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58 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
58 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
PENTAGON BIOWARFARE RESEARCH CONDUCTED IN UNIVERSITY LABORATORIES
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Overshadowed by Star Wars and overlooked by the media, the push
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toward biowarfare has been one of the Reagan administration's best
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kept secrets. The research budget for infectious diseases and toxins
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has increased tenfold since fiscal '81 and most of the '86 budget of
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$42 million went to 24 U.S. university campuses where the world's most
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deadly organisms are being cultured in campus labs.
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The amount of military money available for biotechnology research
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is a powerful attraction for scientists whose civilian funding
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resources dried up. Scientists formerly working on widespread killers
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like cancer now use their talents developing strains of such rare
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pathogens as anthrax, dengue, Rift Valley fever, Japanes encephalitis,
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tularemia, shigella, botulin, Q fever, and mycotoxins.
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Many members of the academic community find the trend alarming,
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but when MIT's biology department voted to refuse Pentagon funds for
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biotech research, the administration forced it to reverse its
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decision. And, in 1987, the University of Wisconsin hired Philip
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Sobocinski, a retired Army colonel, to help professors tailor their
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research to attract Pentagon-funded biowarfare research to the school.
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Richard Jannaccio, a former science writer at UW, was dismissed from
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his job on August 25, 1987, the day after the student newspaper, THE
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DAILY CARDINAL, published his story disclosing the details of Colonel
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Sobicinski's mission at the University.
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Since the U.S. is a signatory to the 1972 Biological and Toxic
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Weapons Convention which bans "development, production, stockpiling
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and use of microbes or their poisonous products except in amounts
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necessary for protective and peaceful research," the university-based
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work is being pursued under the guise of defensive projects aimed at
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developing vaccines and protective gear. Scientists who oppose the
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program insist that germ-warfare defense is clearly impractical; every
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person would have to be vaccinated for every known harmful biological
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agent. Since vaccinating the entire population would be virtually
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impossible, the only application of a defensive development is in
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conjunction with offensive use. Troops could be effectively vaccinated
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for a single agent prior to launching an attack with that agent.
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Colonel David Huxsoll, commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research
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Institute of Infectious Diseases admits that offensive research is
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indistinguishable from defensive research even for those doing it.
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Each of the sources for this synopsis raised ethical questions
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about the perversion of academia by military money and about the U.S.
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engaging in a biological arms race that could rival the nuclear
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threat, yet none mentioned the safety or the security of the labs
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involved. The failure to investigate this aspect of the issue is a
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striking omission. Release of pathogens, either by accident or
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design, would prove tragic at any of the following schools: Brigham
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Young, California Institute of Technology, Colorado State University,
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Emory, Illinois Institute of Technology, Iowa University, M.I.T.,
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Purdue, State University of N.Y. at Albany, Texas A&M, and the
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Universities of California, California at Davis, Cincinnati,
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Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland,
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Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Utah.
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SOURCES: ISTHMUS, 10/9/87, "Biowarfare and the UW," by Richard
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Jannaccio, pp 1, 9, 10; THE PROGRESSIVE, 11/16/87, "Poisons from the
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Pentagon," by Seth Shulman, pp 16-20; WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9/17/86,
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"Military Science," by Bill Richards and Tim Carrington, pp 1, 23.
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