Swine flu virus which killed half-million modified to 'incurable'

‘Humdinger’: Swine flu virus which killed half-million modified to 'incurable'

Published time: July 02, 2014 10:07
Edited time: July 02, 2014 11:37

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A controversial flu researcher has modified the flu virus responsible for the 2009 pandemic to allow it evade the human immune system. His lab’s previous works include recreating the Spanish flu and making a deadly bird flu strain highly transmittable.

The yet-to-be-published research by Professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka and his team is meant to give scientists better ways to fight influenza outbreaks, but gives chills to some people in academia, who are fearful that accidental release of the strain would result in a global disaster, according to a report by the Independent.

At his level-3 biosafety lab at Wisconsin University’s Institute for Influenza Virus Research in Madison, Kawaoka experimented with the H1N1 flu strain that was responsible for the pandemic in 2009, dubbed the swine flu pandemic by the media. The work resulted in a mutated strain that is able to evade the human antibodies, effectively rendering humans defenseless against the virus.

“He took the 2009 pandemic flu virus and selected out strains that were not neutralized by human antibodies. He repeated this several times until he got a real humdinger of a virus,” a scientist familiar with Kawaoka’s research told the British newspaper.

“He’s basically got a known pandemic strain that is now resistant to vaccination. Everything he did before was dangerous but this is even madder. This is the virus,” he added.

This 2009 Centers For Disease Control and Prevention handout image taken through a microscope, shows a negative-stained image of the swine flu virus H1N1 strain. (AFP Photo)

H1N1 flu had caused serious outbreaks and two recorded pandemics, the first being the notorious Spanish flu of 1918. Kawaoka’s newest work is partially derived from his experience in recreating the deadly strain.

The first H1N1 pandemic left between 50 and 100 million people dead, according to estimates. The 2009 pandemic death toll is debated, with some estimates putting the number as high as 560,000, most of them in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The professor assured the newspaper that the mutant virus is well under control in his lab and that making a strain that can beat human immune system will help epidemiologists be prepared for a contingency of a similar mutation occurring naturally.

“Through selection of immune escape viruses in the laboratory under appropriate containment conditions, we were able to identify the key regions [that] would enable 2009 H1N1 viruses to escape immunity,” he said in an email.

“Viruses in clinical isolates have been identified that have these same changes in the [viral protein]. This shows that escape viruses emerge in nature and laboratory studies like ours have relevance to what occurs in nature,” he added.

A man sprays a disinfectant against the swine flu virus on November 18, 2009 in a classroom of the Georges Brassens school in Baillargues, southern France. (AFP Photo / Pascal Guyot)

The research was approved by Wisconsin’s Institutional Biosafety Committee, although a minority of the 17-member board is critical of Kawaoka’s line of study. One such vocal critic at the committee is Thomas Jeffries, who argues that an accidental release of the virus from the safe lab is possible, citing the recent incident at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which potentially exposed some 80 people to anthrax bacteria.

"I think we can sometimes fool ourselves into thinking we have more control over a situation in a laboratory than we do," he told Wisconsin State Journal last week. "Accidents do happen."

When The Independent approached Jeffries for comments on Kawaoka’s new research, he said he was not made aware of details of the study at the time the approval was given.

“What was present in the research protocols was a very brief outline or abstract of what he was actually doing…there were elements to it that bothered me,” Professor Jeffries said.

Demonstration at the Red Cross Emergency Ambulance Station in Washington, D.C., during the influenza pandemic of 1918. (Image from wikipedia.org)

Rebecca Moritz, who is responsible for overseeing Wisconsin’s work at the institute, said it is needed to create new vaccines.

“The work is designed to identify potential circulating strains to guide the process of selecting strains used for the next vaccine…The committee found the biosafety containment procedures to be appropriate for conducting this research. I have no concerns about the biosafety of these experiments,” she said.

Kawaoka said he presented preliminary results of his research to the World Health Organization and they had been “well received.”

“We are confident our study will contribute to the field, particularly given the number of mutant viruses we generated and the sophisticated analysis applied,” he explained.

“There are risks in all research. However, there are ways to mitigate the risks. As for all the research on influenza viruses in my laboratory, this work is performed by experienced researchers under appropriate containment and with full review and prior approval by the [biosafety committee],” he added.

University Research Park, where Kawaoka conducts flu GOF experiments. (Photo by Jeff Miller/UW-Madison / cidrap.umn.edu)

Flu virus strains are notorious for changing rapidly, with new strains emerging and causing seasonal flu epidemics. Scientists have to try and predict what kind of flu they would have to face each year and have a vaccine ready. When they succeed, an outbreak causes much less damage that it could have otherwise.

Research of ‘gain of function’ by viruses like the works of Kawaoka is focused on exploring how a virus can become deadlier and more transmittable or resistant to existing vaccines. Critics of such studies say they are too dangerous, both due to the risk of accidental or even deliberate release.

For instance some people in the academia called on Kawaoka to withhold parts of his research on H5N1 bird flu. Normally the virus is highly lethal, but does not transmit well, but a series of experiments with ferrets resulted in an easily transmittable strain. The experiments were simple enough for any person with expertise in microbiology to replicate, which critics said some group of would-be bioterrorists would eventually do.

