The Humble Pig - Our newest terrorist?

'Pandemic' is a word which awakens dark terror in our collective souls. Terror is an emotion that makes people highly maleable to the dictates of survival: first it was Bin Ladan, then Saddam, the Avian flu, Iran, the financial meltdown and now, the humble pig. My approach to dark terror is to find a candle and light it, and start looking around.

This blog has been in the simmering pot for quite a few days now. Sometimes a topic just needs more study and this one will need ongoing research. However, I have assembled below some of the more informative lucid articles found during my research which give the A H1N1 swine flu virus, a bit of dimension not found in the scaremongers' main media outlets. These articles raise questions - but do not expect to find answers.

Is it coincidental or fortunate that the A H1N1 virus can be treated with Tamiflu, a pharmaceutical stock associated with Donald Rumsfeld? Tamiflu shares are soaring now: fortunes are being made. This has to be taken into the context of other information. So I invite you to take my candle and light your own - perhaps together we can illuminate the darkeness surrounding us; to see if it is indeed as scary as we fear it is.

Draw your own conclusions. But beware: sometimes there really is a monster under the bed. And it might not be the humble pig.

To wake up a man from a nightmare is compassion.
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

This image copyright © 2005, Paul Bielaczyc and Aradani Studios.

Cui Bono?

Tamiflu stock is soaring; Buy Tamiflu stock... while you can? Yes it will coax bears out of their cave and drive a rally on wall street. Shares in pharmaceuticals and healthcare providers will rally:

H1N1 and its impact on global equity values.

Mexico Peso Falls on Concern Swine Flu to Deepen Economic Slump

Swine Flu: Bringing Home the Bacon

Global Research
April 28, 2009
Source As the world gears up once again for a flu pandemic that may or may not arrive (it actually seems possible this time), we might want to remember some of the lessons of the last flu scare. One of these is that there are winners as well as losers in every high-profile outbreak of infectious disease.

First and foremost among them, of course, is Big Pharma, which can always be counted on to have its hand out wherever human misery presents an opportunity to rake in some cash. In 2005, I reported on the bird flu scare for the Village Voice in a piece called “Capitalizing on the Flu.” We can realistically hope that our current federal government will improve upon the bungled effort made by the Bush Administration to prepare for the onslaught of avian flu—which fortunately didn’t materialize. But certain aspects of the crisis are likely to be repeated, and profiteers will surely waste no time in gathering at the trough. Then, as now, one of the two effective antidotes was a drug called Tamiflu.

But this silver bullet came with side effects, as well as a high price tag. As I reported in 2005: With no vaccine in sight, the U.S. government, along with others, is belatedly stocking up on Tamiflu, a drug that supposedly offers some defense against bird flu. But last week Japanese newspapers told how children who were administered Tamiflu went mad and tried to kill themselves by jumping out of windows. In a cautionary statement the FDA noted 12 deaths among children, and said there are reports of psychiatric disturbances, including hallucinations, along with heart and lung disorders. Roche, the manufacturer, is quoted by the BBC as stating that the rate of deaths and psychiatric problems is no higher among those taking its medication than among those with flu. The company is increasing Tamiflu production to 300 million doses a year to meet demand.

There are other reasons people are leery of Tamiflu. Given the rip-offs in Iraq and after the hurricanes, people are understandably interested in knowing just who is going to get rich off the plague. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, himself former CEO of drug company Searle, currently owns stock in the one company that owns Tamiflu patents—to the tune of at least $18 million. Rumsfeld says he understands why people might question his holdings, but selling them would raise even more questions. So he is hanging on to what he’s got.

A report by Citicorp at the time described which pharmaceutical manufacturers and other comapnies stood to make money: Winners could include drug makers such as Gilead Sciences, Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, and Sanofi-Aventis. Other possible winners are hospital chains such as Rhoen Klinikum, cleaning-products makers such as Henkel, Ecolab, and Clorox, as well as home entertainment companies such as Blockbuster and Nintendo…. In order for the pharmaceutical companies to profit from making flu vaccine in the administration’s $7.1 billion pandemic flu plan, Bush now is proposing to ban liability suits against them except in cases of willful misconduct.

As for those injured by a flu vaccine, possible lawsuits remain an open question…. With a worldwide market estimated at more than $1 billion, there’s big money in a flu plague. Kimberly-Clark’s Chinese subsidiary is already ramping up manufacture of new lines of medical masks, wipes, and hand-washing liquids, according to Business Week, with consulting firms Kroll and Booz Allen Hamilton selling flu preparedness advice to companies and governments. “Crisis is an opportunity as long as you see it first,” Pitney Bowes’s Christian Crews tells the magazine. Of course, that was then, and this is now. In the coming days we’re bound to discover who’s pulling in the pork this time. But even before the U.S. markets open this morning, early indications aren’t hard to find: “Fears of a potential pandemic are bringing down stock markets around the world today,” public radio’s “Marketplace” reports from London, ”but two big pharmaceutical companies are getting a boost from the news”: Shares in Switzerland’s leading drug maker, Roche, are up nearly 4 percent this morning.

The company says it’s scaling up production of Tamiflu. The drug’s been show to be an effective vaccine against the virus. In the U.K., GlaxoSmithKline, which manufacturers its own vaccine against deadly flu viruses, is also gaining in the markets. Glaxo’s drug is called Relenza…. Both drug makers have been approached by the World Health Organization about their readiness to deploy stocks in the case of a pandemic. Roche says it stands ready with 3 million treatments, but warned further production could take up to eight months.

Flu Pandemic Hype:
Another Pretext for World Government

Kurt Nimmo
April 27, 2009
Source
During the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) Summit in Montebello, Canada in 2005, the “three amigos” (Bush, Harper and Calderon) released “North American Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza,” described as a “collaborative North American approach that recognizes that controlling the spread of avian influenza or a novel strain of human influenza, with minimal economic disruption, is in the best interest of all three countries.”

The plan outlines how “Canada, Mexico and the United States intend to work together to prepare for and manage avian and pandemic influenza.” featured stories Flu Pandemic Hype: Another Pretext for World Government Ki-moon Ban Ki-moon said the Mexican flu outbreak is the “first test” of the “pandemic preparedness work undertaken by the international community over the past three years.” It was hardly a coincidence that at the same time the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, created a webpage dedicated to avian flu and subsequently ran exercises in preparation for the possible use of U.S. military forces in a continental domestic emergency involving avian flu or pandemic influenza.

In 2006, NORTHCOM held an international exercise with more than 40 international, federal, and state agencies “designed to provoke discussion and determine what governmental actions, including military support, would be necessary in the event of an influenza pandemic in the United States.” In addition, NORTHCOM participated in a nationwide Joint Chiefs of Staff-directed exercise code-named Exercise Ardent Sentry 06 to rehearse cooperation between Department of Defense and local, state, federal agencies, and the Canadian government. In 2005, then president Bush shifted U.S. policy on avian flu and pandemic influenza and placed the U.S. under international guidelines.

“The policy shift was formalized Sept. 14, 2005, when Bush announced a new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza to a High-Level Plenary Meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, in New York,” Jerome Corsi wrote in September, 2007. “The new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza was designed to supersede an earlier November 2005 Homeland Security report that called for a U.S. national strategy that would be coordinated by the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Agriculture.”

