THERE IS AN OUTFIT WEBSITE — WE SUSPECT LOVED BY THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION — THAT CLAIMS TO BE A JOURNALISTIC FACT-CHECKER. IT'S CALLED POYNTER, WITH VARIOUS BRANCHES, INCLUDING POLITIFACT... AS WE KNOW, NOTHING IS EVER CERTAIN AND DEPENDING ON THE SOURCE OF INFORMATION, FACTS ARE RARELY CERTAIN TO VARIOUS DEGREE. "FACTS" COMING FROM THE US ADMINISTRATION ARE RARELY TRUE — BUT POYNTER AND ITS CABALEERS BELIEVE THESE "FACTS" BECAUSE THEY ARE FED BY OFFICIAL SOURCES...

SO IT IS THE SAME WITH THE DENIALS IN REGARD TO THE YUCKRAINIAN BIOLABS RUN BY THE USA. WE HAVE ALREADY EXPLORED THIS ROUTE, BUT IN THE LIGHT OF POLITIFACT, WE'RE CAUTIOUS ABOUT ITS ENTIRE BODY OF WORK WHICH TENDS TO FAVOUR OPINIONS FROM THE DEMOCRATS AND POOPOO OPINIONS FROM THE REPUBLICANS.

WHEN THERE IS A CONTENTIOUS ISSUE SUCH AS SUPPORTING THE WAR IN YUCKRAINE, POLITIFACT SEEMS NOT TO GO THERE...

THE BIOLABS:

In view of the unrest that US intelligence services have been actively initiating lately, whether in Central Asia, Transcaucasia or other areas bordering Russia and China, the risk of a biological disaster from multiple secret military biological laboratories deployed by the US in potentially politically and socially unstable regions is objectively increasing.

In this regard, the issue of the US preparing a biological time bomb in Kazakhstan has been raised many times before. The growing risk of the Pentagon initiating biological warfare using over 400 US biological laboratories located overseas around the world and the need for a clear response to the risk of worldwide biological disaster from such secret US overseas facilities has been repeatedly pointed out.  After all, these biological laboratories employ some 13,000 “employees” who are busy creating strains of killer pathogens (microbes and viruses) that are resistant to vaccines.

It is no secret nowadays that the US has set up such biological laboratories in 25 countries around the world: in the Middle East, Africa, South-East Asia. Only within the former Soviet Union there are US military biological laboratories in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Uzbekistan.

The Americans try to deny the military nature of the studies conducted in such laboratories. However, the secrecy that surrounds them is only comparable to that of the most important military facilities. There is no accountability to the local and global public about the “work” being done there. Moreover, no scientific “achievements” have been publicly demonstrated by American biologists over the many years of the existence of such foreign secret laboratories, and the results of their research are not published anywhere in the public domain.  Meanwhile, laboratories are actively collecting information on the gene pool of the populations of countries where such laboratories operate. All this indicates that the Pentagon is undoubtedly preparing to wage a biological war using biological weapons, which the US is building in such biological laboratories. It is well known that the US has already spent over $100bn in recent years developing biological warfare weapons. The US is the only country that still blocks the establishment of a verification mechanism under the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction.

However, like Russia’s demands to the West for a clear agreement on universal security measures and on the non-proliferation of NATO to the east, warnings about US readiness to unleash a global biological war have never been heeded in Washington and Western capitals.

With this in mind, one can hardly deny that Russia, like any other country, does not wish to have such weapons near its borders, thus jeopardizing the security of all.

Therefore, in Moscow’s military operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine in recent days, getting rid of the numerous US military biological laboratories on the territory of that country is an important point.