A/H1N1 was re-assorted in a lab

A virologist who has been researching the A/H1N1 virus has concluded after months of research that the "novel" influenza was re-assorted in a laboratory from eight genes consisting of avian, swine and human type influenza A virus.

The scientist does not believe, based on intensive laboratory research of the A/H1N1 virus, that its sudden appearance in Mexico this past Spring was a natural occurrence.

The reassortment of viruses occurs when one or more complete genes are exchanged enabling the virus to adapt to a new host. An example is when the avian virus switches gene with a human virus. In the case of A/H1N1, three genes were exchanged, from avian, swine, and human influenza viruses, resulting in the ressortant virus now expected to launch another deadly wave of infections in early October.

There are also signs that adaptation leading to mutation has occurred in the A/H1N1 strain. Several cases of mutated A/H1N1 have been reported from around the globe rendering treatment with anti-A/H1N1 drugs and A/H1N1 vaccines ineffective.

Adaptation takes place when a small change takes place in the virus and sometimes that can be one amino acid alteration. The adaptation permits the virus to thrive in its new host. A/H1N1 is believed to be a laboratory strain because a specific amino acid was discovered that appears to have made several passage in eggs. The vaccine industry usually amplifies viruses by isolating them in eggs and after several passages, the mutation can be discovered.

The mutation of A/H1N1 has been discovered by our virologist source to have been more rapid than is naturally possible. The following is what was described in scientific terms about the rate of mutation of A/H1N1:

"Mutation takes time to occur, up to the rate of amino acid substitution. For example, for HA gene, or "duck virus," HA has a substitution rate about 3 x 10e-4 per site per year which is slower compare to human and swine HA (about 10e-3 per site per year). If the total nucleotide number in influenza A virus HA is 1,700, then it takes three years for making a single change in the duck virus, or 1.7 year in the case of human and swine virus."

The natural rate of mutation for a complete gene mutation, according to the virologist, takes "thousand of years to be established."

As far as the reassortant A/H1N1 virus is concerned, there is a fear that a human was used as a laboratory "guinea pig" to permit the exchange of genes between humans, pigs, and fowl. The reasoning is that an individual was infected by avian, human and swine virus simultaneously, and the viruses exchanged genes inside the individual's body, creating a new virus having mixed genes and then rapidly spreading to others.

Herein lies the suspicions concerning the purposeful creation of A/H1N1 and its infection of a human host. WMR's virologist source stated:

"The host should have efficient receptor for those three different derived hosts. So far, human virus tends to infect human, because it is suited to a human receptor. Avian virus tends to infect birds, because it is suited to bird receptors. Pigs have both human and avian type receptors, so it is believed that pig serves as the 'mixing vessel'. However, some researchers tried to prove the 'mixing vessel' theory by trying to infect pigs with human and avian viruses to create a reassortant virus."

The test involving the infection of pigs with reassortant human and avian viruses failed.

While it is common for pigs to become infected with human and avian viruses but there are no reports that pigs shed the reassortant A/H1N1 virus and infected new hosts, either human or bird.

What is known is that the first A/H1N1 virus was found in a human. Although some pigs and turkeys were infected with the A/H1N1 virus by farm workers, there is no evidence that the opposite occured.

Reassortant genes also require ancestor viruses. According to the virologist:

"If you check the phylogenetic tree, it shows the NA and M genes derived from avian virus, PB1 from human H3N2; other genes (PB2, PA, HA, NP, NS) from swine triple reassortant, swine H1N2 and Eurasian swine (H1N1/H3N2). The triple reassortant swine actually derived from human H3N2 which infected pigs, and has been circulating in North America for at least 20 years. When people say it is 'swine virus,' it's actually human virus."

It has also been discovered that suspected ancestor viruses are coming from old isolates. The NA gene comes from a 1996-2001 isolate, the M gene from 1990-1993 isolates, and the others even older, somewhere between 1979 to 1980's isolates. The consensus virologist community contends that the A/H1N1 virus has been in existence for over twenty years without ever being detected. WMR's virologist states that it is impossible for a virus existing for twenty years without being detected given the amount of virus medical surveillance that takes place around the world.

The virologist has not detected any evidence of 1918 influenza RNA/DNA in A/H1N1. However, the 1918 flu, like A/H1N1, began in a first wave in the spring and came back with a vengeance in October. The 1918 flu killed an estimated 50 million people around the world. Although no genetic evidence of a link to 1918 flu has been discovered by the virologist, the same scientist who has conducted research into A/H1N1 and may have received DNA samples from the buried corpse of an Inuit woman in Fort Brevig, Alaska who died of the pandemic in 1918 is also financially linked to an A/H1N1 vaccine firm.

The virologist has asked an alarming question about A/H1N1, "How can you mix avian, human and pig virus at one time? The viruses must have come from Europe, America and Asia, without any detection?"

The virologist adds, "the virus emerged suddenly in Mexico. I can't explain how. I wish I could. For me as a virologist, it's impossible . . . on the other hand, technology can create any kind of virus you want."

RT: Hybrid flu genetically-engineered in U.S. and Canada

Hybrid A/H1N1 flu tied to genetic trigger for larger, mutated version

WMR previously reported on the genetic manipulation of the 1918 flu from tissue extracted from an Inuit woman who died from the pandemic in Alaska. On May 6, WMR reported: "WMR has obtained information from biological researchers that the 1918 Spanish flu genetic sequences were 'manipulated' in order to effect transmission capability. The current H1N1 virus, called 'swine flu,' is reportedly a combination of two forms of human flu, two forms of swine flu (North American and Eurasian), and avian or bird flu . . . Two bio-safety laboratories have been associated with the genetic reverse engineering of not only A-H1N1, the current 'swine flu' strain, but also the deadly Ebola virus. They are the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada."

