Seeds of Destruction'
The Hidden Agenda
of
Genetic Manipulation
F. William Engdahl
PART V
Population Control
CHAPTER 12
Terminators, Traitors,
Spermicidal Corn
"Two Steps Forward, Then
One Step Backward ... "
By the end of the 1980's, backed by the new clout of the WTO
and the full support from the White House, the genetic seed
giants began to get visibly intoxicated by the possibilities of taking over the world's food supply. They all were working feverishly
on a new technology which would allow them to sell seed that
would not reproduce. The seed companies named their innovation GURT's, short for Genetic Use Restriction Technologies.
The process was soon known as "Terminator" seeds, a reference
to Arnold Schwarzenegger's crude and death-ridden Hollywood
films. As one GMO Terminator backer put it, it was developed to
"protect corporations from unscrupulous farmers" (sic) who might
try to re-use patented seed without paying. No matter that the vast
majority of the world's farmers were too poor to afford the
Monsanto GMO license and other seed fees, and had re-used seed
for thousands of years before.
In 1998, Delta & Pine Land Seed Company, a US bio-tech
company in Scott, Mississippi, was the largest owner of commercial
cotton seeds. With financial backing from the US Department of Agriculture, it had won a joint patent together with the US
Government, for its GURT, or Terminator, technology. Their joint
patent, US patent number 5,723,765 titled "Control of Plant Gene
Expression," allowed its owners and licensees to create sterile seed
by selectively programming a plant's DNA to kill its own embryos.
The patent applied to plants and seeds of all species.1
If farmers tried to save the seeds at harvest for future crops, the
seeds produced by these plants would not grow. Peas, tomatoes,
peppers, wheat, rice or corn would essentially become seed cemeteries. As one critic put it, "In one broad, brazen stroke of his hand,
man will have irretrievably broken the plant-to-seed-to plant-to seed cycle, the cycle that supports most life on the planet. No seed,
no food ... unless you buy more seed."2 [Nothing logical about that,all about monopoly and greed DC]
One year later Monsanto announced it was buying Delta & Pine
Land. They had their eyes firmly on getting the Terminator patent.
They knew it was applicable not only to cotton seeds but to all
seeds.
Terminator looked like the answer to the agribusiness dream of
controlling world food production. No longer would they need to
hire expensive detectives to spy on whether farmers were re-using
Monsanto seeds.
Terminator corn, soybeans, or cotton seeds had been genetically modified to "commit suicide" after one harvest season. The
inbuilt gene produced a toxin just before the seed ripened, whereby
in every seed the plant embryo would self-destruct. The Terminator
seeds would automatically prevent farmers from saving and reusing the seed for the next harvest. The technology was a beautiful
means of enforcing Monsanto or other GMO patent rights and
fees, especially in developing economies where patent rights were
little respected.
A second, closely related technology which held priority R&D
funding by the gene multinationals in the late 1990's was T -GURT
seeds, the second generation of Terminator. T -Gurts, or Trait Genetic
Use Restriction Technologies, were nicknamed "Traitor;" a reference
to the plant trait features of the genetic technology used. It was also
a word which had a double meaning not lost on its critics.
Traitor technologies relied on controlling not only the plant's
fertility, but also its genetic characteristics. In its US patent application, Delta & Pine Land and the USDA stated the method with
"an inducible gene promoter that is responsive to an exogenous
chemical inducer:' called a "gene switch." This promoter can be
linked to a gene and introduced into a plant. The gene can be selectively expressed (i.e. activated) by application of the chemical
inducer to activate the promoter directly.
The official patent application continued. Growth of the plant
can be controlled by the application or withholding of a chemical
inducer. While the inducer is present, the repressor is expressed,
the promoter attached to the disrupter gene is repressed, the disrupter protein is not expressed, thereby allowing the plant to grow
normally. If the chemical inducer is withheld, the gene switch is
turned off, the repressible promoter is not repressed, so the disrupter protein is expressed and plant development is disrupted.3
A GMO crop of rice or corn would only be resistant to certain
plagues or pests after use of a specific chemical compound, which
would only be available from Monsanto, Syngenta, or other owners of patent rights to the specific Traitor seeds. Farmers trying to
buy seed from the "illegal" seed market would not be able to get the
special chemical compound needed to "turn on" the plant's resistance gene.
