No end to bio-chemical weaponry

Nerun Yakub Historians tracing the abuse of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) identify the United States as one of 'the most notorious and prolific practitioners' of the devilish game. Given the array of information available in the public domain on the subject, the US does seem to deserve the title. Not that there aren't other, less open, states involved in experimenting with CBW. By the 1980s about a dozen countries were said to have established facilities to manufacture such weaponry, and even India was mentioned among them ! Man's capacity for hatred and mischief seems to have become greater than the caring and sharing abilities. Investigative science reporters in the last century had dug up enough facts and figures to prove that. The invaders of the 'New World" initiated germ warfare as early as 1763. Blankets with smallpox germs were given as gifts to the native Americans, who sought only friendly relations with the colonists ! This satanic conduct continues to this day as revealed by the exploits of the US across the world ---- North Korea, Laos, Vietnam and Cuba from the 1950s to the 1980s, not to mention the more recent 'missions' against other 'dispensible' people ! The International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacteriological Warfare in Korea and Indo China produced a 700 page report describing their wicked tactics: 'feathers infected with anthrax; lice, fleas, mosquitoes dosed with plague and yellow fever; diseased rodents; various implements contaminated with deadly microbes ---toilet paper, envelopes and the ink in fountain pens' dropped from the air ! On the commission was the renowned British scientist, Joseph Needham, along with peers from France, Italy, Sweden, Brazil and the then Soviet Union. Other countries' covert exercises sometimes get media attention too. South Africa's secret service agents, for example, made news for poisoning black opposition leaders, and pushing cholera and anthrax germs into unsuspecting black people during the apartheid era. This was revealed in a report placed before the Truth and Reconciliation Committee of Mandela and Tutu's South Africa. Frank Chikane was one of the black politicians whose poisoned underwear sent him into a coma and weeks of pain in an intensive care unit ! The Serbs, at the height of the Bosnian conflict were reported to have used some kind of binary missiles over Srebenica. These were designed to blow up after two specific gases mixed in mid-air and produced a compound that induced berserk behaviour in those exposed to it.Even docile people could turn murderous then ! Clearly it could exploit undercurrents of hostility and resentment and instigate Hutu-Tutsi-type massacres, mob violence and lynching sprees ! The US made use of Shiro Ishii, a talented and dedicated Japanese army surgeon, who on behalf of his government, established a major biological warfare institution in Manchuria in 1937. It could produce eight tons of bacteria a month ! With a staff of 3,000, Shiro Ishii worked here with some of the world's most deadly diseases, using not only thousands of animals for the purpose but even prisoners of war whom he referred to as "monkeys" in his notes! 'The experiments ranged from the gruesome to the horrific: Ishii's researchers injected tetanus into the heels of prisoners; left them naked outdoors in temperatures 40 degrees below zero until their limbs froze solid as rock; fed them typhus contaminated tomatoes; placed prisoners in glass rooms and sprayed them with anthrax, cholera, typhoid, plague-infected fleas, and other diseases, to calculate the minimum lethal dose; contaminated chocolate, bread, tooth powder, milk, cream and butter with anthrax spores; tied prisoners to a stake and then exploded germ bombs overhead while soldiers wearing protective gear timed their deaths with stopwatches ...........' (The Killing Winds: The Menace of Biological Warfare, by Jeanne McDermott, Arbor House, New York, 1987) After World War II the US government tracked Ishii down and offered him immunity from war crimes prosecution in exchange for his expertise, and then went on denying for over thirty years that anything horrible happened in the Manchurian lab ! With mind-boggling breakthroughs in science and technology --- genetic engineering, nanotechnology, robotics and the like ---- quite bizarre frontiers have been opening up for more sophisticated weapons. Scientists acquired the capacity to tinker with old diseases and even re-design them for specific situations ---- such as targeting particular ethnic groups under cover of health oriented vaccination programmes ! Only the planners need know what biological agents were being used and for what purpose. Thus it was not difficult to inject chosen blacks in South Africa with cholera and anthrax ! Nothing seems impossible today. The common cold virus or common flu could be made virulent with the insertion of more harmful genes from deadlier microbes. These new biological warfare agents could be made resistant to known antibiotics and vaccines; while new vaccines could be developed to protect the aggressors from their own creations while at the same time raking in corporate profits. Anthrax, plague, Q-fever, dengue virus, tularemia, psittacosis, venezuelan equine encephalitis, rift valley fever virus and scores of other diseases, have been favourites, perfected for use against humans as well as agriculture and livestock. The possibilities of tinkering with life forms are so vast that there is no way to determine whether emerging new diseases or re-emerging old ones that are afflicting people these days are the handiwork of evil genius or natural mutation. An outbreak of plague in India's Surat several years ago led to accusations that the CIA was using Indians as guinea pigs. One news magazine ran a story on the incident in great detail, demonstrating that the Indian military's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was fairly equipped to take on any covert aggressors. However, the furore died down soon, and we are told the secret services of India and the US have been on collaborating terms since then ! [Plenty of guinea pigs in caste-cursed, dirt-poor pockets within. And Bangladesh is also perfectly placed as an experimental field !] Genewatch, a biotechnology journal, reported in its 1987 JulyOctober issue that the US military, between 1945 and 1969, had conducted well over 299 known experimental disseminations of micro-organisms over 239 populated areas. The tests had been carried out both within US territory and outside. Even airports and subways had been sprayed with bacteria to test dispersal characteristics ! By 1969, however, President Nixon had been persuaded to call for a halt to the madness and order the destruction of CBW agents in the US. Russia also went ahead to become one of the sponsors of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention which bars the possession and production of weapons designed to unleash deadly bacteria, viruses, fungi or toxins. But is it working at all ? Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg, speaking to the Geneva Conference Committee on Disarmament in1972 had clearly warned: Molecular biology might be exploited for military purposes and result in a biological weapons race whose aim could well become the most efficient means of removing man from the planet.