In other words, any U.S. response to an avian flu pandemic would be directed under WHO, WTO, U.N. and NAFTA directives. Congress and U.S. agencies would be cut out of the picture. “The U.N.-WHO-WTO-NAFTA plan advanced by SPP features a prominent role for the U.N. system influenza coordinator as a central international director in the case of a North American avian flu or pandemic influenza outbreak,” Corsi adds.

Dr. David Nabarro, WHO executive director of sustainable development and health environments, was appointed the first U.N. system influenza coordinator. In 2005, Nabarro said during a press conference that his number one priority was to prepare for the H5N1 virus, known as the avian flu. Nabarro played into the global fear that an epidemic was inevitable. “I’m not, at the moment at liberty to give you a prediction on numbers, but I just want to stress, that, let’s say, the range of deaths could be anything from 5 to 150 million,” said Nabarro.

On March 8, 2006, during a U.N. press conference Nabarro predicted an outbreak of the H5N1 virus would “reach the Americas within the next six to 12 months.” On Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stoked the fear of a global flu pandemic. He said the Mexican flu outbreak is the “first test” of the “pandemic preparedness work undertaken by the international community over the past three years.” Ban Ki-moon said if “we are indeed facing a pandemic, we need to demonstrate global solidarity. In our interconnected world, no nation can deal with threats of such dimension on its own.” For Ki-moon and the global elite, “global solidarity” in “our interconnected world” translates into yet another push for world government.

Ki-moon’s dire warning falls on the heels of the G20 summit where plans were announced for implementing the creation of a new global currency to replace the U.S. dollar’s role as the world reserve currency. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and others repeatedly called for “global governance” and a “New World Order.” The current flu pandemic hype serves as punctuation mark between the G20 held in London and the upcoming one to be held in Italy in June. “The G20 summit has agreed to try to kick start stalled Doha trade liberalization talks at the next G8 meeting,” Reuters reported on April 2.

So-called “trade liberalization” is code for the neoliberal plan to “privatize” public and private industries around the world, impose “flexibilization” of labor markets (create massive unemployment), “deregulate” consumer and financial markets, and foster foreign buyouts, layoffs, wage cuts, transient employment, higher prices, and potentially destabilizing capital flows. As noted by the Eagle Forum in October, 2007, the SPP’s North American Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza “is not only about combating a flu epidemic but is far-reaching in seeking control over U.S. citizens and public policy during an epidemic.” The Plan would give authority to international bureaucrats “beyond the health sector to include a coordinated approach to critical infrastructure protection,” including “border and transportation issues.” On April 26, Infowars covered the Department of Defense’s “Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza” that proposes nothing less than the militarization of health care, military augmentation of civilian law enforcement, and the mass vaccination of the population as directed by the government.

Ki-moon, the United Nations, and the globalists, with the participation of the globalist-dominated corporate media and the ruling elite in Mexico, are hyping the flu outbreak as a possible pandemic in order to sell us their scheme for world government.

Historical perspective

Violet Planet ... read more
"Seven Billion World Population in Six Years From Now. The world population is predicted to reach the seven billion mark on Oct 18, 2012. World population hit the six billion mark in June 1999, over 3.5 times the population at the beginning of the 20th century and roughly double its size in 1960. The time for the global population to grow from 5 billion to 6 billion, a dozen years, was shorter than the interval between any of the previous billions. The population today is nearly four times the number in 1900. Behind that increase is a vast gulf in birth and death rates around the world." - World Health Organization, (2006)

From whence it came?

Recreating the Spanish flu?

The Sunshine Project
Briefing Paper - 9 October 2003
http://www.sunshine-project.org
Source
This briefing is extracted from: Emerging Technologies: Genetic Engineering and Biological Weapons, Sunshine Project Backgrounder #12, October 2003 (forthcoming)

Influenza as a bioweapon does not sound like a particularly grave threat. Annual outbreaks kill many people, particularly the elderly; but a case of the flu is generally percieved as an uncomfortable nuisance rather than a grave threat. But flu viruses can be devastating. In 1918 and 1919, the so-called "Spanish flu" killed an estimated 20-40 million people worldwide and, since then, the highly changeable flu virus has resurfaced in a variety of particularly virulent forms.

The strain of influenza virus that caused the 1918 global epidemic ("pandemic") was exceptionally aggressive. It showed a high capacity to cause severe disease and a propensity to kill fit young adults rather than the elderly. The mortality rate among the infected was over 2.5%, as compared to less than 0.1% in other influenza epidemics (Taubenberger et al. 1997). This high mortality rate, especially amongst the younger, lowered the average life expectancy in the USA by almost 10 years (Tumpey et al. 2002). Creation of this particularly dangerous influenza strain, as it is currently pursued by a US research team, may thus pose a serious biowarfare threat.

A recent commentary in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (Madjid et al. 2003) noted that influenza is readily transmissible by aerosol and that a small number of viruses can cause a full-blown infection. The authors continued: "the possibility for genetic engineering and aerosol transmission [of influenza] suggests an enormous potential for bioterrorism" The possible hostile abuse of influenza virus is seen as a very real threat by public health officials in the USA. Just two weeks ago, $15 million was granted by the US National Institutes of Health to Stanford University to study how to guard against the flu virus "if it were to be unleashed as an agent of bioterrorism".[1]

US scientists led by a Pentagon pathologist recently began to genetically reconstruct this specifically dangerous 1918 influenza strain. In one experiment a partially reconstructed 1918 virus killed mice, while virus constructs with genes from a contemporary flu virus had hardly any effect.

Chart of the two mechanisms by which pandemic influenza originates.

Attempts to recover the Spanish flu virus date to the 1950s, when scientists unsuccessfully tried to revive the virus from victims buried in the permafrost of Alaska.[2] In the mid 1990s, Dr Jeffrey Taubenberger from the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology started to screen preserved tissue samples from 1918 influenza victims. It appears that this work was not triggered by a search for flu treatments, or the search for a new biowarfare agent, but by a rather simple motivation: Taubenberger and his team were just able to do it. In previous experiments they had developed a new technique to analyse DNA in old, preserved tissues and for now looking for new applications: "The 1918 flu was by far and away the most interesting thing we could think of"[3] explained Taubenberger the reason why he started to unravel the secrets of one of most deadliest viruses known to humankind.

A sample of lung tissue from a 21-year-old soldier who died in 1918 at Fort Jackson in South Carolina[4], yielded what the Army researchers were looking for: intact pieces of viral RNA that could be analysed and sequenced. In a first publication in 1997, nine short fragments of Spanish flu viral RNA were revealed (Taubenberger et al. 1997). Due to the rough tissue preparation procedure in 1918, no living virus or complete viral RNA sequences were recovered.

Genetic techniques helped to isolate more Spanish flu RNA from a variety of sources. By 2002, four of the eight viral RNA segments had been completely sequenced, including the two segments that are considered to be of greatest importance for the virulence of the virus: the genes for hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). In the forthcoming issue of the scientific journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, another article on the Spanish flu DNA sequence will be published (Reid et al. 2003).