On February 24, the British conservative publication THE EXPOSÉ published an article entitled “Is there more to the Ukraine/Russia conflict than meets the eye?” It recognizes that Russia should have conducted the current military operation on the basis of its security interests and confirms that there has long been a very serious threat to the lives and health of the Russian Federation population from the territory of Ukraine. It refers to at least 16 US military biological laboratories located in Odessa, Vinnitsa, Uzhgorod, Lviv (three), Kharkiv, Kiev (also three), Kherson, Ternopil, Dnepropetrovsk, as well as near Luhansk and the border with Crimea. Such “cooperation” between the Pentagon and the Ukrainian Ministry of Health dates back to 2005. Opposition parties managed to push through the Verkhovna Rada in 2013 to end this “cooperation”, but the US-led coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014 prevented the implementation of this decision, resulting in this “cooperation” not only continuing but also actively developing at the initiative of Washington.

Many of the Pentagon’s and White House’s official secrets about US clandestine biological laboratories overseas have been revealed by Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois at Champaign (USA) and author of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 (BWATA). As this American scientist points out, “We now have an Offensive Biological Weapons industry in this country that violates the Biological Weapons Convention and my Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989”. According to Boyle, “American universities have a long history of willingly permitting their research agenda …. to be co-opted, corrupted, and perverted by the the Pentagon and the C.I.A. into death science”. He cites as an example the group of Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, which managed to increase the toxicity of the flu virus by a factor of 200. According to Boyle, the Pentagon and the CIA are “ready, willing and able to launch biowarfare when it suits their interests… They have a stockpile of that super-weapons-grade anthrax that they already used against us in October 2001”.

The threat to people living even at a distance from such laboratories is evidenced by an investigation conducted by USA Today newspaper, which showed that from 2006 to 2013 alone, more than 1,500 accidents and safety violations occurred in 200 military biological laboratories on the territory of the US. So what about possible similar incidents in biological laboratories in Ukraine or other former Soviet republics?

In the summer of 2019, “America’s main biological warfare lab has been ordered to stop all research into the deadliest viruses and pathogens over fears contaminated waste could leak out of the facility,” reported Britain’s The Independent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the public health authority in the US, has revoked the military bioresearch center at Fort Detrick’s license to handle Ebola, smallpox and anthrax after CDC inspectors found “problems with the procedures used to decontaminate wastewater” at Fort Detrick. In this regard, it is notable that the possibility of “deadly viruses and pathogens” leaking into Fort Detrick’s wastewater was detected shortly before the COVID-19 outbreak, which the Americans were quick to blame on China. It is also noteworthy that the Pentagon has significantly stepped up the activities of its overseas biological laboratories since 2019, clearly shifting the “work” on particularly dangerous strains and biological weapons development there.

In these circumstances, the task of terminating the activities of the US secret biological laboratories as part of the demilitarization of that country is justified in the program of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine.

Against this background, it is noteworthy that the US embassy in Ukraine removed all documents about the biological laboratories in Kiev and Odessa from its official website after Moscow launched its military operation. This further confirms that in addition to the nuclear threat from Zelensky, Russia was also being prepared for bio-extinction behind the ocean. Under these circumstances, the announcement by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) on the US government procurement website last October of an addendum on “combating highly dangerous pathogens” is understandable. This document concerned the $3.6mln finishing work to launch two biological laboratories in Ukraine – in Kiev and Odessa, where machinery, equipment and personnel were already being prepared for the United States to unleash a biological war under the cover of Ukraine.

Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/43228

THE DENIAL BY POLITIFACT:

Russia, China and right-wing American media have been spreading false stories about U.S.-backed bioweapon labs in Ukraine. 

"We confirm facts, unearthed as part of the special military operations, which testify to an emergency attempt to erase evidence of military biological programs," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said March 9.

China’s Foreign Ministry tweeted March 8, "The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone. It should give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification."

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson joined in March 9, saying, "We never imagined Ukraine would have biological weapons."

But as Carlson described it, his eyes were opened when Victoria Nuland, U.S. undersecretary of state, had this exchange with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

"Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?" Rubio asked.

