THE DEADLY VIRUS COMETH.. IS IT A HARBINGER OF BIO-WARFARE?

By Paul DeRienzo

In March 2022, Russia, then two weeks into its invasion of Ukraine, called a meeting of the 15 member United Nations Security Council, to assert that occupying Russian soldiers had discovered evidence that Ukraine ran biological weapons laboratories with U.S. Defense Department support.

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York is Vasily Nebenzya. Referring to Russia’s name for the war, he said “as Russia is conducting its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, its forces had unearthed an “emergency clean up by the Kiev regime of the traces of a military biological program.” Nebenzya went on to accuse the United States of assisting Ukraine in construction of “military biological labs.” He said there were at least 30 labs working together as a network where “extremely dangerous biological experiments were conducted.”

Nebenzya quoted captured documents to claim that the purpose of the labs was to “strengthen the pathogenic qualities of the plague, anthrax, cholera and other lethal diseases using synthetic biology.” According to the Russian diplomat, the work is funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the United States. Nebenzya said that “the goal is to study the possibility of spreading particularly dangerous infections using migratory birds.”

In a one two punch, Nebenzya also said that “bats were considered” as animals for spreading harmful organisms in these programs. This was an eerie reference to the leading theory for the origination of the COVID 19 coronavirus pandemic in bats sold at a wet market in Wuhan, China. Nebenzya said that information on research using bats as a “vector” for plague and other diseases was carried out and shared with US military biological labs.

Although the U.S. government was quick to dismiss the Russian claims as war propaganda, former U.S. representative Tulsi Gabbard used her web site to ask pointed questions. Gabbard says: “Here are the undeniable facts - there are 25 to 30 U.S.-funded bio-labs in Ukraine. According to the U.S. government, these bio-labs are conducting research on dangerous pathogens. Ukraine is in an active war zone with widespread bombing or artillery and shelling.” She added, “these facilities, even in the best of circumstances, could easily be compromised and release these deadly pathogens.”

The U.S. clamped down hard on the story, claiming that it is a false flag operation by Russia in order to cover up what U.S. government spokespeople say might be an attempt by Russia to use biological weapons and blame the west: an assertion never backed up by evidence and denied by Russian authorities.

Gabbard’s remarks unsettled Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who hit back, saying that “Tulsi Gabbard is peddling false Russian propaganda; her treasonous lies may well cost lives.” Romney’s remarks prompted right wing Fox TV host Tucker Carlson to ask what Gabbard did to bring Romney, an anti Trump Republican, down on her. “Did she call for a violent overthrow of the United States government?” Carlson continued: “Did she come out and pledge allegiance to Putin? Did she get a Cyrillic tattoo on her neck?”

The answer to all three sarcastic questions is NO.

Dr. Daniel Gerstein is a scientist directly involved in removing Cold War weapons from Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1992. He works for the RAND corporation, a global policy think tank financed by the U.S. government, corporations, universities and private individuals.

Gerstein agrees that the U.S. has funded bio-labs in Ukraine, but says they have never had any military purpose. “We helped to refurbish some of the laboratories that were there. Make sure they were doing proper bio-surveillance, that they were doing bio-safety and bio-security,” Gersten told The SHADOW. “I was the principal director for countering weapons of mass destruction in the Office of the Secretary of Defense....my job was to get rocket motors from Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles destroyed.”

When asked about Russia’s assertion that Ukraine scientists were caught destroying documents related to their research, Gerstein answered: “Given the violence that is going on, it would make sense that whatever was there would be moved to an even more secure location or destroyed.”

In 1969, U.S. President Richard Nixon unconditionally ended the United States’ offensive biological weapons program. In 1972, the U.S., Soviet Union, and United Kingdom signed the Biological Weapons Convention, soon joined by most of the world’s nations. Even so, the U.S. still pursues “bio-defense” to prepare for a potential biological attack, and Russia has long been accused of continuing its bio-warfare programs, despite the treaty.

Bacillus anthracis is the bacteria that causes anthrax. Anthrax spores are found in nature, but can be produced in labs, where they can be weaponized for use against human populations. In 2001, shortly after the September 11 destruction of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, envelopes containing powdered anthrax spores were mailed through the U.S. postal system to politicians and newscasters. According to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], twenty two people, including mail handlers, became sick from anthrax, killing five of them. Gerstein told the SHADOW that the United States does not have biological weapons. “Absolutely not,” he insists.

Bruce Edwards Ivins was a microbiologist, vaccinologist and senior bio-defense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases [USAMRIID] at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where the U.S. biological weapons program is headquartered. Although no one was ever arrested or officially blamed for the 2001 anthrax attacks, Ivins was suspected. Ivins died on July 29, 2008, of an overdose of acetaminophen (Tylenol) a few days before the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] planned to charge him for the anthrax attacks.

