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