"Ukraine has biological research facilities, which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of," Nuland said. "So, we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach." 

For Carlson, this was proof positive that Ukraine has "secret labs," and that what Russia has said is, "in fact, totally and completely true."

Let us be clear: There is no evidence of Ukrainian bioweapon labs. The Russian talking point is not, as Carlson said, "totally and completely true."

There are labs in Ukraine, backed by the United States, the European Union, Canada and the World Health Organization. These labs work with a number of pathogens, including the ones that cause anthrax, plague and hemorrhagic fever in humans. They study viruses that affect birds and pigs.

That does not make them bioweapon facilities. Virtually every nation has labs to deal with the threat of microbes that drive disease, and some of those microbes are especially deadly.

The U.S. Defense Department said March 11 that when the Russian attack began, "the Ukrainian Ministry of Health responsibly ordered the safe and secure disposal of samples. These actions limit the danger of an accidental release of pathogens should Russia’s military attack laboratories."

Contrary to what Carlson said, these are not secret labs. The Global Partnership Working Group, a multilateral body, lists the domestic institutes and agencies that run these labs in its annual reports. (The U.S. supports labs in more than 20 countries.) For at least two years, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine had a page on its website that described the U.S. role in these facilities. That pageremains active, and it has details on the 13 major facilities where research takes place. There are other, smaller labs that only identify pathogens.

The Defense Department said in a fact sheet that since 2005, it has spent $200 million in Ukraine supporting 46 Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities and diagnostic sites. It works with Ukrainian health and agriculture ministries and agencies. Those organizations have limited contact with Ukraine’s military, providing mobile diagnostic labs in case of a public health emergency.

"These are all public health and veterinary labs," said Gregory Koblentz, director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University. "None of them have been involved in biological warfare."

A 2012 report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences included a section on the labs in Ukraine that dealt with potentially lethal microbes. Three Ukrainian labs were equipped to work with some of the more dangerous pathogens such as anthrax, and, with U.S. assistance, had been upgraded to the level needed to work with diseases transmitted by breathing. 

In addition to labs that worked on identifying the presence of pathogens, Ukraine also had a storage center where it kept samples of both indigenous and exotic pathogens.

Carlson used the terms biolab and bioweapon lab interchangeably. There is always the question of whether a lab that studies pathogens could be used to turn one into a weapon. Much of the equipment is similar. But an actual weapons program takes more.

"The reality is that a real biological weapon program has additional requirements, such as formulating an agent to be able to be mass-produced and stable enough to be stored and disseminated," Koblentz said.

Beyond that, there are issues of production and delivery systems.

"These are not activities that most public health labs are capable of doing," he said. "They can diagnose a disease but not conduct the more advanced work to convert a pathogen into a biological weapon."

Like all but a handful of countries, Ukraine has signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, which bans the development, production and possession of biological weapons. The convention lacks an independent verification process, though Ukraine has voluntarily submitted compliance reports..

The Defense Department program that works with labs in Ukraine started after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The initial focus was on Russian biological and chemical weapons facilities. The Soviet military program included some labs in Ukraine, and the primary goal of the U.S. was to repurpose them for peaceful uses.

Since 2005, through the Biological Threat Reduction Program, the U.S. and Ukraine have had an agreement to upgrade the country’s biological research laboratories.

"All of the labs have long since been converted for biosurveillance and testing," said RAND researcher Daniel Gerstein, who served in the Homeland Security Department in the Obama administration. "One of the diseases that everybody in Europe is now concerned about is African swine fever, so that would be an example of a pathogen that they might study."

The conversion of the labs involved a lot of hands-on work by American specialists, he said. 

"We found the best way to tell what the scientists were doing, and how well they were performing, and what the risk was for a possible accident or misuse, was through cooperative biological research," he said.

That engagement is ongoing, and in itself acts as a way to verify what takes place at the labs. Ukraine has been open to specialists from the U.S. and Europe, said Hayley Severance, deputy vice president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. She served as an adviser to the Defense Department during both the Obama and Trump administrations. 

