Battle Batch Incubator
Not so recently in the United States, events commemorating the 15 anniversary of the tragic events of 11 in September 2001 took place. The scary television plots of the falling World Trade Center twin towers, attacked by airliners controlled by suicide bombers, overshadowed some very interesting details of that time. About them, even now the White House does not like to spread. Moreover, these details directly testified to the role that the US has assigned to bacteriological arms in the fight for world domination.In July, 2001, the Americans unilaterally refused to complete work on the draft protocol of the agreement on effective control over bacteriological weapons (BW). But it has been prepared by a group of international experts for over six years. The objective goal of the document was to eliminate procedural shortcomings of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction (BTWC) of the 1972 of the Year. The expert group was to complete its work by the beginning of the 5 conference of the States Parties to the convention, which took place in November 2001.
CATALYST BADA
According to the draft protocol, the signatory states undertook to inform each other about the enterprises producing various vaccines and to inform in the most detailed manner about the objects of biological protection.
And also to mention in a timely manner the scientific institutions involved in the field of genetic engineering research and the study of aerosols of biological agents that are most likely to be used as materials for the production of BO. But the main advantage of this document was considered to be the decision-making mechanism developed by experts to conduct inspections in the territory of all the signatories of the BTWC.
For the American side, the troubles began from the very moment when Russian experts (members of an international expert group) began to insist on conducting inspections not only in the Russian Federation, which was taken for granted by the Americans, but also in the USA itself. And besides, they demanded to establish a threshold number of biological formulations, the reserves of which should not exceed that same level, which allowed them to find combat use. Thus, they encroached on the most sacred - on the infallibility and uniqueness of the "stronghold of world democracy." Its adherents blocked the adoption of the protocol, justifying their decision by saying that then the United States "will be open to other states, but will receive nothing in return." And "all these open measures can be used by governments of other countries to learn American secrets." In other words, the members of the expert group on control over BO were clearly given to understand who is the boss in the world and who should control whom.
And then followed the well-known events of September 11, the consequence of which was the adoption in the United States of the notorious “Patriot Act”, a legislative document significantly limiting the democratic rights and freedoms of citizens of the United States. And, of course, the response of Americans in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. But few people remember now that the dust had not yet settled after the fall of the twin towers, as the scandal erupted around the so-called cases of biological terrorism. This refers to the criminal acts of the microbiologist Bruce Ivins, an employee of the Medical Research Center of the US Forces in Fort Detrick (Maryland), specializing in infectious diseases and protection against bacteriological weapons.
As the investigation has shown, it was he who made and sent by mail letters with deadly anthrax, causing the death of five and the cause of the fatal disease of another 17 man. An artificial anthrax outbreak was first detected on September 22 of 2001 by an 31-year-old employee of the New York Post newspaper office. The first victim of the homebrew bioterrorist attack was 5 who passed away in October of the same year in Boca Raton, Fla., 63, the summer photo editor for the newspaper Sun, which is part of the American Media Inc. publishing holding. Among the recipients of such distinctive "letters of happiness" were, among other things, the leader of the Senate Democratic majority, the senator from South Dakota, Thomas Dashley and his fellow party member Patrick Leahy, the Democratic senator from Vermont.
Intrigue to those events was given by the fact that the aforementioned congressmen were the most irreconcilable at that time political opponents of the then administration of President George W. Bush. It was they who mercilessly criticized the owner of the Oval Office in his desire to push through the adoption of the "Patriot Act." True, the investigation did not find anything wrong in that. However, if it didn’t close its eyes, it looked a lot through rose-colored glasses. It was extremely beneficial for the American investigators to present Bruce Ivins as a convinced single terrorist, despite the apparent mismatch of many facts.
Last, moreover, shortly before the accusation against him, he strangely committed “an obvious act of suicide,” as stated in the official statement on this matter. Again, none of the officials could provide a sensible explanation of how it could happen that a prisoner died by taking a lethal dose of painkillers (taleynol with codeine) 29 July 2008. Right on the eve of the trial, which clearly promised to be loud and exposing, it’s obvious that it’s not destiny. But something suggests, taking into account all the oddities of the circumstances of this criminal case, that they are conceived and carried out according to a certain scenario of the director, whose name we will never know. And the name of Bruce Ivins will take his “honorable” place next to the Dutchman Marinus Van der Lubbe, officially recognized as the instigator of the building of the German Reichstag 27 in February 1933 of the year. At least the collapsed twin towers of the World Trade Center are quite suitable for the role of the burning symbol of German parliamentarism.
