In the 1960's the U.S. military biowarfare establishment began to pay serious attention to the new advances in biotechnology and genetic engineering. It was obvious to scientists that infectious agents could be transformed into deadly biologic weapons that could be used against civilian populations in time of war. Much cheaper to produce than atomic and conventional military weapons, bioweapons have the distinct advantage of killing life without destroying property.

A group of biowarfare experts, appearing before a United Nations panel in 1969, estimated that the cost of a large-scale killing operation against a civilian population would amount to $2,000 per square kilometer with conventional weapons, $800 with nuclear weapons, $600 with nerve-gas weapons, and $1 with biological weapons.

Nobel Prize winner Sal Luria, a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was one of the first microbiologists to speak out against biowarfare. Fleeing Europe shortly before World War II, Luria was keenly aware of how medical science could be used to kill people. He warned that genetically engineered bioweapons had the potential to "degrade the genetic qualities of entire populations."

In a 1968 essay entitled The Microbiologist and His Times, Luria implored members of the American Society of Microbiologists to reconsider the ethics of their dangerous participation in covert military research. Beginning in the 1950's, an advisory committee of the Society had been cooperating with the army biowarfare laboratory at Fort Detrick, located in Frederick, Maryland.

The biology professor counseled, "The decision as to whether or not to work on biological warfare research, and on war-related research in general, is bound to be a personal one. Consciousness of the difficult issues involved dictates the utmost restraint in making value judgments concerning either those who do carry out such research or those who wish to disassociate themselves from it." Luria's personal opinion was that the Society should not be associated with the Fort Detrick biowarfare lab, and that the committee should be disbanded.

In 1969 Dr. Donald M. MacArthur appeared at a Congressional Hearing on Chemical and Biological Warfare. As Deputy Director of the Department of Defense, he was responsible for the management of diverse research and technology programs such as rocket and missile propulsion, materials technology, medical and life sciences, social and behavioral sciences, environmental sciences, and chemical technology.

Donald MacArthur declared that biowarfare experts could develop a genetically engineered "super germ" that would be very different from any previous microbe known to mankind. The agent would be a highly effective killing agent because the human immune system would be powerless against this super-microbe. This testimony was delivered in Washington before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970, on July 1, 1969.

When questioned about the cost and time required to develop this biowarfare program, Dr. MacArthur answered that a small group of molecular biologists had considered the matter and provided the following details...

Not surprisingly, the Department of Defense, with its vast network of hospitals and researchers, is the principal Federal agency involved in AIDS research, with funds allotted by Congress. According to The New York Times , "Congress usually sets the nation's medical-research priorities, often after intensive lobbying by scientists, companies and interest groups." Some AIDS researchers complain that lawmakers let corporate lobbyists determine which AIDS treatments and studies should be supported by tax dollars. Like cancer, AIDS is big business. And with big money interests so heavily involved in the multi-billion dollar AIDS industry, it is likely that politics will continue to override science in the search for an AIDS cure.

The U.S. has the world's largest arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. Our biowarfare arsenal contains enough nerve and mustard gas to kill everyone on the planet 5,000 times. However, few people are aware of the covert biowarfare experiments conducted against U.S. citizens by various government agencies, particularly the military and the CIA. Previously classified data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act have revealed over 200 experiments directed against civilians and military personnel.

Details of some of these secret biological experiments are discussed in A Higher Form of Killing (1982), by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman. This definitive biowarfare study stands as a testimony of man's inhumanity to man, and Harris and Paxman's book should be required reading for everyone interested in protecting our planet from this biologic "higher form of killing."

For example, "in August 1977 the CIA admitted to no less than 149 subprojects, including experiments to determine the effects of different drugs on human behavior; work on lie-detectors, hypnosis and electric shock; and the surreptitious delivery of drug-related materials. Forty-four colleges and universities have been involved, fifteen research foundations, twelve hospitals or clinics, and three penal institutions." In covert "MKULTRA" mind-altering experiments, the victims were lured to hotel rooms for sexual encounters with prostitutes, and were then drugged and monitored by CIA agents.

Military biowarfare attacks against unsuspecting Americans in the 1950's and 60's are a documented reality. The most notorious was a six-day U.S. military bioattack on San Francisco in which clouds of potentially harmful bacteria were sprayed over the city. Twelve people developed pneumonia due to these infectious microbes, and one elderly man died from the bioattack.

In other secret tests, bacteria were sprayed into New York City subway tunnels; into crowds at a Washington, D.C. airport; and onto highways in Pennsylvania. Biowarfare testing also took place in military bases in Virginia, in Key West, Florida, and off the coasts of California and Hawaii.

The full extent of these covert programs will probably never be known. The CIA has admitted to illegally destroying and shredding many of the incriminating documents. Nevertheless, scholarly accounts of medical abuse by government agencies, not only in the U.S. but worldwide, are slowly coming to light.

Shocking revelations of government-sanctioned medical torture by physicians are presented in Journey into Madness: The True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse (1989). Summing up his research, medical writer Gordon Thomas confides that "nothing had quite prepared me for the horror that came from spending every day for over two years, often twelve-and fourteen-hour days, dealing with the inescapable truth that doctors have tortured--and still do. At the end of the research I could well understand why other investigators had shied from the subject: it really is the stuff of nightmares."

Is AIDS biowarfare? For those who question whether the U.S. government is capable of injuring its own citizens, the answer is all too obvious.

As the 1970's began, the U.S. Army's biological warfare program intensified, particularly in the area of DNA and "gene-splicing" research. In order to placate the fears of critics, President Richard Nixon renounced germ warfare, except for "medical defensive research."

