Emergency Medical Services
Scientists Killed For Weapons Programs
Although advances in science and technology improve prospects for developing innovative medical treatments, scientific advancements also lay the groundwork for the development, and use, of dangerous weapons of mass destruction.
Somewhere between 10 and 17 countries now possess biological weapons (BW) programs. Furthermore, a bizarre string of suspicious deaths of prominent, world-class microbiologists, who engaged in DNA sequencing-research, has triggered suspicion of cover-up of the development of ethnic-specific BW programs.
The theory is that weapons can be biologically manipulated through DNA sequencing to target certain ethnic groups with slight genetic features not prevalent in other groups at the same percentages.
Harvard University microbiologist, Don C. Wiley, disappeared in 2001. His body was found in the Mississippi River, 300 miles from where his abandoned rental car was parked. He had been exploring DNA sequencing, which is key to the development of ethnic-specific BW.
Three days before Wiley's disappearance, University of Miami Medical School Microbiologist Benito Que, was beaten to death in a parking lot. He was also a DNA-sequencing specialist.
Russian defector and renowned Microbiologist Vladimir Pasechnik, 64, was found dead at his home in the UK, one week after meeting with Wiley in Boston to talk over DNA sequencing.
North Korean Microbiologist, Dr. Ri Chae Woo, was working on a whites-only ethnic-specific BW when he defected from his underground laboratory at Chubari Chemical Corporation in Anbyon, North Korea. It is theorized that either the Chinese government or some Western intelligence agency intercepted him.
Some have suggested that DNA-sequencing research must be carefully monitored so that it won't be used to produce genetic weapons aimed at racial or ethnic groups, as well as at plants or animals. Perhaps the scientists who died under suspicious circumstances agreed.
In its report, Emerging Technologies: Genetic Engineering and Biological Weapons, The Sunshine Project urges governments to ensure maximum transparency in their bio-defense programs, and to immediately abandon any project that violates the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions Act. These steps would help to prevent the hostile exploitation of biology, the report says.
The most incriminating evidence of the existence of BW programs, particularly in Israel and the United States proves to be the relationships and odd connections between scientific academia and intelligence agencies.
At the same time that some nations are moving forward with BW research and development, some nations' attempts to participate with BW research are being thwarted by the elimination of scientific community.
For instance, more than 300 Iraqi scientists, particularly those with knowledge of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, have been assassinated, since the U.S invaded the country. One source reported that more than a 1000 leading Iraqi professionals and intellectuals were assassinated within a 12-month period.
In a Washington Post article last year, Congressman Steve Buyer blamed Iraqi insurgents for the assassinations, but top Iraqi scientists and engineers last year told the Christian Science Monitor they believe Israel and the U.S. were responsible for the assassinations.
Usama al-Ani, director of the research and development department in the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Iraq, said in an Aljazeera article, that he believes top Iraqi scientists are being targeted by foreign powers, most probably Israel. Al-Ani said Iraqi universities have lost 1315 scientists, or eight percent of the 15,500 Iraqi academics, holding MA and Ph.D. degrees.
If correct, some scientists are targeted for opposing the creation of biological weapons while others are targeted to exclude their participation in any weapons program. If globally, we commit to developing defensive biological products such as medicines and vaccines instead of weapons of mass destruction, the deaths of scientists would be unnecessary and with all the brilliant minds, our world would have less illness.
