Stop Unregulated and Unmonitored American Biological and Chemical Weapon Research, Development and Stockpiling Now
There is an extreme practical need for the creation of a group of independent investigatory agencies from different countries tasked with ensuring compliance with international biological and chemical weapons treaties.
By Gregory Brundage
ABSTRACT
This review article summarizes 1) a joint Statement released by the Russian and Chinese governments expressing the “need to raise awareness of the risks associated with dual-use research and, simultaneously, promote the full use of the latest advances in biotechnology for peaceful purposes,” 2) some of the criticisms of the largely discredited OPCW 3) some of the research done by DARPA on “dual-use” coronavirus and means of its transmission, 4) a recent preprint research article using statistical modeling to study the most likely point of origin of the COVID-19 global pandemic, 5) “deprioritizing” prosecution of American war crimes as the result of what appears to be extortion, 6) how to persuade American politicians to comply with international treatises regulating the creation, collection, research on, and transportation of potential biological and chemical weapons, 7) “complexities” in American courts, and “special interest” money in Congress, 8) Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 9) illegal global censorship by US intelligence services, 10) containment breeches, and 11) the concerns, grief and fears of those who lost loved ones to COVID-19. It is the assertion of this writer that all people worldwide have a universal human right to know what potential chemical and biological weapons are located anywhere near them, such that in the case of (all too frequent) breeches they can at least know what is sickening and killing them and their family members. Consequently, it is proposed that a small group of separate independent international biological and chemical weapons inspection groups must be formed to investigate, regulate and monitor BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories, research methodologies and justifications for that research, safety standards and containment technologies and procedures. They must be empowered to freely collect information and stop unwarranted “dual-use” biological weapons development and all chemical weapons development. Furthermore, that information should be publicly accessible.
1) Recent Statement by Foreign Ministers of China and Russia
On October 7, a “Joint Statement by the Foreign Ministers of the People's Republic of China and the Russia Federation on Strengthening the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction” was released.
Among other things it mentioned that “the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BWC) was well underway until the United States unilaterally withdrew in 2001 and the risk of biological agents with dual-use capabilities being used as weapons has increased.” That is surely one of the most elegant understatements in diplomatic history.
The Statement adds:
“In this context they emphasize that the United States’ and its allies’ overseas military biological activities (over 200 US biological laboratories are deployed outside its national territory, which function in opaque and non-transparent manner) cause serious concerns and questions among the international community over its compliance with the BWC. The two sides share the view that such activities pose serious risks for the national security of the Russian Federation and China, and are detrimental to the security of relevant regions.”
At present there are several American BSL lab in Africa including Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Somalia, Tunisia and others. Libya and Somalia are conflict zones, rather odd places for BSL labs to located, one might think.
Near the end of the above cited statement, it notes: “There is a need to raise awareness of the risks associated with dual-use research and, simultaneously, promote the full use of the latest advances in biotechnology for peaceful purposes.”
Those are valid points. For example, a The Lancet Preprint dated April 20, 2021 announced that in a trial with 450 children aged 5–17 months, a new vaccine called R21 was up to 77% effective in the prevention of malaria over the period of one year.
Malaria is not caused by a virus or bacteria but rather by a parasite known as Plasmodium and normally spread by infected mosquitoes. To research a vaccine for that disease however requires collecting, storing and experimenting with the Plasmodium parasite. That, by itself is a potential biological weapon hazard and yet that kind of research emphasizes some research on potential dual-use biological weapons is useful in preventing disease. However, that should not give carte blanche rational to any nation to produce and/or collect, store, research and transport potentially deadly pathogens or parasites without public awareness.
2) Credibility issues regarding OPCW
There has never been a credible international body to regulate the development of potential dual-use biological and chemical weapons. Furthermore, one organization alone could not do the job due to potential conflicts of interest and subsequent potential bias as in the case of well substantiated coverups by the OPCW as investigated by numerous journalists including The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté, European parliamentarians Mick Wallace and Clare Daley, five former OPCW officials, other WMD inspectors, international diplomats, and others.
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3) DARPA Research
It’s a slippery slope when nations start researching potential bioweapons without oversight because they have to create and/or collect, store and often transport them to research those potential weapons. The American Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has for decades done, and routinely continues to do all three without external monitoring of any kind.
