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THE MEDICATION: Experts Say Cipro Overuse Could Lead to Problems

By ABIGAIL ZUGER

NY Times, October 19, 2001

Infectious disease experts are increasingly concerned that overuse of the antibiotic Cipro by people worried about anthrax may cause a second wave of health problems.

These problems include side effects for people taking the drug and the possibility that a surge in Cipro use may exacerbate bacterial resistance to the drug and undermine its usefulness in the future.

"Our membership is extremely concerned," said Dr. Carol J. Baker, president of the Infectious Disease Society of America and a professor of pediatrics, molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Some people are allergic to Cipro, or ciprofloxacin, and become sick after even a single dose. But even people who initially take the antibiotic without a problem risk developing side effects from Cipro with time.

Dr. Stephen Baum, head of medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in New York and president of the Infectious Disease Society of New York, said, "Every antibiotic has side effects, and for almost all of them, the more you take, the more likely the side effects are."

The most common side effects from Cipro are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and loss of appetite.

The drug can also have an effect on the brain, including headaches, insomnia and mood changes. Five percent to 10 percent of people who take Cipro have had these problems. Hallucinations or seizures are rarer but can also occur.

Cipro can also damage the cartilage in the joints, especially in children.

It is given to children only when absolutely necessary.

These concerns mean that Cipro should be used for anthrax prevention only when exposure has occurred, said Dr. David C. Hooper, chief of the infection control unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Hooper said people who had been told to take Cipro because of a possible exposure to anthrax should stop taking the drug immediately if the situation proved to be a false alarm. The experts emphasized that no one should take Cipro or any other antibiotic out of fear that they might be exposed to anthrax at some indefinite future time. To date, all the anthrax bacteria isolated in New York and Florida have been sensitive both to Cipro and to drugs in the penicillin and tetracycline families of antibiotics. Both penicillin and doxycycline can also have side effects. But some experts say that if a long course of antibiotics is necessary one of those medications might be a better choice than Cipro. Doctors have had more experience with the other drugs, Dr. Hooper said. Furthermore, penicillin is active against far fewer kinds of bacteria than Cipro is. This means that it is less likely to lead to serious antibiotic resistance than Cipro, said Dr. Stuart B. Levy, director of the center of adaptation genetics and drug resistance at Tufts University Medical School in Boston.

Bacterial resistance to an antibiotic arises when an antibiotic taken for an infection kills off many other strains of bacteria in the body, leaving only resistant variants behind. These drug resistant variants may then multiply and come to predominate in the intestines and elsewhere in the body. Anyone who takes Cipro for a few weeks is bound to have Cipro resistant organisms in the intestine, Dr. Levy said.

Resistance to Cipro has become a problem with some dangerous bacteria. The drug could once treat gonorrhea everywhere in the world, for instance, but now it can no longer be used in Asia, and cases of resistant gonorrhea in the United States are increasing.

Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1999 showed that as ciprofloxacin use in Canada rose steeply from 1988 to 1997, the drug became less and less useful for treating a common and dangerous kind of pneumonia.

With overuse of Cipro, "we are risking the loss of a crucially important class of antibiotics," Dr. Levy said.

Dr. Michael H. Miller, a professor of immunology and microbial disease at Albany Medical College who does research on Cipro and related antibiotics, added. "I'm very concerned about this."

With flu season coming, Dr. Miller said, he worried that if a lot of people took Cipro -- which does not work for the flu -- resistance to the drug could become a particular problem in people who develop pneumonia as a complication of the flu.

"My concern is that there may eventually be unnecessary deaths because of this," Dr. Miller said, "and the impact may be far more deleterious than any overall effect of anthrax."

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The Cipro Rip Off and the Public Health

By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Confronted with the prospect of bioterrorism on a massive scale, the Bush administration and the pharmaceutical industry have colluded to protect patent monopolies rather than the public health.

When the anthrax scare first hit, Cipro was understood to be the drug of choice for treatment. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson said he wanted a stockpile adequate to treat 10 million exposed persons. That meant he needed 1.2 billion Cipro pills (the treatment regimen is two pills for 60 days). Bayer, which holds the disputed patent rights to Cipro in the United States, could not meet that demand in a timely fashion.

For the drugs it was able to supply, Bayer was charging the government $1.89 per pill. The drugstore price was more than $4.50. Indian companies sell a generic version of the same drug for less than 20 cents.

The U.S. government has authority, under existing law, to license generic companies to make on patent drugs for sale to the government. Those companies could have met supply needs that Bayer was not and is not able to satisfy. Generic competition might also have helped bring prices down, though it is unclear exactly what the government would have to pay Bayer if it bought generic versions of Cipro.

But the Bush administration chose not to exercise this authority. Pharmaceutical industry monopolistic patent protections are so sacrosanct, the administration decided, that even urgent U.S. public health needs do not merit any limitation on patent monopolies.

The administration was motivated in significant part by fear that if it authorized generic production in the United States for Cipro, it would undermine its hand in negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Qatar. There, African and other poor countries are asking for a declaration that the WTO's intellectual property rules not be interpreted in ways that undermine efforts to advance public health. Above all, they want to clarify their existing right under WTO rules to authorize generic production of on patent drugs (a practice known as compulsory licensing). The United States, pathetically, is opposing this effort.

With the spotlight shining on Bayer's price gouging for Cipro, the Department of Health and Human Services had to take action. It cut a deal with the company to lower Cipro prices, agreeing on a price tag of 95 cents a pill. That supposedly cut rate price turns out to be twice what the same government, indeed the same government agency, pays the same company for the same drug under another program.

But though inadequate, the price reduction did reflect the U.S. government's negotiating leverage -- leverage that was enhanced by the fact that the government had the authority to turn to generic manufacturers if Bayer refused to cut a deal.

What hypocrisy! At the same time as it leveraged the threat of a compulsory license, the administration is working feverishly in diverse fora -- including the WTO and the Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations -- to limit poor countries' effective ability to do compulsory licensing.

It is time to reverse course, and for citizens to demand the government prioritize public health over corporate profit.

In the United States, it is unclear how much Cipro the government should stockpile as a public health measure. Other, off patent antibiotics may be superior and are cheaper. These other drugs may or may not be effective against all strains of anthrax. What is clear is that intellectual property issues should have no impact on public health judgments made in this context.

