . .”

Much of the pro­gram cen­ters on the 2001 attacks and the sus­pi­cion that focused on Steven Hat­fill as a pos­si­ble per­pe­tra­tor of them. Although exon­er­at­ed in the attacks, Hat­fill was the focal point of con­sid­er­able sus­pi­cion in con­nec­tion with the event. Our sus­pi­cion is that he is an oper­a­tive of one or anoth­er intel­li­gence agency, CIA being the most prob­a­ble.

We sus­pect that the anthrax attacks were a provo­ca­tion aimed at jus­ti­fy­ing the inva­sion of Iraq and spurring devel­op­ment of the U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare capa­bil­i­ty.

Of par­tic­u­lar note is the appar­ent “oper­a­tional Teflon” worn by Hat­fill. Although cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence point­ed in his direc­tion, he appeared to be alto­geth­er “off lim­its” to inves­tiga­tive ele­ments of Alpha­bet Soup. Don Fos­ter not­ed the unusu­al treat­ment accord­ed to Hat­fill by the pow­ers that be.

Of sig­nif­i­cance, as well, are the numer­ous exam­ples of fore­shad­ow­ing of the foren­sic cir­cum­stances of the anthrax attacks, as well as oth­er “false alarm” inci­dents that occurred before and after the fatal attacks. It requires lit­tle to see state­ments and arti­cles by nota­bles such as Bill Patrick and the seem­ing­ly ubiq­ui­tous Steven Hat­fill as lay­ing a foun­da­tion of cred­i­bil­i­ty for sub­se­quent events.

Note that the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health have also part­nered with CIA and the Pen­ta­gon, as under­scored by an arti­cle about a BSL‑4 lab at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty.

1.–As the arti­cle notes, as of 2007, the U.S. had “more than a dozen” BSL4 labs–China com­mis­sioned its first as of 2017. a ten­fold increase in fund­ing for BSL4 labs occurred because of the anthrax attacks of 2001. Those attacks might be seen as some­thing of a provo­ca­tion, spurring a dra­mat­ic increase in “dual use” biowar­fare research, under the cov­er of “legit­i­mate” medical/scientific research. In FTR #1128, we hypoth­e­sized about the milieu of Steven Hat­fill and apartheid-linked inter­ests as pos­si­ble authors of a vec­tor­ing of New York City with Sars COV2: ” . . . . Before the anthrax mail­ings of 2001, the Unit­ed States had just two BSL4 labs—both with­in the razor-wire con­fines of gov­ern­ment-owned cam­pus­es. Now, thanks to a ten­fold increase in funding—from $200 mil­lion in 2001 to $2 bil­lion in 2006—more than a dozen such facil­i­ties can be found at uni­ver­si­ties and pri­vate com­pa­nies across the coun­try. . . .”
2.–The Boston Uni­ver­si­ty lab exem­pli­fies the Pen­ta­gon and CIA pres­ence in BSL‑4 facil­i­ty “dual use”: ” . . . . But some sci­en­tists say that argu­ment obscures the true pur­pose of the cur­rent biode­fense boom: to study poten­tial bio­log­i­cal weapons. ‘The uni­ver­si­ty por­trays it as an emerg­ing infec­tious dis­ease lab,’ says David Ozonoff, a Boston Uni­ver­si­ty epi­demi­ol­o­gist whose office is right across the street from the new BSL4 facil­i­ty. ‘But they are talk­ing about study­ing things like small pox and inhala­tion anthrax, which pose no pub­lic health threat oth­er than as bioweapons.’ . . . The orig­i­nal NIH man­date for the lab indi­cat­ed that many groups—including the CIA and Depart­ment of Defense—would be allowed to use the lab for their own research, the nature of which BU might have lit­tle con­trol over. . . .”

As not­ed in past pro­grams, Gilead Sci­ences is very well-con­nect­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly, with for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld (among oth­er polit­i­cal lumi­nar­ies) serv­ing on its board of direc­tors. Rums­feld was chair­man of the board from 1997 until he left in 2001 to become George W. Bush’s Sec­re­tary of Defense.

Rums­feld was Sec­re­tary of Defense dur­ing the peri­od in which the 2001 anthrax attacks occurred.