The project did not stop at sequencing the genome of the deadly 1918 strain. The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology teamed up with a microbiologist from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Together, they started to reconstruct the Spanish flu. In a first attempt, they combined gene fragments from a standard laboratory influenza strain with one 1918 gene.[5] They infected mice with this chimera, and it turned out that the 1918 gene made the virus less dangerous for mice (Basler et al. 2001).[6]

In a second experiment, published in October 2002 (Tumpey et al. 2002), the scientists were successful in creating a virus with two 1918 genes. This virus was much more deadly to mice than other constructs containing genes from contemporary influenza virus[7]. This experiment is only one step away from taking the 1918 demon entirely out of the bottle and bringing the Spanish flu back to life.

The scientists were aware of the dangers of their creation. The experiments were conducted under high biosafety conditions at a laboratory of the US Department of Agriculture in Athens, Georgia. Possible hostile use of their work was an issue considered by the scientists:"the available molecular techniques could be used for the purpose of bioterrorism" (Tumpey et al. 2002:13849).

There is no sound scientific reason to conduct these experiments. The most recent experiments (Tumpey et al. 2002) allegedly seeked to test the efficacy of existing antiviral drugs on the 1918 construct – but there is little need for antiviral drugs against the 1918 strain if the 1918 strain would not have been sequenced and recreated in the first place. It is true that biodefense research – and any kind of civilian medical research – is always a race with its counterpart, the evolution of naturally occuring infectious agents or the development of biowarfare agents. But in this race it should be avoided to create the threats that are allegedly the motivation for the research. A vicious circle is created: "The technologies are in place with reverse genetics to generate any influenza virus we wish ... studies are envisaged using genes of the 1918 Spanish Influenza virus."[8] These arguments were recently brought forward to justify another maximum biosafety laboratory for biological defense work in Texas. Without Taubenberger’s pioneering work, the money for the lab experiments might have been saved and better invested in combatting naturally occuring diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, or HIV.

Other papers argued that the experiments may help to elucidate the mechanisms of influenza evolution and virulence (Taubenberger et al. 1997, Basler et al. 2001), but this argument is also deeply flawed. Since 1918, a many different influenza viruses with different virulence and pathogenicity properties have been isolated and characterised by researchers around the world - a more than abundant source for generations of scientists to study influenza evolution and virulence. A resuscitation of the Spanish flu is neither necessary nor warranted from a public health point of view.

There may be many reasons for the individual scientists to work on this project, not least the scientific prestige - the"Spanish flu" subject matter practically guaranteed a series of publications in prestigious journals. From an arms control perspective it appears to be particularly sensitive if a military research institution embarks on a project that aims at constructing more dangerous pathogens - if Jeffery Taubenberger worked in a Chinese, Russian or Iranian laboratory, his work might well be seen as the "smoking gun" of a biowarfare program.

References

Basler CF, Reid AH, Dybing JK, Janczewski TA, Fanning TG, Zheng HY, Salvatore M, Perdue ML, Swayne DE, García-Sastre A, Palese P, Taubenberger JK (2001) Sequence of the 1918 pandemic influenza virus nonstructural gene (NS) segment and characterization of recombinant viruses bearing the 1918 NS genes. PNAS 98:2746-2751

Madjid M, Lillibridge S, Mirhaji P, Casscells W (2003) Influenza as a bioweapon. J Roy Soc Med 96:345-346

Reid AH, Janczewski TA, Raina M. Lourens RM, Elliot AJ, Rod S, CL Berry, JS Oxford, JK Taubenberger (2003) 1918 Influenza pandemic caused by highly conserved viruses with two receptor-binding variants. Emerg Infect Dis [serial online] October 2003, available from: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol9no10/02-0789.htm

Reid A, Fanning TG, Janczewski TA, McCall S, Taubenberger JK (2002) Characterization of the 1918 "Spanish" Influenza Virus Matrix Gene Segment. J Virol 76:10717-10723

Taubenberger JK, Reid AH, Krafft AE, Bijwaard KE, Fanning TG (1997) Initial genetic characterization of the 1918 ‘Spanish’ influenza virus. Science 275:1793-1796

Tumpey TM, Garcia-Sastre A, Mikulasova A, Taubenberger JK, Swayne DE, Palese P, Basler CF (2002) Existing antivirals are effective against influenza viruses with genes from the 1918 pandemic virus. PNAS 99:13849-13854

[1] Stanford University News Release 17 September 2003, online at http://mednews.stanford.edu/news_releases_html/2003/septrelease/bioterror%20flu.htm

[2] Spanish flu keeps its secrets. Nature science update at www.nature.com/nsu/990304/990304-5.html

[3] Profile: Jeffery Taubenberger at www.microbeworld.org/htm/aboutmicro/what_m_do/profiles/taubenberger.htm

[4] AFIP scientists discover clues to 1918 Spanish flu, www.dcmilitary.com/army/stripe/archives/mar28/str_flu032897.html

[5] The so called "nonstructural" gene (NS)

[6] It should be noted that for this experiments, a standard influenza strain was used that was specifically adapted to mice and that was lethal to mice. The scientists reasoned that the 1918 gene probably weakened the lethality for the mice as it stemmed from a human-adapted strain.

[7] This time, the 1918 genes for hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA) and matrix (M) were used, single and in combination. Only the combination of the 1918 HA and NA genes caused a dramatic increase in lethality if compared to constructs containing genes from a more recent human influenza virus. The scientists concluded: "These data suggest that the 1918 HA and NA genes might possess intrinsic high-virulence properties." (Tumpey et al. 2002:13853)

[8] Letter (4 February 2003) from Robert G. Webster, Professor of Virology at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital to Stanley Lemon, Dean, School of Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston, in support of the UTMB application to contruct a National Biocontainment Laboratory. Released to the Sunshine Project under the Texas Public Information Act

Johann Hari: We face a century of viral pandemics

Industrial factory farming of chickens has actually
sped up the evolution of the flu virus

Monday, 6 March 2006
Source
In the ultra-secure, ultra-safe West, there is one game we obsessively play, and always get wrong - Risk. We are living longer and healthier lives than any generation of humans ever, but we are obsessed with statistically negligible risks, from paedophiles lurking in bushes to BSE lurking in burgers. Somehow, the real, rumbling risks to our safety - like the destabilisation of the planet's climate - get lost in a shifting parade of bogeymen.

When I first began to research bird flu, I thought the real danger was not of a pandemic but a panic-demic. Sir David King, Britain's chief scientist, was struggling to point out that Brits are seven times more likely to win the lottery than to contract the H5N1 variant of avian flu. It's crazy that we are eating less chicken, since avian flu is a respiratory disease and - unless something has gone terribly wrong - your KFC bucket isn't breathing.

But the more I discovered from interviewing experts and reading the scientific papers, the more I realised this was one of those rare scares with real evidence behind it. They urged me to look back to the grimy, war-trashed year of 1918 when - in just 24 weeks - a virulent form of influenza ripped around the world and killed between 40 and 100 million people. But I sighed and thought - why worry about it? Humans have no control over viruses. They are natural biological events. I might as well fret about asteroids hitting the earth. Even though scientists warn that we are "overdue" for a similar outbreak, what can we do? But gradually it became clear that this complacency was based on a misunderstanding.