In 1971, when Nixon transferred a major part of the Army's Biological Warfare Unit over to the National Cancer Institute, secret biowarfare experiments continued under the cover of cancer research. Utilizing what were the latest techniques of genetic engineering and laboratory cell culture, the cancer virologists learned how to "jump" animal cancer viruses from one species of animal into another. Chicken viruses were put into lamb kidney cells. The combinations were endless. In this transfer process, new forms of cancer, immunodeficiency and opportunistic infections were produced in the animals.

As predicted by the biowarfare experts, monster "super-germs" were created that had a deadly effect on the immune system.

When I met Bob Strecker in the summer of 1986, he had already gone public with his belief that AIDS was biowarfare. At the time, few people took him seriously, and he was rarely given a chance to express his views in the media. However, soon after he announced that the epidemic was man-made, strange AIDS stories began to appear in the press.

In the fall of 1986 the Soviets proclaimed that AIDS was a result of U.S. germ warfare gone wild. Time (November 17) did a brief piece on the story, labeling it as "infectious propaganda" and passing off Robert Strecker's man-made theory of AIDS as "just speculation."

An editorial in the New Delhi Times of India (November 17, 1986) took the biowarfare accusations seriously, urging readers to sit up and take notice about the grave danger of germ warfare. "It is conceivable that such deadly germs are being manufactured through genetic manipulation and that some of them are liable to leak out of laboratories, whether accidentally or otherwise. All this suggests the new advances in biotechnology and genetic engineering are being rapidly militarized. The consequences of this are too horrifying to contemplate. Those deadly germs represent, like nuclear weapons, agents of mass annihilation. The only thing to do with them is to ban and get rid of them."

Is AIDS biowarfare? Charles Piller, an investigative reporter, and Keith R. Yamamoto, a molecular biologist, briefly discuss this question in their highly informative book on biowarfare entitled, Gene Wars: Military Control Over the New Genetic Technologies (1988). "The Soviets have called AIDS a U.S. biowarfare experiment gone out of control. Although no evidence has been presented to support the claim, manipulating genes to defeat the body's immune system is quite feasible and consistent with some U.S. studies." Piller and Yamamoto emphasize that the discoveries of molecular biology have been utilized by the military, leading to entirely new possibilities in the production of deadly toxins, viruses and bacteria.

Senator George S. McGovern praises Gene Wars as "an arresting book about the incredible dangers and implications of genetic engineering harnessed to biological warfare. This book should be read, pondered, and then acted upon by all who are concerned about the future of life on our planet. It is a special challenge to action by the scientific and medical communities."

In 1988 Saddam Hussein initiated genocide against the Kurds in Iraq. As part of his biowarfare program, military planes sprayed isolated Kurdish villages with poison nerve gas. Within minutes hundreds of peasants died. Over one-hundred thousand Kurds are thought to have perished in Hussein's genocide program. Despite all the killing, the U.S. government continued to loan Iraq billions of dollars, loans which probably will never be repaid.

In 1991 world leaders wondered whether Hussein would use bioweapons in the Persian Gulf War. While the leaders pondered, frantic Israelis donned gas masks in preparation for Saddam's nerve gas attacks. As late as 1992, it was suspected that Iraq was supplying tainted medicines to the Kurds, resulting in a fatal "mysterious disease" with symptoms of bloody diarrhea and complete kidney failure.

Americans shuddered when the media proclaimed the strength of Iraq's chemical and biological warfare arsenal, largely supplied by the U.S. government. Not a word was mentioned about the contents of the U.S. military biowarfare arsenal, except to reassure the American public that we had the capability to gas the entire world population 5,000 times over.

Did AIDS come from a laboratory? The idea of taking a cancer-causing animal virus and deliberately injecting it into a human being sounds unbelievable. However, this is exactly how current human genetic engineering experiments are carried out. In 1990, after three decades of gene-splicing animal experiments, the scientists were ready to begin official tests on a human being.

The subject was a 35 pound girl with a depressed immune system caused by a faulty gene. To correct the gene abnormality, scientists first took cells from a healthy person and allowed an animal cancer virus to infect these normal cells. The infecting virus was a "weakened" mouse leukemia retrovirus "spliced into" the genetic material of the healthy person's normal cells.

Time magazine (September 24, 1990) explained that the mouse retrovirus was the same type of virus as the AIDS virus. The mouse-infected cells were then allowed to "taxi-in" and infect a culture of the little girl's cells. Her cultured cells, now containing the needed gene, were cloned. In the cloning process, billions of copies of the needed cells were produced. These genetically-altered mouse cancer virus-infected, cloned cells were then injected back into the girl to seed her body with these newly engineered cells containing the required gene.

If the experiment is successful the girl will live. She will always carry traces of a mouse cancer virus in her cells--a virus not out of Africa, but out of a laboratory.

The new genetic technology is a triumph of medical science. However, Time warns that this technology could be used for evil purposes. "Opposition is bound to swell if scientists turn toward a goal that is still far off: the genetic engineering of sperm and egg cells. Such Brave New World-style manipulations would affect the genetic endowment of future generations, raise new ethical issues and pose unknown risks."

Unrecognized by most people is the fact that the genetic endowment of gay men has already changed. As many as half the homosexual men have tissue and blood cells permanently altered by a deadly virus "out of Africa." Sal Luria's concern about the "downgrading" of the genetic qualities of entire populations is now a reality.

By the early 1990's, two things were clear. Monkey business was big business. And monkey business could be used to exterminate millions of people on the planet.

Excerpted from QUEER BLOOD: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot by Alan Cantwell, Jr., M.D. published by ARIES Rising Press, P.O. Box 29532, Los Angeles, California, 90029 $12.95 Phone: 213-462-6458)

(To Be Continued)