Russian MP Calls Bird Flu “American Provocation”

[Ernesto]

A deputy of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic faction of the Russian State Duma, Aleksei Mitrofanov, has said in a parliamentary speech that bird flu was invented by Americans who wanted to dominate the world’s poultry markets.


http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/10/21/mitrofanovrevealsall.shtml

[Dhalgren]

1. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me at all....

[malaise]

2. Ditto n/t

[indepat]

3. Nothing surprises me, but this might be the mother of all conspiracy

theories.

[Loonman]

4. Whacko

Still nutbars in Russia, I see.

[depakid]

32. We have plenty of homegrown ones

right here on DU.

Largely a matter of paranoia and lack of science education, I think.

The paranoia part I understand. The lack of respect for science, on the other hand....

[MidwestTransplant]

5. It wasn't the Jooooos this time?

[Loonman]

6. It's the Hottentots

In league with the space aliens.

[Lindsay]

8. Nah, it was me. It's my secret plan for taking over the world.

Don't tell, okay?

Nutbars, fer shure.

[Lori Price CLG]

7. Kicking. Nominating. (78 dead microbiologists since 9/11)

Flu 'Oddities' here:
http://www.legitgov.org/flu_oddities.html

Lori Price

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

10. Oh for fuck's fucking sake. n/t

[nashville_brook]

14. ha! it's worth the "price of admission" just see the reaction of deniers

you go girl!

[arikara]

18. Terra! Terra! Terra!

So 40 people in China die of "bird flu"... and just how do they know its "bird flu" in some obscure Chinese province? That many and more people probably die in China every day of ordinary flu.

They want to incite terra with a goal of enacting martial law. And if on the outside chance that there is a flu outbread, a lot of good a bunch soldiers are going to be running around training their guns on sick people.

[nodehopper]

19. ok, this guy who is cited? CRAZY. LOONY. "The Jews run the world" loony

I am all for some tinfoil, but not from this drawer.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

22. MAKE LOVE NOT TINFOIL n/t

[ananda]

9. actually, birdflu does make a great metaphor..

.. for the disease that is now Amerika.

[Strawman]

11. Did he take his shoe off and say "we will bury you?"

[WinkyDink]

12. Well, we DID re-create the Spanish influenza.

Gee. I wonder when this will be part of a terror alert?

When impeachment starts?

[enigma000]

13. Someone started on the vodka early in the day n/t

[robbibaba]

15. I think he means it's a fake

not that we actually produced a virus and infected a bunch of birds. I'm sure the guy is crazy, but in this case I think he's probably correct! I trust the WHO and CDC about as far as I can throw a fit.

[Red_Viking]

16. I saw something interesting in a Deutsche Welle article

Link: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1735911,00.html

They mention how the bird flu has moved into Turkey, affecting the availability of poultry. That's difficult for a Muslim country...that doesn't eat pork...so it's hurting their food supply.

I know it started in Asia, like almost all flus do, but I keep seeing articles about the bird flu appearing in Muslim countries.

Yeah, probably crazy, but I just don't trust the government worth a damn.

Peace,

RV

[TexasLawyer]

17. Here's the picture accompanying the article...

'nuff said.

[maddezmom]

21. LOL

have to admit, I checked the link cuz I thought you were joking. :crazy:

[superconnected]

20. I don't doubt we created the flu. I think this mans NUTS to think it was

to take over world poultry.

How much money does he think the American poultry market has to pay off politicians.

I wonder why he didn't consider the medical industry... nutjob.

[judaspriestess]

23. LOL, kill all the chickens in Europe? too funny

Please we have the mother of all chickens here in the states

[Kailassa]

24. He seems to be afraid we'll force him to eat Bush's legs ...

now that's an idea, who can we feed the rest too?

I'm worried about the tulips tho. I don't mind if there's no bird flu, aids, or mad cowboy disease, but no tulips? Next the windmills will vanish too :-(

[Megahurtz]

25. That thought has crossed my mind.

Who knows? If not to dominate the worlds poultry markets, maybe for another reason?:shrug:

[arikara]

26. An article with some sense to it...

The Fear Contagion

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/15/AR2005101500102.html

<snip>A few scientists have suggested "priming" people with a dose of the new vaccine against H5N1 before we even know whether a pandemic is coming. Vaccinating large numbers of people against a disease that may never appear carries its own risks. Remember the swine flu debacle of 1976? At least 25 people died from vaccine complications and no epidemic ever erupted. That should be warning enough.