Viruses live or die in circumstances controlled by man - and over the past few decades, we have unwittingly transformed the world into a virus-heaven, a place where they can develop, multiply and devour better than ever before. The first virus-friendly change we have made is the incredible interconnectedness of the world. A single doctor on a single day on a single floor of a Hong Kong hotel managed to spread Sars to Singapore, Vietnam, Canada, Ireland and the US without going anywhere, just by coughing and spluttering in the lobby. While the 1918 virus took months to slowly fan across the world - becoming weaker and weaker as it went - today the most virulent strain of a virus will be easyJetted to every continent before we know it exists. The world hasn't just become smaller for e-mail and tourism - it has become smaller for viruses too.

The second shift is the sudden concentration of vast numbers of animals and people in extremely close proximity, providing a swollen feeding pool for viruses. Let's look at animals first. Over the past 20 years, the entire world - from Thailand to India - has adopted the model of poultry farming preached by the Arkansas chicken-mongers, Tyson. This crams together unprecedented concentrations of chickens in massive warehouses. The result? Viruses used to be self-limiting - they would pass through a small flock of birds and then die out - but in these conditions, the virus never runs out of hosts. As the virologist Richard Webby says, "We have a bucket of evolution going on."

Professor Mike Davis has shown that industrial factory-farming has actually sped up the evolution of the flu virus - and even produced evidence suggesting bird flu was born on Thailand's immense chicken production line. The same thing is happening for people: over a billion humans are now crammed into mega-slums across the world, ensuring no virus is ever left behind. It only takes a few amino acids to mutate in some chicken-factory or distant slum for bird flu to become transmissible human-to-human, 1918-style. Then the lottery odds cited by Sir David King shorten dramatically.

Some scientists think this is "inevitable", others "unlikely" - but all agree that even if we dodge a human variant of bird flu this time round, we are facing a 21st century plagued by pandemics because of the new virus-friendly ecology we have created across the world. Yet to my despairing question "what can we do?", I found there are actually some quite detailed answers. In the long term, it turns out that the morally right things to do are also the best things for human safety. It was always immoral to factory farm chickens in disgusting conditions and to leave a billion people festering in shanty-cities. Now we know it is a matter of national security to end these virus-factories too.

Even more importantly, the bird flu crisis should remind us - with a hard slap in the face - that the only means we have to protect ourselves from these new viruses are currently in the hands of private corporations who put their own right to profit above the right of human beings to life. Tamiflu is the only way we have to protect ourselves against a bird flu epidemic. It is an antiviral developed at an American hospital with tax-payers' money, then developed into a pharmaceutical by a small company in California, but it now is controlled by a $20bn-a-year corporation called Roche. They have been insisting on their sole rights to the drug, no matter how urgent other countries' needs. Only after massive pressure did they agree to license a few other companies to use their patent (for a price, of course). Taiwan, in a state of desperation, has begun to manufacture its own generic version - and may face legal action through the World Trade Organisation for the sin of putting its citizens before intellectual property law.

The scandal of Aids drugs in Africa and South America have already demonstrated how druggernauts are prepared - as the editor of The Lancet, Richard Horton, puts it - "to see literally millions of people die ... to protect their own profits". Even last year's UN-brokered deal - which was supposed to allow developing countries to manufacture cheap imitation Aids drugs for their dying populations - is being held up by Big Pharma, who are insisting countries with virtually no infrastructure "prove" the drugs will not be sold on to other countries before they can begin to make them. (What's a few dying black people when there are shareholders to protect?)

Do we want to enter the looming century of viral pandemics with our antivirals - our lifelines - in the bloody hands of drugs corporations who just watched mass death in Africa and prevented anybody from manufacturing life-saving treatments? (Call it Pharmageddon). Isn't now the time to dismantle the WTO system that serves them and build one based on the spirit of Jonas Salk, the man who invented the polio vaccine but refused to patent it, because it would be "like patenting the sun"? Then we could say that - just once - that our endless game of Risk had stumbled on to something that really mattered.
j.hari@independent.co.uk

New swine flu feared to be weaponized strain

By Wayne Madsen
Apr 27, 2009
Source
According to two mainstream media journalists, one in Mexico City and the other in Jakarta, who spoke to WMR on background, they are convinced that the current outbreak of a new strain of swine flu in Mexico and some parts of the United States is the result of the introduction of a human-engineered pathogen that could result in a widespread global pandemic, with potentially catastrophic consequences for domestic and international travel and commerce.

The journalists have been told by top officials of the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO) about the grave dangers posed by the new and deadly swine flu strain, known as A-H1N1. This flu, never before seen by scientists, has already killed up to 68 people in Mexico and has forced the cancellation of public events, including sports matches and concerts, and the closure of schools, libraries, and museums. Eight cases have been reported in Texas and California.

Doctors are examining several students at a Queens high school in New York who displayed symptoms similar to those experienced by swine flu patients in Mexico. Our Mexico City source said a top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, concluded that H1N1 possesses certain transmission “vectors” that suggest that the new flu strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon.

The UN expert believes that Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and the current A-H1N1 swine flu virus are biological warfare agents. Past swine flu outbreaks have been spread from pigs to humans, who then passed the flu on to other humans. However, with A-H1N1, there have been no reported infections of pigs. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), A-H1N1 has gene segments from North American swine, bird and human flu strains and a segment from Eurasian swine flu. Costa Rica, Brazil, and Peru have issued alerts to check all incoming passengers from Mexico at border crossings, airports, and seaports for symptoms of the swine flu. WHO is convening an emergency session of its top medical experts in Geneva and is set to declare H1N1 a “public health event of international concern.”

It is reported that WHO will recommend travel restrictions to and from areas where the flu has been reported, including Mexico City and the states of Mexico, Hidalgo, San Luis Potosí and Oaxaca. Our Jakarta source said WHO officials are afraid that the presence of gene segments from dreaded H5N1 bird flu in the A-H1N1 swine flu strain could mean that the new swine flu strain was engineered to “jump species.”

WMR has been informed that the CDC and U.S. Army dug up the body of an Inuit woman who died in 1918 in Brevig Mission, Alaska from an outbreak of Spanish flu. The influenza pandemic that year killed up to 100 million people worldwide in an 18-month period. Brevig Mission saw 72 of its 80 residents die within five days, the worst case recorded anywhere in the world. WMR has been told the genetic material recovered by the U.S. government from the corpse of the Inuit woman provided the basis for the development of the H5N1, or bird (avian), flu strain at the U.S. Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the point of origin for the Ames strain of anthrax used in the 2001 bio-war attacks against the U.S. Congress and the media.

The fear in Asia is that if the A-H1N1 pandemic spreads to the United States, travel to and from the country will be all but shut down. The following are the symptoms associated with A-H1N1: · cough · fever · sore throat · shortness of breath · muscle and joint pain The drugs Tamiflu and Relenza are seen as the most effective against A-H1N1.

Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

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Swine Flu Was “Cultured In A Laboratory”

Paul Joseph Watson
Global Research
April 26, 2009
Source

[Al-Manar.com.lb is not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author’s alone.

Editor’s note: On Friday, NPR reported that the deadly swine flu “combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before,” thus leading us to suspect it was cooked up in a lab.]

Swine flu panic is spreading in Mexico and soldiers are patrolling the streets after it was confirmed that human to human transmission is occurring and that the virus is a brand new strain which is seemingly affecting young, healthy people the worst. Questions about the source of the outbreak are also being asked after a public health official said that the virus was “cultured in a laboratory”.

“This strain of swine influenza that’s been cultured in a laboratoryis something that’s not been seen anywhere actually in the United States and the world, so this is actually a new strain of influenza that’s been identified,” said Dr. John Carlo, Dallas Co. Medical Director.

Was this a slip-up or an admission that this new super-strain of swine influenza was deliberately cultured in a laboratory and released? Alarming reports are now filtering in about people catching the illness who have had no contact with pigs whatsoever. These include a man and his daughter in San Diego County, a 41-year-old woman in Imperial County and two teenagers in San Antonio, Texas. In fact, in all U.S. cases, the victims had no contact with any pigs. Dr. Wilma Wooten, San Diego County’s public health officer, told KPBS

“We have had person-to-person spread with the father and the daughter,” says Wooten, “And also with the two teenagers in Texas, they were in the same school. So that also indicates person-to-person transfer.” “Dr. Wooten says it’s unclear how people were exposed to swine flu.

She says none of the patients have had any contact with pigs,” according to the report. Although the situation in the U.S. looks under control, panic is spreading in Mexico, where 800 cases of pneumonia in the capital alone are suspected to be related to the swine flu and the virus has hit young and healthy people, which is very rare with an flu outbreak. Despite the danger of a pandemic, the U.S. border with Mexico remains open.

“Mexico has shut schools and museums and canceled hundreds of public events in its sprawling, overcrowded capital of 20 million people to try to prevent further infections,” reports Reuters. “My level of concern is significant,” said Dr. Martin Fenstersheib, the health officer for Santa Clara County. “We have a novel virus, a brand-new strain that’s spreading human to human, and we are also seeing a virulent strain in Mexico that seems to be related. We certainly have concerns for this escalating.”

featured stories Medical Director: Swine Flu Was “Cultured In A Laboratory” The WHO insists that the outbreak has “pandemic potential” and has been stockpiling supplies of Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, a pill that can both treat flu and prevent infection, according to officials.

As we previously highlighted, those that have a stake in the Tamiflu vaccine include top globalists and BIlderberg members like George Shultz, Lodewijk J.R. de Vink and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Indeed, Rumsfeld himself played a key role in hyping an outbreak of swine flu back in the 1976 when he urged the entire country to get vaccinated. Many batches of the vaccine were contaminated, resulting in hundreds of sick people and 52 fatalities.

The fact that the properties of the strain are completely new, that the virus is spreading from people to people, and that the young and healthy are being hit worst, has disturbing parallels to the deadly 1918 pandemic that killed millions. It is unclear as to why, if the virus is a brand new strain, that public health officials are so confident programs of mass vaccination, which are already being prepared, would necessarily be effective. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that deadly flu viruses have been concocted in labs and then dispatched with the intention of creating a pandemic.

When the story first broke last month, Czech newspapers questioned if the shocking discovery of vaccines contaminated with the deadly avian flu virus which were distributed to 18 countries by the American company Baxter were part of a conspiracy to provoke a pandemic. Since the probability of mixing a live virus biological weapon with vaccine material by accident is virtually impossible, this leaves no other explanation than that the contamination was a deliberate attempt to weaponize the H5N1 virus to its most potent extreme and distribute it via conventional flu vaccines to the population who would then infect others to a devastating degree as the disease went airborne. However, this is not the first time that vaccine companies have been caught distributing vaccines contaminated with deadly viruses. In 2006 it was revealed that Bayer Corporation had discovered that their injection drug, which was used by hemophiliacs, was contaminated with the HIV virus. Internal documents prove that after they positively knew that the drug was contaminated, they took it off the U.S. market only to dump it on the European, Asian and Latin American markets, knowingly exposing thousands, most of them children, to the live HIV virus.

Government officials in France went to prison for allowing the drug to be distributed. The documents show that the FDA colluded with Bayer to cover-up the scandal and allowed the deadly drug to be distributed globally.

No Bayer executives ever faced arrest or prosecution in the United States. In the UK, a 2007 outbreak of foot and mouth disease that put Britain on high alert has been originated from a government laboratory which is shared with an American pharmaceutical company, mirroring the deadly outbreak of 2001, which was also deliberately released. As we reported yesterday, last time there was a significant outbreak of a new form of swine flu in the U.S. it originated at the army base at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

What we don't know from the dead

The mysterious deaths of top microbiologists

Source

It all began with Don Wiley.

On November 15th, Harvard Professor Don Wiley left a gathering of friends and colleagues some time after 10:30 PM. The next morning, Memphis police found his rental car stopped on a bridge, with a full tank of gas and keys still in the ignition. There was no financial or family trouble. Indeed Wiley was supposed to meet his family at the Memphis airport to continue on to an Icelandic vacation. Neither was there any history of depression or mental illness.

In the report printed in the New York Times on November 27th, the FBI's Memphis office distanced itself from the case saying that the available facts did not add up to a suspicion of foul play. I guess at the FBI it's a perfectly everyday occurrence for a Harvard Professor to stop his rental car on a bridge in the middle of the night before he is supposed to leave for Iceland and just walk away into the Tennessee dark.

The NYT report of November 27th also downplayed Professor Wiley's expertise in virology, quoting Gregory Verdine, a professor of chemical biology at Harvard, said, "If bioterrorists were to abduct Don Wiley, they'd be very disappointed,

" because his research was in studying the component parts of viruses, and "that doesn't really help you make a more dangerous version of the virus."

But this statement is not consistent with the facts of Professor Wiley's full range of knowledge. Wiley has, in conjunction with another Harvard Professor, Dr. Jack Strominger, won several academic prizes for their work in immunology, including a Lasker prize. Don Wiley is a Harvard professor, but he is also a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the National Institute of Health.

Tribute to Don Wiley from his colleagues at Harvard.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is located in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and performs biological research, sometimes jointly funded by the Department of Defense and the NIH. Don Wiley's peers at Harvard include professors such as John Collier performing research on Anthrax. So, contrary to the dismissive tone of the New York Times report, Professor Wiley would be of great value to anyone developing biological weapons.

This makes the FBI's obvious disinterest in the case highly questionable, indeed reminiscent of the FBI's obvious disinterest in the numerous witnesses in Oklahoma City who had seen Tim McVeigh in the company of additional perpetrators not to mention the witnesses who had seen additional bombs. Especially in light of the events of 9/11, the vanishing of a scientist with Professor Wiley's expertise in virology and immunology should have been expected to be an issue of critical national importance, yet the official tone of the government was that this is nothing to worry about. Move along citizen, nothing to see. In the context of the Anthrax letters being sent through the mail, any disappearance of any microbiologist under questionable circumstances should have set off alarm bells across the nation. but it didn't. Professor Wiley was assumed to have committed suicide, end of story.

