GARY NULL:
Basically, just about everything that the human mind can imagine is
much closer than ever before because of our ability to manipulate
the genetic structure of the living cell.

Well, not surprisingly, bio-technology companies are springing up at
a phenomenal rate, all with the hope of cashing in on this budding
new field. The profit potentials are ENORMOUS. And a public stock
offering by a promising new company can send Wall Street into a
frenzy. This is a world in which competition is fierce, and in which
each nation is vying against other nations -- company against
company. It is an arena in which profits can be in the billions of
dollars, and where today's fledgling company can be tomorrow's
multi-national giant, and where scientific reputations are made.
Because of its virtually unlimited potentials, the bio-technology
industry is attracting the attention of many established industries
and institutions who view bio-technology as their chance to bolster
profits and to increase power. The pharmaceutical corporations, for
instance, are major underwriters of bio-technology research aimed at
the development of new "wonder drugs", the most promising of which
is currently a cardiovascular medication for which heart patients
pay about twenty-two hundred dollars per SINGLE dose.            

The Military, which is forced to abandon the use and development of
chemical and biological warfare -- by a treaty some years ago, and
by the demise of the Soviet Union -- is looking for loopholes in
these restrictions. The Military is already pumping tens of millions
of dollars every year into research on new forms of germ weaponry,
conducted at major universities and at research facilities, and at
corporations across the country.

However, while bio-technology does promise to provide (and probably
will) solutions in areas where Science has previously had no
success, many observers warn against unbridled enthusiasm. In a
whirlwind generated by the visions of a new mega-industry springing
up overnight, it's all too easy to overlook the need for caution   
and vigilance. Bio-technology, after all, involves the release into
your environment of organisms which have NEVER, EVER been there
before. They've never existed on this planet!  And since the field
itself is so young, it may be many, many years before we have an
inkling of the impact that these new organisms will have on human
beings and their environment. And while bio-technology is exciting
because of its potential benefits, it also evokes in many the fear
of an equally great risk of disaster if it is allowed to develop,
unchecked and without proper regulation.

The rapid growth of genetic engineering endangers a whole host of
species, too. Remember, when they're creating a new crop species,
they're doing it to replace an old crop that they don't OWN!
Could you imagine the day when virtually every single food that is
purchased in a market is patented?  The seeds are patented, so
therefore, you don't have the selection. You don't have the taste.
You don't have the quality. It will have certain benefits. It might
be more disease-resistant to a certain blight or bug. It might 
ripen at a certain rate. But it will have it's disadvantages. And
what about the people who will then control the price on it?

What, precisely, is the effect of releasing an artificially
manipulated organism into the environment for the first time?
Scientists are ASSURING us that there are no risks involved, either
to humans or to the environment. But this cavalier attitude toward
risks associated with scientific research and experiments is not 
unusual. With so many researchers being involved in the field, they
may be inclined to simply contradict cumbersome facts. Other issues
surrounding the bio-technology industry are more general, and often
arise whenever Science allies itself too intimately with power and
politics and money. In this regard, bio-technology is particularly
vulnerable. It allies itself with America's most formidable
institutions: the Medical Establishment, universities, major 
research facilities, the Pharmaceutical Industry, the 
Military-Industrial Complex and Agribusiness; and, of course, the 
U.S. Public Health Service.

Now, to understand some of the issues surrounding the development  
of bio-technology today, first it's important to examine some of  
the factors affecting the manner in which Science operates in this 
country. I want to give you a little background. I think that it's
important that you understand this. One of the factors to consider
is that there are economics. Since PURE science, like pure art or
pure mathematics, is rarely a self-supporting, independent discipline
in America. In today's society, science is not so much valued for
itself, but rather, for how it can be utitlized by other sectors of
our society. What this means, in economic terms, is that much of 
the private endowment funds, which gave scientists the liberty to
choose and direct their own research, have dried up, especially in
hard times. And those funds have been replaced by research grants
which are linked to very specific goals. The Military, for instance,
which provides eighty percent of the research funding on many of the
nation's campuses, wants new weapons, even though we have no one to
fight with these weapons -- even though we don't need them --
even though the ones we have are more than adequate.                  