Another dangerous idea for pandemic preparation has come from President Bush. Earlier this month, he suggested using the military to enforce a quarantine. "Who best to be able to effect a quarantine?" he asked rhetorically at a press conference. "One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move."

<snip>
Despite all the hysteria, there isn't a shred of evidence that a pandemic is actually on the way. Developing new flu vaccines is a useful thing to do. Pandemic or not, flu kills thousands every year. But devising quarantine plans is useless.

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. This doesn't make sense to me

Some of these ideas -- such as stockpiling vaccines -- are sensible, whether or not bird flu turns into a human disease and begins to spread rapidly.

But other ideas aren't. A few scientists have suggested "priming" people with a dose of the new vaccine against H5N1 before we even know whether a pandemic is coming. Vaccinating large numbers of people against a disease that may never appear carries its own risks.

There's not point in having a vaccine if you don't use it. If you wait until the pandemic starts, it's too late - the vaccine takes time to have an effect. So why stockpile something that you have to use earlier rather than later - and by the time you know the pandemic has started, it'll be too late?

[arikara]

29. I guess if it makes you feel more secure to take their vaccine

then ok. I won't, my belief is that they are fearmongering yet again and I certainly don't trust them enough to allow them to inject anything into my body. I would sooner take my chances with my immune system intact.

On the other hand, my husband is most anxious to have the vaccine. So I guess we'll see how it plays out.

[depakid]

33. Citing the Washington Post on science topics is like

Fox "news" for analysis of fiscal policy.

Not sure whether the editors are lazy, or ignorant have some wierd agenda, but if you look at the "stories" they print, you'll see that ridiculous statements (sometimes "backed up" by anonymous sources) are a common theme in their "science" segments.

It's gotten to the point of being comical- they quite literally get laughed at in graduate schools.

[cyberpj]

28. My own tinfoil hat theory

is that we dug up the 1912 version for studies into our own little bio weapon and sent it there for "testing".

So sue me.

Avian Flu and 1918 Virus - What's the real story? Research or Development?

4 articles follow -

(1) May 2003
The Sunshine Project
US Army Patents Biological Weapons Delivery System, Violates Bioweapons Convention

Austin and Hamburg (8 May 2003) - The United States Army has developed and patented a new grenade that it says can be used to wage biowarfare. This is in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention, which explicitly prohibits development of bioweapons delivery devices.

US Patent #6,523,478, granted on February 25th 2003, covers a "rifle launched non lethal cargo dispenser" that is designed to deliver aerosols, including - according to the patent's claims - "crowd control agents, biological agents, chemical agents..."

The development of biological weapons delivery devices is absolutely prohibited - "in any circumstance" - by Article I of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, to which the US is a party. There is no exemption from this prohibition, neither for defensive purposes nor for so called non-lethal agents.

"The development of weapons for biological payloads produces great uncertainty about the US commitment to the Biological Weapons Convention." says Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project US, "Thirty four years after the US renunciation of biological weapons, the Pentagon is back in the bioweapons business."

For more information, please see: http://www.sunshine-project.org
http://www.refuseandresist.org/war/art.php?aid=780


(2) October 2003
Lethal Virus from 1918 Genetically Reconstructed
US Army scientists create "Spanish Flu" virus in laboratory - medical benefit questionable

(Austin and Hamburg, 9 October 2003) – The 'Spanish Flu' influenza virus that killed 20-40 million people in 1918 is currently under reconstruction. Several genes of the extraordinarily lethal 1918 flu virus have been isolated and introduced into contemporary flu strains. These proved to be lethal for mice, while virus constructs with genes from a current flu virus types had hardly any effect. These experiments may easily be abused for military purposes, but provide little benefit from a medical or public health point of view.

snip...