WMR has now learned from virus researchers that the current A-H1N1 strain strongly appears tied to vaccinations for the seasonal form on influenza. The hybrid flu began in countries where seasonal vaccinations are commonplace and where A-H1N1 did not respond to the normal seasonal flu vaccination antibody, according to researchers studying the new virus.

What has some researchers alarmed is that the engineers of A-H1N1 purposely planned to make the virus non-responsive to any available vaccine. There is also a suspicion by researchers that the A-H1N1 vaccine under development will trigger a more deadly mutated form of the virus for which the A-H1N1 vaccine will be ineffective.

On May 19, WMR reported: "What researchers have told us is that as long as the current AH1N1 can infect humans, it will not try to mutate. Even though there have been deaths from AH1N1, most of those infected are sick for up to four days, take Tamiflu or similar drugs, and recover with immunity from the hybrid or 'novel' virus . . . However, with vaccinations, the AH1N1 virus will, of course, be rejected by human hosts and cases around the world will decrease. However, then, the virus will begin to mutate in order to successfully infect human hosts. And when that happens, the new, newly-mutated virus will become much more transmissible and more pathogenic. The nightmare scenario is that the new, mutated virus may take on the characteristics of H5N1 or the avian flu. The vaccines administered for AH1N1 will be ineffective against the new strain of H5N1 and the world may face a more deadlier pandemic then the current AH1N1 outbreak. There are scientists at WHO who are aware of this scenario but their alarm has been suppressed by political and economic considerations."

Public health officials in Brazil are now reporting that the A/H1N1 virus is now in the process of mutating, confirming our earlier reports. A new variant of the pandemic virus is showing up in patients in Brazil making treatment more difficult.

On May 13, 2009, WMR reported: "Because of the rapid mutation of the virus and the fact that, unlike 1918, rapid global transportation is now the norm, scientists are predicting that the molecular clock of the A/H1N1 virus, coupled with modern transportation, means that almost all the countries of the world will experience an A/H1N1 outbreak within the next few months."

The prediction about the rate of global infection is being borne out by reports of the virus now being reported in many more nations, including South Africa, Yemen, Qatar, India, and Morocco, as well as uncontained surges in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Utah, and Argentina.

In another suspicious turn of events, Ivorian national Konan Yao, a former researcher at the Winnipeg laboratory that has been involved in A/H1N1 research and who was arrested by the FBI at the U.S. border crossing on May 5 trying to sneak 22 vials of Ebola and HIV genetic material into the United States for his new job at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, near Washington, DC, was given his post-plea bargain sentence in federal court in Grand Forks, North Dakota late last month: 17 days in prison which equated to time served and a $500 fine. Yao's federal charge was "failure to present merchandise for inspection," a lesser charge from the original "attempting to bring biological material into the United States without a permit." Yao's new job was at the NIH's Biodefense Research Laboratory. The federal prosecutor who cut the plea deal with Yao is Lynn Jordheim, the Assistant U.S. Attorney in Fargo, who also happens to be the U.S. Attorney's office representative on the Anti-terrorism Advisory Council (ATAC) and Crisis Management Coordinator for the federal jurisdiction and, more intriguing, the "Confidential Human Source Coordinator."

H1N1 synthetic flu may be test run for H5N1 avian flu

H1N1 synthetic flu may be test run for H5N1 avian flu

On May 13, 2009, WMR reported the following regarding the synthetic A/H1N1 influenza pandemic:

"WMR has learned from an A/H1N1 researcher that the current "novel" flu strain is mutating rapidly in humans but no animals have contracted the virus. The enzyme in A/H1N1, as with all influenza A viruses, is called a polymerase. Scientists have calculated the molecular clock of A/H1N1 form the virus's polymerase rate. Because of the rapid mutation of the virus and the fact that, unlike 1918, rapid global transportation is now the norm, scientists are predicting that the molecular clock of the A/H1N1 virus, coupled with modern transportation, means that almost all the countries of the world will experience an A/H1N1 outbreak within the next few months."

The World Health Organization (WHO), after indicating it was prepared to raise the AH1N1 pandemic flu alert to Level 6, the agency's highest alert level,. has now succumbed to political pressure from Britain, Japan, China, and other nations led by corporate-beholden governments to keep the alert level at Level 5. The nations opposed to a Level 6 level argue that H1N1 should not be considered by the rate at which it is spreading but by deadly it is. WMR has also learned that New York's Public Health Commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden, has been downplaying the threat from H1N1, even though the flu has claimed the life of an assistant principal of a public school in Queens. Ominously, the Obama administration has named Frieden to be the administrator of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta.

Political considerations by the White House, Gracie Mansion, and WHO headquarters in Geneva are overshadowing what could be a more deadly follow-on pandemic, according to an influenza research scientist who has been in contact with WMR.

The AH1N1 virus has infected some 100 students in Kobe, Japan. Many of the students have no history of traveling abroad. There are plans underway to begin a mass vaccination against AH1N1. However, there are misgivings in the international research community about administering an AH1N1 vaccine.