"Ukraine’s willingness to partner with countries like the U.S. and to grant them access to their laboratories demonstrates that they have nothing to hide," Severance said.

A spokesman with the Russian Defense Ministry explained on March 10 how papers "received from various sources" on the migration of ducks and bats proved the labs’ dangerous activities. The presentation failed to answer how studying how a virus could cross borders must be a sign of bioweapons research, and not an effort to protect public or animal health.

At Russia’s request, the U.N. Security Council planned to meet March 11 to discuss Russia’s claims.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/mar/11/russia-china-and-tucker-carlson-lack-evidence-ukra/

-------------------------

THE ADMISSION BY THE US ADMINISTRATION:

Washington has been urged to come clean over its biolab program in Ukraine after the Department of Defense admitted its existence.

The Pentagon said on Thursday that it has operated 46 biolabs in Ukraine handling dangerous pathogens, after previously dismissing the charges as Russian propaganda.

China has joined calls for the United States to explain the role and capacity of the laboratories following the Pentagon’s stunning reversal after months of denial.

In March leaked papers appeared to suggest that its operations in Ukraine were sensitive while Kiev was reportedly blocked from public disclosure about the program.

According to a document signed between the two nations, Ukraine is obliged to transfer the dangerous pathogens to the U.S. Department of Defense for biological research.

Those who had raised concerns over the presence of the biolabs have been dismissed as conspiracy theorists and accused of regurgitating Russian disinformation.

But comments made by U.S. Deputy Secretary of state Victoria Nuland in March prompted further suspicions when she appeared to confirm the biological program, saying she feared the labs would “fall into Russian hands.”

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Friday that the U.S. must explain its activities and called on it to stop “single-handedly opposing the establishment of a verification mechanism for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).

“As I stressed time and again, the U.S. conducts more bio-military activities than any other country in the world.

“Moreover, the U.S. is the only country opposing the establishment of a verification mechanism for the BWC.

“The international community has long had concerns over this. Recently, Russia has further revealed the U.S.’ bio-military activities in Ukraine and raised clearly that the US has violated the BWC.

“According to the stipulations of the BWC, the U.S. is under an obligation to provide clarifications on Russia’s allegation so as to restore the international community’s confidence in the U.S.’s compliance,” he said.

Washington denies Russian claims that it has experimented on humans after it was alleged that testing of pathogens was carried out on psychiatric patients from Kharkiv.

The United States has been accused of engaging in biological warfare in the past.

Late Cuban leader Fidel Castro claimed that its operatives had introduced swine fever and dengue fever into the country, with a previously unknown strain of the latter created in a laboratory.

The aim was to create “the largest number of victims possible,” he said.

Former Daily Worker (U.K.) international correspondent Alan Winnington and Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett were accused of treason and had their passports canceled after exposing the U.S. biological war in Korea in the 1950s.

Despite the denials, an International Scientific Commission headed by Cambridge University’s Professor Joseph Needham concluded that China and North Korea had been subjected to bacteriological weapons.

Editor’s Note (August 24, 2023): This article contains partial information which may lead readers to conclude that the U.S. Department of Defense admitted to operating biological weapons laboratories – “biolabs” – inside Ukraine. What the U.S. government confirmed was the funding/operation of biological laboratories researching certain diseases and pathogens in Ukraine. The Russian government has long claimed that these labs were also conducting (or could in the future conduct) research and development on chemical and biological weaponry. Many Q-Anon and other right-wing conspiracy theorists have repeated the Russian accusations. The implication of the above article is that, given the U.S.’ long and atrocious record of conducting chemical and biological warfare in places like Korea, Cuba, and Iraq, such a possibility is not outside the realm of believability. It does not directly claim, however, that such development has occurred. It does report on demands by China, though, that the U.S. fully disclose the nature of the research it collaborated on with Ukraine. At this time, there is no confirmed evidence of chemical or biological weapons research being carried out at the labs in question.