This has happened many times in the past. Let us recall at least the explosion of the American battleship "Maine" on the 15 February 1898 raid in Havana, which became a significant reason for the United States, unleashing the American-Spanish war, to take away from the decrepit Spain the remnants of its colonial possessions in the West Indies and the Pacific. Fifty years later, Uncle Sam played, as if by notes, a party in a giveaway with the Japanese, which resulted in December 7 of 1941, in the Pearl Harbor tragedy. The game was worth the candle, given the fact that at the end of the Second World War, the whole world was in debt to the Americans as in silk. And such cases will be typed car and small truck.
So this time everything went according to the thumbed political rut. In this case, it does not mean the fate of Libya with Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, but a sharp increase in the military-biological programs of the Pentagon. Over the subsequent years since the fall of the twin towers and the “letters of happiness” in the United States, 10 spent about 60 billion dollars to protect against the threat of bioterrorism, and the number of relevant research laboratories in the US increased 20 times (from 20 to 2001 year before 400 in 2010-m). But in recent years, the Pentagon thought that was not enough. Similar objects began to appear en masse in the territories of foreign countries, including in the post-Soviet space, in close proximity to the borders of the Russian Federation.
POSSIBILITIES OF BIOBANK
The level of biological safety of any country today, in the era of the Ebola epidemic, Zika virus and outbreaks of influenza varieties, directly depends on the state of the biorepositary, in common parlance - the biobank. In other words, it is a collection of various biomaterials, taken primarily from humans, which are stored for a long time and do not lose their biological properties during the entire storage period. And besides, it has its own infrastructure, using the most modern biotechnologies and information systems. As samples in biobanks, various so-called biological fluids are most often represented in the form of blood serum, saliva or urine. This is followed by biopsy materials, which include cell samples, tissues, DNA and, of course, strains of viruses and bacteria. Where do without them ...There is nothing reprehensible in that, given that the nature around us is an inexhaustible storehouse of all sorts of microorganisms that cause diseases of the human, animal and plant worlds. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes infectious diseases as the second leading cause of premature death in the world. She estimates that annually 2 billion people suffer from various infectious diseases. For 17 million of this number, the case is fatal. Every day, infectious mole is sacrificed 50 thousand human lives, and half the population of the entire planet is under the threat of endemic diseases.
The vulnerability of society to biological agents is mainly due to the fact that the system of medical and sanitary diagnostics is not always able to detect them in a timely manner in order to take the necessary protective measures. According to the WHO, currently no country in the world is able to sufficiently counteract the bioterrorist threat, because all over the world the public health system is fighting against outbreaks of infectious diseases at the limit of their own capabilities. Therefore, she strongly recommends that in order to increase the “readiness” of health authorities to repel bio-threats, it is necessary to focus on a program that includes a limited, but well-chosen group of biological agents. That will create the necessary potential to combat a wider range of pathogens.
A very important, one can say the key, point in building an effective biological defense system is the creation of a global structure for monitoring infectious morbidity, controlling and forecasting the development of the epidemic process. What is required is appropriate informational support, the level of which is largely assessed by the presence of certified samples of biomaterials. Well, for example, the collection of blood serum of the population of the country, which allows to obtain data on population immunity, the prevalence of certain infections, population protection throughout the country, etc.
According to a professor from South Africa, Akim Abayomi, expressed at the international conference on biobanking in Geneva 13 in May 2015, the biorepository is an institution that actively participates in research projects and government initiatives. Its functional tasks include: obtaining, processing and storage of samples of biomaterials; the ability to create their "added value"; distribution of materials for scientific purposes upon request from competent institutions; functioning at the junction of genomics, ethics and public good.
The development of biobanks is impossible without voluntary donors - this is the cornerstone of biorepository. The doctor is obliged, as bioethics requires, to ask the patient-donor for a documented permission, the so-called informed consent, confirming his consent to the transfer of data. At the same time, despite such a strict procedure and the obligation not to use the selected samples for purposes other than intended, potential donors are in no hurry to offer their services. And all because often medical institutions do not notify them of participation in various studies, which is a gross violation of bioethics. One example is given to one of the largest biobanks in the world - the storage of blood serum of the US military, which has accumulated 55,5 million samples from 10 million people.
According to its head, Professor Mark Ruperton, this institution does not under any circumstances destroy samples, even if this is required by some individual donors because they do not know that their biomaterials are stored even after the end of the study in which they were involved. According to his confession, no one has yet managed to get back their samples from the storage. In addition, 900 thousand of 55,5 million of available samples are not directly related to the specialization of this institution. It begs the question: why and for what purpose are they stored there? Professor Bernie Elger from the University of Geneva, during his speech at the aforementioned 13 conference in May 2015, stated that samples infected with the Ebola virus (the conference was dedicated to this problem) should not belong to anyone ( donor, any research scientist or a specific biorepository), because, in his opinion, they are already a global treasure themselves, designed to serve all of humanity.
NON-COMMERCIAL INTERESTS IN AMERICAN
And now the fun part. This year, the American scientific journal Life Sciences, Society and Policy published an article by US scientists (Raymond G. De Vries, Tom Tomlinson, H. Myra Kim, Chris D. Krenz, Kerry A. Ryan, Nicole Lehpamer, Scott YH Kim) under titled “The Moral Aspects of Biobank Donor Concerns: The Impact of Non-Commercial Interests on the Desire to Be a Donor In it, the authors note the increased, if not the decisive, role of biobanking in all sorts, primarily genetic research around the world. No wonder. After all, centralized repositories of certified biomaterial samples allow scientists to reduce the research path of introducing their scientific creation very efficiently and cost-effectively.
As a rule, donors are asked to consent to the use of their samples in research approved by biobanks. But at the same time, this type of agreement completely ignores the moral, religious and cultural aspects of the use of biomaterials, which causes certain concerns among the donor community. These concerns are described by the authors in a familiar American manner as non-commercial interests. In their opinion, the nature of such concerns and their impact on the willingness to become a donor has not yet been studied. And in order to shed light and establish clarity on this issue, the team of authors conducted a large-scale study in the USA in 2014. The participants were chosen using the online platform of GfK Knowledge Networks, based on a random selection. A total of 2654 respondents participated in the study, of which only 1638 fully answered all the questions asked. But ultimately, the authors built their scientific findings on the data obtained from the 1599 respondents.
The American scientists offered their wards seven nominations reflecting various moral aspects, according to which they surveyed the wards in order to assess their consent to any use of donor samples by researchers in each of the above directions. First, it is the development of more effective and safe methods of abortion (abortion); secondly, the creation of renal stem cells in order to grow a human kidney or some other organ in the womb of the pig, which can later be transplanted to people (xenograft); thirdly, the development of patents and profit-making by commercial companies, since most of the new drugs are created by them (patents); fourthly, the creation of stem cells with the genetic code of a donor for the reproduction of various types of tissues and organs for the purpose of their use in medical research (stem cells); Fifth, the creation of vaccines against new biological weapons for the production of their own BW, should the government have a state need in the case of conducting such a study (biological weapons); sixthly, to reveal the evolution of various ethnic groups and places of origin, which cannot but conflict with their cultural and religious beliefs (evolution); Seventh, detection of a gene that makes some people more brutal in order to find ways to reduce aggressive behavior. At the same time, this can significantly increase prejudice if certain racial and ethnic features of this identified gene are found in the relevant groups of the population (the gene of violence).
The percentage of people willing to donate samples of their biomaterials for each nomination was: abortions - 49,5%, xenografts - 64,2%, patents - 55,2%, stem cells - 70,1%, biological weapons - 56,5%, evolution - 64%, violence gene - 58,1%. At the same time, the survey results showed that more than 70% of respondents refused to become donors on the terms of complete agreement in at least one of the seven nominations presented.
The fifth point of the survey campaign of American scientists regarding the possible use of donor samples in the development of biological weapons cannot but cause concern. Maybe this is the beginning of something even more terrible, and the above poll is just an informational preparation of some new Maine or Pearl Harbor. In any case, the moral torments of the inhabitants of the White House, on whose orders on the planet the most unseemly acts were committed and are being committed, including the first and so far the only atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are not very hard to believe. So, we are still waiting for new stunning discoveries.
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