US to spend another $1 billion for flu vaccine

Reuters ^ | 7/12/2009

[Selene]

WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) - The United States will spend an another $1 billion for ingredients for an H1N1 vaccination, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Sunday.

"There'll be another $1 billion worth of orders placed to get the bulk ingredients for an H1N1 vaccination. Congress has agreed with the president that this is the number one priority, keeping Americans safe and secure," Sebelius said on CNN.

Sebelius has said plans were on track for a mid-October vaccination program, although it was not certain Americans would be offered the vaccine for the so-called swine flu.

[john in springfield]

That’s actually an interesting link you provided, thanks.

I still think it unlikely that there’s such a genocide conspiracy. However, such conspiracies have existed in the past (witness Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.), so it’s not beyond the realm of possiblity.

[Star Traveler]

Umm..., I think I did already... LOL...

[Star Traveler]

You said — Both the little girl and the doctor are believed to have been perfectly healthy before succumbing to swine flu

—

That reminds me of the flu epidemic (of 1918) that my grandmother used to tell me about, all the time (when I was a kid). I remember the phrase that she used.... “They were dropping in the street like flies!”

I used to think, for many years, that she was just using colorful and exaggerated language to get the point across about how deadly it was. However, I found out, many years later (after looking into it), that some people would be fine in the morning, before going to work (i.e., showing or feeling no symptoms) and then by the end of the day and maybe by the time they got off work, they would literally “drop dead”... and I mean drop down dead while walking in the streets.

So, “dropping in the street like flies” was apparently true. I also read somewhere (when reading up on it in the past) that in some places (in the U.S.) there would be carts going around picking up dead bodies in the streets.

And so, yes, if these people in the 1918 flu epidemic could drop in the street like flies, feeling fine at the beginning of the day and being dead at the end of the day, this sort of thing you’re talking about could happen again.

[Star Traveler]

You said — I actually think there are some real reasons for concern about the safety of a swine flu vaccine. But to think it’s all a deliberate plot to sterilize everybody for population control is, well, you just oughtta go into the tinfoil hat business.

—

Yeah..., it sounds way too much like the crazy internet sites you find out there about every conceivable topic you could ever *imagine*... it’s there on the Internet.

It’s like I said in my prior post, in that maybe there are some concerns, but until I see some credible stuff, it’s all “crazy tinfoil hat stuff”... in the meantime.

And, furthermore, if something like this is going on, on a large scale, it has credible information that will be shown. And if no credible information is shown, then *at the very least* one can say that it’s nothing more than an assertion without any proof (but when you add “common sense” to the mix, it’s “tinfoil hat stuff”).

[LucyT]

Thanks, Star Traveler. Scary, isn't it. You might enjoy reading the book The Great Influenza (Paperback) by Author, John Barry.

Publisher's note:

"At the height of WWI, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. "It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.

"Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research and now revised to reflect the growing danger of the avian flu, "The Great Influenza" is ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, which provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon.

Annotation:

"Victims of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 suffered horrifying effects, including bleeding from the ears and nose, and they usually died.

"It killed more people in a year than the plagues of the Middle Ages did in a century. In the United States, where there weren't enough coffins to house the increasing numbers of bodies, nearly seven times as many people died of influenza than were killed in the First World War.

"Award-winning historian John M. Barry tells the story of the worst flu epidemic in world history, including background on microbiology, immunology, and epidemiology."

[null and void]

Right, I had a CRS moment. Sorry.

[Star Traveler]

One of the reasons why governments may be rushing on this one...

All, I can say is get ready for the great pandemic of 2010.

---

New flu “unstoppable”, WHO says, calls for vaccine
13 Jul 2009

WASHINGTON - Saying the new H1N1 virus is “unstoppable”, the World Health Organization gave drug makers a full go-ahead to manufacture vaccines against the pandemic influenza strain on Monday and said healthcare workers should be the first to get one.

Every country will need to vaccinate citizens against the swine flu virus and must choose who else would get priority after nurses, doctors and technicians, said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research.

Several reports showed the new virus attacks people differently than seasonal flu — affecting younger people, the severely obese and seemingly healthy adults, and causing disease deep in the lungs.