Despite the very dangerous nature of the 1918 virus, efforts to reconstruct it started in the mid 1990s, when Dr Jeffrey Taubenberger from the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington DC succeeded in recovering and sequencing fragments of the viral RNA from preserved tissues of 1918 victims.

snip...
But after (partially) unravelling the genetic sequence of the virus, the scientists went a step further and began bringing the Spanish flu back to life. Unnoticed by the public, they succeeded in creating a live virus containing two 1918 genes that proved to be very lethal in animal experiments. This experiment is only one genetic step away from taking the 1918 demon entirely out of the bottle.

http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr/pr091003.html


(3) March 2004
The Next Worst Thing
Is the federal government's expansion of biodefense research paving the way for the bioweapons of the future?
By Michael Scherer

It has been called a modern-day Manhattan Project—a spending spree so vast and rapid that it might change the face of biological science. In the wake of 9/11, the U.S. government is funding a massive new biodefense research effort, redirecting up to $10 billion toward projects related to biological weapons such as anthrax. The Pentagon's budget for chemical and biological defense has doubled; high-security nuclear-weapons labs have begun conducting genetic research on dangerous pathogens; universities are receiving government funding to build high-tech labs equipped to handle deadly infectious organisms; and Fort Detrick, Maryland, once the home of America's secret bioweapons program, is about to break ground on two new high-tech biodefense centers.

snip...

In a little-noticed report released in October, the National Academy of Sciences warned that the government has no mechanism to prevent the "misuse of the tools, technology, or knowledge base of this research enterprise for offensive military or terrorist purposes." The report called for dramatically stepped-up monitoring of federally supported biodefense projects; so far, Congress and the administration have failed to act on those recommendations. Federal anti-terror legislation has focused on limiting access to stockpiles of known bioterrorism agents such as anthrax. But in a world where scientists can create deadly diseases in a test tube, says Dr. Ernie Takafuji, acting assistant director of biodefense at the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, that is not enough. "When you come down to it, the threat is not just the organisms," he explains. "The threat is the technologies." The greatest danger, scientists and intelligence officials agree, stems from researchers' increasing ability to alter the genetic codes of viruses and bacteria: The same information can be used either to treat disease or to make new germs— pathogens that could, for example, be designed to evade treatment or to genetically target specific populations.

snip...

In another project that has raised eyebrows among bioweapons experts, a U.S. Army medical scientist in Maryland has been seeking to bring back to life key parts of the 1918 Spanish flu, a lethal influenza virus that killed 40 million people worldwide. While such research could be immensely valuable in fighting another deadly flu outbreak, it might also be used to create such an outbreak, notes Ed Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project, a group critical of American biodefense spending. "If worked in a Chinese, Russian, or Iranian laboratory," he says, "his work might well be seen as the 'smoking gun' of a bio-warfare program."

Even more worrisome to many experts is the apparent growth in secretive, or "black box," biodefense research by the U.S. intelligence community. "There's all kinds of secret research going on right now," says Matthew Meselson, a Harvard biologist who has worked closely with the military. "The more you create secret research in biology," he warns, "the more you create risk." One program that has become public is Project Jefferson, a Pentagon effort to genetically engineer a vaccine-resistant version of anthrax.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2004/03/02_400.html


(4) October 2005
Deadly 1918 Epidemic Linked to Bird Flu, Scientists Say
By Gina Kolata

Two teams of federal and university scientists announced today that they had resurrected the 1918 influenza virus, the cause of one of history's most deadly epidemics, and had found that unlike the viruses that caused more recent flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968, the 1918 virus was actually a bird flu that jumped directly to humans.

snip...

Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, deplored the publication of the viral gene sequence and the reconstruction of the virus. "There is a risk verging on inevitability of accidental release of the virus and a risk verging on inevitability of deliberate release," he said. And the 1918 flu virus, Dr. Ebright added, "is perhaps the most effective bioweapons agent ever known."

snip...

"Now you have all these viruses going around and we don't know, Is it going to adapt to humans? Is it going to cause a pandemic? We don't understand the rules," Dr. Taubenberger said. "There is a lot of science to go."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/health/05cnd-flu.html?ei=5094&en=054b7bbcd1082219&hp=&ex=1128571200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

[Singular73]

30. Nonsense

[UncleSepp]

31. Oh man. Won't the LDPR just go away already?

How do these clowns maintain any kind of presence in the Duma at all?

[wordout]

34. Russia should just

send troops into Palestine.

[geek tragedy]

35. Yeah, and we invented trichinosis to dominate the pork market.

Freaking loon.

[goforit]

36. Yep, wouldn't put it past this administration.

Wouldn't doubt it.

[bunny planet]

37. No, we've already cornered the market on chickenhawks, that's why he's

confused.