In 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump insisted on calling the coronavirus the “China Virus,” in a vulgar attempt to shift the blame for the virus on the entire Chinese people. Soon, random attacks on Asians increased across the United States and continued long after Trump was defeated in his re-election bid by Senator Joe Biden.

Trump’s slur of Chinese people was an epic racist trope, but it has begged the question of how coronavirus arose and whether there was the tell tale fingerprint of gain-of-function experiments to make the virus more voracious. Why would anyone make a dangerous germ more dangerous? Experts say it is to study the worst-case scenario with a specific bug, in order to be better able to meet the challenge if the specific pathogen becomes a health risk.

Without any evidence, Trump repeatedly blamed a biology lab in Wuhan, China, for the outbreak, against findings by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] and most scientists, who say that the coronavirus emerged from nature.

The Wuhan lab is China’s only bio-safety Level 4 laboratory that researches human infectious diseases. It is located a few miles from a “wet market,” where the COVID 19 virus reportedly originated. The lab collaborates with an American organization, the New York City-based EcoHealth Alliance, which describes itself as “a global nonprofit, leading scientific research into the critical connections between human, animal and environmental health.”

Trump retaliated against China, then in the middle of a massive campaign to stop the disease, which was killing millions, for not helping to investigate the source of the virus. In May 2020, Trump cut a $3 million dollar grant to EcoHealth Alliance, a move that took the organization by surprise.

Although U.S. politicians accuse China of secrecy and blocking the investigation, in fact, U.S. scientists have been directly involved with the Wuhan lab since its inception.

Some researchers agree that the relationship between the Wuhan lab and EcoHealth Alliance should be investigated. [For more on EcoHealth Alliance, see the article “It Ain’t Natural”] .

Virologist Jonathan Latham, executive director of the Bio-sciences Research Project, has been warning that EcoHealth Alliance has been working with the U.S. and Chinese government to develop new viruses.

Latham says that people are going into bat caves and getting “covered with bat pee and bat poo,” He says that is a “risky thing.” He claims that the labs are performing gain-of-function research and that “it’s to help.” Gain of function research genetically alters an organism to alter and enhance its biological functions. The stated intent in virology is to better understand pandemics before they happen.

While some scientists claim that it is legitimate, others say that gain-of-function research is just a back door to bio-warfare experimentation, or, at best, very dangerous, since microbes can get loose into the environment. Latham says that reporting on wet markets, where locals buy and sell game animals for food, may be shifting the spotlight from the real COVID culprit.

“It’s really a mistake,” Latham says, to “focus on wet markets and the wildlife trade.” The real destroyers of nature are not the traditional diets based on hunting or gathering wild animals for the dinner table, he says, it’s the “bulldozers,” used to clear rainforests in order to plant commercial crops for cattle, that are at the root of the problem.

Latham says that the media narrative is about people going to those places and bringing back diseases, or the few thousand people involved in the wildlife trade. These activities “pale in comparison to the destruction of agribusiness.”

According to Latham, the media is spreading corporate propaganda. “Agribusiness interests know people will be questioning the destruction of the natural environment for profit,” he says, “so they’re telling a story about wildlife trade to distract public opinion from the destruction of natural habitats, like the rainforests.”

This is similar to what has been called “green washing,” which is the splashing of words and images, invoking nature with words like “green” and “eco,” and the use of beautiful photos of wilderness by businesses as part of their advertising. Nevertheless, the destruction of the environment continues.

Latham tells the SHADOW that he is doubtful that vaccinations would be a final answer to the COVID 19 pandemic. He says that the EcoHealth Alliance is an example of funding “risky biological research” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in part to produce vaccines. They may or may not develop vaccines, but, as Latham says, “we still don’t have a vaccine for HIV after 20 years of trying.”

Matthew Field writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist that there is no evidence the COVID 19 virus originated at the Wuhan lab. Claiming that most biologists don’t believe the coronavirus was part of a bio-warfare experiment that got loose, nevertheless, Field feels that there are some in the bio-science community who think that the virus might have been the result of an accidental release from the lab.

According to Field, biological laboratories are never perfectly safe, whether in China, or in the United States. In fact, there have been a constant stream of stories claiming that Lyme disease escaped from a U.S. lab on Plum Island, off the north shore on Long Island.

An article in Nature magazine in 2020 claimed that, although COVID was probably not a bio-weapon, there have been accidental releases of viruses, including the deadly SARS virus. Field says, “Labs aren’t air-tight,” emphasizing that there have been many safety issues in the United States and that it is wrong to label the coronavirus as the “China virus.” Whatever happened at Wuhan, identifying a virus with an ethnic or national group, is “incredibly dangerous,” because it “stigmatizes everyone walking around who looks Chinese.”