Dur­ing the post‑9/11 peri­od of explod­ing gov­ern­ment invest­ments in biode­fense pro­grams, Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld was still hold­ing onto mas­sive amounts of Gilead stock, which was increas­ing in val­ue dra­mat­i­cal­ly. What kind of rela­tion­ship did Gilead devel­op with the US biode­fense nation­al secu­ri­ty state dur­ing this peri­od? That seems like a pret­ty impor­tant ques­tion at this point in time.

The U.S. gov­ern­ment was among the cus­tomers whose pur­chas­es drove up the Gilead earn­ings and stock price: ” . . . . What’s more, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is emerg­ing as one of the world’s biggest cus­tomers for Tam­i­flu. In July, the Pen­ta­gon ordered $58 mil­lion worth of the treat­ment for U.S. troops around the world, and Con­gress is con­sid­er­ing a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar pur­chase. . . .”

Sev­er­al years into his tenure at the Pen­ta­gon, Rums­feld made a killing on the sale of Gilead Sci­ences’ stock, which rose expo­nen­tial­ly in val­ue fol­low­ing its devel­op­ment of Tam­i­flu as a treat­ment for H5N1 avian flu.” . . . . The firm made a loss in 2003, the year before con­cern about bird flu start­ed. Then rev­enues from Tam­i­flu almost quadru­pled, to $44.6m, help­ing put the com­pa­ny well into the black. Sales almost quadru­pled again, to $161.6m last year. Dur­ing this time the share price tre­bled. Mr Rums­feld sold some of his Gilead shares in 2004 reap­ing – accord­ing to the finan­cial dis­clo­sure report he is required to make each year – cap­i­tal gains of more than $5m. The report showed that he still had up to $25m-worth of shares at the end of 2004, and at least one ana­lyst believes his stake has grown well beyond that fig­ure, as the share price has soared. . . .”

Don­ald Rums­feld was a sig­na­to­ry to the 1998 let­ter to Pres­i­dent Clin­ton by the Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry. That let­ter advo­cat­ed a hard­er line against Iraq. ” . . . . Rums­feld has strong ties to the Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty, as well as to the Atlantic Insti­tute, and is a mem­ber of the Bilder­berg group. He is a finan­cial sup­port­er for the Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy. Rums­feld was one of the sign­ers of the Jan­u­ary 26, 1998, Project for the New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry (PNAC) let­ter sent to Pres­i­dent William Jef­fer­son Clin­ton. . . .”

DARPA and the Pen­ta­gon have into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing in order to cre­ate eth­no-spe­cif­ic bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons, as dis­cussed by the Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry.

In past pro­grams and posts, we have not­ed that DARPA was research­ing  bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es.  One can but won­der to what extent the PNAC doc­trine helped spawn the DARPA research into coro­n­avirus­es and, pos­si­bly, the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.


FTR #1138 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 10: Bad Medicine

Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion about drug treat­ments for, and vac­cines to pre­vent, Covid-19, this pro­gram sets forth infor­ma­tion about the ongo­ing pro­fes­sion­al mas­sag­ing of Gilead Sci­ences’ anti-viral remde­sivir. Only mod­est­ly suc­cess­ful against SARS Cov‑2 (the virus that caus­es Covid-19), remde­sivir has been pro­pelled to the fore­front of treat­ment reg­i­mens for the pan­dem­ic.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est are the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the CDC’s clo­sure of the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases. The USAMRIID–located at Ft. Detrick–had host­ed Gilead Sci­ences’ ani­mal tri­als of remde­sivir. Remde­sivir was devel­oped to com­bat Ebo­la, and was a fail­ure in its ini­tial pro­fes­sion­al iter­a­tion.

In March of 2019, rhe­sus macaques were infect­ed with Ebo­la at the USAMRIID as part of a project to allow remde­sivir to be mar­ket­ed as an Ebo­la treat­ment with­out meet­ing the pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards of human test­ing. ” . . . This agree­ment was made pos­si­ble through a 2018 Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Study (NHS) of Ebo­la virus con­duct­ed by USAMRIID in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with Gilead Sci­ences, Inc., the spon­sor of remde­sivir devel­op­ment . . .”

Many of the safe­ty vio­la­tions cit­ed by the CDC in its cri­tique of USAMRIID safe­ty and secu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures con­cerned “non-human pri­mates” infect­ed with one or more “select agents” that were not named. The term “select agent” refers to a pathogen being used in lab­o­ra­to­ry pro­ce­dures. Whether the “select agent” was Ebo­la, and whether the safe­ty laps­es were in con­nec­tion with the remdesivir/rhesus mon­key tri­als was not dis­closed.