The fear is that once a vaccination against AH1N1 is started, the virus will re-assort itself into a hybrid H1N1/H5N1 strain or mutate into a new H5N1 strain. The current AH1N1 strain, as previously reported by WMR, contains synthetically gene spliced strains of two forms of human flu viruses, two forms of swine flu viruses, and a single form of avian flu virus.

What researchers have told us is that as long as the current AH1N1 can infect humans, it will not try to mutate. Even though there have been deaths from AH1N1, most of those infected are sick for up to four days, take Tamiflu or similar drugs, and recover with immunity from the hybrid or "novel" virus. The vaccination program will be a profit maker for such Big Pharma firms as Sanofi-Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline and Baxter International.

However, with vaccinations, the AH1N1 virus will, of course, be rejected by human hosts and cases around the world will decrease. However, then, the virus will begin to mutate in order to successfully infect human hosts. And when that happens, the new, newly-mutated virus will become much more transmissible and more pathogenic.

The nightmare scenario is that the new, mutated virus may take on the characteristics of H5N1 or the avian flu. The vaccines administered for AH1N1 will be ineffective against the new strain of H5N1 and the world may face a more deadlier pandemic then the current AH1N1 outbreak. There are scientists at WHO who are aware of this scenario but their alarm has been suppressed by political and economic considerations.

Our May 13 item stated: "scientists are predicting that the molecular clock of the A/H1N1 virus, coupled with modern transportation, means that almost all the countries of the world will experience an A/H1N1 outbreak within the next few months."

That prediction appears to be correct. Since May 13, AH1N1 cases have spread to Japan, India, Chile, Turkey, Cuba, Ecuador, Ireland, and Thailand. The flu has also spread from southern China to Beijing.

Related Articles:

• May 13-14, 2009 -- SPECIAL REPORT. The history of the synthetic H1N1 flu virus and a not-so-rosy future

SPECIAL REPORT. The history of the synthetic H1N1 flu virus, the resurrection of the 1918 flu virus and a not-so-rosy future

The history of the extraction of the genetic material from the corpses of victims of the 1918 Spanish influenza virus who were buried in Arctic permafrost is part "X-Files" and part "Jurassic Park." After an unsuccessful 1951 mission, that involved U.S. biological warfare specialists, to extract 1918 Spanish flu genetic material in 1951 from a cemetery in the Inupiat Eskimo village of Brevig Mission, Alaska, scientists made another attempt, a successful one it turns out, in 1997. Dr. Johan Hultin, from the State University of Iowa, successfully extracted genetic material from the corpse of an obese thirty-something female who died from the Spanish flu in 1918, along with 85 percent of Brevig Mission's (called Teller Mission in 1918) villagers in a single week. The pandemic killed at least 50 million people around the world.

Once the Spanish flu genetic material was obtained from the lungs, spleen, liver, and heart of the Eskimo woman's corpse, scientists, in a scene reminiscent of the fictional movie "Jurassic Park," in which genetic material from extinct dinosaurs is used to bring the creatures back to life, recreated the long-since dead 1918 Spanish flu in a U.S.-government funded laboratory. The woman's organs were cut into one-inch cubes and shipped to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland where the virus's genetic RNA material was identified and the 1918 Spanish flu was successfully brought back to life.

The search for the frozen bodies of 1918 flu victims was not limited to Alaska. Another team of scientists, acting like Dr. Frankenstein's "Igor," set out to dig up the graves of miners who died from the flu in the remote Norwegian mining village of Longyearbyen in Spitsbergen, which lies north of the Arctic Circle.

WMR has learned from a research scientist who has been working on the recreation of the 1918 flu that the genetic material has been re-engineered to synthetically create what is now known as the A/H1N1 virus, or as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calls it, the "novel flu."

The A/H1N1 influenza, which contains genetic material from two strains of swine flu, two strains of human flu, and a single strain of avian flu, has, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), infected a total of 4880 people in North America: 2,059 in Mexico; 2,535 in the United States, and 286 in Canada. There have been 56 reported deaths from the flu in Mexico, three in the United States, and one in Canada.

WMR has learned from an A/H1N1 researcher that the current "novel" flu strain is mutating rapidly in humans but no animals have contracted the virus. The enzyme in A/H1N1, as with all influenza A viruses, is called a polymerase. Scientists have calculated the molecular clock of A/H1N1 form the virus's polymerase rate. Because of the rapid mutation of the virus and the fact that, unlike 1918, rapid global transportation is now the norm, scientists are predicting that the molecular clock of the A/H1N1 virus, coupled with modern transportation, means that almost all the countries of the world will experience an A/H1N1 outbreak within the next few months.

What is different about A/H1N1 is that, unlike other new strains of viruses that rapidly mutate upon emerging and then slow down mutation and then stop entirely, the "novel" or incorrectly-named "swine flu" is showing no signs yet of slowing down its mutation rate and that, according to scientists who worry about A/H1N1 being synthetically-generated, does not happen in nature.