It's because those [military contracting] companies generate profits.         
Remember: Any time anything is made for the Government, someone
profits. Every industry wants a competitive edge. Medicine wants its
"cures". All of these goals are very closely linked to how research
monies are allocated. This puts research directors and university
chairpersons and heads of facilities -- as well as the researchers
themeselves -- under enormous pressure, aware that the continued
funding of their programs may well depend upon coming up with the
right answers at the right times. The temptation to cut corners
becomes irresistible in many cases. In most cases, these short cuts
are relatively insignificant, and we rarely hear about them or feel
their effects. But in some instances, they can have serious
consequences and lead to major questions of ethics and morality in
science. In this regard, the crash of the space shuttle Challenger
immediately comes to mind. But other events of equal importance
involving research fraud and violations of basic scientific 
protocol frequently appear in the Media.

Another factor which greatly affects the manner in which Science
operates in this country is its relative freedom from public
scrutiny. As it stands now, rarely, if ever, does any lay person
know anything about science. They are intimidated by science, and 
they view it to be beyond their grasp. Part of this belief stems
from the highly specialized and technical nature of science, which
does, indeed, place it beyond the comprehension of most lay people.

GARY NULL:
However, the idea that only scientists are competent to judge the
work and the acts of their peers also stems from a longstanding
campaign on the part of the scientific Establishment to pressure
others to allow them to preserve their absolute autonomy. That 
frees them from the burdens of public accountability. Now this
campaign has been successful, and, for the most part, Science is
free to govern itself and to determine its own policies. This would
create few problems if Science was always objective, had only the
public well-being in mind, and was fully accountable for its
research and experimentation. But, given the organizational
structure of the scientific Establishment in this country today,
this is rarely the case.

The real seat of power in the scientific Establishment resides in   
a sort of closely-knit "old boys" network which, far from being
objective, is most often self-serving and much more interested in
perpetuating itself than in lofty ideals of public welfare and
scientific ethics. Within this network, prominent scientists and
researchers, who have either tacitly or expressly agreed to play by
the rules of the game, move freely from one strategic position to
another within the scientific Establishment. It's not uncommon, for
instance, to see a key official in a Government agency, who has
promoted policies favorable to a particular industry, retire from
his position in Government and then go to work for that industry in
some important and very well-paid capacity. This network extends to
virtually every segment of the scientific community which plays a
role in scientific policy-making; whether it's universities,
Government agencies, industry, the Military, Medicine, peer review
boards and scientific journals. It's via these institutions that 
the public side of Science is determined.

Now, this causes a capacity for them to dictate the way in which
Science shall be practiced. Who is qualified to practice, who shall
be published, how research grants shall be allocated, what policies
shall be followed, and what image Science shall portray to the
Public. And that's one of the reasons, by the way, why we have had
no success with arthritis, no success with cancer, except for a few
minor cancers; and the only success in heart disease has come about,
not because of Science, but because of preventive health measures.
This is all because they control it, and they control everything
that we learn. Well, combined with the almost unlimited resources 
at its disposition, the scientific community has carte blanche to
conduct its affairs as it sees fit -- free from public scrutiny.

The secret release of genetically-engineered viruses in Argentina
was but one example of the dangers involved with a self-regulating
scientific community. Jeremy Rifkin of the Foundation on Economic
Trends, whom I quoted a moment ago, has been monitoring the testing
procedures of the scientific community for quite some time now.   
But he is not given the same credibility as someone from those
industries.                                                     

Just think of this. The Department of Defense wanted to build a new,
state-of-the-art bio-technology warfare laboratory, Dunway Proving
Grounds in Utah, to develop a whole new generation  of "defensive"
materials dealing with genetically-engineered weaponry. Again, they
pulled a fast one on the American Public. When the Congress was out
of session in August of that year, the Department of Defense slipped
this facility into the Federal budget as a standard reprogamming  
request. In other words, instead of having it debated at a major 
new policy meeting so that the American Public could know what was
up, and whether or not the People of Utah really wanted it, they
simply made it look like it was just some more construction on-line.
In point-of-fact, we only found out about this when Senator Sasser
of Tennessee sued the Federal Government. He won that suit and the
Military had to be held up. They were not allowed to construct the
building.

There was another suit the next year against the Navy, Army and Air
Force. They were working on genetic-engineering in a hundred and
twenty-nine universities and corporate military laboratories across
the country. That's a HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE universities. They 
are working with every SUPER PATHOGEN known to humanity, from those
associated with hemorrhagic fevers to Legionnaire's Disease. The
Military says that they are doing it for "DEFENSIVE" research
purposes. Well, regardless; the potential dangers of this kind of
experimentation are profound.