One thing no Chinese or American official will mention is DARPA had done extensive research on coronavirus and the use of bats as carriers prior to the COVID-19 epidemic. Mention of that research figured prominently on DARPAs internet site prior to, and during the few months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Furthermore, research published in The Lancet makes note that:
“The ten genome sequences of COVID-19 obtained from the nine patients were extremely similar, exhibiting more than 99·98% sequence identity. Notably, COVID-19 was closely related (with 88% identity) to two bat-derived severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like coronaviruses, bat-SL-CoVZC45 and bat-SL-CoVZXC21, collected in 2018 in Zhoushan, eastern China, but were more distant from SARS-CoV (about 79%) and MERS-CoV (about 50%). Phylogenetic analysis revealed that COVID-19 fell within the subgenus Sarbecovirus of the genus Betacoronavirus, with a relatively long branch length to its closest relatives bat-SL-CoVZC45 and bat-SL-CoVZXC21, and was genetically distinct from SARS-CoV.”
Lancet, 2020 Jan 30. pii: S0140-6736(20)30251-8. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30251-8. [Epub ahead of print]
These kinds of comparisons can easily be done directly on NCBI. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/viruses/
That database also provides free use of BLAST software for comparisons. It only takes a few minutes.
4) There is practically no chance COVID-19 started in China
In their statement released October 7th, 2021 Russia and Chinese officials made no mention of COVID-19 because they didn’t have to. Chinese researchers have used statistical modeling to study the most likely point of origin of the COVID-19 disease and it appears to have started in the USA.
“The experimental results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States started to spread around September 2019 with a high confidence probability. In addition, the existing confirmed cases are also used in Wuhan City and Zhejiang Province in China to infer the origin time of COVID-19 and provide the confidence probability. The results show that the spread of COVID-19 pandemic in China is likely to [have begun] in late December 2019.”
One doesn’t need advanced statistical modeling or New York Times headlines to predict the above preprint research paper was studied very carefully by the World Health Organization, decision makers in the United Nations, Beijing and Moscow, even though mainstream media in the US somehow managed to miss it.
The bottom line is a group of independent investigatory/regulatory agencies must be developed in order to bring all nations into compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) treaty whether they like it or not.
The Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons entered into force on 26 March 1975 however the history of this legislation dates back to June 17, 1925 in the wake of WWI.
As of this writing October 9, 2021, two years after the initial spread of COVID-19 in the USA, 4,837,361 people have been killed by this disease and there are no guarantees 1) Delta Variant will respond to the current generation of vaccines, or that 2) new mutations will not evolve.
5) “Deprioritizing” investigations into US war crimes
The questions for all people worldwide now are 1) What else is DARPA cooking up?” and given that even the UN has yielded to American extortion e.g. “ICC to ‘deprioritize’ investigation into alleged US war crimes in renewed Afghan probe, will focus on Taliban and ISIS-K,” in exchange for aid money to feed the millions of starving people directly resulting from American wars and economic sanctions, is there no hope for an end to the vicious ever increasing cycle of violence and death promoted by the corrupt politicians in Washington DC?
6) How to persuade American politicians to comply with international treatises
The above quoted October 7, “Joint Statement by the Foreign Ministers of the People's Republic of China and the Russia Federation on Strengthening the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction,” is a good start, however massive social, political and economic pressures must be applied to the American leadership to get them to begin to comply with the BWC and other treaties and participate as a member in a group of independent investigatory/regulatory agencies tasked with ensuring compliance with that and related treaties.
What kind of social, political and economic pressures need be applied?
It it is glaringly obvious (to this writer at least) the only thing decision makers in Washington DC care about is money, and therefore the only way to gain their compliance in this matter is the threat of globally applied economic and trade sanctions on the USA until American politicians realize they cannot bully the entire world into submission forever in their psychopathological quest for global hegemony in perpetuity.
A small group of separate independent international biological and chemical weapons inspection groups must be formed to investigate, regulate and monitor BSL-3 and BSL-4 research, safety standards and containment. They must be empowered to freely collect information and stop unwarranted “dual-use” biological weapons development and all chemical weapons development, storage and research via court orders, or in the case of the US beginning with a Legislative Committee.