Representative Sherrod Brown has introduced legislation, H.R. 3235, the Public Health Emergency Medicines Act, that would reiterate the government's ability to do compulsory licensing in case of public health emergency (the government currently has this right, without regard to situation of national emergency) and establish that compensation paid to patent holders should be "reasonable." It lists a variety of criteria to determine reasonability, including how much the patent holder invested and risked in the drug's development, and how significant the government contribution was to the drug's research and development. It also would permit the government to authorize generic producers to manufacture on patent drugs in the United States for export to countries undergoing public health emergencies. The Public Health Emergency Medicines Act should quickly become law.

In international treaty negotiations, it is time for the United States to stop identifying its interests only with those of the brand name drug manufacturers. The government should immediately cease its shameful opposition to a declaration that the WTO intellectual property agreement should not hinder developing country measures to protect public health. It should agree to accept the few needed clarifications to WTO rules to make compulsory licensing workable in poor countries over the long haul. It should end its sneaky efforts in the Free Trade Area of the Americas and other negotiations to impose technical rules that would impede compulsory licensing. And Congress should deny the administration the fast track authority it seeks to facilitate negotiation of more trade rules enhancing the brand name drug companies' monopoly power.

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Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C. based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C. based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999).

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BIOWARFARE

by Mitchel Cohen

With the U.S. government poised to once again bomb Iraq, the administration and media are orchestrating the barely repressed hysteria and manipulating the American public into a chorus for retribution and war.

It doesn't matter that Iraq has categorically denied any connection to the attacks on the World Trade Center and to the Anthrax scare, and has, indeed, denounced them.

Before the US bombardment began ten years ago under the auspices of George H.W. Bush, Sr., Iraq -- along with Israel -- had the most sophisticated health care system in western Asia and the Middle East. And it was free for all Iraqis. It also had modern sanitation and drinking water systems.

The U.S. bombardment took care of that. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people were murdered outright by the U.S. bombardment in 1991. A million more were killed by U.S. destruction of Iraq's drinking water and hospitals, combined with the sanctions against that beleaguered people. Children continue to die from malnutrition and curable ailments that go untreated due to the U.S./U.N. embargo and sanctions. Whatever one thinks of Saddam Hussein (or George Bush, or Bill Clinton for that matter), when did the people of Iraq become our enemy?

George W. Bush is following in his father's and in former President Clinton's footsteps; both repeatedly declared the need to bomb Iraq again and again. Why? Back in 1998 Clinton and Gore said it was to force Iraq's President, Saddam Hussein, to allow the U.S. to be represented on U.N. teams inspecting Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapons facilities. The Canadian and Dutch inspectors were permitted by Iraq, but this was not considered good enough by the U.S. It had to be U.S. inspectors -- Iraq claimed they were working with the CIA, and so objected. Whitewashed in all the orchestrated hysteria and mumbo jumbo is that it was the U.S. and its allies that provided Iraq with nerve gas to begin with, along with all sorts of chemical and biological agents.

Saddam Hussein -- who had been installed as President of Iraq in a CIA orchestrated coup -- obtained the nerve gas on the world market (the leading suppliers were the U.S., France, England, Germany and Russia). Even as he condemned the threatened use of chemical and biological weapons by Saddam Hussein, U.S. President George Bush knew full well the extent of arsenal, for it was Bush himself, in his former capacity as head of the CIA (and later as Vice President and President), who had approved shipments of material needed to make biological and chemical weapons to Iraq.

Bush approved shipping to Iraq toxic varieties of E.coli and Salmonella bacteria, and agents causing anthrax, gas gangrene and brucellosis.(1)

In the course of restructuring the production and control of world oil, the Gulf war provided the the U.S. military with the opportunity to test new depleted uranium weapons, gas vaccines, and biological warfare medications in the field, on its own soldiers. Inoculations -- some genetically engineered and completely experimental -- were mandatory and generally done without the consent and often against the will of the soldiers. As it turns out, these inoculations are now viewed by independent researchers as cofactors in the development of Gulf War Syndrome, mysterious ailments afflicting hundreds of thousands of American veterans of the Gulf. And, in February, 1998, the U.S. began shipping large containers of untested genetically engineered anthrax vaccine to Israel to thwart the expected use of biological agents the U.S. had supplied to Iraq. What kind of devious mass experiment was being set up here?

The Bush administration also signed 700 licenses worth $1.2 billion for so called "dual use" technology to Iraq. As exposed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in California and House of Representatives Banking Committee Chair Henry Gonzalez (D, Texas), hundreds of U.S. and European corporations such as Hewlett Packard, Honeywell and others provided Iraq with such "dual use" technology as computers for weapons guidance, fuel air explosives, imaging circuitry for missile warheads, vaccum pumps and bellows for nuclear power plants, and live cultures for bacteriological research. These were sent directly to the Iraqi military.(2)

In early February, 1998, the Russian government warned the U.S. not to bomb Iraq. To discredit Russia, word suddenly "leaked" that three years earlier (and the US government conveniently "just" discovered it! What a coincidence!) Russia sent "dual purpose" technology to Iraq which U.S. officials claimed could be used for bacteriological warfare. In actuality, this "dangerous" equipment sold by Russia was nothing more than a 5,000 liter vat for fermenting yeast. Could such a product be used for making, say, anthrax? Yes, although not the sophisticated "military grade" variety. So could any pressure cooker or, for that matter, any bathtub. It could also be used for making beer, and, more likely, antibiotics, which Iraq was desperate to obtain after a decade of war with Iran in which 1 million people on both sides were killed. Meanwhile, the press has yet to question why the U.S. had exported to Iraq far more ominous biological agents and military technology, with Reagan's and Bush's approval. What did the press, let alone Bush and Reagan, expect those agents would be used for?

The U.S. used the existence of Iraqi nerve gas -- weapons, let me repeat, that were shipped to Iraq by the U.S. and its allies, primarily Britain, France and Germany -- as a basis for vilifying Iraq. This enabled the U.S. government to get away with atrocity after atrocity in a war more properly called the "Gulf Massacre." Civilian casualties? No problem. They're just "collateral damage."(3)

Most people assume that if any nerve gas had been used it would have had to have been Saddam's doing. No corporate paper or tv newscast has yet dared suggest the possibility that it was the U.S., not Saddam, that used dangerous biological and chemical warfare agents in the Gulf.