The professor's colleagues expressed doubts about the official "suicide" explanation for his disappearance. Then, more biologists started to die under suspicious circumstances. The Very Mysterious Deaths of Five Microbiologists. The body count of infections disease experts continued to climb. Connections to weapons research began to surface. As many as 14 world-class microbiologists died between 9/11/1 and 3/2/2, and on 6/24/2 yet another microbiologist was added to the list. Still the US Government acted as if nothing was amiss, as silent on the question of dead microbiologists as they are on the question of the Israeli spies and their connection to 9-11.

In fact, the official silence on the question of how so many top experts in infectious diseases could die in such a short time span is deafening. Now, statistically, it's possible, even likely, that one or two of these microbiologists legitimately were killed in random accidents. But for so many to die in such a short while exceeds all reasonable bounds of statistics. Prudence would demand an investigation, not the "ho hum" attitude of the government which even today continues to issue dire warnings to the general population of how much we are all in danger from "bioterrorism".

So, let's take a moment and step away from the perpetual fear-mongering of the media (and Rumsfeld) as they assure us another attack IS coming (with a certainty which suggests inside information on the subject) and assume for a moment that some party has indeed decided to "liquidate" weapons research infectious disease experts.

There is really only one reason to kill off a bunch of scientists. To keep them from doing something they are able to do. What were these scientists able to do? Maybe blow the whistle if an artificially created disease was about to be used in a manner those who created it did not approve of.

Regardless of the exact reason, there does seem to be a clear pattern of targeted microbiologists, and paired with it, an obvious government disinterest in the matter. I leave it to you to figure out why.

Dead Microbiologists

Source
It seems like the most dangerous profession in the world right now is being a microbiologist. Quite a few have turned up dead in last few years from suicides, car accidents, murder, hit and runs, and more at a rate of one or two every few months.

Is it all a big coincidence, or something far more sinister? Furthermore, why is the mainstream media ignoring this?

Many observers and experts have speculated that certain globalists are getting ready to release a killer plague on the earth. So people that are seen as a threat to that happening (ie. biologists that created the actual plague or are working on vaccines) are being wiped out one by one as a precaution. No matter how you slice it, something strange is definitely going on here.

Partial List

Nov. 12, 2001 - Benito Que was said to have been beaten in a Miami parking lot and died later.
Nov. 16, 2001 - Don C. Wiley went missing. Was found Dec. 20. Investigators said he got dizzy on a Memphis bridge and fell to his death in a river.
Nov. 21, 2001 - Vladimir Pasechnik, former high-level Russian microbiologist who defected in 1989 to the U.K. apparently died from a stroke.
Nov 24, 2001 - A Swissair flight from Berlin to Zurich crashes during its landing approach; 22 are killed and nine survive. Among those killed are Dr. Yaakov Matzner, 54, dean of the Hebrew University school of medicine; Amiramp Eldor, 59, head of the haematology department at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv and a world-recognized expert in blood clotting; and Avishai Berkman, 50, director of the Tel Aviv public health department and businessman.

Dec. 10, 2001 - Robert M. Schwartz was stabbed to death in Leesberg, Va. Three Satanists have been arrested.
Dec. 14, 2001 - Nguyen Van Set died in an airlock filled with nitrogen in his lab in Geelong, Australia.
Feb. 9, 2002 - Victor Korshunov had his head bashed in near his home in Moscow.
Feb. 14, 2002 - Ian Langford was found partially naked and wedged under a chair in Norwich, England.
Feb. 28, 2002 - San Francisco resident Tanya Holzmayer was killed by a microbiologist colleague, Guyang Huang, who shot her as she took delivery of a pizza and then apparently shot himself.
March 24, 2002 - David Wynn-Williams died in a road accident near his home in Cambridge, England.
March 25, 2002 - Steven Mostow of the Colorado Health Sciences Centre, killed in a plane he was flying near Denver.
June 24, 2003 - Leland Rickman, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the UCSD School of Medicine, died suddenly on June 24 while traveling and teaching medicine in Lesotho, Africa. Actual cause of death, apparently due to natural causes, is not known.
July 18, 2003 - David Kelly, a British biological weapons expert, was said to have slashed his own wrists while walking near his home. Kelly was the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific officer and senior adviser to the proliferation and arms control secretariat, and to the Foreign Office's non-proliferation department. The senior adviser on biological weapons to the UN biological weapons inspections teams (Unscom) from 1994 to 1999, he was also, in the opinion of his peers, pre-eminent in his field, not only in this country, but in the world.
November 20, 2003 - Robert Leslie Burghoff, 45, a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor College of Medicine's molecular virology and microbiology department, was walking to his car Nov. 20 when he was hit from behind by a white or light-colored cargo van that jumped the sidewalk in the 1600 block of South Braeswood. Burghoff, a father of three who lived in The Woodlands, had been studying the Norwalk virus plaguing cruise ships. - Source: Cryptogon

Dead since 2004 - microbioligists

Died 2007

#81: Dr. Mario Alberto Vargas Olvera, age 52. Died: Oct. 6, 2007 as a result of several blunt-force injuries to his head and neck. Ruled as murder. Found in his home. He was a nationally and internationally recognized biologist.

Died 2006

#80: Lee Jong-woo, age 61. Died: May 22, 2006 after suffering a blood clot on the brain. Lee was spearheading the organization's fight against global threats from bird flu, AIDS and other infectious diseases. WHO director-general since 2003, Lee was his country's top international official. The affable South Korean, who liked to lighten his press conferences with jokes, was a keen sportsman with no history of ill-health, according to officials.

Died 2005

#79: Leonid Strachunsky. Died: June 8, 2005 after being hit on the head with a champagne bottle. Strachunsky specialized in creating microbes resistant to biological weapons. Strachunsky was found dead in his hotel room in Moscow, where hed come from Smolensk en route to the United States. Investigators are looking for a connection between the murder of this leading bio weapons researcher and the hepatitis outbreak in Tver, Russia.

#78: Robert J. Lull, age 66. Died: May 19, 2005 of multiple stab wounds. Despite his missing car and apparent credit card theft, homicide Inspector Holly Pera said investigators aren't convinced that robbery was the sole motive for Lull's killing. She said a robber would typically have taken more valuables from Lull's home than what the killer left with. Lull had been chief of nuclear medicine at San Francisco General Hospital since 1990 and served as a radiology professor at UCSF. He was past president of the American College of Nuclear Physicians and the San Francisco Medical Society and served as editor of the medical society's journal, San Francisco Medicine, from 1997 to 1999. Lee Lull said her former husband was a proponent of nuclear power and loved to debate his political positions with others.

