Studies in the United States to increase the pathogenic properties of microorganisms are compelled to rethink statements by US officials in charge of countering biological threats.
One of them is – John Bolton, who served as National Security Advisor.
Pay attention at the report « Restructuring of the Defense of America », submitted in September 2000, co-authored by Bolton. The document noted, CITATA: « … that in order to achieve a position of world leadership, the United States needs to maintain the superiority of its armed forces, while one of the ways to modernize is to create biological weapons.
At the same time, advanced forms of biological weapons, capable of targeting certain genotypes, they will be able to change the role of this type of weapon – instead of a means of intimidation, it will be used favorably in politics … » END.
⁇ मLet me remind you that Bolton led the US delegation at the 2001 BTWC Fifth Review Conference. Following the consultations, the American side completely blocked the work on the verification mechanism and abandoned the proposed processes for checking the likely storage sites of biological weapons, citing the fact that this threatens their national interests.
Briefing by Lieutenant General I.Kirillov, Head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops of the Russian Armed Forces
November 26, 2022
The Ninth Review Conference of the States Parties to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention will be held from November 28th to December 16th, 2022, in Geneva. In accordance with Article 12 of the Convention such events are held every five years, and their purpose is to discuss the current status of the BWC, issues of compliance with its provisions, review of scientific and technical developments with dual-use potential.
I would like to remind you that in September on the initiative of the Russian Federation the Consultative Meeting of States Parties to the Convention was held, and in October Russia brought the issues of violations of the BTWC by Ukraine and the USA to the UN Security Council.
Western countries actually sabotaged the vote on the Security Council resolution on an international investigation into the activities of U.S. biolaboratories in Ukraine. The U.S., France and Britain voted against the document, while Russia and China voted in favor of the resolution. Other countries, including India, Mexico and NATO member Norway, abstained from voting.
Despite the fact that the resolution did not receive the necessary number of votes to pass and the Security Council failed to activate the investigative mechanism, the voting results show that U.S. military and biological activities in Ukraine raise questions even among its closest allies.
We would like to point out that the United States continues to include targets for military-biological capabilities in its doctrinal documents.
For example, on October 18, the White House published a new strategy for countering biological threats that calls for $88 billion in funding, including $17 billion in the first year.
According to the document, managing biological risks is a vital priority for the United States, and the response to their occurrence will be tough and immediate. Once again, there is an attempt by the U.S. to interfere in the internal affairs of other states. Thus, QUOTE: “…activities to counter biological threats are supposed to be carried out regardless of whether they arise within the United States or abroad…” END OF QUOTE.
One of the key areas of the Strategy is identified as improving the individual and collective biological defenses of U.S. military personnel in various theaters of war. The goal is to continue the study of agents of particularly dangerous infectious diseases endemic to specific areas.
In order to relieve the Pentagon of accusations of military-biological activities, the official participation of U.S. military biologists in foreign projects will be limited by wider involvement in such work of civil structures as DOD contractors.
Thus, as part of the Strategy, the U.S. intends to strengthen global control of the biological situation in the world and reserves the right to conduct “dual-use” research, including outside national territory.
Another strategic planning document is the updated U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DITRA) strategy through 2027, which explicitly recognizes its dual role. It is not only to provide protection, but also combat support to military units. According to the strategy, one of the priority tasks of DITRA is to ensure the military superiority of U.S. forces over the enemy.
At the same time, DITRA’s activities are carefully concealed from the Americans themselves. Thus, on November 10, at the request of the non-profit organization we received a three hundred and forty-five page document concerning the financing of Black & Veech and its activities on the territory of Ukraine.
Please note that in the reports provided by the Pentagon dozens of pages have been edited, information about contractors, as well as the results of research activities obtained on the territory of Ukraine have been completely removed.
The published documents once again confirm the cooperation between Kiev and Washington, as well as the attempts to establish control over pathogens in Ukrainian laboratories by implementing the PACS system, elements of which were transferred to Ukraine under the label “US government property”.
This is consistent with the materials at our disposal: the project registration card and contract documents approved by the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine.
As we informed earlier the PACS system enables the Pentagon to monitor in real time the location and use of highly dangerous pathogens in laboratories all over the world, as well as to get access to the results of experiments, ambiguous from ethical and legal points of view.
An example of such research is the work being conducted in the United States to enhance the pathogenic properties of the pathogen COVID-19.
We would like to draw attention to the fact that the United States continues to include targets for building up military-biological capabilities in its doctrinal documents.