[EXCEPT BY DOCUMENTS SHOWN BY RUSSIA — BUT WHO BELIEVES THE RUSSIANS ANYWAY?]

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/after-months-of-denial-u-s-admits-to-running-ukraine-biolabs/

SEE ALSO: 

NEWS RELEASE

1/11/01 

Mark Shwartz, News Service (650) 723-9296; e-mail: mshwartz@stanford.edu 

Why is biophysicist Steven Block so concerned about smallpox? 

After all, more than 20 years have passed since the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the eradication of this highly contagious and incurable disease. 

"Simply put, smallpox represents a direct threat to the entire world," says Block, a professor of biological sciences and applied physics at Stanford. 

He points out that, although the disease has been eliminated in the wild, frozen stocks of smallpox virus are still maintained by the governments of the United States and Russia. 

If rogue politicians or terrorists were to get hold of the remaining supplies, "the consequences could be disastrous," he warns.

But Block is haunted by more than the threat of a smallpox attack. 

He points to some two dozen conventional biological agents -- including anthrax, Ebola and typhus -- plus an unknown number of genetically engineered organisms that terrorists could unleash on an unsuspecting public. 

"We're tempted to say that nobody in their right mind would ever use these things," he says, "but not everybody is in their right mind!" 

Block paints a disturbing picture of the international bioterrorist threat in an article published in the Jan./Feb. issue of American Scientist magazine. 

His expertise in biological warfare stems from his work with JASON, an organization of primarily academic scientists who dedicate a portion of their time to solving national security problems. Members of JASON often serve as consultants to the Defense Department and other U.S. agencies 

"In my opinion," he writes, "the terrorist threat is very real, and it's about to get worse." 

Block argues that the United States and other developed countries should be doing more to prevent the spread of biological weaponry, which he calls "a serious threat to peace in the twenty-first century." 

He saves his harshest criticism for his fellow biologists, most of whom have remained silent on the issue. 

"Where are the biological scientists willing to go on the record about bioweapons?" he asks. 

Anthrax

Biological weapons are "the poor man's atom bomb," writes Block in American Scientist. 

He argues that bioweapons offer terrorist groups and "rogue states" (such as Iraq and North Korea) an affordable way to counter the overwhelming military superiority of the United States and other nuclear powers. 

The agent of choice for most biological warfare programs, writes Block, is anthrax. Anthrax bacteria produce extremely lethal spores, and breathing in large numbers can lead to inhalation anthrax -- a disease that usually is fatal unless treated with large doses of a penicillin-type antibiotic immediately after exposure. 

Anthrax spores are easy to produce and can remain viable for more than 100 years if kept dry and out of direct sunlight. 

Their long shelf life makes them "well suited to weaponization in a device that can deliver a widespread aerosol," Block notes. 

Anthrax also is relatively easy and safe to handle. 

"Airborne spores remain infectious until they fall to the ground, where most become inactivated by sunlight," Block writes. 

"Anthrax is not very communicable," he adds, "thereby reducing the risk that it will spread beyond the intended target. Moreover, a well-established vaccine exists that can prevent the onset of the disease, allowing it to be used safely by the aggressor." 

"Black biology"

If anthrax, smallpox and other "conventional" biological agents aren't frightening enough, Block also raises the specter of "black biology" -- a shadowy science in which microorganisms are genetically engineered for the sole purpose of creating novel weapons of terror. 

"The idea that anybody can brew this stuff in their garage vastly overstates the case," he says, "but any technology that can be used to insert genes into DNA can be used for either good or bad." 

Block points out that genetic maps of deadly viruses, bacteria and other microorganisms already are widely available in the public domain. Last summer, for example, a leading scientific journal published the entire genetic code for the cholera pathogen. And legitimate researchers are now in the process of mapping the genomes of more than 100 other microbes -- including the bacteria that cause anthrax, the plague and typhoid. 