#77: Todd Kauppila, age 41. Died: May 8, 2005 of hemorrhagic pancreatitis at the Los Alamos hospital, according to the state medical examiner's office. Picture of him was not available to due secret nature of his work. This is his funeral picture. His death came two days after Kauppila publicly rejoiced over news that the lab's director was leaving. Kauppila was fired by director Pete Nanos on Sept. 23, 2004 following a security scandal. Kauppila said he was fired because he did not immediately return from a family vacation during a lab investigation into two classified computer disks that were thought to be missing. The apparent security breach forced Nanos to shut down the lab for several weeks. Kauppila claimed he was made a scapegoat over the disks, which investigators concluded never existed. The mistake was blamed on a clerical error. After he was fired, Kauppila accepted a job as a contractor at Bechtel Nevada Corp., a research company that works with Los Alamos and other national laboratories. He was also working on a new Scatter Reduction Grids in Megavolt Radiography focused on metal plates or crossed grids to act to stop the scattered radiation while allowing the unscattered or direct rays to pass through with other scientists: Scott Watson (LANL, DX-3), Chuck Lebeda (LANL, XTA), Alan Tubb (LANL, DX-8), and Mike Appleby (Tecomet Thermo Electron Corp.)

#76: David Banks, age 55. Died: May 8, 2005. Banks, based in North Queensland, died in an airplane crash, along with 14 others. He was known as an Agro Genius inventing the mosquito trap used for cattle. Banks was the principal scientist with quarantine authority, Biosecurity Australia, and heavily involved in protecting Australians from unwanted diseases and pests. Most of Dr Banks' work involved preventing potentially devastating diseases making their way into Australia. He had been through Indonesia looking at the potential for foot and mouth disease to spread through the archipelago and into Australia. Other diseases he had fought to keep out of Australian livestock herds and fruit orchards include classical swine fever, Nipah virus and Japanese encephalitis.

#75: Dr. Douglas James Passaro, age 43. Died April 18, 2005 from unknown cause in Oak Park, Illinois. Dr. Passaro was a brilliant epidemiologist who wanted to unlock the secrets of a spiral-shaped bacteria that causes stomach disease. He was a professor who challenged his students with real-life exercises in bioterrorism. He was married to Dr. Sherry Nordstrom..

#74: Geetha Angara, age 43. Died: February 8, 2005. This formerly missing chemist was found in a Totowa, New Jersey water treatment plant's tank. Angara, 43, of Holmdel, was last seen on the night of Feb. 8 doing water quality tests at the Passaic Valley Water Commission plant in Totowa, where she worked for 12 years. Divers found her body in a 35-foot-deep sump opening at the bottom of one of the emptied tanks. Investigators are treating Angara's death as a possible homicide. Angara, a senior chemist with a doctorate from New York University, was married and mother of three.

#73: Jeong H. Im, age 72. Died: January 7, 2005. Korean Jeong H. Im, died of multiple stab wounds to the chest before firefighters found in his body in the trunk of a burning car on the third level of the Maryland Avenue Garage. A retired research assistant professor at the University of Missouri - Columbia and primarily a protein chemist, MUPD with the assistance of the Columbia Police Department and Columbia Fire Department are conducting a death investigation of the incident. A "person of interest" described as a male 6'–6'2" wearing some type of mask possible a painters mask or drywall type mask was seen in the area of the Maryland Avenue Garage. Dr. Im was primarily a protein chemist and he was a researcher in the field.

Died in 2004

#72: Darwin Kenneth Vest, born April 22, 1951, was an internationally renowned entomologist, expert on hobo spiders and other poisonous spiders and snakes. Darwin disappeared in the early morning hours of June 3, 1999 while walking in downtown Idaho Falls, Idaho (USA). The family believes foul play was involved in his disappearance. A celebration of Darwin's life was held in Idaho Falls and Moscow on the one-year anniversary of his disappearance. The services included displays of Darwin's work and thank you letters from school children and teachers. Memories of Darwin were shared by at least a dozen speakers from around the world and concluded with the placing of roses and a memorial wreath in the Snake River. A candlelight vigil was also held that evening on the banks of the Snake River.

Darwin was declared legally dead the first week of March 2004 and now the family is in the process of obtaining restraining orders against several companies who saw fit to use his name and photos without permission. His brother David is legal conservator of the estate and his sister Rebecca is handling issues related to Eagle Rock Research and ongoing research projects.

Media help in locating Darwin is welcome. Continuing efforts to solve this mystery include recent DNA sampling. Stories about his disappearance continue to appear throughout the world. Issues surrounding missing adult investigations have received new attention following the tragedies of 911.


#s70-71: Tom Thorne, age 64; Beth Williams, age 53; Died: December 29, 2004. Two wild life scientists, Husband-and-wife wildlife veterinarians who were nationally prominent experts on chronic wasting disease and brucellosis were killed in a snowy-weather crash on U.S. 287 in northern Colorado.


#69: Taleb Ibrahim al-Daher. Died: December 21, 2004. Iraqi nuclear scientist was shot dead north of Baghdad by unknown gunmen. He was on his way to work at Diyala University when armed men opened fire on his car as it was crossing a bridge in Baqouba, 57 km northeast of Baghdad. The vehicle swerved off the bridge and fell into the Khrisan river. Al-Daher, who was a professor at the local university, was removed from the submerged car and rushed to Baqouba hospital where he was pronounced dead.

#68: John R. La Montagne, age 61. Died: November 2, 2004. Died while in Mexico, no cause stated, later disclosed as pulmonary embolism. PhD, Head of US Infectious Diseases unit under Tommie Thompson. Was NIAID Deputy Director. Expert in AIDS Program work and Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.

#67: Matthew Allison, age 32. Died: October 13, 2004. Fatal explosion of a car parked at an Osceola County, Fla., Wal-Mart store. It was no accident, Local 6 News has learned. Found inside a burned car. Witnesses said the man left the store at about 11 p.m. and entered his Ford Taurus car when it exploded. Investigators said they found a Duraflame log and propane canisters on the front passenger's seat. Allison had a college degree in molecular biology and biotechnology.

#66: Mohammed Toki Hussein al-Talakani, age 40. Died: September 5, 2004: Iraqi nuclear scientist was shot dead in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad. He was a practicing nuclear physicist since 1984.

#65: Professor John Clark, Age 52, Died: August 12, 2004. Found hanged in his holiday home. An expert in animal science and biotechnology where he developed techniques for the genetic modification of livestock; this work paved the way for the birth, in 1996, of Dolly the sheep, the first animal to have been cloned from an adult. Head of the science lab which created Dolly the sheep. Prof Clark led the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, one of the world s leading animal biotechnology research centers. He played a crucial role in creating the transgenic sheep that earned the institute worldwide fame. He was put in charge of a project to produce human proteins (which could be used in the treatment of human diseases) in sheep's milk. Clark and his team focused their study on the production of the alpha-I-antitryps in protein, which is used for treatment of cystic fibrosis. Prof Clark also founded three spin-out firms from Roslin - PPL Therapeutics, Rosgen and Roslin BioMed.

#64: Dr. John Badwey, age 54. Died: July 21, 2004. Scientist and accidental politician when he opposed disposal of sewage waste program of exposing humans to sludge. Suddenly developed pneumonia like symptoms then died in two weeks. Biochemist at Harvard Medical School specializing in infectious diseases.