In 2006, at a summit meeting in Cancun, Mexico, President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Mexican President Vicente Fox agreed for their nations to coordinate their response to avian flu, which was spreading in Asia. National Public Radio, on April 2, 2006, ran a segment on how bird flu wreaked havoc in 1918 in Brevig Mission. NPR's Weekend Edition ran a report from Brevig Mission by Lori Townsend of Alaska Public Radio:

"The grave has been opened twice by the same pathologist. In 1951, Johann Hultin convinced village elders to allow him to take tissue samples from bodies buried in permafrost. His lab attempts to map the virus were unsuccessful, but he returned in 1997, and when he did, he was once again given permission to re-open the grave."

WMR has learned from a journalist from Anchorage who covered the 1997 grave exhumation that there was CIA personnel with the team of scientists. Inuit elders of Brevig Mission argued against digging up the graves of the flu victims would release evil spirits. However, money allegedly changed hands between the U.S. government research team and some of the elders, so permission to dig up the graves was granted.

NPR and Alaska Public Radio was reporting what was extracted from the 1918 flu victim's corpse was the H5N1 avian flu virus, but that was erroneous. Or was it? If what was extracted from the dead woman's body in Brevig Mission was used to synthetically create the current A/H1N1 virus, there is a strain of avian flu in the virus. But the current A/H1N1 virus also contains swine and human flu strains.

What has been relayed by the researcher is that the original 1918 virus was the H1N1 virus. In Bio-safety level 3 (BSL-s) laboratory work that was largely classified, the virus was artifically combined with common H3N2 and a minor gene splice from the H5N1 Eurasian avian flu strain.

The avian flu or H5N1 virus that struck Asia in 2006 contained some genetic mutations of the 1918 virus. And scientists researching pandemic flu strains have, since the recreation of the 1918 flu, been playing fast and loose with flu samples. On April, 17, 2005, The Washington Post reported that Meridian Bioscience, which was under contract to the College of American Pathologists, accidentally distributed the pandemic H2N2/Japan flu strain, as part of a flu testing kit, to influenza laboratories around the world. WHO ordered the labs to immediately destroy the flu sample because it was worried about an accidental release of the pandemic virus, resulting in a global health crisis. In 1957, H2N2 killed a million people around the world.

The Post'sarticle, by Wendy Orent, states that scientists were working to create an artificial strain of the 1918 virus: "[Scientists] can combine some 1918 genes either with laboratory strains that have been adapted to grow in mice, which don't normally catch human flu, or with ordinary human flu strains to yield new artificial strains. Then the researcher infects mice with his new strain. Strains using three of the 1918 genes are already known to kill mice."

The same Postarticle quotes Peter B. Jahrling, the chief scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about the danger of the virus recreation research. Jahrling stated the research was like "looking for a gas leak with a lighted match." The article continues: "What concerns Jahrling and Brown, among others, is that experiments involving 1918 genes are not being carried out under the highest biosafety level, BSL-4. While most of the scientists use what is known as BSL-3 plus, or enhanced, conditions, they do not use space suits, chemical showers or gas-tight cabinets in their work."

Lastly, the article has a stark warning regarding the 1918 flu reconstruction at the military laboratory in Rockville, research led by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger. The article states: "Even more disturbing is what may happen when Taubenberger publishes the remaining three gene sequences. Then the entire 1918 flu could be built from scratch by anyone, anywhere, who has sufficient resources and skill. It is quite conceivable that resurrected 1918 flu could someday be used as a bioterrorist agent."

In a January 29, 2006, New York Times article by Jamie Shreeve, titled "Why Revive a Deadly Flu Virus?," it is reported that the 1918 flu had been successfully revived. The article states: "In October, a team of scientists, [CDC's Terrence] Tumpey among them, announced that they had recreated the extinct organism from its genetic code -- essentially the scenario played out in the movie ''Jurassic Park,'' albeit on a microbial scale. In the movie, the scientists' self-serving revivification of dinosaurs leads to mayhem and death . . . . How dangerous is the 1918 virus to today's population? Its genetic code is now in public databases, where other researchers can download it to conduct experiments. Scientists from the University of Wisconsin and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada have already collaborated to reconstruct the virus from the publicly available sequence. How easy would it be for a bioterrorist to exploit the same information for malevolent ends?"

The article details how the 1918 genetic material was extracted and who worked on the project: "The resurrection of the 1918 influenzavirus was a team effort engaging the resources of the C.D.C. in Atlanta, an obscure military pathology lab outside Washington, D.C., an esteemed group of influenza experts at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and one elderly Swede. Though the story has been told before, it is impossible not to begin with the Swede. In 1950, Johan Hultin, then a 25-year-old graduate student at the University of Iowa, was searching for a Ph.D. topic when he heard a visiting virologist say that the only way to solve the mystery of the 1918 pandemic would be to recover the virus from a victim who had been buried in permafrost."

There has been yet another secretive U.S. government group involved in researching bio-warfare agents like influenza. Known simply as JASON, the group consists of civilian scientists, the top experts in their fields and a number of Nobel laureates, who meet periodically and issue reports, many of which are classified. JASON has been in existence for 40 years and is thought to be a follow-on to the Manhattan Project, the top secret scientific group that created the atomic bomb during World War II. In fact, some of JASON's earliest members helped to design both the atomic and hydrogen bombs. Its first three members were scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the home of the Manhattan Project.

Operating under the aegis of the MITRE Corporation, a federally-funded contracting entity, JASON scientists primarily met in the highly-secured Building 29 at 3550 General Atomics Court in San Diego. The location is the address of the Torrey Pines Institute. Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), JASON also has links, according to distribution lists on JASON reports, to the CIA. The CIA maintains an element called the IC [Intelligence Community] JASON Program under the Chief Technical Officer. Traditionally, JASON self-selects its members from a number of academic disciplines. However, JASON almost lost its funding a few years ago, when, after issuing a report critical of the Bush administration's ballistic missile defense program, DARPA attempted to force three new members, obviously political overseers, on to the JASON membership rolls. DARPA's chief Tony Tether pulled funding for JASON, forcing the group for the first time since its inception in 1959 to look for another Pentagon sponsor. The ballistic missile defense program, also called Star Wars II, was a personal pet project of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

JASON survived when DARPA's parent orgzniation, the Pentagon's Directorate for Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), provided JASON with direct funding, an indication of the power enjoyed by the secretive JASON organization. JASON also has other federal government sponsors, including the Department of Energy.

JASON is also very much involved in issues of biological warfare. JASON produced a report on Civilian Biodefense in January 2000, which was highly-redacted when released. Even the names of the report's authors and the information on four bio-warfare scenarios is completely blacked out, except for a discussion of a 1947 smallpox incident in Scenario Two. The report also states that the CIA's Clandestine Measurement and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT) Operations Center and Counter-Proliferation Center were interested in biological weapons intelligence collection and signatures. A section of the report on "Managing Civilian Response" to a bio-war attack is also completely redacted, as is a section on domestic intelligence. A page on the anthrax threat references "psychological BW [biological weapons] warfare." The JASON report was completed almost two years before anthrax attacks all but suspended the work of Congress after 9/11 and saw the quick passage of the US Patriot Act.

The JASON report also discusses the mining of medical data, including patient billing records, to find out if a disease outbreak has occurred and how far and what direction it is spreading by examining "spatiotemporal patterns," including "averaging statistics for humans traveling globally."

In fact, the JASON Civilian Biodefense report mirrors, in many respects, the analysis being currently conducted by medical intelligence (MEDINT) agencies around the world on the outbreak and spread of A/H1N1. And that begs the question: is A/H1N1, artificially-developed by U.S. government scientists, the real thing or a test run for something much worse?

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SIDEBAR:

The Jason report on bio-war discusses "managing civilian response." That also appears be a major concern of the CDC on A/H1N1 at the present time judging from the following internal CDC memo obtained by WMR (note that "swine flu" is being referred to as the "novel H1N1 flu"):

From: CDC Announcements
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 10:31 AM
To: CDC All - [REDACTED]

Subject: Public Inquires Regarding Novel H1N1 Flu – CDC-INFO

Public Inquires Regarding Novel H1N1 Flu – CDC-INFO

The CDC National Contact Center, CDC-INFO, is available to assist CDC programs in responding to calls and emails related to the novel H1N1 flu. CDC-INFO maintains current content for phone and email responses; maintains records of calls/emails; collects and analyzes quality assurance and customer satisfaction data; and provides on-demand reports for program partners.

If the general public is contacting you with questions related to the novel H1N1 outbreak, we encourage you to direct those inquires you receive to CDC-INFO. CDC-INFO representatives are available to respond to inquiries 24 hours, 7 days a week via email and phone, in English and Spanish. Emails should be forwarded to cdcinfo@cdc.gov. Telephone inquiries may be routed to 1-800-CDC-INFO (1-800-232-4636).

If you have any questions regarding this email, or for assistance in routing public inquiries, please contact eocjiccdcinfo@cdc.gov.

CDC-INFO’s Novel H1N1 Flu Response

Since April 22, 2009, CDC-INFO has answered more than 29,000 phone and email inquiries from the general public and health care professionals in support of CDC’s novel H1N1 flu response. As of Friday, May 8, 2009, the average hold time for phone calls related to novel H1N1 flu was less than 5 seconds. To date, the states with the highest number of phone inquiries are: California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Georgia.

On Thursday, April 30, 2009, CDC-INFO answered the highest number of inquiries on a single topic in its 4-year history, with 3,127 calls and emails answered related to the novel H1N1 outbreak.

As of May 5, 2009, 75 percent of survey respondents gave CDC-INFO their highest satisfaction rating for the novel H1N1 flu-related services they received.

Supporting CDC’s Mission

The CDC-INFO National Contact Center (1800-CDC-INFO or cdcinfo@cdc.gov) supports CDC’s mission by providing a single trusted source of accurate, timely, consistent, and science-based information for the general public, healthcare providers and public health partners. Information is available on more than 400 CDC health and safety topics, disease prevention, and health promotion information through phone, TTY, and email. CDC-INFO provides critical health information to vulnerable populations, including those without access to CDC’s internet resources or those with low health literacy.

More evidence emerges that H1N1 was engineered in "Jurassic Park" bio-labs

Informed sources have revealed to WMR that the H1N1 virus, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned could become a global pandemic, was reverse engineered from genetic material obtained from the remains of victims of the deadly 1918 "Spanish flu" influenza pandemic that killed 50 million people worldwide.

WMR has obtained information from biological researchers that the 1918 Spanish flu genetic sequences were "manipulated" in order to effect transmission capability. The current H1N1 virus, called "swine flu," is reportedly a combination of two forms of human flu, two forms of swine flu (North American and Eurasian), and avian or bird flu. There are now reports of species hopping from humans to pigs in Canada.