Any scientist bent on destruction could use this information to attempt to clone extremely virulent strains of bacteria and viruses, Block contends. 

He also points out that there are plenty of underpaid microbiologists in the world who might be eager to work for unscrupulous clients -- producing incurable "designer diseases," such as penicillin-resistant anthrax, or "stealth viruses" that infect the host but remain silent until activated by some external trigger, such as exposure to a normally harmless chemical. 

History lessons

Biological warfare is as old as civilization, observes Block, but it was international revulsion over the widespread use of poisonous mustard gas during World War I that finally led to a 1925 treaty banning bioweapons during future wars. 

"Disappointingly," Block writes, "neither the U.S. nor Japan ratified the treaty before the advent of World War II, when anthrax and other bioweapons were secretly being developed by both countries -- as well as by Germany, the U.S.S.R [now Russia] and Great Britain." 

During the Second World War, the Japanese military killed thousands of Chinese prisoners by subjecting them to experimental doses of anthrax, cholera, plague and other pathogens. Evidence also exists of a deliberate tularemia -- or rabbit fever -- attack by Soviet forces against German troops in 1942, although some experts say the incident never occurred. 

After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union launched full-scale bioweapons programs, which included the development of aerosol sprays capable of delivering bacterial and viral agents by plane or ballistic missile. 

"Both sides also stockpiled plenty of anthrax," adds Block. 

In 1969, President Richard Nixon issued an executive order unilaterally and unconditionally ending America's bioweapons program, and all U.S. stockpiles were destroyed by 1972. 

That same year, 160 nations signed a treaty banning all use of biological and chemical weapons. And 143 countries eventually ratified the treaty, including the United States, Russia, Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea. Fifty-two nations have not signed on, including Israel, Egypt and Somalia. 

Failed treaty

Despite its noble intentions, says Block, the 1972 treaty lacks any significant provisions for enforcement or verification. As a result, a number of signatories to the treaty have maintained active bioweapons programs. 

"I'm fairly confident that the U.S. has stopped producing biological weapons," he says, "but the Soviet Union carried out ultra-secret bioweapons work right up until it collapsed in 1990." 

In 1979, 100 people and countless livestock died following the accidental release of anthrax spores from a bioweapons plant in the Russian city of Sverdlovsk -- one of 40 such facilities that operated in the former Soviet Union. 

Russia's dismal economic situation raises the question of how out-of-work bioweapons scientists are managing to find gainful employment now, observes Block. 

"Some experts contend that a low but significant level of bioresearch still exists today," he adds. 

Block's ultimate nightmare is that terrorists could somehow get access to the smallpox viruses being kept on ice at the Russian State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology -- a fear bolstered by the testimony of a former official in the Russian biowarfare program, who claimed that smallpox-based weapons were being manufactured there as recently as 1992. 

Iraq also has violated the 1972 bioweapons treaty by mass-producing weapons-grade anthrax and conducting research on a wide variety of other biological agents -- including botulism, rotavirus and gangrene-inducing bacteria. Details of the Iraqi bioweaponry program only came to light in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. 

All told, Block estimates that about a dozen countries are believed to have active bioweapons programs. 

Terrorist threat

Although Block is concerned about the bioweapons buildup in Iraq and other nations, he believes a greater threat comes from terrorist groups willing to risk an out-of-control epidemic and eager to suffer casualties for the good of "the cause." 

A recent example was the 1995 sarin gas attack inside the Tokyo subway by the Japanese apocalyptic cult Aum Shinrikyo. The widely publicized assault, which killed 13 people and hospitalized thousands, had been preceded by a series of failed botulism and anthrax assaults near the Imperial Palace, a Tokyo airport and two U.S. military bases. 