Traitor technology offered a unique chance to open an entire
new captive market for Monsanto and the others to sell their agrichemicals. Furthermore, Traitor was cheaper to produce than the
complicated Terminator seeds. Not widely publicized, the fact about
Traitor technologies was that with them it was also possible to
develop GMO plants that needed to be "turned on" in order to grow
or become fertile.
One study noted that 11 new patents were held by the newly formed Syngenta. These patents allowed "genetic modification of
staple crops which will produce disease prone plants (unless treated
with chemicals); control the fertility of crops; control when plants
flower; control when crops sprout; control how crops age:'4
By the year 2000 Syngenta had the single largest interest in GURTs
of all the global GMO companies. Monsanto was determined to
change that, however. 5
Under the Terminator joint agreement between the USDA and
Delta & Pine Land, D&PL had exclusive licensing rights, while the
USDA would earn about 5 percent of the net sales of any commercial product using the technology. The USDA and Pine Land
Co. also applied for patents in some 78 other countries. The official
backing of the US Government gave the patent application huge
leverage that a small private company would lack abroad. Delta &
Pine Land said in its press release that the technology had "the
prospect of opening significant worldwide seed markets to the sale
of transgenic technology for crops in which seed currently is saved
and used in subsequent plantings:'6
In practice, farmers purchased elite seeds that provided only
one harvest; the seeds from this harvest were sterile, absent, or nonelite and the farmer must buy either seed or trait-maintenance
chemical compound from the company.7
The US Government defended its patent on GURTs, which they
named TPS for the benign-sounding "Technology Protection
System":
Because of this seed-saving practice, companies are often reluctant to
make research investments in many crops; they cannot recoup their
multi-year investment in developing improved varieties through sales
in one year. TPS would protect investments made in breeding or genetically engineering these crops. It would do this by reducing potential
sales losses from unauthorized reproduction and sale of seed.8
At the time, in a revealing but little-noticed statement, Delta &
Pine Land admitted that the initial reason they developed Terminator
technology was to market it to rice and wheat farmers in countries
such as India, Pakistan and China.
The implications of Terminator and Traitor technology in the
hands of the GMO agribusiness giants were difficult to grasp.[I do not see the difficulty in understanding how bad an idea it was DC] For
the first time in history, it would allow three or four private multinational seed companies to dictate terms to world farmers for their seed. There are several major crops which usually are not grown
from hybrid seeds. These include wheat, rice, soybeans, and cotton.
Farmers often save the seeds from these crops, and may not need
to go back to the seed company for several years-or longer, in
some parts of the world-to purchase a new variety.9
In the hands of one or more governments intent on using food
as a weapon, Terminator was a tool of biological warfare almost
"too good to believe:' In their US patent applications, the companies
stated, "seed savers number an estimated 1.4 billion farmers worldwide,100 million in Latin America, 300 million in Africa, and
1 billion in Asia-and are responsible for growing between 15 and
20 percent of the world's food supply."10
The Guardian Angel
Saves the GMO Project
An ensuing public uproar over the prospect of major private seed
multinationals controlling seeds through Terminator technology
threatened the very future of the entire Gene Revolution. Ministers
were delivering Sunday sermons on the moral implications of
Terminator; farmers were organizing protests; governments were
holding public hearings on the new development in gene technology. Across the European Union, citizens were in open opposition
to GMO because of the Terminator threat and its implications for
food security, and because of the fact that the US and other patent
offices had decided to grant exclusive patents to Monsanto and
Syngenta for several different varieties of Terminator.
The widespread and growing protest against the obvious potential for misuse of Terminator suicide seeds took on a new character
in May 1998. Monsanto, which had already gotten one patent on
Terminator gene technology six months earlier, announced it would
buy Delta & Pine Land. The move would make Monsanto the
unquestioned leader in genetic Terminator technology.
News of the planned takeover became a public relations disaster
for Monsanto. Newspaper headlines around the world portrayed it
as exactly what it was-an attempt by a private corporation to
control the seed supply of world farmers.
The growing opposition to genetically modified foods, fed by the
negative publicity given to the Terminator seed, led to a dramatic
intervention by the guardian angel of the GMO global project.