7) “Complexities” in American courts, and “special interest” money in Congress
Unfortunately court orders in the US mandating public dissemination of information about the location of potential chemical and biological weapons are unlikely to appear given 1) the overwhelming power of the American “intelligence community” (see Attachment 1) and department of defense, and 2) widespread judicial corruption as Wall Street Journal recently revealed: “131 Federal Judges Broke the Law by Hearing Cases Where They Had a Financial Interest - The judges failed to recuse themselves from 685 lawsuits from 2010 to 2018 involving firms in which they or their family held shares, a Wall Street Journal investigation found,” by James Grimaldi, Coulter Jones, and Joe Palazzolo, https://www.wsj.com/articles/131-federal-judges-broke-the-law-by-hearing-cases-where-they-had-a-financial-interest-11632834421
Nobody profits from a “good” old-fashioned global pandemic more than pharmaceutical corporations and too many US Congressional representatives profit hugely from pharmaceutical corporations.
Congress invests big in pharmaceutical, tech stocks, by Karl Evers-Hillstrom, April 27, 2020 https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/04/dc-lawmakers-stocks-pharmaceutical-tech
Exclusive: Investments give lawmakers personal stake in biotech, health care, by Sheila Kaplan and Ike Swetlitz, December 1, 2015 https://www.statnews.com/2015/12/01/congress-pharmaceutical-investment
Pharma is showering Congress with cash, even as drug makers race to fight the coronavirus, Aug. 10, 2020, interactives by Kaitlyn Bartley, story by Lev Facher https://www.statnews.com/feature/prescription-politics/prescription-politics
FDA medical adviser: ‘Congress is owned by pharma’, by Adriana Belmonte, March 13, 2019 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/congress-big-pharma-money-123757664.html
These Senators Received the Biggest Checks from Pharma Companies Testifying Tuesday, by Michela Tindera, Feb 26, 2019
According to a Forbes review of Federal Election Commission filings from 2009 through the end of 2018, PACs of AbbVie , AstraZeneca , Bristol-Myers Squibb , Johnson & Johnson , Merck, Pfizer and Sanofi the seven companies set to appear before the Senate Finance Committee—have contributed some $1.6 million to the campaign committees of 27 out of 28 current members of the Finance Committee.
Twenty-seven out of 28 current members of the United States Senate Committee on Finance profited from pharmaceutical corporation “donations.” That is prima facie evidence of saturation corruption at the highest levels of the US government. When even corporate giants like Wall Street Journal and Forbes are reporting on massive corruption in the Judiciary and House, something is clearly very wrong at the top.
It is highly unlikely the US Congress will back off the American quest for global hegemony given the number of senators and representatives that also personally profit from war.
https://prospect.org/power/the-members-of-congress-who-profit-from-war
Legislation to mandate the creation of an independent investigatory agency tasked with ensuring compliance with international biological and chemical weapons treaties will never happen in the US without substantial outside pressure, because it must first be passed by a majority in Congress, too many of whom have substantial “conflicts of interest” as referenced above.
Around the rest of the world where there may really be some representative governments and citizens who don’t want to die from containment leaks of biological and chemical weapons (as COVID-19 may be) independent international investigatory/regulatory groups/agencies can and should be formed posthaste.
Those biological and chemical weapon investigation and regulatory groups must 1) be independent of each other so as to produce reports from which inter-group report reliability and validity can be measured and 2) provide global on-line publicly accessible records of all pathogens, where they are, and where and when they are transported so when containment breeches occur people can at least know what is sickening and killing them and their family members and where it came from.
There really is nothing preventing foreign groups from investigating American biological and chemical weapons (dual-use or not) where-ever they may be, except American laws which probably (and outrageously) prohibit such activities.
8) Universal Declaration of Human Rights
None the less, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights nobly states:
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law…
https://www.un.org/en/udhrbook/pdf/udhr_booklet_en_web.pdf
9) Global censorship
Unfortunately, very few people will ever become aware of the issues motivating the Russian and Chinese joint statement released October 7, 2021 or this writing, as freedom of speech has been usurped worldwide by the USA as demonstrated in this writer’s June 25, 2021 article: “A brief review of American censorship mechanisms and laws prohibiting it.”
Back in the world outside of American political and judicial saturation level corruption and media censorship, penalties for violating biological and chemical weapon treaties must be strong enough to present a powerful deterrence. No nation’s “national security” should preempt the right of all people to live free of biological and chemical warfare weapons and the fear of them.
The inevitable consequences of failing to monitor and regulate potential chemical and biological weapons are unthinkable.
The only alternative to the above suggested forms of remedial measures to monitor and curtail research on chemical and biological weapons is to wait for the next leak, potentially something much worse than COVID-19. There are no guarantees the human species will survive something worse.
10) Containment breeches
A report by the bulletin of the Atomic Scientists lists 123 “incident” reports obtained by FOI requests for containment breeches in BSL-4 laboratories relating only to ‘human error’ analysis.
The total number of containment breeches is unquestionably much higher.
Europeans have made some efforts in this direction, however only in Europe.
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.36.2000089#r14
Those efforts represent only a small percentage of BSL-4 laboratories around the world, which are mostly operated in high secrecy by the USA.
11) For those who lost loved ones to COVID-19, this is no joke
This may seem like a joke or ridiculous proposition to some, however to family members and friends who have already lost loved ones to COVID-19 this is no joke, no idle speculation or fanciful hypothesis, but a very real danger and possibly, or probably the only rational means to facilitate positive change in the hallways and chambers of power in the USA in a timely and reasonable manner.
12) Conclusions
I am very thankful to the foreign ministers of China and Russia for voicing their concerns regarding (unregulated) research on dual-use chemical and biological pathogens beyond that needed for biomedical research. I am writing this article to promote their expressed “need to raise awareness of the risks associated with dual-use research and, simultaneously, promote the full use of the latest advances in biotechnology for peaceful purposes.”
Furthermore, I am presenting what I consider to be the only possible methods to persuade the US Congress and President to agree to cooperate in the formation of a truly objective independent international monitoring and regulating agency (one among several others sponsored by responsible governments) to collect data on exactly what, where and when potential chemical and biological weapons (dual-use of not) are created and/or collected, where they are stored, what and when research is being done on them, and where, when and how they are transported. Furthermore, I strongly believe the public in every country has a universal human right to have access to that information such that they can know what is sickening or killing them in cases of containment breeches as has happened so often in the past.
Likewise, I am pleased with and thankful to the researchers who chose probability modeling to determine the probable origin of COVID-19. My first effort in that direction was titled: “Probability Model of the Genesis of COVID-19 in Wuhan China,” first published February 19, 2020. Though only receiving 2,256 views mostly from university professors, I thought it was a seminal work at least pointing in the right direction. I congratulate researchers Zhouwang Yang, Yunhe Hu, Zhiwei Ding, and corresponding author Tiande Guo on their work.
I was hoping someone else would pick up on the idea of a probability model to predict the origin of COVID-19 and they did a brilliant job. True, it took until September 2021 for them to present a pre-publication draft, however as they note in their article, it usually takes decades to explore the origin of infectious diseases and yet they did it only two years.
Attachment 1 – Article by former President Harry Truman
For those not familiar with him, Harry Truman was President of the United States from April 12, 1945 – January 20, 1953.
President Eisenhower in 1961 expressed related warnings.
https://www.airforcemag.com/article/eisenhowers-farewell-warning
The next president, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
And today?
Absurd mission creep: The CIA’s new units pave the way for the most totalitarian period in its history, 8 Oct, 2021 https://www.rt.com/op-ed/536986-cia-new-units-totalitarian
It appears the worst of those presidents’ fears have been realized and Pandora’s Box has been smashed to smithereens.
Is there a way to back off of even greater tidal waves of death emanating from unlimited corporate greed? Yes, but only if citizens and leaders around the world are willing to speak honestly and to the point, and work collectively for the whole of humanity together for the first time in history. Getting a grip on containing and publicly illuminating the development of chemical and biological weapons is one critically important step in that direction.
This and other articles of mine can be downloaded from some of my other sites including:
https://www.silkroadvirtualuniversity.org/publications-by-gcb.html
In addition to my pages at: