A slippery slope

on
Editorial. A slippery slope. Nature 2009; 462(7274):699

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7274/pdf/462699b.pdf

After what appears to be an "arbitrary and ad hoc" decision to cancel a funding committee-approved, animal-use committee-approved study using baboons to test an anthrax vaccine by Oklahoma State University president Burns Hargis, the influence of the university's wealthy donors on research decisions is questioned.

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GotchaLookin said…
Oklahoma State University should be applauded for canceling support for human anthrax vaccine efficacy tests using baboons as test animals. First, baboons are a threatened species: With their habitat rapidly decreasing in Indonesia and a wild population dwindling to less than 10,000, the death of baboons in captivity would be unconscionable since those individual baboons may be essential for maintaining the biodiversity of the species. Second, the goals of the US human anthrax vaccine program are to be questioned: With first and second generation vaccines which were developed since the 1970's, only temporary tolerance to anthrax bacteria is provided: The vaccines require annual booster shots to maintain the human body's tolerance to the presence of anthrax. No human anthrax vaccines currently induce the body to kill anthrax bacteria: They only interfere with and delay disease symptoms. The human anthrax vaccine design goal is to render human soldiers effective carriers of the disease into enemy territory This is the essential design goal required to preserve the value of any anthrax bioweapon and manage the loyalty of inoculated troops. Lifetime immunity would allow inoculated troops to actually use the anthrax bioweapon on non-inoculated civilian superiors, like in the Anthrax Letter attacks of 2001. Third, the human anthrax vaccine program actually creates the opportunity for the human body to develop antibodies, Immunoglobulin Gamma, which will sequester the FURIN covertase protein. This can lead to the failure to activate para-thyroid hormone, transforming growth factor beta-1, von Willebrand factor, beta secretase, gonaditropin, and neural growth factor. Lack of activated neural growth factor leads to severe depression and suicidal thoughts. Worse, lack of FURIN will result in a decrease in the levels of effector T-cells, which produce tumor necrosis factor alpha-1, and suppressor T-cells, which reduce the levels of anti-nuclear antibodies. Lack of FURIN can result in malignant tumor growth and damage to healthy tissues, symptoms typical of lymphoma and leukemia. Because US Army researchers were so focused on the goal of interfering with anthrax disease, no studies in over forty years of research have focused on the secondary adverse side effects referred to as the Gulf War Syndrome due to the human anthrax vaccine, BioThrax(tm). Instead, anecdotal case reports of severe reactions to the human anthrax vaccine have been recorded in the US, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Israel (See the OMER-2 survivors medical injury case currently being heard by Israel's High Court.) Oddly, the controlling interest in Emergent Biosolutions, the licensed distributor of the human anthrax vaccine in the US and UK, is held by former Lebanese banker Fuad El-Hibri, who has reportedly stated publicly in 2009 his intent to invest in biotech companies in Lebanon. The Anthrax Letter attacks of 2001 were apparently in response to an attempt by the Bush administration to cancel the human anthrax vaccine program in August of 2001. The FBI's prime suspect for the case is USAMRIID's Dr. Bruce Ivins, the microbiologist who had received various formulations of the human anthrax vaccine for over thirty years, resulting in chronic depression and increasingly severe bouts with schizophrenia. Dr. Ivins also supervised the joint Israeli-US human anthrax vaccine project OMER-2 in 1998 to test new formulations on IDF "volunteers" in which over 1,500 suffered severe crippling auto-immune diseases. For more information, see Scott Miller's documentary "A CALL TO ARMS 2009 EDITION."
Sunday, December 13, 2009
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