In September 1999, Gordon Conway, the Rockefeller Foundation
President, took the highly unusual step of asking to personally
address the Board of Directors of Monsanto. He made clear to them
that what was at stake was to demand Monsanto not to persist in
developing and commercializing Terminator seed technologies. 11
Monsanto listened carefully to Conway. On October 4, 1999,
Monsanto CEO, Robert B. Shapiro, held a press conference where
he announced that the company had decided to stop the process of
commercializing the Terminator technology. Shapiro repeated his
position in an Open Letter that month to Rockefeller Foundation
President Conway, where he said, "We are making a public commitment not to commercialize sterile seed technologies, such as the
one dubbed "Terminator." We are doing this based on input from
you and a wide range of other experts and stakeholders." The
world's press covered it as a major victory for the side of reason
and social justice. In reality, it was a shrewd tactical deception,
worked out together with Rockefeller Foundation's Conway.
For those who bothered to read the fine print, Monsanto had in
fact given up nothing. Monsanto's Shapiro did not back off or reject
the chance to develop Terminator in the future. Only for an undefined time would there be a moratorium on "commercialization."
The commercial stage of Terminator at that point was believed at
least several more years away, earliest perhaps in 2007, so little
would be lost for Monsanto and much would be won in terms of
public relations.
Shapiro made clear in his public statement that he was not about
to give up such a weapon over seed supply without a fight. He
declared that, "Monsanto holds patents on technological approaches
to gene protection that do not render seeds sterile and has studied
one that would inactivate the specific gene responsible for the value added biotech trait."12 He was referring to Traitor technologies.
Shapiro added that, "We are not currently investing resources to
develop these technologies."13
"But:' he stressed, "we do not rule out their future development
. and use for gene protection or their possible agronomic benefits"
(emphasis added). Shortly after that statement, Monsanto announced that it had called off plans to take over Delta & Pine Land as
well. All appeared to signal the death of Terminator. 14
Syngenta announced at the same time that it was also declaring
a moratorium on the commercialization of Terminator, adding
that it would, however, continue with its Traitor developments.
The heat was off the Terminator controversy; the deception had
apparently worked, as press headlines about Terminator began to
disappear from view.
Notably, while Rockefeller's Conway and Monsanto Corporation
were making headlines with their declarations on Terminator suspension, the US Department of Agriculture, the partner in
Terminator with Delta & Pine Land, made no such commitment.
This was indeed curious, as it would have been easy and uncomplicated for the USDA to follow the gene giants by declaring its own
moratorium. The press paid no attention to this. Monsanto's news
was the headline story.
In a June 1998 interview, USDA spokesman Willard Phelps had
declared the US Government policy on Terminator seeds. He
explained that the USDA wanted the technology to be "widely
licensed and made expeditiously available to many seed companies." He added that the Government's aim was "to increase the
value of proprietary seed owned by US seed companies and to open
up new markets in Second and Third World countries:' The USDA
was open about its reasons. It wanted to get Terminator seeds into
the developing world, where the Rockefeller Foundation had put
eventual proliferation of genetically engineered crops at the heart of
its GMO strategy from the beginnings of its r!ce genome project in
1984.15
The Terminator technology was being supported at the highest
levels of the US government to target agriculture in the Second and
Third World. It would make it "safe" for Monsanto, DuPont and
the other seed giants to market their GMO seeds in targeted developing countries. The USDA microbiologist primarily responsible for developing Terminator with D&PL, Melvin Oliver, openly admitted: "My main interest is the protection of American technology.
Our mission is to protect US agriculture, and to make us competitive in the face of foreign competition. Without this, there is no
way of protecting the technology [patented seed]." 16
Together with Delta & Pine Land, the USDA had applied for
Terminator patents in 78 countries. The USDA admitted openly,
perhaps carelessly so, that the target for Terminator seeds were the
populations and farmers of the developing world, precisely the
Rockefeller Foundation's long-standing goal of promoting GMO.
The coherence between the 1974 Henry Kissinger NSSM 200
population control policies in the developing world, the Rockefeller
Foundation's support for introduction of gene technologies in targeted developing countries, and the development of a technology
which would allow the private multinationals owning the patents
on vital staple seed varieties, was also beginning to dawn on a
broader thinking public. The development by Monsanto was
increasingly being seen by the world as a kind of Trojan Horse for
Western GMO seed giants to get control over Third World food
supplies in areas with weak or non-existent patent laws.