#63: Dr. Bassem al-Mudares. Died: July 21, 2004. Mutilated body was found in the city of Samarra, Iraq*. He was a Phd. chemist and had been tortured before being killed. He was a drug company worker who had a chemistry doctorate.


#62: Professor Stephen Tabet, age 42. Died on July 6, 2004 from an unknown illness. He was an associate professor and epidemiologist at the University of Washington. A world-renowned HIV doctor and researcher who worked with HIV patients in a vaccine clinical trial for the HIV Vaccine Trials Network

#61: Dr. Larry Bustard, age 53. Died July 2, 2004 from unknown causes. He was a Sandia scientist in the Department of Energy who helped develop a foam spray to clean up congressional buildings and media sites during the anthrax scare in 2001. He worked at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. As an expert in bioterrorism, his team came up with a new technology used against biological and chemical agents.

#60: Edward Hoffman, age 62. Died July 1, 2004 from unknown causes. Hoffman was a professor and a scientist who also held leadership positions within the UCLA medical community. He worked to develop the first human PET scanner in 1973 at Washington University in St. Louis.

#59: John Mullen, age 67. Died: June 29, 2004. A Nuclear physicist poisoned with a huge dose of arsenic. A nuclear research scientist with McDonnell Douglas. Police investigating will not say how Mullen was exposed to the arsenic or where it came from. At the time of his death he was doing contract work for Boeing.

#58: Dr. Paul Norman, age 52. Died: June 27, 2004. From Salisbury Wiltshire. Killed when the single-engine Cessna 206 he was piloting crashed in Devon. Expert in chemical and biological weapons. He traveled the world lecturing on defending against the scourge of weapons of mass destruction. He was married with a 14-year-old son and a 20-year-old daughter, and was the chief scientist for chemical and biological defense at the Ministry of Defense's laboratory at Porton Down, Wiltshire. The crash site was examined by officials from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch and the wreckage of the aircraft was removed from the site to the AAIB base at Farnborough.

#57: Dr. Assefa Tulu, age 45. Died: June 24, 2004. Dr. Tulu joined the health department in 1997 and served for five years as the county's lone epidemiologist. He was charged with trackcing the health of the county, including the spread of diseases, such as syphilis, AIDS and measles. He also designed a system for detecting a bioterrorism attack involving viruses or bacterial agents. Tulu often coordinated efforts to address major health concerns in Dallas County, such as the West Nile virus outbreaks of the past few years, and worked with the media to inform the public. Found face down, dead in his office. The Dallas County Epidemiologist died of a hemorrhagic stroke.

#56: Thomas Gold, age 84. Died: June 22, 2004. Austrian born Thomas Gold famous over the years for a variety of bold theories that flout conventional wisdom and reported in his 1998 book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere," the idea challenges the accepted wisdom of how oil and natural gas are formed and, along the way, proposes a new theory of the beginnings of life on Earth and potentially on other planets. Long term battle with heart failure. Gold's theory of the deep hot biosphere holds important ramifications for the possibility of life on other planets, including seemingly inhospitable planets within our own solar system. He was Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Cornell University and was the founder (and for 20 years director) of Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research. He was also involved in air accident investigations.

#55: Antonina Presnyakova, age 46. Died: May 25, 2004. A Russian scientist at a former Soviet biological weapons laboratory in Siberia died after an accident with a needle laced with ebola. Scientists and officials said the accident had raised concerns about safety and secrecy at the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector, which in Soviet times specialized in turning deadly viruses into biological weapons. Vector has been a leading recipient of aid in an American program.

#54: Dr. Eugene Mallove, age 56. Died: May 14, 2004. Autopsy confirmed Mallove died as a result of several blunt-force injuries to his head and neck. Ruled as murder. Found at the end of his driveway. Alt. Energy Expert who was working on viable energy alternative program and announcement. Norwich Free Academy graduate.Beaten to death during an alleged robbery. Mallove was well respected for his knowledge of cold fusion. He had just published an "open letter" outlining the results of and reasons for his last 15 years in the field of "new energy research." Dr. Mallove was convinced it was only a matter of months before the world would actually see a free energy device.

#53: William T. McGuire, age 39. Found May 5, 2004, last seen late April 2004. Body found in three suitcases floating in Chesapeake Bay. He was NJ University Professor and Senior programmer analyst and adjunct professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. He emerged as one of the world's leading microbiologists and an expert in developing and overseeing multiple levels of biocontainment facilities.

#52: Ilsley Ingram, age 84. Died on April 12, 2004 from unknown causes. Ingram was Director of the Supraregional Haemophilia Reference Centre and the Supraregional Centre for the Diagnosis of Bleeding Disorders at the St. Thomas Hospital in London. Although his age is most likely the reason for his death, why wasn't this confirmed by the family in the news media?

#51: Mohammed Munim al-Izmerly, Died: April 2004. This distinguished Iraqi chemistry professor died in American custody from a sudden hit to the back of his head caused by blunt trauma. It was uncertain exactly how he died, but someone had hit him from behind, possibly with a bar or a pistol. His battered corpse turned up at Baghdad's morgue and the cause of death was initially recorded as "brainstem compression". It was discovered that US doctors had made a 20cm incision in his skull.

#50: Vadake Srinivasan, Died: March 13, 2004. Microbiologist crashed car into guard rail in Baton Rouge, LA. Death was ruled a stroke. He was originally from India, was one of the most-accomplished and respected industrial biologists in academia, and held two doctorate degrees.

#49: Dr. Michael Patrick Kiley, age 62. Died: January 24, 2004. Died of massive heart attack. Ebola, Mad Cow Expert, top of the line world class. It is interesting to note, he had a good heart, but it "gave out". Dr. Shope and Dr. Kiley were working on the lab upgrade to BSL 4 at the UTMB Galvaston lab for Homeland Security. The lab would have to be secure to house some of the deadliest pathogens of tropical and emerging infectious disease as well as bioweaponized ones.

#48: LEAD Technologies Inc. V1.01 Robert Shope, age 74. Died: January 23, 2004. Virus Expert Who Warned of Epidemics, Dies died of lung transplant complications. Later purported to have died of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis which can be caused by either environmental stimulus or a VIRUS. It would not be hard to administer a drug that would cause Dr. Shope's lung transplant to either be rejected or to cause complications from the transplant. Dr. Shope led the group of scientists who had an 11 MILLION dollar fed grant to ensure the new lab would keep in the nasty bugs. Dr. Shope also met with and worked with Dr. Mike Kiley on the UTMB Galveston lab upgrade to BSL 4. When the upgrade would be complete the lab will host the most hazardous pathogens known to man especially tropical and emerging diseases as well as bioweapons.

#47: Dr Richard Stevens, age 54. Died: January 6, 2004. He had disappeared after arriving for work on 21 July, 2003. A doctor whose disappearance sparked a national manhunt, killed himself because he could not cope with the stress of a secret affair, a coroner has ruled. He was a hematologist. (hematologists analyze the cellular composition of blood and blood producing tissues e.g. bone marrow).

Related urls
PLEASE NOTE: OUT OF 10 URLS ON DEATHS OF MICROBIOLOGISTS, 8 HAVE BEEN REMOVED FROM THE WEB.

spanish flu - the remix