Kieny briefed reporters on the findings of the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, or SAGE. “The committee recognized that the H1N1 pandemic ... is unstoppable and therefore that all countries need access to vaccine,” Kieney said.

“The SAGE recognized first that healthcare workers should be immunized in all countries in order to retain a functional health system as the virus evolves,” she added.

After that, each country should decide who is next in line, based on the virus’s unusual behavior.

Seasonal influenza is deadly enough — each year it is involved in 250,000 to 500,000 deaths globally. But most are the elderly or those with some kind of chronic disease that makes them more vulnerable to flu, such as asthma.

ELDERLY ADVANTAGE

The elderly seem to have some extra immunity to this new H1N1, which is a mixture of two swine viruses, one of which also contains genetic material from birds and humans. It is a very distant cousin of the H1N1 virus that caused the 1918 pandemic that killed 50 million to 100 million people.

A study published in the journal Nature on Monday confirmed that the blood of people born before 1920 carries antibodies to the 1918 strain, suggesting their immune systems remember a childhood infection.

The work by Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka also supports other studies that this new H1N1 strain does not stay in the nose and throat, as do most seasonal viruses.

“The H1N1 virus replicates significantly better in the lungs,” Kawaoka said. Other studies have also shown it can cause gastrointestinal effects, and that it targets people not usually thought of as being at high risk.

“Obesity has been observed to be one of the risk factors for more severe reaction to H1N1” — something never before seen, Kieny added. It is not clear if obese people may have undiagnosed health problems that make them susceptible, or if obesity in and of itself is a risk.

On Friday, a team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Michigan reported that nine out of 10 patients treated in an intensive care unit there were obese. They also had unusual symptoms such as blood clots in the lungs and multiple organ failure.

None have recovered and three died.

The CDC estimates at least a million people are infected in the United States alone and clinics everywhere are advised not to test each and every patient, so keeping an accurate count of cases will be impossible. The United States has documented 211 deaths and WHO counted 429 early last week.

Kieny said WHO would also work to get better viruses for companies from which to make vaccines. She said the strains that had been distributed did not grow very well in chicken eggs — used to make all flu vaccines.

One exception — AstraZeneca’s MedImmune unit makes a live virus vaccine that is squirted up the nose and it is easier to produce, Kieny said.

WHO said countries should continue with their normal vaccination programs against seasonal flu. Kieny said the seasonal H3N2 strain was also very active now in the southern hemisphere’s winter.

---

I’m not giving the link to the MSM paper that printed this, as anyone can find it themselves, if they want. I include it here for the documentation of the pandemic.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Don't take the shot. It's a population control experiment.
As Obama's science czar wrote: "The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation's drinking water or in food..." Or in vaccines.
Guillain-Barré syndrome, MS, Alzheimer's, Autism, sterility, infertility, etc.
Don't take this. They will lie to try to trick people into taking this. Thousands or more will get sick or crippled from this. Just watch and see...

They mean to depopulate the planet. They say this at their meetings.
They tried it before.

Vaccine may be more dangerous than Swine Flu

The truth about poisons in vaccines

[Freedom56v2]

The info I posted has been verified multiple times.

---

Just wondering, could you tell me where the Guardisil and monsanto MON810 corn (I am assuming you mean MON810 Maize) sourcing is.

[ExTexasRedhead]

Something smells very sinister on this one.

I’m telling everyone to NOT get this vaccine. Beware. AustchwitzCare, ya think? Are you that trusting of Zero and his Gestapo to let them pump you with this supposed vaccine? Let Pelosi, Reid, Zero, his shrew and their kids, Murtha, Kerry, and the rest of the DC crowd be the first to line up for their shots and make it on TV.

[al baby]

"unless you could back your “facts” up with ORIGINAL, CREDIBLE sources."

Do ORIGINAL, CREDIBLE sources even exisit anymore in this or any other country ?

[freekitty]

Me too.

[hiredhand]

The last time I was "willingly" innoculated for flu, myself and 13 other people came down with a near deadly case of pneumonia. After I left active duty, I swore I'd never be injected with ANYTHING against my will again. I've got at least one note in my medical records for refusing treatment because of this.