The Rockefeller-Monsanto public moratorium announcement
in October 1999 was a calculated ploy to direct attention elsewhere,
while the seed companies continued their perfection of Terminator,
Traitor and related technologies.
Meanwhile, as the Rockefeller Foundation understood it, the
urgent priority for the time was to spread GMO seeds worldwide
in order, first, to capture huge markets and to make the use of
patented GMO seeds irreversible. In some cases, companies like
Monsanto were accused by local farmers of illegally smuggling
GMO seeds into regions like Brazil or Poland, in order to later
claim that farmers had "illegally" used their patented seed, while
demanding they pay royalties.
In the case of Brazil, Monsanto was shrewd. Monsanto used the
smuggling of GMO soybeans to its advantage, working with the
illegal GMO soy producers to pressure the Lula da Silva government to legalise the crop. Once the GMO soy became legal in Brazil, Monsanto moved in to put an end to the "black market". With the
government offering an amnesty to farmers who registered their
crops as GMO soy, Monsanto worked out an agreement with producer organisations and soybean crushers, cooperatives and
exporters, to force Brazilian farmers to pay royalties. 17
Rockefeller's Conway clearly realized that the entire strategy of
achieving global control over the food supply was being jeopardized in its most fragile stages by the relentless drive of Monsanto to
promote its Terminator technology. In 1999, GMO seeds had barely
assumed a significant share in the US seed market. Their proliferation in developing countries, with occasional exceptions such as
Argentina, was at that time minimal. The European Union had
imposed a ban or moratorium on licensing GMO plants. Brazil,
Mexico and many African nations had strict bans on GMO imports
or cultivation. The entire Gene Revolution project of the Rockefeller
Foundation and its corporate and political allies was in danger of
flying off the track if Monsanto persisted with the public development of Terminator.
Were the world to wake up to what was possible with GMO seeds,
it might rebel while it still could. This was the evident reasoning
behind the rare event of the Rockefeller Foundation's public intervention. In order to save the entire project, Rockefeller in effect
imposed a higher discipline on Monsanto, and Monsanto got the
message.
Terminator developments never stopped after 1999.
While Monsanto did abandon merger talks with Delta & Pine
Land in late 1999, Delta & Pine and the USDA continued with their
full program to perfect Terminator and Traitor technologies. Delta
Vice President, Harry Collins, declared in a press interview to his
GMO trade peers in the Agral industrial Biotechnology Legal Letter,
"We've continued right on with work on the Technology Protection
System (TPS or Terminator). We never really slowed down. We're
on target, moving ahead to commercialize it. We never really backed
off." 18
Neither did their partner, the United States Department of
Agriculture, back down after 1999. In 2001, the USDA Agricultural Research Service CARS) website announced: "USDA has no plans
to introduce TPS into any germplasm .... Our involvement has
been to help develop the technology, not to assist companies to
use it"-as if to say, "our hands are clean."19
They weren't.
The USDA went on to say it was "committed to making the
[Terminator 1 technology as widely available as possible, so that its
benefits will accrue to all segments of society .... ARS intends to do
research on other applications of this unique gene control discovery .... When new applications are at the appropriate stage of development, this technology will also be transferred to the private sector
for commercial application."20 Terminator was alive and well in
the hands of US Government.
In August 2001, the USDA announced that it had signed a license
agreement with its partner, Delta & Pine Land, allowing D&PL to
commercialize the Terminator technology for its cotton seeds. The
public outcry this time was mute. The issue had fallen off the public
radar screen, and days later the events of September 11,2001 completely buried the USDA announcement. The world suddenly had
other concerns.
After the Terminator furor had died down in June 2003,
Monsanto had begun to repackage Terminator as an "ecological
plus:' Rather than stress the seed control aspect, Monsanto began to
promote Terminator or GURT's as a way to control the spread of
GMO seeds by wind or pollination and the contamination of non-GMO crops. In February 2004, Roger Krueger of Monsanto wrote
a paper together with Harry Collins of Delta & Pine Land in the
magazine of the International Seed Federation, the umbrella association for the industry. Their article dismissed all worries about
the dangers of Terminator or GURT seeds as "conjecture:' and
declared that "GURTs have the potential to benefit farmers in all
size, economic and geographical areas." This time they referred to
Terminator or GURT's as "a possible technical solution" to problems
of plant contamination.
