April 28, 2008

The Death Angel Goes High BioTech—Are Ethnically-Targeted Weapons for Real?

By Frank Miele

[Also by Frank Miele: The K9 Comparison—What Dogs Tell Us About Humans]

South Africa and Israel "worked on an ethnic bomb that kills Blacks and Arabs."

So exclaimed one Ali Baghdadi—identified as an Arab-American activist, writer and columnist and "Middle East advisor to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, as well as Minister Louis Farrakhan"—in the newsletter of Barack Obama's church's website (WorldNetDaily, June 10, 2007 ).

Given the rhetoric of Rev. Wright and his "what this country needs is a sacred conversation about race" church, should this claim merit one jot or tittle of credibility?

Are ethnically targeted weapons even a possibility—or the just stuff of dystopian sci-fi?

The alarming answer: they’re more fact than fiction!

In effect, biological warfare would be the high tech realization of the Death Angel that killed first-born Egyptian sons in the Book of Exodus—a biological weapon that selectively attacks members of a specific race, while scrupulously passing over members of the attacker's race.

However ghoulish, such nightmarish weapons have been taken seriously for decades.

As early as 1970 Prof. Carl A. Larson, head of the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Lund in Sweden, wrote that heritable differences in body chemistry between populations (the scientifically approved euphemism for races) could serve as the basis for a new generation of biological weapons His article appeared in the Military Review, which is published by the U. S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. [Ethnic Weapons,(PDF) November 1970]

In 1972 the Defense News reported that, through genetic engineering, it might be possible to "recognize DNA from different people and attach different things that will kill only that group of people…. You will be able to determine the difference between blacks and whites and Orientals and Jews and Swedes and Finns and develop an agent that will kill only [a particular] group."

The 1993 Stockholm Peace Research Institute's Yearbook posed the question "Can 'genetic weapons' be developed?" and answered — "if investigations provide sufficient data on ethnic genetic differences between population groups [which now are well documented], it may be possible to use such data to target suitable micro-organism to attack known receptor sites for which differences exist at a cell membrane level or even to target DNA sequences inside cells by viral vectors."

The Yearbook concluded that the "genetic differences between [between human groups, that is, races] may in many cases be sufficiently large and stable so as to possibly be exploited by using naturally occurring, selective agents or by genetically engineering organisms and toxins with selectivity for an intended genetic marker…"[Appendix 7A. Benefits and threats of developments in biotechnology and genetic engineering, By Tamas Bartfai, S. J. Lundin and Bo Rybeck PDF]

More recently, a report of the British Medical Association entitled Biotechnology Weapons and Humanity, written by Prof. Malcolm Dando, likewise concluded that "if there are distinguishing DNA sequences between groups [the DNAPrint methodology has now demonstrated that there are], and these can be targeted in a way that is known to produce a harmful outcome, a genetic weapon is possible."

Dr. Vivienne Nathanson, chairman and organizer of the BMA project stated that "With an ethnically targeted weapon, you could even hit groups within a population. The history of warfare, in which many conflicts have an ethnic factor, shows us how dangerous this could be."

Indeed, research and development of such “race bombs” has taken place in at least two different countries: South Africa and Israel.

The evidence —

In 1998, The Sunday Times (London) reported that both South Africa (under the former Apartheid regime) and Israel have worked on ethnically targeted weapons. [Israel planning 'ethnic' bomb as Saddam caves in, by Uzi Mahnaimi and Marie Colvin, November 15, 1998]

Dr. Daan Goosen, head of a South African chemical and biological warfare plant, testified before the post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he had led a research team that was ordered to develop a "pigmentation weapon" that would "target only black people" and that could be spread through beer, maize, or even vaccinations.

Western intelligence sources have reported that Israel has also been trying to develop such a weapon.

Foreign Report, one of the Jane's security and defense publications, reported an unnamed source as saying that Israeli scientists have used some of the South African research.

William Cohen, Secretary of Defense during the Bill Clinton administration confirmed that he had received reports of countries working to create "certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic-specific" and an intelligence source stated that Israel was one of those countries. [Cohen Address At Conference On Terrorism]

A scientist working at Israel's biological research center in Nes Tziyone said the team had "succeeded in pinpointing a particular characteristic in the genetic profile of certain Arab communities, particularly the Iraqi people."

Dedi Zucker, a member of the Israeli Knesset, denounced the project saying, "Morally, based on our history, and our tradition and our experience, such a weapon is monstrous and should be denied."

The end of apartheid put an end to the research and development on the South African race bomb. Perhaps the U.S. removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq has eliminated Israel’s motive to develop such weapons.

But ethnic conflict exists both within and across national borders around the world. And unlike ICBMs, aircraft carriers, or high performance jet aircraft, biological race bombs can be developed by small terrorist groups. Indeed, such groups have developed and even used simpler biological weapons.[VDARE.COM note: Remember that the punji stick was essentially a biological weapon. See this paper on Biological Warfare Before 1914, for stories of biological warfare committed by (not against, by) American Indians.]

These weapons wouldn't have pinpoint accuracy. But anybody crazy enough to attempt them would be crazy enough to consider large numbers of dead among their own nation, race, or ethnic group as acceptable losses in their unholy, holy war to save their own group.

Given the possibility of ethnically targeted weapons, who is at risk and why? I will discuss this in a later article.

This article is adapted and updated from Race: The Reality of Human Differences by Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele.

Frank Miele [Email him] is also the author of Intelligence, Race, and Genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen and The Battlegrounds of Bio-Science. He is a senior editor of Skeptic Magazine.