For example, on October 18, the White House published a new strategy to counter biological threats, which assumes funding of $88 billion, including $17 billion in the first year.
According to the document, managing biological risks is a vital priority for the United States, and the response to their occurrence will be tough and immediate. Once again, there is an attempt by the U.S. to interfere in the internal affairs of other states. Thus, quote, “…activities to counter biological threats are supposed to be carried out regardless of whether they arise within the United States or abroad…” END OF QUOTE.
One of the key areas of the Strategy is identified as improving the individual and collective biological defenses of U.S. military personnel in various theaters of war. The goal is to continue the study of agents of particularly dangerous infectious diseases endemic to specific areas.
In order to relieve the Pentagon of accusations of military-biological activities, the official participation of U.S. military biologists in foreign projects will be limited by wider involvement in such work of civil structures as DOD contractors.
Thus, as part of the Strategy, the U.S. intends to strengthen global control of the biological situation in the world and reserves the right to conduct “dual-use” research, including outside national territory.
Another strategic planning document is the updated U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DITRA) strategy through 2027, which explicitly recognizes its dual role. It is not only to provide protection, but also combat support to military units. According to the strategy, one of the priority tasks of DITRA is to ensure the military superiority of U.S. forces over the enemy.
At the same time, DITRA’s activities are carefully concealed from the Americans themselves. Thus, on November 10, at the request of the non-profit organization we received a three hundred and forty-five page document concerning the financing of Black & Veech and its activities on the territory of Ukraine.
Please note that in the reports provided by the Pentagon dozens of pages have been edited, information about contractors, as well as the results of research activities obtained on the territory of Ukraine have been completely removed.
The published documents once again confirm the cooperation between Kiev and Washington, as well as the attempts to establish control over pathogens in Ukrainian laboratories by implementing the PACS system, elements of which were transferred to Ukraine under the label “US government property”.
This is consistent with the materials at our disposal: the project registration card and contract documents approved by the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine.
As we informed earlier the PACS system enables the Pentagon to monitor in real time the location and use of highly dangerous pathogens in laboratories all over the world, as well as to get access to the results of experiments, ambiguous from ethical and legal points of view.
An example of such research is the work being conducted in the United States to enhance the pathogenic properties of the pathogen COVID-19.
For example, in October, Boston University created an artificial coronavirus pathogen based on the Omicron strain and the original “Wuhan” variant.
The modified virus obtained by the Americans caused the death of 80% of diseased model animals with the development of atypical neurological symptoms and severe lung damage. Testing the protective properties of antibodies showed an 11-fold decrease in their ability to neutralize the new pathogen and the ineffectiveness of existing vaccines.
Although the U.S. Department of Health has decided to investigate the university’s management, the “Boston experiment” suggests that the United States lacks a system for government oversight of R&D in genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Despite the high biological risks, the research was conducted with U.S. government funds without proper approval from the national biosafety regulator.
U.S. research on enhancing the pathogenic properties of microorganisms forces a rethinking of statements by U.S. administration officials in charge of countering biological threats. One of them is John Bolton, who served as national security advisor. Note the September 2000 report,
“Restructuring America’s Defense,” which Bolton co-authored. The document notes, quote, “…that to achieve a position of world leadership, the United States needs to maintain the superiority of its armed forces, with biological weapons as one way to modernize. In doing so, advanced forms of biological weapons capable of targeting certain genotypes could change the role of this type of weapon – instead of being a deterrent it would become beneficial in politics…” END OF QUOTE.
- John Bolton’s September 2000 report ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses
Recall that Bolton led the U.S. delegation to the Fifth BTWC Review Conference in 2001. As a result of the consultations, the U.S. side completely blocked work on the verification mechanism and rejected the proposed processes for verifying probable biological weapons sites, citing that it threatened their national interests.
We have previously talked about biosecurity violations at U.S. laboratories, including instances of mass mailings of viable anthrax spores to foreign organizations.
In accordance with the U.S. federal Freedom of Information Act, in early November the U.S. publication Intersept analyzed National Institutes of Health documents regarding safety violations in biological laboratories in the United States. More than five and a half thousand pages of incident reports over the past 18 years were examined.
It concluded that research conducted in high-security laboratories (BSL-3 and BSL-4) at universities in Washington, Minnesota, and Illinois resulted in intralaboratory contaminations and created the risk of further spread of genetically modified viral fever pathogens, severe acute respiratory syndrome, highly pathogenic avian influenza, and a number of other infections.