"Push it Down Their Bloody Throats ... "
As soon as the furor around Terminator seeds had vanished from
the headlines of the world's press, the major gene seed companies,
in concert with the US Government, began employing increasingly
coercive tactics to force GMO seeds down the throats of the world
population, especially in the developing world. Among their techniques of persuasion, the genetic seed companies employed bribery,
coercion, and illegal smuggling of their GMO seeds into country
after country to "spread the Gospel of GMO salvation:"
In 2002, the State Department instructed all its aid agencies to act
as international policemen. They were instructed by USAID, a
Government agency, to immediately report to them any opposition
in a recipient country, to GMO food imports. They were told to
collect documentation to determine if the anti-GMO attitude of
the local government was "trade or politically motivated:' If they
determined it was trade motivated, the US Government had recourse
to the WTO or to the threat of WTO sanctions against the aid recipient country, usually a potent threat against poor countries.21
To help Monsanto, DuPont and the other US seed giants spread
GMO seeds. The US State Department and US Department of
Agriculture coordinated to give emergency famine relief aid in the
form of genetically modified US surplus commodities, a practice
condemned by international aid organizations, as it destroyed a
country's local agricultural economy in the process of opening new
markets for Monsanto and friends. The European Union issued an
official protest at the US Government's "use of food aid donations
used as surplus disposal measures."22 Washington ignored the
protest.
In early 2003, the Government of India refused to allow import
of 1,000 tons of US soybean-corn blend on the grounds that it
might contain genetically modified foods which could be hazardous
to human health and which had not been adequately tested. The
import, through the American food aid organizations CARE and
Catholic Relief Services, had thus not been approved. USAID
ignored that small fact and pressed ahead.23
The practice long established by international aid agencies was
to buy their food supplies on the open market, if possible from
farmers in the recipient country or in neighboring countries.
USAID mandated that US-based food aid organizations ship only
grain provided by USAID, which meant genetically modified US
grain. The United States was practically the only donor country
insisting on use of its own food surplus for food aid.
In October 2002, the London Guardian reported that the US
Government offered emergency famine relief aid during a severe
drought, aid worth $266 million, to six countries in southern Africa.
However, it offered it only in the form of genetically modified corn
from US surplus stocks, although ample conventional corn was
available on the market.24 Corn was the staple food in that region
of Africa. Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe all refused the GMO
corn, citing possible health hazards. EU and other food aid donors
gave the respective countries cash to buy their food on the open
market instead, the customary international practice in such situations of famine. Washington had another agenda: spread the use
of GMO seeds as far and wide and as fast as possible, by whatever
means necessary.
When USAID Administrator, Andrew Natsios, was questioned
by the press, he snapped back, "starving people do not plant seeds.
They eat them."25 The farmers where the GMO seeds were taken,
of course, planted the seed for a next harvest, unaware for the most
part of what seed they had gotten. It carried no GMO label, as
Monsanto or DuPont or another of the seed giants would later
remind them. The UN claimed that 160,000 tons of non-GMO
cereals, including corn, were available in neighbouring South Africa,
Kenya and nearby states for relief aid.26
Referring to the USAID pressure on Zambia to accept US GMO
corn as famine aid, Dr. Charles Benbrook, an agronomist and
former Executive Director of the US National Academy of Sciences
Board on Agriculture, replied that, "there is no shortage of non-GMO foods which could be offered to Zambia, and to use the needs
of Zambians to score 'political points' on behalf of biotechnology
was unethical and indeed shameless."27
In 2001, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, two
organizations dominated by Washington, demanded that Malawi's
Government sell off its state emergency food reserves in order to
repay their foreign debts due in 2002. Predictably, in the midst of a
severe drought, Malawi had no food to feed its starving population.
USAID shipped 250,000 metric tons of surplus US GMO corn.
Professor David King, Science Adviser to Britain's Prime Minister,
denounced the efforts by the United States to force GMO technology
into Africa, calling it a "massive human experiment." The British aid
organization, ActionAid, criticized the US action, declaring, "farmers
will be caught in a vicious circle, increasingly dependent on a small
number of giant multinationals for patented seeds."28
That was precisely the plan.