That thought remains beyond the pale even today, despite the U.S.'s long history of biological and chemical warfare and experimentation on human beings.(4) Saddam, after all, was portrayed as the war criminal, "worse than Hitler,. The problem is that George Bush fit that description as well.

On September 11th 1990, U.S. President George Bush, upholding "democracy" and "peace," declared his "New World Order". He was soon to order thousands of tons of napalm, air fuel explosives, phosphorous bombs, cluster bombs, and uranium encased shells, raining holy terror upon Iraq. Seven Years later, President Clinton did George Bush one better -- he actually signed a top secret directive authorizing first use of nuclear weapons against Iraq "under certain circumstances."

By the end of February, 1998, two Los Angeles class submarines carrying nuclear warheads atop Tomahawk missiles had arrived in the Gulf. Each missile is encased in so called "depleted" uranium.(5) The non nuclear version, also enclosed in depleted uranium, are now being used against Afghanistan. The foxes of imperialism and world domination use every trick in the book to guard and to expand their multi trillion dollar oil henhouse.

1. NY Newsday, Nov. 8, 1996.

2. Dennis Bernstein, investigative reporter, KPFA (Berkeley, CA), as reported on Democracy Now (Pacifica), Feb. 13, 1998.

3. Mitchel Cohen, "Read My Apocalypse: The Role of the Gulf War in the Emergence of the New World Order," 1998.

4. Mitchel Cohen, "The U.S. Government's Secret War: A History of Experimentation with Biological & Chemical Warfare," 1995.

5. Mitchel Cohen, "Glowing in the Gulf: Radiation, Genetically Engineered Drugs and Gulf War Syndrome," 1998.

END PART ONE

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NoSpray Newz #30: PART TWO

Bush plans forced immunizations, quarantines

by Robert Lederman

If the Bush administration’s seeming incompetence in handling the anthrax issue and tendency to issue conflicting statements generating confusion and panic in the public has you puzzled, perhaps this may shed a bit of light on what they are actually up to. The CDC (Center for Disease Control) has drafted a model law which will require forced vaccinations of all Americans, imprisonment and quarantine of those who refuse to submit to vaccination, seizure of property and other drastic measures (see three news articles below).

Vaccination is one of the most controversial aspects of medicine. While the official position of the medical establishment is that vaccination is a foundation of public health policy, thousands of doctors and hundreds of millions of people worldwide consider it to be a leading cause of disease, neurological damage, learning disabilities and death and to be ineffective in conferring immunity.

The Bush administration has numerous direct ties to vaccine and drug manufacturers and many of Bushs cabinet members are former drug company executives. The Bush family also has more than a seventy year long documented involvement with eugenics and population control.

To get a picture of where this is going read The New York Times 11/4/2001, "DRUG INDUSTRY A Muscular Lobby Tries to Shape Nation’s Bioterror Plan."

An excerpt from this long article: "As that success shows, the pharmaceutical lobby, which represents the nation’s biggest drug makers, from Eli Lilly to Pfizer to Merck, is both large and politically adroit and, if anything, more sophisticated than when it gained fame in the early 1990’s for helping to defeat the Clinton administration health plan. It has more lobbyists than there are members of Congress 625 who are registered. It had a combined lobbying and campaign contribution budget in 1999 and 2000 of $197 million, larger than any other industry. Now it is harnessing those resources to influence major policy decisions being made by the Bush administration that may well influence public health issues and industry profitability for years to come much to the dismay of many consumer groups and others. ...Because of the anthrax scare, and all the attention given to Cipro, the anti anthrax drug of choice, that access has been enormous. In recent weeks, the chief executives and other top executives of Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb, Bayer, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson, along with trade association officials, have been meeting regularly with Bush cabinet members. On one occasion, with executives from other industries, pharmaceutical executives met with President Bush in New York to discuss the administration’s response to terrorism. Drug company executives have offered to send scores of industry scientists, now on their payrolls, to work in government agencies in what the industry calls a gift to the nation, but critics say it is both a conflict of interest and a way for the industry to get a toehold in government. In return, at these top level meetings, industry executives and lobbyists are seeking exemption from antitrust regulations, reduction of the timetable for getting new drugs to market for treating the ills of biological warfare, and immunity from lawsuits for any vaccines they develop to combat bioterrorism. The administration, those in the meeting say, has offered other help, asking the harmaceutical executives to identify the regulatory barriers they would like to see eliminated for this fight. Last Wednesday, for instance, a dozen industry lobbyists and executives, among them Peter R. Dolan, chief executive of Bristol Myers, and Raymond V. Gilmartin, chief executive of Merck, met for an hour and a half in the Roosevelt Room of the White House with Tom Ridge, the director of homeland security. According to one person at the meeting, Mr. Ridge was so impressed with what the industry executives said that he responded: ‘I’m grateful for your offers of assistance. I accept.’ That, according to the meeting’s participant, reflected ‘a true partnership between the federal government and America’s pharmaceutical companies.’"

From CNN.com

CDC releases draft of public health law October 31, 2001

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- A model law drafted for states at the request of the federal government would give authorities broad powers to close buildings, take over hospitals and order quarantines during a biological attack.

The draft, commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and made public Tuesday, provides a template for states to respond to the release of a deadly agent like smallpox or Ebola. Whether to adopt such a law is up to state legislatures. If any did, state officials could take drastic steps -- including controlling the sale of food and gas and condemning contaminated buildings -- to prevent mass casualties from an outbreak.

"The current laws are hopelessly antiquated," said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of law and public health at Georgetown University and the draft’s principal author. "They predated all of the modern threats to the public health. Many of them are probably unconstitutional."

Even before September 11, the federal government wanted states to update their public health laws, some of which date to the 19th century.

The CDC asked public health and law specialists at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown universities, who were writing the draft, to put it on a fast track because of the terrorist attacks and the anthrax outbreak. The 40 page draft would allow state public health officials to purchase as many drugs as they see fit and ration them without getting approval from other branches of government.

It also would give state authorities the right to mandate medical testing of its citizens, to isolate people deemed a threat to the public health and to order private doctors to do the testing. In a bioterrorism emergency, states could seize hospitals, other property and "communication devices" they believe are necessary to stop a biological attack from killing huge numbers of people.

The draft tries to head off the concerns of civil liberties groups over governmental control. It says citizens have the right to the review of a court if they object to being forced into quarantine or ordered to take a vaccine. The law would be triggered by the governor in the event of bioterrorism or an epidemic that poses a substantial risk of significant fatalities.