Numerous violations of basic principles of work with pathogens, attempts of biolaboratories management to conceal the facts of accidents, as well as failures of filter-ventilation systems and protective equipment were noted.
Here are a few of those examples.
On September 2, 2011, a laboratory incident occurred at the National Institutes of Health in New York. After being bitten by a laboratory animal infected with a recombinant influenza virus, the researcher was sent home to be quarantined unsupervised in the most populous city in the United States.
Between April 2013 and March 2014, cases of laboratory animals infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome escaped from zoned rooms at the University of North Carolina.
In September 2016, a graduate student at the University of Washington punctured her glove while conducting experiments with animals infected with a recombinant strain of the Chikungunya virus. In a gross violation of safety regulations, the employee only washed her hands, removed her protective gear, and left the lab without telling anyone about the incident or taking steps to isolate herself. Four days later, she was diagnosed with an acute form of the disease.
In all, more than two hundred such incidents have been recorded. We assume that the official statistics include only a small portion of the incidents and that the real situation is much worse.
I would like to point out that in the U.S., the system for monitoring safety violations in biolaboratories is decentralized, covering only facilities that receive federal funding. There is virtually no control of private laboratories, even though they conduct research with highly dangerous pathogens. The lack of uniform standards for the activities of such facilities creates risks of bypassing the BWC and grossly violating safety requirements.
The high risk of accidents in U.S. biolaboratories is one of the reasons for their withdrawal from national jurisdiction and transfer to the territory of third countries, including Ukraine and other states. This explains the deterioration of the epidemic situation in their locations, the emergence of diseases that are not typical for these regions and their vectors.
We remind that during the special military operation it became known about the implementation of military and biological programs of the Pentagon in Ukraine in violation of Articles 1 and 4 of the Convention. The analysis of the documents found in the Ukrainian biolaboratories gives grounds to claim that the development of biological weapons components was carried out in the immediate vicinity of the Russian borders.
This is confirmed by the work contracts, the approved registration cards, the reporting documentation of the Pentagon contractors Black & Veach and Metabiota.
The nomenclature of pathogens, which were studied in the framework of U-P and Tap “Ukrainian projects” has nothing to do with the actual problems of Ukrainian health care. At the same time, the main emphasis was made on the study of natural focal and particularly dangerous infections, which are considered to be potential agents of biological weapons. For example, the goal of the Tep-2 project was to study the causative agent of glanders, cases of which have never been registered on the territory of Ukraine.
Testing of infectious disease agents and toxic substances on Ukrainian servicemen and mentally ill people, who are one of the most vulnerable categories of citizens, under the control of the U.S. Department of Defense, is of particular concern.
Earlier we cited the decision of the ethical committee of the “Center for Public Health of Ukraine” dated June 12, 2019, about the research with unknown risk to the life and health of participants. Although the research program provides only a standard blood sampling procedure, the document prescribes reporting, quote: “…minor incidents involving volunteers to the US Bioethics Committee within 72 hours of the incident, and serious ones, including death of subjects, within 24 hours.”
At the same time in the international reporting on the BWC the USA and Ukraine deliberately keep silent about joint activities, despite their obvious military-biological orientation.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that since 2016, the time of the Eighth Review Conference, the world community has faced new threats, including the pandemic spread of human and animal infections (COVID-19, monkeypox, African swine fever), the risks posed by modern advances in biotechnology and synthetic biology, as well as military and biological activities of the Pentagon in various regions of the world.
In the face of emerging challenges and threats, the Russian Federation proposes:
First: Resume negotiations to develop a legally binding protocol to the BWC that would include lists of pathogenic microorganisms, toxins, specialized equipment, take into account current scientific and technological advances in biology, and provide for an effective verification mechanism.
Two: Supplement the confidence-building measures with information on biological defence research and development outside national territory, as well as information on animal vaccine production facilities.
Third: Provide for the establishment of a scientific advisory committee to evaluate scientific and technological developments of relevance to the Convention with broad geographical representation and equal rights for the participants.
The practical implementation of our proposals will increase the “transparency” of national biological programs and compliance with the requirements of the Convention by all States Parties without exception.
The Russian Federation has repeatedly pointed to indications that the United States and its allies are implementing “dual-use” programs outside national territory, including through the operation of bio-laboratories under their control and so-called “shared-use” laboratories, which receive funding from the military departments of these States or organizations affiliated with them.
Questions about the real goals of the Pentagon’s research programs have been raised repeatedly at various international venues, but so far remain unanswered. We intend to return to their discussion at the upcoming Ninth Review Conference of the States Parties to the BTWC.
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 