George W. Bush threw the considerable weight of his office to
back the campaign at a G8 European Summit in June 2003, in
which he stated:
Our partners in Europe have blocked all new bio-crops because of
unfounded, unscientific fears. This has caused many African nations
to avoid investing in bio-technologies for fear that their products
will be shut out of European markets.29
Bush was upping the heat on the EU to lift its 1997 ban on GMO
plants. Southern Africa had some of the richest most fertile soil in
the world, abundant supplies of fresh water and a benign climate.
Agribusiness companies like Monsanto and Cargill were clearly
salivating at the prospects of using their industrial factory farming
and GMO plant cultivation. Only a few tens of millions of poor
African citizens stood in the way.
However, Africa was not the only target for the worldwide proliferation of GMO seeds in the early months of the new millennium.
Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and the other major genetic seed
companies used similar forms of coercion, bribery and illegal tactics
to spread their seeds from Poland to Indonesia and beyond. In
Indonesia, Monsanto was forced to plead guilty to criminal charges
of paying $50,000 in bribes to a senior Indonesian Government
official to bypass controls on screening new genetically modified crops. Court records revealed that the bribe had been authorized
in the US headquarters of Monsanto. Monsanto later was found
guilty and forced to pay a fine. 30
In Poland, Monsanto and the other major agribusiness corporations were illegally planting GMO seeds in a country with one of
the richest soils in Europe. In Brazil, Monsanto was accused of illegally smuggling and planting large quantities of GMO soybean
seed into the country. The Government finally lifted a ban on GMO
plants in early 2005, stating it was futile to try to control the spread.
The Gene Revolution was marching forward by all means possible.31
Killing Us Softly, Ever so
Softly, Killing Us Softly With ...
The clear strategy of Monsanto, Dow, DuPont and the Washington
Government backing them was to introduce the GMO seeds in
every corner of the globe, with priority on defenceless, highly
indebted African and other developing countries, or countries like
Poland and Ukraine where government controls were minimal and
official corruption rampant.
Once planted, the seeds would spread rapidly across the land. At
a later date, the GMO seed multinationals, using threats of WTO
sanctions, would be in a position to dominate the seed supply of the
major growing areas of the planet, to give or deny the means of life
sustenance as they saw fit. In intelligence parlance, such a capacity was
called the power of "strategic denial." A potential enemy or rival
would be denied a strategic resource-energy or, in this case, food or be threatened with denial, unless they agreed to certain policy
demands by those controlling the resource.
A Very Special Kind of Corn
The question then became, how did this prospect map onto the
long-term strategy of the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation
and major figures in the US establishment for global population
reduction? A possible answer was soon to be found.
In San Diego, a small, privately-owned biotech company, Epicyte,
held a press conference in September 2001 to make an announcement about its work. Epicyte reported that they had successfully created the ultimate GMO crop-contraceptive corn. They had
taken antibodies from women with a rare condition known as
immune infertility, isolated the genes that regulated the manufacture of those infertility antibodies, and, using genetic engineering
techniques, had inserted the genes into ordinary corn seeds used to
produce corn plants.32 "We have a hothouse filled with corn plants
that make anti-sperm antibodies;' boasted Epicyte President, Mitch
Hein.33
At the time of this dramatic announcement, which went largely
uncommented by the world's major media, Epicyte had concluded
a strategic joint research and licensing agreement with Dow
Chemical Company through Dow AgroSciences, one of the three
agribusiness genetic seed giants in the US. The purpose of that
joint venture, they announced at the time, was to combine Epicyte's
technological breakthroughs with Dow AgroSciences' "strength in
the genetic engineering of crops." Epicyte's product -candidate antibodies were being transformed in corn. Epicyte and the Dow organizations had agreed to a four year program to investigate factors
affecting expression, stability and accumulation of antibodies in
transgenic plants.34 Epicyte had also signed a collaboration with
Novartis Agriculture Discovery Institute (Syngenta) and with
ReProtect LLC of Baltimore to develop other antibody-based microbicides for contraception.35
On October 6, 2002, CBS News reported that the United States
Department of Agriculture, the same agency of the US Government
that had been so vigorous in developing Terminator technology,
had also financed 32 field trials around the country for growing
drug and drug compounds in various crops. The US Government
field trials included Epicyte's spermicidal corn technology. What was
not revealed was that the USDA was also providing the field trial
results to scientists at the US Department of Defense through one
of their numerous biological research laboratories such as the
Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center in Maryland.36
Previously, the production of antibodies for contraception purposes required costly facilities costing up to four hundred million
dollars for ultra-sterile special fermentation conditions, using hamster ovarian bacteria as the antibody source. Epicyte claimed
it needed only perhaps 100 acres of corn land to grow the special
GMO spermicidal corn producing a vastly greater quantity of antibody for the spermicide at a cost of a mere few million dollars, a cost
reduction of some 90%.37
At the time of their brief public announcement, which they presented as a contribution to the world "over-population" problem,
Epicyte estimated the commercial availability of its spermicidal
corn would come in 2006 or 2007. After the press release, the discussion of Epicyte's breakthrough in creating spermicidal corn
which would kill human sperm vanished. The company itself was
taken over in May 2004 by a private Pittsboro, North Carolina
biotech company. Biolex thus acquired Epicyte Pharmaceutical.38
Nothing more was heard in any media about the development of
spermicidal corn and the theme vanished from view.