Elizabeth Eaves is author of “Hot Zone in the Heartland” and is also published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist. She tells the SHADOW that a years-long debate over the National Bio and Agro Defense Facility opening this summer in Manhattan, Kansas, in the middle of cattle country, raises questions about the safety of American bio-defense laboratories.

Construction of the federal lab, that has been in the works for 15 years, ended in mid-June. The $1.25 billion animal and zoonotic disease lab is a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Agriculture, which will take ownership of the facility when commissioning is complete. Officials are now performing safety drills and inspections, which include everything from basic evacuation drills to complex system evaluations.

The facility faced one real life test in June, 2022, when a storm produced tornadoes with 100mph winds that passed through the area. A spokesperson for the lab told reporters that in the event of a tornado, air pressure sensors would detect the rapid pressure change that comes with a tornado or extremely high winds and would trigger an automatic shutdown. He said that officials can also do a manual shutdown.

The Kansas facility, like its Wuhan counterpart, is also a bio-safety Level 4 laboratory. Level 4 is the highest of bio-security precautions, used for diagnostic work and research on easily-transmitted pathogens which can cause fatal disease.

Science fiction fans may remember the film Andromeda Strain, in which scientists are locked in a Level 4 laboratory with a deadly pathogen brought back from space by a NASA mission. In that film, the heroes have to prevent a nuke from destroying the lab in order to prevent the germs from escaping.

Eaves says it is accepted that the coronavirus came from bats, based on what she says is “pretty strong consensus” among scientists. She says that humans have been ranging deeper into animal habitats, like the Amazon and African rainforests, encountering what are called zoonotic diseases, that jump from animals to humans.

The response to the uptick in new microbes has been a proliferation of bio-safety Level 4 labs around the world studying these diseases. High security labs require suiting up with protective gear, breathing systems, multiple layers of rubber gloves and strict protocols for entering or leaving the facility.

Traditionally, a lot of work with dangerous microbes has been carried out in remote locations like Plum Island, where a slightly less restrictive Level 3 lab experimented on animal diseases. These labs were originally built on islands because it was recognized that they needed higher security.

The danger is real. In 2007, an outbreak of foot and mouth disease leaked from a British lab, prompting local farmers to slaughter 600 head of cattle. The facility was being run by the government's Institute for Animal Health and a private pharmaceutical company. Although the disease was isolated, it could have destroyed the UK beef industry if it had not been contained. Leading opponents of the Kansas facility, in the middle of cattle country, wonder what would happen to the US beef industry if a similar virus got loose.

In June 2022, in a heated exchange between Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and White House coronavirus advisor and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID] head Dr. Anthony Fauci, Paul pressed Fauci on the COVID vaccine.” What if new variants of COVID evade vaccination efforts?” Paul asked sarcastically. “Is that proof that we should give ten boosters?"

While Fauci called Paul’s assertion “absurd,” Paul pressed on: "Everybody on the vaccine committee, have any of them ever received money from the people who make vaccines? Can you tell me that?” The debate was a continuation of an earlier exchange between the two when Paul asked Fauci: “Do you really think it is appropriate to use your $420,000 salary to attack scientists that disagree with you?”

Fauci responded with a claim that Paul’s questions about funding and money had prompted death threats against him and his family. Fauci denied personally receiving significant royalties from drug companies, but he did not answer repeated questions about how much money others were making from their research.

Meanwhile, in 2021, deforestation in Brazil rose to a 12 year high. That promoted a deal to spend several billions of dollars to protect rain forests there. A similar deal, called the New York Declaration on Forests, signed by 40 countries in 2014, has failed to stem deforestation. Global Forest Watch reports that since 2000, around 10 percent of world tree cover has been lost.

Brazil alone has witnessed a 92 percent rise in deforestation since Jair Bolsonaro, known as the “Trump of the tropics,” became President in January 2019. Brazil is not alone. Indonesia has experienced the biggest decline in primary tropical forest loss, at 31 percent, in the last decade. Argentina has lost half its rain forests. Vietnam has lost 15 percent and the Ivory Coast in West Africa has lost 30 percent. The only country to stop its rain forests from being destroyed is the Central American nation of Costa Rica.

An official in India was succinct: “Our stand is that any commitment to the environment and climate change should not involve any reference to trade.” In other words, protecting forests is not as important as expanding India’s economy. So the deforestation of the globe marches on.

As fears that the proxy war brewing between the United States and Russia threatens to escalate into a worldwide conflict, can treaties be depended on to keep the bio-warfare genie in the bottle?

[Paul DeRienzo is news director at WBAI 99.5 FM in New York City, You can listen at paulderienzo.com.]