What's the point of all this?  We cannot expect the Government to
police itself. It just doesn't do it. And we're naive if we think
that the industries or the scientific Establishment and the
companies involved are going to police themselves. They haven't!
They won't!  We are starting to realize that we've been had.      
And the people doing the hadding are the scientific and medical
communities, as they have been aligned with these special groups.

The Wistar Institute, using millions of dollars of the National
Institutes of Health's money (That's your money and mine. That's
American tax money.) was researching a new rabies virus vaccine. 
This was a recombinant DNA: a genetically-engineered virus. They
went abroad to Argentina without letting the Argentine Government
know, nor did they let the United States Government know. They
innoculated cattle, placing these genetically-engineered viruses
into the environment. This was only the second release in the World
of a genetically-engineered microorganism, that we are aware of.
How many more were released which we didn't know about?  Who knows?

When the President of Argentina found out, he was outraged. He
halted the experiment and confiscated all of the equipment. The
National Institutes of Health were petitioned at the time to
immediately investigate because much of the monies came from our  
own Federal Government. Our Government responded by saying:

  (quote)
   "We're not responsible because, even though we supplied all of
    the money for the experiment at the research stages, we didn't
    supply the money for the actual trip to Argentina."
  (unquote)

So they used a loophole to get out of it.

GARY NULL:
Then there was further petitioning of the Federal Government, 
saying: "We want to close these loopholes. If you're going to spend
millions of dollars of U.S. funds on an experiment, dump them in a
Third World country, placing the Public in jeopardy, we should 
first make sure that our Government oversees the safety and health
of these experiments."

We said, at the time, that genetically-engineered organisms could
create a potential hazard to public health. Well, people who have
been following this debate over the years know that the scientific
community and the bio-technology industry and the chemical companies
have consistently said that there is no possibility, EVER, of anyone
getting harmed. Well, there was a follow-up. In fact, I talked with
the Minister of Health of Argentina. And guess what! They confirmed
that up to seventeen people in Argentina -- farm workers -- had 
been infected with the genetically-engineered rabies virus. They
were exposed to this virus, and because of the lack of safety
protocols in conducting this experiment, they were infected. 

So now we have the first recorded example in the World of people
being infected by the release into the environment of a genetically-
altered microbe. Now, I don't believe that. I believe that we have 
a lot more of these infections that we were never told about, 
including the HIV virus.  And still, our Government refuses to take 
the responsibility, and still refuses to place the appropriate 
protocols to insure safety in health standards.

So, that's how it works. Everybody passes the buck, and everybody
seems to be on the inside of the game, except the American People.
It's one very incestuous system. There are innumerable examples of
how this takes place within the framework of Science today. We've
selected some in doing this research. All of these cases have been
brought to the attention of the American People at various times,   
in different ways, just as it has been today. Some people in the
Public are indifferent. Still others continue to believe what the
Government says. If the Government says there is no harm, these
people say: "Well, there couldn't be any harm."

Others, including many members of this audience, are not indifferent.
They show a sense of shock and outrage. But remember -- the American
People have very short memories. They soon forget everything. And
one of the reasons for this convenient memory lapse is that people
tend not to feel any particular urgency to act upon their concerns
unless THEY THEMSELVES ARE DIRECTLY AFFECTED. Another reason that
these events, even when they come to the attention of the Public,
have so little impact in altering the course of the future is that
most people view them as isolated events, and they fail to see them
as part of a larger picture. Additionally, while these occurrences
may seem appalling, they usually come to our attention after the
fact, and hence, there's little we can do to remedy them.

Nevertheless, it's important to keep in mind that events such as 
the testing in Argentina and the scientific and medical experiments
that I've discussed today ARE AFFECTING US ALL. They are not taking
place in a vacuum. These experiments often are funded by your U.S.
tax dollars. And they use Americans as human guinea pigs. And they
use our environment as part of their protocol. So, far from being
aberrations, these experiments are part of a pattern of behavior --
a gestalt which is behind much of Medicine and scientific research
conducted today.                                                  

The Biological Weapons Convention was signed by the United States  
in 1972. By this treaty, all development, stockpiling and use of
bio-chemical and biological warfare agents for offensive purposes
was banned. That came after a long and heated debate. The proponents
of biological warfare vigorously opposed the destruction of what
amounted to billions of dollars of chemical warfare substances, as
well as the cessation of research, which meant the drying up of
funds for THEIR contingent researchers, manufacturers and suppliers.
At the time, those in favor of the treaty were relatively unaware 
of the extent of malfeasance by the Military in its testing of
biological warfare substances.