Because anthrax isn’t contagious, the current response has been chiefly about tracking the germ, treating the infected and distributing antibiotics. A more contagious and deadly agent, such as smallpox or Ebola virus, would require a much broader -- and faster -- response, possibly including mass vaccinations and quarantining entire communities.

The draft has been delivered to the CDC for tinkering. State government associations, including the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures, also collaborated.

The following story ran on page D4 of the Boston Globe on 10/31/2001:

By Bloomberg News, 10/31/2001

WASHINGTON -- States would be able to force patients to take medication under model legislation outlining when and how governors can use emergency powers to address public health crises such as recent anthrax attacks. The model law, commissioned by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also would give people the right to appeal states’ decisions to quarantine or isolate them. Individuals with contagious diseases, such as smallpox, wouldn’t be able to appeal orders for treatment or vaccination under the law.

State governments are concerned that laws are inadequate to address new kinds of public health threats such as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on buildings in New York and Washington or the use of germ or chemical weapons. Fifteen Americans have been infected with anthrax, a deadly bacterial disease, and thousands more are taking antibiotics as a precaution. Lawrence Gostin, chief author of the model law and a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said the academic panel that drafted the proposal tried to balance the need to control disease with individuals’ civil rights -- something he said isn’t done under many current state laws. "We felt if we were too Draconian and didn’t respect people’s rights, that meant the terrorists would win," Gostin said.

Emergency powers allow governors to suspend normal government temporarily, letting states swiftly address disease epidemics or natural disasters such as earthquakes. Legal and public health experts at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University examined all states’ emergency powers laws in crafting the model.

Under the model law, states could quarantine or isolate individuals who are infected with a contagious disease, though the patients would have the right to appeal that decision in court. The patient would remain quarantined or isolated until the appeals process was exhausted, Gostin said.

Patients could be forced to take medicines or receive vaccines for contagious diseases that pose a public health threat, such as smallpox, under the model law. Patients wouldn’t be allowed to appeal a state’s decision, though the state would likely quarantine anyone who refused to comply, triggering an appeals process, Gostin said. States would avoid civil liberties violations if they enact laws that spell out penalties such as the loss of public benefits, instead of incarceration, for patients who refuse treatment, said R. Alta Charo, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

For thousands of links on the dangers of vaccines see these sites among many others on the net:

Cipro alleged price fixing and Bioport anthrax vaccine info

For numerous detailed articles on the Bush administrations connection to eugenics, IG Farben, Nazi Germany, drug manufacturers etc. see:

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Military-Grade Airborne Anthrax Weapons Cannot Be Easily Made (Excerpt)

by Gary Novak

[Editors Note: The conclusions drawn in this article need to be examined against claims made in a Manual by Larry Wayne Harris -- a biologist associated with the Aryan Nations AND the CIA -- on how to make anthrax into a weapon, and how to develop resistance to it; and, in light of the Ultra Low Volume fine-nozzle spraying of malathion and pyrethroids over New York City and much of the country. Whether these techniques can be made to apply to living cells such as Anthrax is debatable, but there is no question that there are elements both in ultra-rightwing groups and in the US government that are trying to do exactly that. - Mitchel Cohen]

Anthrax will never be used successfully as a terrorist weapon, and probably never as a military weapon. It has to be converted to spores suspended in the air, which is technically very difficult; and the lethality is nowheres near the terror that it is made out to be. It is not 100% lethal as often claimed. Wool sorters inhale anthrax spores in small quantities continually (150 700 per hour), and only if they get a large dose does an infection get started.

Only US and Russia can Weaponize it. To use anthrax as a weapon, it must be converted to a powder which can be inhaled. Only the US and Russian militaries have succeeded in doing that. Even Iraq uses anthrax in liquid form, which is totally ineffective. Humans are seldom affected.

Anthrax is a livestock pathogen. There are anthrax spores in the ground in rural areas, because they survive for about twenty years. They normally have no effect upon humans, because a few anthrax spores cannot create an infection, and they do not come up from the ground in large quantities. Cellular Limitations. Anthrax is what’s called a "gram positive" bacterium. This means it has the type of cell walls which are harmless, unlike the cell walls of "gram negative" bacteria, which attack tissue. Therefore, anthrax can only attack tissue by producing a special toxin which it excretes. One cell or spore does not produce enough toxin to start an infection. Studies have apparently determined that, typically, ten thousand anthrax spores must be inhaled to start an infection. That number might be someone’s guess, but it is in line with the biology of the disease. It is the number which the military uses, and only the military has significantly researched such questions. It uses gas chambers for animal tests.

Anthrax normally attacks the lungs, because it must lodge in vulnerable tissue. It can invade through other routes such as cuts or undercooked meat, but it only does so under "third world conditions," and those routes are not relevant to biowarfare. Livestock eat from the ground, so they have their faces in the ground where the spores are, and they can inhale ten thousand spores. How does anyone get ten thousand spores into the lungs of humans?

Technical Obstacles to Weaponizing.

The first requirement would be to aerosolize the spores. The spores would have to be converted to a dry powder, because a liquid would create globs which would fall to the ground rather than staying suspended in the air. To create a powder, the spores would first have to be washed several times in an array of very large and expensive centrifuges. Then a drying apparatus would have to be used; and it would require spraying a mist into a vacuum, which is how powders are created from liquids. Otherwise, everything globs up into hard rocks.

How do workers clean the equipment without getting spores everywhere? A likely procedure would be to enclose the equipment in a pressure chamber and steam sterilize it for several days. Such an operation costs hundreds of millions of dollars, considering related facilities and development. Only countries do that, not radical groups, and not in five gallon buckets.

It won’t stay in the Air. Even in powder form, the spores would fall to the ground rapidly in the absence of wind. Anthrax is not adapted for airborne dissemination. It needs to stay on the ground until inhaled by livestock. So it would not stay in the air like mold spores but would fall out easily, about like flour. In the presence of wind, the spores would be carried away rapidly and would not stay in one place long enough for anyone to get more than a few inhaled. Once the spores were on the ground, they would not affect humans significantly, because they would not come up from the ground in large enough quantities.