The scientific name for the current H1N1 virus that was manipulated is "Influenza A virus (strain A/Brevig Mission/1/1918 H1N1)." It is called Brevig Mission because, as WMR previously reported, U.S. Army biological warfare specialists recovered the genetic material from the fairly intact corpse of an Inuit woman who died from the 1918 flu in Brevig Mission, Alaska. WMR has learned that work on manipulation of the Brevig Mission flu strain began in 1997.

Two bio-safety laboratories have been associated with the genetic reverse engineering of not only A-H1N1, the current "swine flu" strain, but also the deadly Ebola virus. They are the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada. The Associated Press reported on September 20, 2007, that the Madison laboratory was cited for safety violations: "University of Wisconsin-Madison research on the deadly Ebola virus was conducted for a year in a less-secure laboratory than required, until the National Institutes of Health alerted the school to the problem. The deadly virus itself was never present in the laboratory, said Jan Klein, UW-Madison biological safety officer. Instead, DNA copies of the virus were being studied to better understand one of the world's most dangerous pathogens."

The report also stated that the Madison research facility was involved with combining "materials": "Klein said no one was ever at risk, though an infectious virus could have been produced if the research material had been combined with other components. But that was not part of any planned experiment and would not be done by accident,' she said."

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) reportedly shut down the Ebola research at Madison but it was reportedly moved to a Level 4 Bio-Safety Laboratory at the National Microbiology Laboratory at the Canadian Science Center for Human and Animal Health in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 2007, macaque monkeys were infected with the 1981 flu virus at the Canadian laboratory by some of the same researchers who were involved in the risky Ebola research in Madison.

The research in Madison on Ebola had been conducted in a Bio Safety Level 2 laboratory when it should have been conducted in a Bio Safety Level 4 laboratory, the most stringent for pathogens like Ebola and H1N1. At the time of the safety violations, Madison has less stringent Level 3 labs but no Level 4 labs. In early 2008, Madison again conducted work on Ebola, but in a Level 4 lab.

Science Daily reported the following from Madison on October 7, 2004: "Using a gene resurrected from the virus that caused the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, recorded history's most lethal outbreak of infectious disease, scientists have found that a single gene may have been responsible for the devastating virulence of the virus."

The Winnipeg laboratory figures into the November 15, 2001 disappearance of noted Harvard University virologist Dr. Don C. Wiley in Memphis, Tennessee after his attendance at a banquet honoring his service as a scientific advisory board member of St. Jude's Hospital. Wiley's body was found one month later in the Mississippi River in Vidalia, Louisiana. The Shelby County medical examiner ruled Wiley's death a "suicide" from jumping into the Mississippi River from the west bound lane of the I-40 Hernando de Soto bridge. Wiley was heading back to his father's residence in Millington, northeast of Memphis at the time of his disappearance.

This editor reported on the Wiley death extensively at the time. And the Canadian facility became involved in the investigation. From "Mystery in Memphis," published in "Abuse Your Illusions, 2003, edited by Russ Kick: "While the Memphis Police and the FBI continued to handle the Wiley case as just another distraught "jumper" hurling himself 135 feet into the Mississippi River, other law enforcement agencies were not as sanguine.

On November30 [2001], [Memphis Police Sergeant Robert 'Bubba' Shemwell received a call from Detective Paul McKemmie of the National Security Investigation Unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Ottawa. McKemmie advised Shemwell that his unit was responsible for protecting scientists with Level-3 and Level-4 clearance at the Canadian Science Center for Human and Animal Health in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The Canadian center houses the National Microbiology Laboratory, where scientists deal with the most dangerous and contagious human and animal pathogens and diseases, which are categorized as Level-4. These include hantavirus, hepatitis, influenza, and hemorrhagic fevers such as the Ebola virus, Marburg virus, and Lassa Fever. In another hghly-protected laboratory, scientists work with Level-3 agents, which include bacteria such as anthrax that, although not contagious, can be transmitted through the air and can cause death or serious illness. The center's tight security is overseen by the RCMP and Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.

McKemmie told Shemwell that someone had posted an email suggesting that Dr. Wiley was not the target for a kidnapping to obtain anthrax but that a scientist working at the Winnipeg laboratory was a more likely target for a kidnapping by bioterrorists.

Nevertheless, the RCMP wanted to know if Memphis hadany information that would indicate that Wiley was the target for an abduction by terrorists. Shockingly, Shemwell fed te RCMP the same line he was feeding the Wiley family and the media: There was no evidence to support the theory that Wiley's disappearance was the result of foul play and that suggestions to the contrary were being mentioned only in the media.

Obviously, not buying Shemwell's line, the Mountie indicated that the RCMP, like the FBI, also would continue to monitor Wiley's disappearance and check out any leads from Canada."

The idea that Wiley's body could have been in the fast-raging Mississippi for a month seems fanciful. When his body was discovered in Louisiana, Wiley's clothing was intact. Recovered from Wiley's clothing were his watch, wedding band, belt, wallet, and even a piece of hard candy that managed not have dissolved after an entire month in water.

Wiley co-wrote a paper on the structures of H5 avian flu and H9 swine flu that was published in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences in September 18, 2001, just some two months before he went missing in Memphis. However, Wiley's expertise on the 1918 influenza was longstanding. In 1981, Wiley co-wrote a paper, titled "X-ray structures of H5 avian and H9 swine influenza virus hemagglutinins bound to avian and human receptor analogs," that defined the crystal structure of the 1918 influenza virus, a step that made it easier to conduct "forensic" analysis on the origin of precursor viruses and their naturally-occurring or man-made genetic off-shoots.

Although virology, not bacteriology, was Wiley's area of expertise, it was revealed during my investigation of Wiley's death that he had become quite concerned about the mailing of anthrax through the postal system. A week before his disappearance, Wiley attended a session on "Bioethics and Research" at a meeting of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland. At the time of the conference, four people had already been killed from being exposed to anthrax-laden letters sent through the mail. It was later discovered that the anthrax originated from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Wiley had also received a letter from a failed PhD student at University College in Dublin, Ireland that sought to warn him about the origins of anthrax. In October 2001, a series of "white powder" samples were discovered at University College. Irish Army specialists transferred all the samples to Britain's Porton Down bio-warfare facility, the UK's equivalent of Fort Detrick.

Based on Dr. Wiley's expertise in tracking down the origins of viruses and, with his speciality in crystallization of samples, bacteria like anthrax, as well, it is clear that whoever is benefiting from the outbreak of a A-H1N1 flu that has been resurrected and genetically "manipulated" in a "Jurassic Park" laboratory had a very good reason to murder Dr. Wiley and make it appear to be a suicide.

Aporkalypse Now: Finding the Real Swine in the Pandemic Pandemonium

Finding the Real Swine in the Pandemic Pandemonium

by Lucinda Marshall / May 2nd, 2009

For the last eight years, there has been no shortage of things to worry about: Bin Laden, Al Queda, Saddam Hussein, Anthrax, Bird Flu, Katrina, sub-prime mortgages, health care costs, gas pump prices, unemployment, stock price plunges and now we have H1N1, the non-Kosher virus formerly known as Swine Flu.

The news media is pigging out (sorry, I’ll try to contain myself) with 24/7 coverage of the potential pandemic and breathless reports that this is the new Black Death and millions could die. According to MSNBC, “H1N1 swine flu is seen as the biggest risk since H5N1 avian flu re-emerged in 2003, killing 257 people of 421 infected in 15 countries. In 1968 a “Hong Kong” flu pandemic killed about 1 million people globally, and a 1957 pandemic killed about 2 million. Seasonal flu kills 250,000 to 500,000 people in a normal year, including healthy children in rich countries.” However, as I write this, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that, only 12 people have died so far of this outbreak of H1N1.

To put all of this in further perspective, it is useful to compare these numbers to the annual number of deaths from other causes. According to WHO:

• 1 million people die from malaria each year
• 2 million from AIDS
• 2 million from air pollution
• 7.4 million from cancer
• 17.5 million from cardiovascular disease
• 1.6 million from tuberculosis

In other words, we KNOW that 31.5 million people will die each year from causes that in large part could be prevented, but 7 deaths a pandemic makes? Have we, as Simon Jenkins suggests in the Guardian all gone demented? Perhaps. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that WHO knows what it is talking about and that a lot of people could get sick from this virus, the question then becomes whether it is the virus we should fear or our ability to react to it.

Like any other disease, the first question should always be what is causing it and how can we prevent it, not the pharmaceutical industry driven approach of how can we (profitably) treat it with drugs such as Tamiflu, which as I noted during the bird flu scare is made by a company in which former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield has a significant financial stake.

Another critical point is that unlike birds that can fly pretty much anywhere, human and pig interaction is for the most part limited to farms, especially factory farms and circumstantial evidence indicates that this outbreak may have originated at a Smithfield Foods facility in Perote, Mexico. Grist reports that, “Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carroll, raise 950,000 hogs per year.” According to Grist, 30% of the population living near the plant have become ill with flu-like symptoms which they believe is due contamination from the hog factory.

But as Narco News points out, the real culprit in swine flu may be NAFTA which went into effect the same year that Smithfield opened its Mexican facility in the aftermath of being hit with huge fines for environmental pollution in the U.S., “The so-called “swine flu” exploded because an environmental disaster simply moved to Mexico where environmental and worker safety laws, if they exist, are not enforced against powerful multinational corporations.”

The issue of whether agri-business run factory farms are the source of the problem has been all but ignored by the U.S. media. Instead we are being told to stay home if sick and seek medical care if really sick. Nice advice presuming you have paid sick leave benefits and health insurance. And even for those able to seek medical care, there are real questions about the adequacy of whether our problem-plagued healthcare infrastructure to handle a massive additional medical incident. As John Nichols points out, we need to reinstate funding for pandemic response; disaster preparedness and infrastructure maintenance aren’t luxuries, they are a necessity, something we surely should have learned from Hurricane Katrina.

So while we need to take this threat seriously, we need to do so in the context of the many existing health pandemics that already exist, we need to take steps to insure that our healthcare system itself is healthy and we need to address the root causes of what allowed the conditions in which the H1N1 virus manifested and take the necessary steps to correct policies that endanger public health.

Lucinda Marshall is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder of the Feminist Peace Network. Her work has been published in numerous publications in the US and abroad. She also blogs at WIMN Online and writes a monthly column for the Louisville Eccentric Observer. Read other articles by Lucinda, or visit Lucinda's website.

This article was posted on Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 at 10:00am and is filed under Food/Nutrition, Health/Medical. ShareThis