Rumors were that the research continued on a secret basis
because of the politically explosive impact of a corn variety which,
when consumed, would make human male sperm sterile. Mexican
farmers were already in an uproar over the unauthorized spread
of genetically engineered corn into the heart of the Mexican corn
seed treasure in Oaxaca.39
It took little effort to imagine the impact were corn-which was
the dietary staple of most Mexicans-to contain Epicyte's spermicidal antibodies. "Some spermicidal corn on the cob? Or perhaps
a killer tortilla, mister?" Or what about that next bowl of corn
flakes? The creator of the Kellogg's Corn Flakes company was also
a founding patron of the American Eugenics Society almost a century before, along with John D. Rockefeller.
From Terminator Suicide
Seeds to Spermicidal Corn
It was becoming clear why powerful elite circles of the United States,
themselves enormously wealthy and largely untaxed thanks to Bush
Administration tax cuts, backed the introduction of genetically
modified seeds into the world food chain as a strategic priority.
That elite included not only the Rockefeller and Ford foundations
and most other foundations tied to the large private family fortunes of the wealthiest American families. It also included the US State
Department, the National Security Council, the US Department
of Agriculture, as well as the leading policy circles of the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, along with agencies
of the United Nations including WHO and FAO.
Tetanus, Rockefeller and the
World Health Organization
The folks at the Rockefeller Foundation were deadly serious about
wanting to solve the world hunger problem through the worldwide
proliferation of GMO seeds and crops. Only their presumed
method to do so aimed at a "supply side" solution rather than the
"demand side." They were out to limit population by going after the
human reproductive process itself.
For any skeptics who doubted their intent, they needed only to
look at the foundation's work with the United Nations' World Health
Organization in Mexico, Nicaragua, the Philippines and other poorer
developing countries. The foundation had quietly funded a WHO
program in "reproductive health;' which had developed an innovative tetanus vaccine. It was no spur of the moment decision by
the people at Rockefeller. Nor could they claim to be unaware of the
true nature of their research funding. They had worked with WHO
researchers since 1972 to develop a new double-whammy vaccine,
at the same time during which the foundation had been funding
research in other bio-technology areas including genetically engineered crops.40
In the early 1990's, according to a report from the Global Vaccine
Institute, the WHO oversaw massive vaccination campaigns against
tetanus in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines. Comite Pro Vida
de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization, became suspicious
of the motives behind the WHO program and decided to test
numerous vials of the vaccine and found them to contain human
Chorionic Gonadotropin, or hCG. That was a curious component
for a vaccine designed to protect people against lockjaw arising
from infection with rusty nail wounds or other contact with certain
bacteria found in soil. The tetanus disease was indeed, also rather
rare.41
It was also curious because hCG was a natural hormone needed
to maintain a pregnancy. However, when combined with a tetanus
toxoid carrier, it stimulated the formation of antibodies against
hCG, rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy, a
form of concealed abortion. Similar reports of vaccines laced with
hCG hormones came from the Philippines and Nicaragua.42
The Comite Pro Vida organization confirmed several other curious facts about the WHO vaccination program. The tetanus vaccine
had been given only to women in the childbearing ages between 15-
45. It was not given to men or children 43 Furthermore, it was usually
given in a series of three vaccinations only months apart to insure
that women had a high enough dosage of hCG, even though one
tetanus injection held for at least ten years. The presence of hCG
was a clear contamination of the vaccine. None of the women receiving the Tetanus hCG vaccine were told it contained an abortion
agent. The WHO clearly intended it that way.