Foggers are Propaganda. There is some talk about using liquids with fogging devices for dispersion of biological agents such as anthrax. It’s not realistic. First, there is no mention of the purity that would be required to prevent globbing and plugging of nozzles. At least, a lot of expensive centrifuging would be required to remove debris. Then agricultural spraying demonstrates that a mist drops rapidly to the ground. It does that because air can only hold a small amount of water, which causes sprays to precipitate. Another problem is that spores would rapidly settle to the bottom of a liquid and form a gum due to sticky cell debris and their tendency to clump.

A chemical mist is different, because chemicals vaporize, while cells do not. Cells in a mist would clump together as the liquid vaporizes. To create free spores would require very clean material, high dilution, ultra fine mist and a vacuum for rapid evaporation. Foggers can’t do the same thing. For these reasons, anthrax would be difficult to use; and it could hardly kill more than a few hundred persons under the most ideal conditions, not the hundreds of thousands which are claimed.

On top of that, antibiotics are effective for it during the early stage of the illness. It is not contagious for humans. Glib Journalism is Unrealistic. Innumerable journalists have been insisting that anthrax can be produced in a simple laboratory with little expertise. To the contrary, no countries but the U.S. and Russia can convert anthrax to a usable weapon. Iraq cannot. Consider what the journalists fail to recognize. Growing a large quantity of anthrax would result in a fermenter full of slop which is extremely slimy and viscous with large amounts of debris and metabolic products mixed with the nutrient medium. That slop has to be washed and converted to a medium which will induce spores to form. Much research and knowledge would be required to get a reasonable yield of spores. Then the cells would have to be fragmented with something like a blender to get the spores out of the cells. Then much differential centrifugation would be required to separate the spores from the debris. Then spray-drying of spores in a vacuum would be required. Accomplishing all of that would require several Ph.Ds. and much developmental type research in addition to expensive equipment and a very large building. It isn’t a matter of growing something in a kettle and pouring it into a rocket, as journalists and weapons inspectors seem to be assuming.

Grinding is Another Absurdity. The latest contrivance is that terrorists might weaponize anthrax by drying a slurry and grinding it to particles 15 microns in size. (The bacteria are 1 by 3 microns.) The first problem is that the gunk would dry like glue; and after grinding, it would still be glue. Even if it were washed first, the bacteria would be sticky and would dry like glue. The second problem is that bacteria do not tolerate grinding. They are as fragile as egg shells. Grinding is how they are broken apart for biochemical tests. Even if only 1% were broken, the result would be a sticky gum, not a powder; and more like 99% would be broken before getting 5 micron particles.

Journalists keep mentioning how many anthrax spores can be gotten onto the head of a pin. It’s not a question of how many can be gotten onto the head of a pin but how many can be gotten into someone’s lungs. Planes cannot Dust a City. A scenario which is often mentioned is that someone might use a plane to dust a large city with anthrax during the night. It’s unrealistic. First, no one in buildings would be harmed by anthrax. The few spores that entered buildings would settle on surfaces, and few would enter the air, and even fewer would be inhaled. At most, someone might inhale a few dozen spores per hour. That’s not the ten thousand that are needed. Secondly, anthrax spores would not diffuse uniformly through the air like a gas. They will either drop too fast or blow away. A few dozen persons might be killed, but that’s not the terror that is being hyped in the media. And more than anything, nobody is producing the spores in powder form but the U.S. and Russia.

Journalists seem to assume that an anthrax cell anywhere will kill someone someplace. Putting words alongside each other on a page is not the same thing as getting cells into humans on the ground. There are millions of square miles of space on the ground which do not show up with the words. Iraq did not Weaponize Anthrax. Saddam Hussein is said to have produced anthrax. If so, the reason is because it is stable and easy to handle, not because it is effective when used. Iraq is unsophisticated to a point of ineptness in its approach to biological weapons. It is said that Iraq uses anthrax in liquid form and puts it in missiles in liquid form. In liquid form, anthrax is almost as safe as cotton candy. Therefore, Iraq poses no anthrax threat.

In fact, military and UN inspectors only found two Iraqi warheads with anthrax in them (in liquid form). If Iraq had anthrax in an effective form, it would have had it in hundreds of warheads, as they did with nerve gas. So Iraq knew its anthrax was useless. For about a billion dollars, Iraq could probably get enough experts together to develop anthrax as a weapon. But the reason why it doesn’t is that researchers already know that anthrax would be next to worthless after it was developed.

The Whole Concept is Flawed. Biological warfare is a flawed concept. The only route usually considered is airborne, because bombs and missiles create the delivery system. There is no disease in existence which is propagated in that manner. Even the airborne diseases require close contact with the source. The reason is because wind disperses the agents too thinly, and gravity brings them down too rapidly. Increasing the quantities massively will get a few persons, but only a few. And then, very few of the diseases which are mentioned as biowarfare agents are suitable for airborne dissemination. Brucellosis is not. It is disseminated through body fluids. Plague is not. It is carried by insects from the blood of one animal to another. The insects do not pick it up from the ground.

Motives tailor the truth at every Level. Biowarfare is promoted through a combination of ignorance and propaganda. The researchers, who should know better and often do, are getting paid to produce the agents, so they do not want to admit the futility of it. The nonresearchers cannot realistically evaluate the claims, and they have propaganda motives. They want tomilitarize society, and scare tactics go a long ways in that direction. The point here is not that large countries cannot make a lot of persons miserable with biological weapons. It’s that the small countries and terrorists cannot do so on their own; and it cannot be done on a large scale and in some magical way as described in the media.

Recent Events. Numerous persons have asked me how I interpret recent events. I think recent events substantiate my statements to the nth degree. Only half a dozen persons have been stricken by anthrax instead of the millions which authorities were predicting upon a terrorist attack. It shows that anthrax is almost impossible to use effectively.

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CALL FOR A BAN ON THE GENETIC ALTERATION OF PATHOGENS FOR DESTRUCTIVE

PURPOSES

by Prof. Francis Boyle

The recent use of the US Postal Service to disseminate anthrax contaminated mail underscores a more general threat to people worldwide brought about by the perversion of the biological sciences to cause harm through the deliberate spread of disease.* This is the moment to outlaw all destructive applications of genetic engineering.

We call on the United States to immediately halt all projects designed to genetically modify naturally occurring organisms for military purposes.