"Groups like Aum Shinrikyo are willing to use biological agents inefficiently just for the terror and propaganda value," Block contends. 

"If anthrax were released haphazardly in a major U.S. city and produced only a handful of cases, the public fear and disruption that would ensue might alone bring about the intended effect," he adds. 

Solutions

During fiscal year 2000, the Clinton administration allocated $1.4 billion to combat both biological and chemical warfare -- a good beginning but not enough, according to Block, who believes more should be spent beefing up America's anti-terrorist intelligence effort and its emergency response capability. 

Block also supports the development of hi-tech devices capable of instantaneously detecting lethal bacteria and viruses in the environment, and he encourages the production and stockpiling of new vaccines ­--a hot-button issue in Washington, D.C. these days. 

The anthrax vaccine has stirred the most controversy. The U.S. military wants to inoculate all 2.4 million active and reserve troops, but no one knows if the current vaccine will provide immunity against inhalation anthrax ­ the type commonly used in bioweapons. Questions of safety, along with a scandal involving the corporation that distributes the anthrax vaccine, have led to a sharp reduction in the military's vaccination effort. 

As for smallpox, routine vaccinations in the United States ended in 1980, the year the virus was officially eradicated, so few Americans still have immunity today. The Centers for Disease Control will make 40 million new doses of the vaccine available beginning in 2004, but critics say that, in the event of a multi-city terrorist attack, hundreds of millions of doses will be needed to prevent the often fatal disease from spreading throughout the country. 

On the diplomatic front, Block argues in favor of strengthening the 1972 bioweapons treaty -- "giving it some 'teeth,'" he says, by requiring reciprocal international inspections to assure treaty compliance. 

"Embarrassingly," he notes, "the United States itself has steadfastly resisted certain attempts to establish provisions for inspections" -- in part to protect the interests of large American pharmaceutical and biotech companies against industrial espionage. 

"As the world's remaining superpower," Block maintains, "the United States bears the unique responsibility to take the moral high ground in this process, assuming a leadership role in support of meaningful weapons treaties." 

He also makes a strong plea to his fellow biologists to break their silence and take a stand against the proliferation of biological weapons. 

"Some folks simply do not take the threat seriously," he observes, "but they should. Others worry about provoking a widespread public backlash against biotechnology in general that might have a chilling effect on their own legitimate biological research." 

None of these excuses stands up to close scrutiny, Block contends, adding that the time to act is now before disaster strikes. 

"We should not have to wait for the biological equivalent of Hiroshima to rally our defenses," he concludes. 

-30- 

By Mark Shwartz 

-----------------

This article was published nearly 24 years ago....

SEE ALSO:

SEE ALSO: 

APPARENTLY, JOHN BRENNAN AS HE WAS RUNNING THE CIA, ALLUDED IN 2016 TO DEVELOPING "NASTY" PATOGENS NEAR THE RUSSIAN BORDER....

"Nowhere are the stakes higher for our national security than in the field of biotechnology," Brennan stated. "Recent advances in genome editing that offer great potential for breakthroughs in public health are also a cause for concern because the same methods can be used to create genetically engineered biological warfare agents."

In April [2016], the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Health Affairs Acting Director Aaron Firoved testified in Congress that synthetic biology and gene editing offer terrorist organizations potential to modify organisms for malicious purposes such as manmade pathogens that can rapidly cause disease outbreaks.

Moreover, subnational terrorist entities such as Daesh "would have few compunctions in wielding such a weapon," Brennan noted.

Brennan called on the international community to create national and global strategies to counter such threats, along with the consensus of laws, standards and authorities that needed to counter the threat.

read more: https://sputniknews.com/us/20160629/1042192637/cia-claims-genome-editing-dangerous.html

the reality: https://sputniknews.com/world/20160908/1045088663/us-russia-biological-laboratories.html

If you are not outraged or spitting chips at the US stance on biological weapons, you are a moron.

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/32552

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.