” . . . . Sev­er­al of the lab­o­ra­to­ry vio­la­tions the CDC not­ed in 2019 con­cerned ‘non-human pri­mates’ infect­ed with a ‘select agent’, the iden­ti­ty of which is unknown — it was redact­ed in all received doc­u­ments, because dis­clos­ing the iden­ti­ty and loca­tion of the agent would endan­ger pub­lic health or safe­ty, the agency says. In addi­tion to Ebo­la, the lab works with oth­er dead­ly agents like anthrax and small­pox. . . ..”

If, for the sake of argu­ment, SARS-CoV­‑2 research was indeed tak­ing plac­ing there was a very real risk of it escap­ing.

Remde­sivir failed in its human tri­als as a treat­ment for Ebo­la: ” . . . . The antivi­ral drug remde­sivir, made by Gilead, under­per­formed ZMapp. . . .  Remde­sivir and ZMapp have been dropped from the tri­al. . . .”

Fol­low­ing that dis­mal per­for­mance against Ebo­la, Gilead Sci­ences recast remde­sivir as a broad spec­trum antivi­ral, a mar­ket­ing approach that has led to the drug being autho­rized to treat Covid-19.

In that pro­fes­sion­al rein­car­na­tion, it demon­strat­ed alto­geth­er mod­est suc­cess in Covid-19 tri­als that were pro­fes­sion­al­ly crit­i­cized and which were bad­ly skewed from a method­olog­i­cal stand­point. 

After a tight­en­ing of pro­fes­sion­al method­olog­i­cal stan­dards at the USAMRIID, it was dis­closed that most of the insti­tu­tion’s oper­a­tives are pri­vate con­trac­tors! From the stand­point of insti­tu­tion­al secu­ri­ty, the broad use of pri­vate con­trac­tors ren­ders USAMRIID sub­ject to pen­e­tra­tion by any num­ber of poten­tial mis­cre­ants. ” . . . . ‘A major­i­ty of our lab­o­ra­to­ry work­ers are contractors–putting teeth in the con­tracts to ensure they’re fol­low­ing the shalls, wills and musts are things we’ve done in the inter­im,’ said [Brigadier Gen­er­al Mike] Tal­ley. . . .”

As not­ed in past pro­grams, Gilead Sci­ences is very well-con­nect­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly, with for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld (among oth­er polit­i­cal lumi­nar­ies) serv­ing on its board of direc­tors. Rums­feld was chair­man of the board from 1997 until he left in 2001 to become George W. Bush’s Sec­re­tary of Defense. The fir­m’s stock has been heav­i­ly invest­ed in by hedge funds, includ­ing Robert Mer­cer’s Renais­sance Tech­nolo­gies. Gilead Sci­ences’ stock has been a major dri­ver of the stock mar­ket’s per­for­mance.

Sev­er­al years into his tenure at the Pen­ta­gon, Rums­feld made a killing on the sale of Gilead Sci­ences’ stock, which rose expo­nen­tial­ly in val­ue fol­low­ing its devel­op­ment of Tam­i­flu as a treat­ment for H5N1 avian flu. ” . . . . The firm made a loss in 2003, the year before con­cern about bird flu start­ed. Then rev­enues from Tam­i­flu almost quadru­pled, to $44.6m, help­ing put the com­pa­ny well into the black. Sales almost quadru­pled again, to $161.6m last year. Dur­ing this time the share price tre­bled. Mr Rums­feld sold some of his Gilead shares in 2004 reap­ing – accord­ing to the finan­cial dis­clo­sure report he is required to make each year – cap­i­tal gains of more than $5m. The report showed that he still had up to $25m-worth of shares at the end of 2004, and at least one ana­lyst believes his stake has grown well beyond that fig­ure, as the share price has soared. . . .”

The U.S. gov­ern­ment was among the cus­tomers whose pur­chas­es drove up the Gilead earn­ings and stock price: ” . . . . What’s more, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is emerg­ing as one of the world’s biggest cus­tomers for Tam­i­flu. In July, the Pen­ta­gon ordered $58 mil­lion worth of the treat­ment for U.S. troops around the world, and Con­gress is con­sid­er­ing a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar pur­chase. . . .”

(Recall that the H5N1 virus is one of the gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ments that was sus­pend­ed in 2014 and then green­light­ed by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion in 2017. Those exper­i­ments engi­neered the virus to infect fer­rets, a maneu­ver that made the virus com­mu­ni­ca­ble by upper res­pi­ra­to­ry activ­i­ty. One can but won­der if those G‑O-F exper­i­ments were con­nect­ed to the recast­ing of remde­sivir as a broad spec­trum antivi­ral.)

Dur­ing the post‑9/11 peri­od of explod­ing gov­ern­ment invest­ments in biode­fense pro­grams, Rums­feld was still hold­ing onto mas­sive amounts of Gilead­’s stock, which was rapid­ly increas­ing in val­ue. What kind of rela­tion­ship did Gilead devel­op with the US biode­fense nation­al secu­ri­ty state dur­ing this peri­od? That seems like an  impor­tant ques­tion at this point in time. 

In FTR #1136, we not­ed that the med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic inter­ests in charge of Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment and diag­no­sis were not only finan­cial ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the ther­a­peu­tic sta­tus quo, but were also tasked with dis­cred­it­ing Lyme patients and physi­cians who chal­lenged that sta­tus quo. In light of the evi­dence that Lyme Dis­ease was the out­growth of bio­log­i­cal war­fare research, the pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship between gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions involved with BW research and biotech­nol­o­gy and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal firms prof­it­ing from the treat­ment of dis­eases those insti­tu­tions devel­op and deploy is worth con­tem­plat­ing! 

Pre­vi­ous broad­casts have doc­u­ment­ed the skewed, pref­er­en­tial treat­ment of remde­sivir by pow­er­ful polit­i­cal and finan­cial play­ers with sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment in the suc­cess of remde­sivir.

The pro­gram con­cludes with three updates of pre­vi­ous lines of inquiry”

1.–Past pro­grams have high­light­ed pos­si­ble vec­tors into Wuhan for the SARS CoV‑2. We note that there was a work­shop held at the Wuhan lab in ear­ly Novem­ber of 2019, fea­tur­ing sci­en­tists and bio-lab pro­fes­sion­als from around the world. This con­fer­ence may have been among the oppor­tu­ni­ties to spread the virus, and/or a co-vec­tor and/or cross-vec­tor. ” . . . . The work­shop is designed for lab­o­ra­to­ry man­agers and direc­tors, research and lab­o­ra­to­ry staffs main­ly from devel­op­ing coun­tries who plan to car­ry out infec­tious dis­ease research in biosafe­ty facil­i­ties. The work­shop will address key aspects of biosafe­ty and pro­vide prac­ti­cal train­ing in high lev­el biosafe­ty lab­o­ra­to­ries (BSL). This work­shop will invite a group of well-known schol­ars and experts from relat­ed fields at home and abroad to pro­vide the the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal cours­es. . . .”
2.–As not­ed in past pro­grams the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy was engaged in bat-borne coro­n­avirus research, which includ­ed the genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tion of such organ­isms. That research was a joint U.S./Chinese under­tak­ing, with the U.S. fund­ing com­ing from insti­tu­tions which have front­ed for Amer­i­can intel­li­gence and the Pen­ta­gon. That joint U.S./Chinese under­tak­ing was ter­mi­nat­ed by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion in May! In addi­tion: ” . . . . Many of the sci­en­tists at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy have been trained by the U.S. government’s PREDICT project. . . . USAID’s PREDICT project . . . will end this Sep­tem­ber after 10 years and two six-month exten­sions as USAID launch­es a new project that applies the data PREDICT col­lect­ed. . . .”
3.–Other broad­casts have explored the Wuhan World Mil­i­tary Games–a mil­i­tary sports competition–as a pos­si­ble vec­tor­ing vehi­cle. We update that path of inquiry with dis­cus­sion of the U.S. del­e­ga­tion as a pos­si­ble vec­tor­ing agent for the spread of the dis­ease in the U.S. ” . . . . Con­trary to the Pentagon’s insis­tence, how­ev­er, an inves­ti­ga­tion of COVID-19 cas­es in the mil­i­tary from offi­cial and pub­lic source mate­ri­als shows that a strong cor­re­la­tion exists in COVID-19 cas­es report­ed at U.S. mil­i­tary facil­i­ties that are home bases of mem­bers of the U.S. team that went to Wuhan. Before March 31, when the Pen­ta­gon restrict­ed the release of infor­ma­tion about COVID-19 cas­es at instal­la­tions for secu­ri­ty rea­sons, infec­tions occurred at a min­i­mum of 63 mil­i­tary facil­i­ties where team mem­bers returned after the Wuhan games. Addi­tion­al­ly, the U.S. team used char­tered flights to and from the games via Seat­tle-Taco­ma Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. Wash­ing­ton was one of the ear­li­est states to show a spike in COVID-19. . . .” We also note that the U.S. del­e­ga­tion con­tained: ” . . . . nine pub­lic-affairs offi­cers . . . and two State Depart­ment per­son­nel, accord­ing to DOD doc­u­ments. . . .” “Pub­lic affairs offi­cer” is a com­mon cov­er for CIA per­son­nel.


FTR #1137 Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare, Part 3

Fur­ther devel­op­ing the links between bio­log­i­cal war­fare research and the Lyme Dis­ease estab­lish­ment, we review infor­ma­tion from FTR #585.

At every turn, Lyme dis­ease research is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. Divid­ed into the “Steere” and “ILADS” camps, the Lyme dis­ease research com­mu­ni­ty is split between the view that the dis­ease is “hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure” and the dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed view that the dis­ease is very seri­ous and pro­duces long-term neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der. The Steere camp dimin­ish­es the sig­nif­i­cance of the dis­ease and is close­ly iden­ti­fied with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. At the epi­cen­ter of Lyme dis­ease research (and the Steere camp) are mem­bers of the Epi­dem­ic Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, or EIS. EIS per­son­nel are to be found at every bend in the road of Lyme dis­ease research.

The Bor­re­lia genus has long been researched as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare vec­tor. Note that Unit 731 per­son­nel and their files were put to work for the Unit­ed States after World War II, much like the Project Paper­clip sci­en­tists from Ger­many. ” . . . bor­re­lia were known for their abil­i­ty to adopt dif­fer­ent forms under con­di­tions of stress (such as expo­sure to antibi­otics). Shed­ding their out­er wall, (which is the tar­get of peni­cillin and relat­ed drugs), they could ward off attack and con­tin­ue to exist in the body.  . .”

Much of the pro­gram is devot­ed to excerpt­ing and analy­sis of a 2013 post­ing by Ele­na Cook. This dis­cus­sion of “Spiro­chete War­fare,” in turn, makes lib­er­al use of mate­r­i­al from a 1944 text about Japan’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. This book “Japan’s Secret Weapon,” con­tains a great deal of infor­ma­tion about Japan­ese pio­neer­ing of the use of spiro­chetes as bio­log­i­cal war­fare organ­isms.

This mate­r­i­al is to be con­sid­ered in the his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal con­text of the incor­po­ra­tion of the key per­son­nel and files of the noto­ri­ous Japan­ese Unit 731 bio­log­i­cal war­fare divi­sion into the U.S. BW pro­gram after World War II.

Appar­ent­ly decades ahead of their Allied coun­ter­parts, Japan­ese use of spiro­chetes encom­passed a num­ber of impor­tant points to con­sid­er.

1.–The Japan­ese under­stood that “cell-wall defi­cient spiro­chetes, ” “gran­ule” and “L‑forms” had tremen­dous sig­nif­i­cance for bio­log­i­cal war­fare. ” . . . This WW2-era book helps to con­firm what some inves­ti­gat­ing the his­to­ry of Lyme dis­ease have long sus­pect­ed; that the offi­cial denial of the dev­as­tat­ing path­o­gen­ic nature of the gran­ule and oth­er ‘L‑forms’(1) of Lyme-caus­ing Bor­re­lia, is relat­ed to their bio­log­i­cal war­fare sig­nif­i­cance. . .”
2.–” . . . To put it blunt­ly, New­man’s book pro­vides cogent cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that many Cell-wall defi­cient forms of Bor­re­lia are in fact weaponized spiro­chetes, nur­tured, cul­tured and opti­mized for aerosol deliv­ery. . .” 
3.–According to author Bar­clay New­man, a com­bined Japan­ese and Nazi bio­log­i­cal war­fare offen­sive against Hawaii using the spiro­chetal dis­ease lep­tospiro­sis against Hawaii two or three years before the attack on Pearl Har­bor: ” . . . . ‘Nazi and Japan­ese sci­en­tists coop­er­at­ed in war­fare against or with spiro­chetes — in Hawaii.’ (orig­i­nal author’s ital­ics). What he is refer­ring to is an excep­tion­al­ly vir­u­lent out­break of the spiro­chetal dis­ease lep­tospiro­sis, also known as Weil’s dis­ease, and known at the time in Ger­many as ‘slime fever’. With offi­cial reports of 44% mor­tal­i­ty from the out­break, New­man states: Con­sult the author­i­ties, and you will find out that, very def­i­nite­ly, so high a mor­tal­i­ty is attained only by Japan­ese strains of spiro­chetes of slime fever. . . .”
4.–According to New­man, the Japan­ese had con­clud­ed that spiro­chetes, although very close to bac­te­ria in form, were not actu­al­ly bac­te­ria and there­fore: ” . . . . a spiro­chete can also break itself into many tiny gran­ules, each as small as the invis­i­ble mol­e­cule of a virus, and each capa­ble of recre­at­ing a new spiro­chete. . . .”
5.–Again, accord­ing to New­man: ” . . . The Japan­ese have report­ed that you can increase the vir­u­lence, or killing pow­er, of these spi­rals by grow­ing them in flesh and blood, of guinea pig or man. . .” This is inter­est­ing to con­sid­er in light of the evi­dence of Lyme Dis­ease as the prod­uct of bio­log­i­cal war­fare. Might some of the “tests” have had the goal of “grow­ing” such organ­isms in humans? ” . . . The resis­tance of many spiro­chetes, includ­ing bor­re­lia, to cul­ture in vit­ro remains a prob­lem for lab sci­en­tists even today. . .”
6.–The “gran­ule” spiro­chete form was found by the Japan­ese to have great val­ue for aerosolized BW appli­ca­tions: ” . . . Ina­da has report­ed that the Japan­ese know how to get virus-like, quite invis­i­ble par­ti­cles or spiro­chete-frag­ments from spe­cial cul­tures of spiro­chetes of infec­tious jaun­dice. The Japan­ese say that such infin­i­tes­i­mals can be used to infect ani­mals and men, by spray­ing droplets con­tain­ing these spiro­chete-cre­at­ing bits into the air, or spread­ing them through water, or scat­ter­ing them in mud or damp soil. . . .”
7.–The above-men­tioned lep­tospiro­sis or “slime fever” may have been used as a “soft­en­ing-up” agent pri­or to Japan­ese inva­sions in World War II” ” . . . ‘Imme­di­ate­ly before the Japan­ese inva­sions of Chi­na, Indo-Chi­na, the Dutch East Indies, and the Malay States, and short­ly before the Japan­ese inva­sion of India and the Japan­ese strokes at Aus­tralia, the very first out­breaks of slime fever were report­ed from every one of these areas’ . . .”
8.–The Japan­ese had dis­cov­ered the appli­ca­tion of infec­tion via mul­ti­ple pathogens. This may have fig­ured into the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease as well. ” . . . Fuji­mori (sic) was test­ing out the effects of spread­ing two dif­fer­ent par­a­sites into the same guinea pig at the same time. The Japan­ese dis­cov­ered that one par­a­site pro­motes the lethal action of the oth­er. . . .”
9.–The Japan­ese devel­oped with spread­ing spiro­chetal dis­ease via spray­ing droplets into the eyes of tar­gets. We won­der if Willy Burgdor­fer­’s pos­si­ble Lyme infec­tion from dis­eased Rab­bit-urine may have stemmed from this tech­nol­o­gy? This is dis­cussed below. ” . . . ‘Some­times the Japan­ese think up the damnedest exper­i­ments, such as the trans­mis­sion of syphilis by spray­ing the spiro­chetes into the air or into the eyes of ani­mals or vol­un­teers. Infec­tion is thus accom­plished. . . . if you want to spec­u­late fur­ther about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of spiro­chete war­fare, you can be sure that the Japan­ese know how to spread any spiro­chete dis­ease . . . by spray­ing droplets laden with spe­cial­ly cul­tured spiro­chetes. . . .”
10.-Among the dis­eases appar­ent­ly har­nessed for BW use by the Japan­ese was African relaps­ing fever. Willy Burgdor­fer did his grad­u­ate the­sis about this tick-borne spiro­chetal dis­ease and it was researched at length by his men­tor Rudolf Geigy. (Geigy’s pos­si­ble role as an I.G. Far­ben intel­li­gence agent and Paper­clip recruiter is dis­cussed in FTR #1135. Note that some forms of Bor­re­lia Burgdorferi–a pri­ma­ry causative agent of Lyme Disease–resemble the spiro­chete that caus­es relaps­ing fever. ” . . . Relaps­ing fever is caused by the Bor­re­lia genus of bac­te­ria, and is gen­er­al­ly trans­mit­ted to man either by lice, or by the bite of a tick. It is worth not­ing, too, that recent inves­ti­ga­tions into the genet­ic make-up of Lyme bor­re­lia have found some strains appar­ent­ly more close­ly relat­ed to relaps­ing fever Bor­re­lia than to Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri, long con­sid­ered the only bor­re­lia capa­ble of caus­ing Lyme dis­ease. . . .”

Next, the pro­gram details Rudolf Geigy’s work on relaps­ing fever. We sus­pect that his inter­est in such afflic­tions was not as benign and altru­is­tic as his defend­ers main­tain. As men­tioned above, Lyme Dis­ease “dis­cov­er­er” and bio­log­i­cal war­fare vet­er­an Willy Burgdor­fer did his grad­u­ate the­sis on relaps­ing fever.

Again, as men­tioned above, Willy Burgdor­fer con­tract­ed what he felt was Lyme Dis­ease after urine from an infect­ed rab­bit splashed into his eyes. We won­der if some of the tech­niques of using aerosolized spiro­chete gran­ules might have been involved in Willy’s acci­den­tal infec­tion? ” . . . .While he was rins­ing off one of the trays in the sink, Lyme-infect­ed rab­bit urine splashed into his eyes. A few weeks lat­er, on April 13, he noticed five Lyme bul­l’s-eye rash­es under his armpit and on his tor­so. . . .”

In an unpub­lished man­u­script, Willy Burgdor­fer not­ed not only the per­sis­tence of Lyme Dis­ease but its abil­i­ty to remain dor­mant in the ner­vous sys­tem: “. . . . It is now clear that Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri can per­sist with­in the ner­vous sys­tem for years, caus­ing pro­gres­sive ill­ness, and increas­ing evi­dence sug­gests also that the spiro­chete can remain latent there for years before pro­duc­ing clin­i­cal symp­toms. . . .”

Lyme dis­ease is dif­fi­cult to diag­nose, anoth­er fac­tor that makes it ide­al for BW use. Might the Japan­ese Unit 731 research into spiro­chetal war­fare described by Bar­clay New­man have fig­ured into some of the boil­er-plate research that went into the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease? ” . . . Lyme’s abil­i­ty to evade detec­tion on rou­tine med­ical tests, its myr­i­ad pre­sen­ta­tions which can baf­fle doc­tors by mim­ic­k­ing 100 dif­fer­ent dis­eases, its amaz­ing abil­i­ties to evade the immune sys­tem and antibi­ot­ic treat­ment, would make it an attrac­tive choice to bioweaponeers look­ing for an inca­pac­i­tat­ing agent. Lyme’s abil­i­ties as ‘the great imi­ta­tor’ might mean that an attack could be mis­in­ter­pret­ed as sim­ply a rise in the inci­dence of dif­fer­ent, nat­u­ral­ly-occur­ring dis­eases. . . .”

There is exper­i­men­tal evi­dence that infec­tion with Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri can pro­duce the amy­loid plaques symp­to­matic of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. ” . . . Here is hypoth­e­sized a tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary notion that round­ed cys­tic forms of Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri are the root cause of the round­ed struc­tures called plaques in the Alzheimer brain. Round­ed “plaques’ in high den­si­ty in brain tis­sue are emblem­at­ic of Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD). . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with more exper­i­men­tal evi­dence of the pro­duc­tion of amy­loid deposits char­ac­ter­is­tic of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: ” . . . To deter­mine whether an anal­o­gous host reac­tion to that occur­ring in AD could be induced by infec­tious agents, we exposed mam­malian glial and neu­ronal cells in vit­ro to Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri spiro­chetes . . . Mor­pho­log­i­cal changes anal­o­gous to the amy­loid deposits of AD brain were observed fol­low­ing 2–8 weeks of expo­sure to the spiro­chetes. . . These obser­va­tions indi­cate that, by expo­sure to bac­te­ria or to their tox­ic prod­ucts, host respons­es sim­i­lar in nature to those observed in AD may be induced. . . .”