We call on the States Parties to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention to extend the Convention’s ban to cover all genetic modification of biological agents for military purposes. Since the line between offense and defense in this context is thin to non existent, there should be no loopholes for "defense." Genetic modification of pathogens for development of vaccines or other medical purposes should be carried out in civilian laboratories and under strict international controls.

Finally, we call on the United States to support a Protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention to assure strict compliance with the terms of the Convention both by states and by individuals and sub state organizations.

Signed,

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law at University of Illinois College of Law, author of U.S. implementing legislation for 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Anti Terrorism Act of 1989.

Jonathan King, PhD, Professor Molecular Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the Biology Electron Microscope Facility.

Martin Teitel, PhD, President of the Council for Responsible Genetics.

Susan Wright, PhD, Associate Research Scientist at the University of Michigan.

*Several industrial countries, including the United States, have initiated projects aimed at genetically engineering pathogenic and other microbes for military purposes. Military sponsored projects include:

1) developing "superbug" capable of digesting materials such as plastics, fuel, rubber, and asphalt;

2) developing a strain of anthrax that overcomes the protection provided by vaccines in the name of "defense" against such genetically altered strains.

These projects are being justified under the terms of the Biological Weapons Convention as necessary for "defense." Far from providing defense, these projects open up the possibility of more dangerous forms of biological warfare against which there is no defense. They also undermine the Convention both because the actual motives for these projects are highly ambiguous (if a country were to withdraw from the Biological Weapons Convention, their projects would have direct offensive applications) and because they will stimulate similar projects elsewhere in the world.

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From Dawn Richardson

Below is a letter from a father of a vaccine injured boy to President Bush regarding his thoughts on forced vaccination. We will have a lot more out on this topic in the near future. We are working closely with NVIC and many other organizations around the country to keep as many people as possible informed.

We will be asking for your help in getting the word out as materials are put together. It is something we all need to take very seriously and be very active to protect our rights.

Before the letter, I am including a recent article on how there is a huge push to create the legal ability to forcibly vaccinate the entire population -- no medical, religious or conscientious exemptions allowed! As unbelievable as this may sound, it is a very real threat to each and every one of us who believes in our civil liberties and in informed consent to medical treatment. We will continue to stand for each person having the right to make the risk/benfit analysis and ultimate decision for themselves. There are so many families with a high tendency to react horribly to vaccines and an action like this could be the equivalent of a death sentence.

This is not about whether or not someone should or shouldn’t take a vaccine -- it is about leaving that decision to the person, and letting them make that decison with full truthful information about risks and benefits. This is also about the value of human life. A death or injury to a person from a vaccine is just as important as a death or injury from a disease and the notion that it is somehow okay to sacrifice the lives of healthy individuals "for the good of society" is barbaric. It is a totally different situation if someone takes a risk with a vaccine or a disease fully knowing the risks but made that decision with their free will. That is where we feel things need to be.

It is very unfortunate that so many well meaning legislators are making decisions based on fear rather than fact, and it is dispicable that some are exploiting this fear to advance positons and programs beyond the scope of what a supposedly free country should ever contemplate.

We are grateful to all of you committed to staying informed on these issues by being on this mail list. NVIC, PROVE, and other goups around the county will continue to do what we can to research and provide reliable trustworthy information on these topics. We firmly believe that giving up our liberty for a sense of security will most likely leave us with neither.

PROVE provides information on vaccines, and immunization policies and practices that affect the children and adults of Texas. Our mission is to prevent vaccine injury and death and to promote and protect the right of every person to make informed independent vaccination decisions for themselves and their family.

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Expert: Federal law needed on smallpox vaccination

By Todd Zwillich

WASHINGTON, Nov 5, 2001 (Reuters Health) Public health officials must have the authority to quarantine and forcibly vaccinate the entire population--with the help of the military if needed--in the event of a smallpox attack on the US, a bioterrorism expert said Monday.

Massachusetts and other states have laws allowing authorities to force mass vaccination to stem outbreaks of smallpox or some other highly contagious disease. But the federal government has no enforceable way of guaranteeing widespread vaccination, even as it prepares to spend billions of dollars to increase vaccine stockpiles and beef up the public health infrastructure.

"You can’t have a patchy response. There has to be compulsion" to vaccinate in the event of the attack, said Dr. Stephen D. Prior, the research director at the National Security Health Policy Center.

"Each state has different laws and that’s one of the problems," he said.

The government is in the process of procuring 300 million smallpox vaccine doses, enough for every person living in the US. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that they have no plans to institute mass vaccination because there is currently no identifiable threat of a smallpox attack.

Smallpox vaccination used to be routine, but regular inoculations were stopped in 1972. About 40% of the US population has never been vaccinated and lacks immunity to the disease, which is fatal in about one third of cases.

Authorities currently plan to deal with any possible smallpox outbreak by vaccinating in a widening circle around a newly discovered case. Such a practice is useful with a relatively fixed population, but would essentially be useless as unsuspecting citizens carry the virus onto planes traveling across the country, Prior said.

Dr. Anita Barry, the communicable disease control director for the Boston Public Health Commission in Massachusetts, told a Senate subcommittee last Friday that states needed the authority to confine infected persons to their homes for quarantine.

Federal law gives the US Surgeon General the authority to vaccinate and quarantine individuals to protect the public health. "But he has no means of enforcing it," Prior said.

A spokesman for Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chair Edward Kennedy (D MA) said that federal law on mass vaccination is not part of the bioterrorism bill lawmakers are expected to consider soon.

"We’ve heard the issue but we’ve done nothing with it," said spokesman James Manley.

Military planners are currently mulling whether or not they should have a role in enforcing mandatory mass vaccinations or quarantines in the event of a highly contagious biological attack, said Edgar H. Brenner, the co director of the Inter University Center for Legal Studies in Washington.

Brenner told reporters that he had discussed the potential plans with high ranking military officials. "They had no answer yet," he said. But Pentagon spokesman James Turner could not confirm the conversations Brenner mentioned or that officials are discussing such plans.

Prior acknowledged that the potential for federally enforced mandatory vaccinations could arouse anti government sentiments in some sectors of the American public. Any mass vaccination policy would also have to take into account the vaccine’s side effects. Historically, the smallpox vaccine caused serious reactions in about 1 in every 4,000 persons and death in about 4 per 1 million.

"The debate has to take place, and the public has to be involved," he said.

