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in volume 47, page 257, 1972, Bulletin of the World Health this virus became of interest because it has that ability; it will Organisation, and said why they wanted to make these agents. _ introduce genetic material from the outside, and once it's intro- They said, "We can use these agents to produce certain kinds of duced it changes forever that species. Just as with humans, now cancers and leukaemias. It will allow us to make these diseases, it | we have modified our genes, in a sense, forever, or short of a way will allow us also to make what we call dissolving diseases," to wipe out this species of this strange virus that's inserting itself which is part two of that same request for production. So,in 1972, into us. p a group of virologists said, "Let's make AIDS." In 1972, when they were monkeying around with this thing in In 1975, Clemenson says that it's coming, and in 1980 it's here, _ the United States National Institute of Health, a guy named Stuart and everybody's wandering around scratching their heads, saying, | Aronson published a paper and he was working with a mouse "Geez, where did all this suff come from?" Well, really, to me it retrovirus. What Aronson discovered was this: he put that mouse seems quite simple. This virus was produced in a laboratory by _ retrovirus into a human tissue culture plate and then he came back the recombination or the mixing or the melting together or the after it was packaged—in other words, it grew there several mating of two viruses, one named bovine leukaemia virus of cat- times—and what he discovered was that this mouse retrovirus tle, and the other named visna virus of sheep. would no longer grow in mice: it would now grow most efficient- Now, if you look at the diseases in humans that are presently _ly in human tissue. So he had discovered how to make a cross- running, there is a whole lot more going OM 5. aes Species jump, in other words, how you out there besides AIDS. There is an infece ——<<====<<—<—<—=—=<=—= change the virus of one species into the tious T-cell leukaemia virus named HTLV-1 virus of another species. This is how.you which is human T-cell leukaemia virus 1, take bovine leukaemia virus of cattle and which is a confectious agent. It looks like If you take bovine visna . change it into HTLV-1 human T-cell bovine leukaemia virus, it causes the same ; BO leukaemia virus. You merely have to kind of disease in humans as it does in cattle, virus, the original AIDS ba = Pd the hare - — tis- and this virus is probably far more infectious . ‘ sue for a sufficient period of time and you than the AIDS in This virus has man- virus, and grow that virus now have human T-cell leukaemia virus. aged to infect 20-30% of southern Japan jn fhuman tissue, you now If you take bovine visna virus, the origi- already. It is infiltrating into the Asian coun- f . nal AIDS virus, and grow that virus in tries, and because they're so densely populat- have human AIDS virus. human tissue, you now have human ed. ise AIDS virus. We can worry about Japan all we want, / One of the things we didn't understand but I can tell you this, that short of acre fo) initially (or at least it wasn't clear to us) these diseases, in about another 10 years or in 1983 and 1984 was: were these people so the entire population of Japan will suddenly get leukaemia and intentionally deceiving people, the American public—you and die, short of there being a cure for this problem, because this dis- | Me—or were they just stupid? Now, don't ever believe that they're ease will spread in that group of people due to their density of stupid. We asked a question of several virologists, and one of the population. The same thing will occur in China, Taipei, India and © questions was, "Could you take bovine leukaemia virus of cattle the rest of the Asiatic countries. HTLV-2 which is HTLV human _ and visna virus of sheep and make an AIDS-like agent?" In 1983 T-cell leukaemia virus 2, causes hairy-cell leukaemia in humans, and 1984 we called up one of the world's leading retrovirologists, the same as the similar discase bovine visna virus causes a very one of the leaders in our AIDS industry, and said, "Can you do unusual leukaemia, hairy-cell leukaemia, in cattle. So, these dis- that kind of an experiment? Could you make an AIDS-like eases do have analogous agents that they could have evolved from agent?" This is typical; he said, "Who wants to know?" And I or that they were derived from that are present today in laborato- ‘said, "I want to know. I'm Robert Strecker." So he said, "Well, ries around the world. — Ask yourself, how do you take a virus of cattle and sheep and make it into a virus of humans? In 1971 and 1972, the scientists of the world got very interested in this group of viruses called retroviruses. Retro stands for the presence of an enzyme called reverse transcriptase. Now, that doesn't mean anything to us, but what does it really mean? Here is a virus which is in an RNA form. Our genes are in a DNA form. In other words, there are two separate entities, the viruses on RNA form are different than your genetic materi- al, which is DNA. Why they were interested specifically in these agents more than the fact that they could make ethnic and racially specific bio-weaponry was this, and this is the very nature of the virus that allows them to do this: the virus enters the cell, it changes its form from an RNA form into a DNA form, which is now like your genes. It inserts itself into your genetic material and then interacts with the genetic material that is there; it then leads to production of new virus. The fact that it inserts itself into your genetic material and then expresses itself, in other words, once it's inserted it can then act, that fact made it perfect for introducing genes into species. So scientists said, "This is how we will intro- duce genes and manipulate the genetic material of species." They had been looking for a mechanism, trying to fire DNA into cells. In everything you can think of they were trying to manipulate the genetic materials. Because, in their thinking, they can do this job better than anybody else. So, 4s NEXUS¢25 Somnath FEBRUARY - MARCH 1994