For instance, the Public never knew that there were SECRET SPRAYINGS
of mysterious substances by the Army and the CIA in the New York
City subway systems. Few people knew, as I revealed some years ago,
that the U.S. Army performed indiscriminate testing of a powerful
hallucenogenic drug on unwitting soldiers.  I also revealed the
BACTERIAL SPRAYING OF SAN FRANCISCO.

We have that knowledge today. We know what's going on -- or at 
least some of what's going on. We know that the Pentagon lies.    
We know that they will continue to do their work and they will
continue to manufacture poisonous things, and they will call it
"defensive". Yet, we know that it's for offensive purposes. They're
smart enough. There have been many tests of this [practice] in court.
Sometimes the [victimized] people win. Most of the time they don't.

Remember -- you can never judge .... There's no way to calculate 
the dangers if one of these things ends up being an "Andromeda
Strain" and gets into the environment. You never know, until years
later, how many top secret experiments are releasing poisons into
humans and into the environment.   A lot is going on!

I remember talking to Doctor Leonard Cole, professor of political
science at Rutgers University, the author of CLOUDS OF SECRECY: THE
ARMY'S GERM WARFARE TESTS OVER POPULATED AREAS. That book was very
good because it detailed, in a very graphic way, the Government's
policies on germ warfare, and how those policies evolved, and that
all the tests that they did, including spreading trillions of
bacteria, at various times, during TWENTY YEARS, over San Francisco,
Washington and New York. And the U.S. Army wanted to evaluate what 
they called "dispersion patterns" of the bacteria, meaning:    
"Let's see how long the bacteria will survive, and let's see in what
directions the bacteria go."   But there was never a follow-up 
to see whether or not these bacteria affected people.

Now, the Government says that they stopped those secret experiments
back in 1969.   BUT  THEY  HAD  NOT!   They were still going on.   
And there were examples of these experiments continuing. And the
Government was caught.    They just lie.

There were secrets released, under the Freedom of Information Act, 
in which the Army itself ACKNOWLEDGED, in some closed-door Senate
hearings, that during the twenty-year period, it had conducted   
TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINE secret open-air tests, over heavily-
populated areas, with genetically-altered microorganisms, two of
which were: the sirita marcensus[sp] microbe and another, the
bacillus globugilli[sp]. Trillions of these microorganisms were
thrown into the environment. The United States Army's own secret
report said that "EVERY SINGLE CITIZEN IN SAN FRANCISCO HAD BEEN
EXPOSED TO AND WAS INHALING ABOUT FIVE THOUSAND PARTICLES        
PER MINUTE."

GARY NULL:
Another interesting test that the U.S. Army performed lasted for
five days. They conducted the test in New York City, in our subway
system. They PURPOSELY selected the peak travel hours for their
secret experiment. They had bacteria that they put into regular
incandescent light bulbs. About eighty-seven trillion bacteria can
be contained in one glass bulb. And then these were surreptitiously
dropped so that they would break and get into the ventilating
systems. And then they measured the dispersion factor.

One of the strangest discoveries that one makes after examining 
all this data is that by the U.S. Army's own testimony, they never
monitored the health of the exposed populations. So, the Army's
first answer to questions concerning the health of the test
populations is that:

  (quote)
  "We just don't know how many people have been injured or hurt."
  (unquote)

However, a very intriguing affair occurred in one year when the
Public first learned that these tests had taken place. A reporter
from Newsday began to investigate these tests. He thought, at the
time when he first discovered that the U.S. Army had done some 
tests, that there were perhaps seven or eight tests done. It was
only later on in the course of the following month that so many 
more tests were uncovered. A young lawyer out in San Francisco,
named Edward Nevin, was traveling to his office reading the San
Francisco Chronicle one morning, and he came across an article 
about a San Francisco man having been sprayed, along with everyone
else, about twenty-seven years earlier. The article said that 
there was a suspicion that this person had died from an infection
caused by the same bacteria that the U.S. Army had used. And the
man's name was given as Edward Nevin. Well, the younger Nevin
immediately recognized this man to be his grandfather who had died
many years before. His grandfather was a patient at Stanford
University Hospital. He had gone in for a prostate operation. And 
he was in good health. It was a simple operation. Then suddenly, he
took very ill. The hospital found that he had been infected with 
the same organism, sirita marcensus [that the U.S. Army had been
spraying over heavily-populated areas].                     

One very important aspect of this is that this patient was at
Stanford University Hospital, one of the best teaching hospitals in
the United States. Never in the history of that hospital had that
organism ever been found to cause infection. And it was at the exact
same time that the U.S. Army had tested this bacteria that he had
been in the hospital. There were many other cases of people showing
up at the hospital who were infected with this bacteria. Well, the
case so baffled the doctors at Stanford that they wrote an article
on it. And I got the article. It was published in the Archives of
Internal Medicine. Now, had that article NOT been written, and had
the doctors NOT explained their puzzlement in that article .....
They didn't know that the U.S. Army had just finished spraying. 
No one knew! Because the U.S. Army told no one that it was doing
this open-air test.

The Nevin family took the United States Government to court,
claiming that their father had been killed as a consequence of
infection by that bacteria. the case was based on three basic 
premises:

  1) that the U.S. Army's spraying of bacteria over San Francisco
     had caused the senior Nevin's death,
  2) the U.S. Army had sufficient reason to suspect that the  
     bacteria could be pathogenic, and thus, their spraying of the 
     bacteria over heavily-populated areas was an act of negligence.

 [JD: That's a misstatement. These were cold-blooded attacks  
      upon the American People.]
      
  3) that the Army's spraying over San Francisco was not a part of
     basic Government policy, and hence, the Government could not 
     claim immunity.

Two months after the institution of the [legal] action, a Federal
judge dismissed the case and vindicated the Federal Government on
all three counts. First, despite ample evidence supporting the
Nevins' claim that the U.S. Army's testing had been responsible for
their relative's death, the judge reasoned that it was impossible 
to prove cause and effect. And even though the Nevin family 
produced all this evidence, the judge said that it was not the U.S.
Army's negligence. Doctor Richard Wheat[sp], one of the co-authors
of the original scientific article on this mysterious outbreak of
this bacterial infection around the time of the U.S. Army's tests,
when asked whether a review of the medical literature [on this
bacteria] prior to the year [of the Army's testing] would inevitably
include some degree of risk, he said:

  (quote)
  "That would be my conclusion."
  (unquote)

So, clearly, the U.S. Government knew that what they were spraying
was dangerous. But the judge still threw it out. That's not
surprising. He's a Federal judge. Remember, the Government knows 
just what judges to appoint by knowing their tendencies. Now, that
doesn't mean that the WHOLE system is biased, but a lot of it is.
The Nevins' case is significant because it illustrates the almost
insurmountable obstacles involved in trying to get the Government 
to take responsibility for its actions. Even in the face of medical
literature to the contrary, the U.S. Army insisted that the bacteria
it was spraying was absolutely harmless (How many times have we
heard that?), and the U.S. Government won.
      
Are we still being experimented on?  We'll find out.
Remember how the U.S. Government denied any responsibility when six
thousand sheep suddenly died, fell flat, twenty miles from Dunway
Research Laboratories?  Nobody knew what happened. The ranchers got
suspicious because the winds were coming from Dunway. The U.S. Army
denied it, and to this day, they continue to deny it. But how in the
world did six thousand sheep just suddenly die in one day?  The U.S.
Government claimed that it was a natural act.  Really?  Has it ever
happened in history, in any country in the world, that six thousand
sheep suddenly die in one day?

Well, that's how it stands. Some of us are concerned about that kind
of thinking and that kind of rationale. But, unfortunately, there
are still too few Americans who are aware of this to do anything 
about it.
                        (end of report)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
        
        If you agree that this information is vital to the defense and 
        the preservation of our free society, please help to disseminate
        it by posting it to computer bulletin boards and by posting
        hardcopies in public places, both on and off campus.
        The Usenet newsgroup, "alt.bbs.lists" provides dial-in 
        numbers of BBSs.

           John DiNardo


The episodes of this and other series can be retrieved 
via anonymous ftp from the site:
    red.css.itd.umich.edu     
Log in with name "anonymous" or "ftp" and supply your e-mail address as 
the password.  The files are kept in the directory /poli/Essays/Conspiracy

Instructions for ftp retrieval are dependent upon what sort of system the
user is on. On a UNIX machine, at the command prompt, type the following:
ftp red.css.itd.umich.edu    This may be different on IBMs and Vax systems.
        Archivist: Paul Southworth,  pauls@css.itd.umich.edu