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Letter to the President on smallpox and other vaccines

Raymond Gallup, President Autism Autoimmunity Project

Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey

Dear President Bush:

I read the following in the NY Times on Friday, November 9, 2001 regarding universal vaccination of the American people for smallpox: "But Mr. Bush said he was hesitant to back universal vaccination of the American public because of the likelihood that a small percentage of those receiving the vaccination would die. ‘I would be deeply concerned about a vaccination program that would cause people to lose their life,’ he said."

I’m very concerned about the vaccines that are already out there and that there are safety concerns about them and the fact that a smallpox vaccine would be introduced, would not be in the best interests of the citizens of our country. There has been considerable controversy about the anthrax vaccine that has caused Gulf War syndrome and basically has undermined our military.

When I was in the U.S. Navy from 1966 68, there were not nearly as many vaccines as there are now. The manufacturer of the anthrax vaccine has been cited for various violations and there have numerous deaths and disorders attributed to the anthrax vaccine by military personnel and their families. Major Sonnie Bates, head of our Delaware chapter of the Autism Autoimmunity Project, was forced to resign from the Air Force because he refused to get the anthrax vaccine. He was concerned after hearing reports from other personnel on his base were coming down with debilitating side effects after taking the vaccine. Also, he was concerned after his son, who was normal and healthy, had multiple vaccines and regressed into autism.

Unfortunately, Major Bates is not the only parent who has seen their normal child regress into autism after getting a vaccine. I have been in contact with more than 400 families across the U.S. who have seen the same thing happen to their child. Our son, Eric, received the MMR vaccine in April 1986 when he was 15 months old. Eric was born normal and healthy. In early 1989, he was diagnosed as autistic. In 1995, we found out that Eric had elevated measles titers/antibodies ten times higher than normal, T cell abnormalities and tested positive for myelin basic protein antibodies. We have tried all kinds of treatments including the intravenous gamma globulin but while he has improved, he still has speech and social problems. God made a perfect baby boy and man with his defective product, the vaccine, destroyed Eric and gave him his permanent disability.

Autism is in epidemic proportions across the U.S. and in other countries where vaccines are used in abundance. I started the Autism Autoimmunity Project to define, prevent and treat the immune problems of autism in 1998. To date, the NIH, CDC and FDA do not recognize that autism is an immune/gastrointestinal disorder and do not recognize that vaccines can cause autism. Parents and independent researchers do see a connection and they want the research that will make their children improve.

Unfortunately, the same Federal health agencies that are supposed to look out for our children, stand in the way of science that could prevent and treat autism.

When I was a teen in the 1950’s I never met a child or an adult with autism. Now, I meet new children every week that have autism. Herbert Hoover said that our children are our nation’s most important asset. Why then are vaccine companies using our children as guinea pigs for their safety studies? I believe in free enterprise and profit making, that is what makes our country great, but should money and profits come before safety when it is our children?

In a letter to the medical journal, the Lancet, July 8, 2000, in the Correspondence section titled The MMR Question I mentioned about how Dr. Jacqueline Bertrand of the CDC addressed the incidence of autism in Brick, NJ. I asked her if any of the children were not vaccinated in Brick, NJ.

She said No, it was a highly vaccinated population. I then asked her if the CDC planned on doing any immune blood panel tests on the children. Again, she said No. Yet, the CDC announced in the newspapers that there was no connection to autism and the MMR vaccine or any other vaccine. Where was their science? Recently, in April of this year Dr. Andrew Wakefield appeared before the IOM regarding autism and the MMR vaccine. When Congressman Dan Burton asked for tapes on the session, he got blank tapes from the IOM. What is the IOM trying to hide? Why the obfuscation of the truth and the fear of science? Why are there people in government health agencies who make decisions on vaccines, also connected financially to the vaccine manufacturers? When it comes to vaccine safety by the vaccine manufacturers, our children, our young people in the military and science are the victims.

Please don’t allow the attack on our country by terrorist thugs to allow the vaccine companies to make more vaccines that can disable and kill, when we already have a program in place that is doing that. Safety and science needs to be the number one priority or the human and financial costs will be horrendous.

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Biotech Companies As Bioterrorists

By Vandana Shiva

While the public is preoccupied by an anthrax scare, another act of bio terrorism is threatening India’s farmers and our rich biodiversity.

Ten thousand hectares of transgenic Bt. cotton was found to have been illegally planted in Gujarat in Western India.

At a meeting of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the Committee in the Union Environment Ministry whose permission is mandatory for the introduction of any GM crop, a land mark decision was made to order the state biotechnology co ordination committee to destroy all standing crops of Bt. cotton.

Bt. cotton would not have spread so widely if laws and regulations had been adhered to earlier.

The very introduction of Bt. cotton in India has been steeped in illegality and violation of Biosafety laws and norms.

In 1989, laws to regulate genetically engineered organisms were framed under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. The Biosafety laws were titled "Rules for the Manufacture, Use, Import, Export and Storage of Hazardous Microorganisms, Genetically Engineered Organisms or Cells".

Under these rules, the permission of the GEAC is mandatory for any import, large local scale use or deliberate release of GMOs into the open environment. Field trials in which a GM crop interacts with soils, other plants, insects and animals, are open trials, and hence also need GEAC approval.

A Second Committee, the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation (RCGM) of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) governs the clearances for genetic engineering experiments in labs or greenhouses which are totally contained.

From beginning to end the introduction of genetically engineered Bt. Cotton in India has been illegal. Bt. genes were imported illegally by MAHYCO without GEAC approval. In 1998, after the Monsanto and Mahyco formed a joint venture and Monsanto also bought a 27 percent stake in Mahyco, the two companies started 40 open field trials in 9 states without GEAC approval.

These trials were therefore in violation of the Biosafety laws. They were also in violation of the Constitution of India since agriculture is a state subject and none of the nine states were consulted. Nor were the State Biotechnology Coordination Committee (SBCC) and the District Level Committee (DLC) informed in advance as is required under the Biosafety Rules.

On 6th Jan 1999, the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court of India to bring the bioterrorism of biotech companies to the notice of the Court and to seek protection of the environment, and ecological and economic security of farmers.

In spite of the case, the Monsanto and Mahyco repeated their illegal trials in 1999 in 10 locations. They continued to multiply seeds in total contravention of Bio safety laws which require that all planting material at trial stage will be destroyed.

Between 1995 and 2000, the biotech companies were acting without approval of the GEAC only in May 2000, Mahyco wrote to GEAC seeking approval for "release for large scale commercial field trials and hybrid seed production of indigenously developed Bt. cotton hybrid". In July GEAC cleared large scale field trials on 85 hectares and seed production on 150 hectares. We again challenged the GEAC clearance for seed production without completion of the biosafety trials.

Even ordinary seed requires 2 years of trials and tests to ensure new diseases and pests are not introduced. Since genetically engineered seeds introduce new traits into crops, their tests and safety assessments have to be more rigorous and more extended, and need to take place over at least five years before commercialisation.

The GEAC’s first approval came in July 2000. Bt. cotton seed should not be introduced commercially in India before 2005. It will in any case take five years to upgrade our state agriculture research institutions to test for biosafety and to get the gramsabhas, panchayats, district administrations, state governments, and union ministries fully equipped to deal with the new technologies and the biosafeguards that must evolve simultaneously.

In the absence of biosafety capacity building, commercial introduction of GMO’s amounts to bioterrorism.

The uncontrolled spread of GM seed over 10,000 acres in Gujrat is a result of five years of illegal seed production and multiplication by Mansanto and Mahyco over the past five years. It somehow reached Navbharat seeds, an Ahmedabad based seed company whose Managing Director is Dr. D.B Desai. The seed was sold as "Navbharat 151".

The cultivation of GM cotton in Gujrat was not detected by any regulatory body but by Mahyco. Mahyco, which had itself spread Bt. cotton in Indian agriculture illegally over the past five years, and had repeatedly bypassed the GEAC now ran to GEAC and the DBT wanting "strong and immediate action" against Navbharat for its "blatant contravention of the legal and regulatory processes".

However, until July 2000, Mahyco and Monsanto had also acted in blatant contravention of the legal and regulatory processes, and whatever action is taken against Navbharat for violating biosafety laws should also be taken against Monsanto and Mahyco for their illegal trials.

As far as the issue of compensation and liability is concerned, the government of Gujarat should immediately buy the Bt. cotton from farmers, which is in any case ready for harvesting, and pay them full market price as compensation. This amount should then be collected from Mansanto, Mahyco, and Navbharat seeds.

Mansanto, after all, "owns" the Bt. gene in Bt. cotton through a patent. In all laws of environmental pollution, the owner and producer of the polluting product is liable.

The same holds for biopollution. Mansanto and Mahyco were responsible for destroying all planting material after trials. No seed should have been available for further sale.

The availability of enough seed to cover 10,000 acres in Gujarat is a result of violation of biosafety laws by Mansanto, Mahyco earlier and Navbharat now.

How the government handless the Gujarat case will determine the future of both Biosafety laws and Intellectual Property Laws in the country. Mahyco, and hence Mansanto, are outraged at Bt. cotton being grown in Gujarat not on grounds of biosafety but because they would like to have exclusive rights to sell and produce Bt. cotton in India as soon as possible. Their battle with Navbharat is a property rights battle.

Our challenge to Monsanto, Mahyco and Navbharat, and the regulatory agencies of the government is on grounds of Biosafety and Farmers Rights. We do not want to see our biodiversity destroyed and our farmers ruined because of corporate bioterrorism. We do not want corporations to destroy farmers’ freedoms and choices through biopollution and IPR monopolies.

The engineering of the genes of Bt. toxins into plants implies that high dose toxin is expressed in every cell of every plant all the time. This promotes development of resistance in insect populations and the creation of "super" pests.

Monsanto’s genetically engineered "Bollgard" cotton or Bt. cotton has genes from a bacteria engineered into it so that the plant produces its own pesticide contrary to Monsanto’s claim. Bt.cotton is not "pest resistant" but a pesticide producing plant.

The severe ecological risks of crops genetically engineered to produce toxics include the threat posed to beneficial species such as bird, bees, butterflies, beetles which are necessary for pollination and for pest control through prey predator balance. Nothing is yet known of the impact on human health when toxic producing Bt. crops such as potato and corn are eaten or on animal health when oilcake from Bt.cotton or fodder from Bt.corn is consumed as cattle feed.

Further, while pesticide producing plants are being offered as an alternative to spraying pesticides, they will in fact create the need for more pesticides since pests are rapidly evolving resistance to genetically engineered Bt. crops.

Research at the Scottish Crop Research showed that lady birds fed on aphid which were fed on transgenic potatoes laid fewer eggs and lived half as long as lady birds on a normal diet (Brich et al, 1996//97).

The latest research that has sent shock waves throughout the scientific and environmental community is the finding by the Cornell scientists that the Monarch butterfly Danaus plexippus was killed by ingesting milkweed leaves dusted with pollen from Bt. cotton (Losey et al., 1999).

These impacts on non target species falsify the claims that the Bt. Toxin in Bt. cotton only effects the cotton bollworm. If such Bt. cotton is allowed to spread across the country its impact on diverse species will be similar to the devastating impacts of pesticide use. In addition, the risks of transgene moving into other plants will have the added risks of genetic pollution and the destruction of our biodiversity.

Gujarat has 130 indigenous cotton varieties. Genetic pollution would wipe out this rich genetic wealth. In any case, spreading the risk of genetically engineered crops is not necessary because organic cotton cultivation produces more cotton of better quality at lower cost. It therefore brings a double benefit to farmers of lowering costs on expensive seeds and chemicals, and increasing income by producing a quality product.

GM cottons is not a superior option for the farmer, it is only a preferred option for the biotech and seed industry which can lock the farmer into a new bioserfdom based on patents and intellectual property rights, and forced purchase of expensive and unreliable seeds at every planting season.

The government needs to immediately set up a high level study to evaluate the risks and the benefits of organic farming vis a vis genetic engineering. Meantime, a five year moratorium needs to be imposed on all commercial sales of GM seeds.

The research and regulatory capacity for Biosafety needs to be built in these five years at all levels -- local, regional and natural laws for strict liability to reflect the ownership of GMOs as embodied in IPR regimes need to be evolved and implemented. Let the fields of Gujarat become an opportunity for creating national policies and laws that protect biodiversity and farmers rights. Let us ensure that corporate the Bioterrorism does not become the culture of Indian agriculture.

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Allene R. Wahl, Ph.D., C.N.C.

Int'l. Resource Center for Chemically Induced Immune Disorders

True cause of immune epidemic: