Since 9/11, the Bush Administration has spent tens of billions of dollars on bioweapons research. The sum may be $40-billion or higher, but an accurate figure is not available as much of the work is being conducted in secret.
Some universities have leaped at the opportunity for Federal funding for suchresearch from NIH and DHS. Hammond claims, “Government and academic labs are responding less to bona fide needs than the urge to build power and revenue centers for what they hope is a perpetual biodefense boom. This will result in a dangerous proliferation of bioweapons agents and the knowledge to use them.”
He noted the U.S. is facing a virulent new strain of drug-resistant gonorrhea. Unfortunately, he added, “the NIH has been extravagantly funding research into ‘threat’ diseases like glanders, which has not been seen in humans in the U.S. since the 1940s except, of course, lab-acquired infections in biodefense facilities. What a shame.”
The lack of transparency in U.S. federally-funded biological laboratories has been a growing cause for concern. Jackie Cabasso, of the Western States Legal Foundation of Oakland, Calif., said, “the U.S. is now massively expanding its biodefense program, mostly in secretive facilities. Other countries are going to be suspicious. This bodes badly for the future of biological weapons control.”
According to Jonathan King, professor of molecular biology at MIT, “the Bush administration launched a major (biological weapons) program which threatens to put the health of our people at far greater risk than the hazard to which they claimed to have been responding.” Bush’s policies, he continued, “do not increase the security of the American people. They bring new risk to our population of the most appalling kind.”
#(Sherwood Ross is a reporter who has worked for major dailies and wire services. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com)(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