I've also got a very close relative who has Gillian Barre Syndrome as a result of a flu shot back around 1999, and in all likelihood, the complications are going to kill him.

It's unfortunate really... our legislators are so known for personal gain through associations with the pharmaceutical industry and every other special interest group that lobbies them, that we can't trust them. Yet, they stupidly think that we're supposed to believe them about things like this? Why should we? Quite honestly, they don't give us a whole hell of lot we can believe!

[Borax Queen]

You are SO right and there is NO flippin’ way I’d get one of the vaccines from those clowns. There’s Vit D, Oscillococcinum, lots of other proven, natural remedies. Hope they work for whatever strain the chairman and his minions plan to unleash, but I’ll take the chance over the gubt cocktail.

[justiceseeker93]

Something smells very sinister on this one.

Probably just 'Rats doing what 'Rats usually do: spend, spend, spend. Chances are strong that this Mexican flu strain epidemic is over, but then again, the history of the 1918 epidemic is that things got much better in the summer before getting very bad the next fall.

This could also be a gambit to promote the "good job" that government will do if they have full control of health care.

[browniexyz]

Funding the flu vaccine for Big Pharma may be the only “health reform” Zero can get...

[Star Traveler]

The same thing was a concern and voiced and *actually happened* with some who received the polio vaccine in the sugar cubes, as I did. It wasn’t required to take that and was voluntary.

—

Iatrogenic (vaccine-induced) polio

A major concern about the oral polio vaccine (OPV) is its known ability to revert to a form that can achieve neurological infection and cause paralysis. Clinical disease, including paralysis, caused by vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) is indistinguishable from that caused by wild polioviruses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine

—

And...

THE POLIO SUGAR CUBE

Is It Safe?

In 1960 a medical debate raged over the polio vaccine. In 1954 Dr. Jonas Salk had produced a killed-virus vaccine that was administered by injection and was 90 percent effective. The vaccine seemed relatively safe and cheap. Then in 1955 Dr. Albert B. Sabin of the University of Cincinnati produced a live-virus vaccine that was placed on a sugar cube and eaten, rather than injected. Researchers, physicians, and patients were wary. Researchers suspected that the attenuated, or weakened, virus might gain the strength to cause polio once it was introduced into the human body. Physicians felt the Salk vaccine had been proven, and it was not worth the risk to switch to an oral vaccine simply for the sake of convenience. Patients were suspicious of a process of preventing polio by eating the live polio virus.

A Cautious Success

The live-virus vaccine was tested as an oral medication on children between six-months and one-year old in Houston, Texas, and on children under five in New Haven, Connecticut. In Cleveland, Ohio, newborn babies were given an eyedropper full of vaccine without the sugar cube. Large-scale testing was done outside the United States. In the Soviet Union the Sabin vaccine was given to twelve million people. By the middle of 1960 U.S. Surgeon General Le Roy Burney gave results of two years of testing on one hundred mil-lion people around the world. The Sabin vaccine was 95 percent effective and was cheaper than the Salk. It also provided “herd immunity,” the ability of the vaccine to pass along its protective qualities by infection.

Sabin’s Vaccine in the United States

Still, the vaccine was introduced cautiously. By August 1960, 800,000 Americans had taken the Sabin vaccine. A major study was conducted in Miami and its vicinity in Dade County, Florida. Statisticians predicted that during the term of the study twenty-seven cases of polio would occur in the county. Only eight were actually seen, however, and none of them were of the same virus type as the one used in the vaccine. The oral polio vaccine was approved for general use in August 1961 and all but replaced the killed-virus vaccine.

Three Types

There are three types of polio virus. The Salk vaccine was effective against all three types but was weak against Type III. The oral vaccine originally approved was effective against only one type (Type I), but the Type II oral vaccine was ready for approval soon after the Type I. The Type III oral vaccine experienced a delay in U.S. distribution, though; when it was injected directly into monkeys’ brains, some nerve damage resulted. Although millions of people around the world had already taken the Type III oral vaccine without experiencing problems, the Public Health Service withheld approval until the vaccine met their strict testing requirements.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468302415.html

—

I remember the “talk” about having a *live polio virus” being introduced into kids..., at the time.

If the Internet had been active back then, we would have had a lot of “conspiracy theories” going on then, too. Or, rather, if we were to introduced a live polio virus into our population *now* (not having eradicated it or controlled it up to this point in time)..., there would be *so many posters* here who would say that this was all about “population control”, too... LOL...

[Star Traveler]

First Pandemic Systematically Monitored in Real Time

“The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic,” said Margaret Chan, MD, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), on June 11. Dr. Chan added: “No previous pandemic has been detected so early or watched so closely in real time, right at the very beginning. The world can now reap the benefits of investments over the last 5 years, in pandemic preparedness.”

A multidisciplinary expert panel on the Human Swine Flu (H1N1) and Novel Influenza Pandemics — held at the New York Academy of Sciences, New York, NY, on May 28, 2009 — drew attention to worldwide, national, and local surveillance and preparedness efforts under way for a possible pandemic. The scope of the public health program could change in the fall and winter if the virus appears in the southern hemisphere. So far, the virus has been stable, but the virus could mutate and become more transmissible or virulent, perhaps becoming more of a threat to the northern hemisphere. Clinicians need to keep abreast of the situation by following the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), WHO, and area health department Websites for real-time recommendations and guidance, according to the panelists.

Raising the pandemic level to 6, its highest level, on the basis of geographic spread alone was not a surprise. The novel H1N1 virus has shown no sign of abatement. Dr. Chan reported 30,000 confirmed cases in 74 countries on June 11. In the United States, cases have been identified in all 50 states.

The New York Academy of Sciences meeting focused on the need to ramp up continuing surveillance worldwide, while preparing for possible mass immunization and treatment with antiviral medications. Panelists made it abundantly clear that international health authorities have been preparing for a possible pandemic since the avian flu outbreak. The CDC and New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH) representatives provided a snapshot of the continuing international, national, and community response and broad collaborations across the globe. The challenges behind developing safe and effective vaccines and antiviral medications for novel influenza viruses were also addressed.

Throughout the afternoon, panelists contrasted the deadly 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, which killed 50 million people — more than those killed in World War I — with the “great nonpandemic of 1976.” That year’s swine flu attack hit Army recruits at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and inspired a National Immunization Program of 43 million people. “A death of a 24-year-old soldier sounded the alarm, but the epidemic fizzled in terms of virulence,” John G. Bartlett, MD, told Medscape Medical News. Dr. Bartlett, Professor and Founding Director of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, was not part of the panel, and he did not attend the symposium.

Panel member Edwin D. Kilbourne, MD, Emeritus Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York, was at the center of the 1976 story and had a long career in influenza research. He sheepishly shared photos of President Gerald Ford and himself getting the vaccine, along with news clips mocking what soon proved to be a nonpandemic. The program was the butt of jokes in public health because it never extended beyond Fort Dix. Many referred to it as a “fiasco” and a “debacle”; others called it a “noble effort in public health” and valuable in teaching people about the value of vaccination. The immunization program was halted in December 1976.

Some people who were vaccinated developed Guillain-Barré syndrome. “What we learned is that mass vaccination in such a short span of time is not without risks,” said Dr. Kilbourne. However, there have been questions of the precise relationship between vaccination and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Dr. Kilbourne said that the vaccine manufacturers should be indemnified by the government. Dr. Bartlett acknowledged that Guillain-Barré syndrome was a “serious complication,” but added that “its connection to the vaccine was never terribly convincing.”

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/704751

[Star Traveler]

2009 flu pandemic vaccine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_vaccine

—

Political issues

The U.S. government currently has the power to enforce vaccinations in an epidemic or pandemic flu breakout, or even the threat of such, by a measure provided within the Patriot Act. In addition, there is The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, which will have federal funding for each state that adopts a similar model, so far adopted by 38 states and the District of Columbia. States will be allowed to “enforce vaccinations with absolute police power, which includes detention and seizure of private property.”

[Star Traveler]

The history of the synthetic H1N1 flu virus and a not-so-rosy future
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

May 21, 2009, 00:20

(WMR) — 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 30-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, as of May 13, a total of 4,880 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 that 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 artificially 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’s article, 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 Post article 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 influenza virus 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 USAPATRIOT 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?

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4724.shtml