Pro Vida dug further and learned that the Rockefeller Foundation,
working with John D. Rockefeller Ill's Population Council, the World
Bank, the UN Development Program and the Ford Foundation, and
others had been working with the WHO for 20 years to develop an
anti-fertility vaccine using hCG with tetanus as well as with other
vaccines.44
Among those "others" involved in funding the WHO research
was a list which included the All India Institute of Medical Sciences,
and a number of universities, including Uppsala in Sweden, Helsinki
University, and Ohio State University. The list also included the
US Government, through its National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development, a part of National Institutes of Health
(NIH). The latter US Government agency supplied the hCG hormone in some of the anti-fertility vaccine experiments.45
The respected British medical journal, The Lancet, in a June 11,
1988 article entitled "Clinical Trials of a WHO Birth Control
Vaccine;' confirmed the findings of the Comite Pro Vida de Mexico.
Why a Tetanus Toxoid "Carrier"? Because the human body does
not attack its own naturally occurring hormone hCG, the body
has to be fooled into treating hCG as an invading enemy in order to develop a successful anti-fertility vaccine utilizing hCG antibodies, according G.P. Talwar, one of the scientists involved.46
By mid-1993, the WHO had spent a total of $365 million of its
scarce research funds on what it euphemistically dubbed "reproductive health:' including research on implanting hCG into tetanus
vaccines. WHO officials declined to explain why women they had
vaccinated had developed anti-hCG antibodies 47
They dismissed the findings of Pro Vida by claiming the charges
were coming from "Right to Life and Catholic sources;" as if that
should indicate some fatal bias. If you can't deny the message, at
least try to discredit the messenger.
When four additional vials of the tetanus vaccine used on
women in the Philippines were sent to St. Luke's Lutheran Medical
Center in Manila, where all four tested positive for hCG, the officials
at WHO shifted. The WHO now claimed the hCG had come from
the manufacturing process.
The vaccine had been produced by Connaught Laboratories
Ltd of Canada, Intervex and CSL Laboratories of Australia.
Connaught, one of the world's largest producers of vaccines, was
part of the French pharmaceutical Rhone Poulenc group. Among
other research projects, Connaught was engaged in producing a
genetically engineered version of the Human Immunodeficiency
Virus (HIV).
Population reduction and genetically engineered crops were
clearly part of the same broad strategy: the drastic reduction of
the world's population. It was in fact a sophisticated form of what
the Pentagon termed biological warfare, promulgated under the
name of "solving the world hunger problem."
The Hidden GMO Agenda Emerges
The US and UK governments' relentless backing for the global
spread of genetically modified seeds was in fact the implementation
of a decades long policy of the Rockefeller Foundation since the
1930's, when it funded Nazi eugenics research-i.e. mass-scale population reduction, and control of darker-skinned races by an Anglo-Saxon white elite. As some of these circles saw it, war as a means of
population reduction was costly and not that efficient.
In 1925, Britain's Winston Churchill, a robust racist, commented
favorably on the potential for biological warfare, writing about the
desirability of the government being able to produce "pestilences
methodically prepared and deliberately launched upon man
and beast .... Blight to destroy crops. Anthrax to slay horses and
cattle .... " And that was in 1925.48
Reflecting the discussion in US senior military circles, Lt. Col.
Robert P. Kadlec, USAF, of the College of Aerospace Doctrine,
Research and Education, discussed in a book written in the 1990's,
Battlefield of the Future, the biowarfare potential of genetically engineered crops. He referred to GMO-based biological weapons as
"cost-effective" weapons of mass destruction. He wrote that,
"Compared with other mass destruction weapons, biological
weapons are cheap. A recent Office of Technology Assessment
report paces the cost of a BW (biological weapon) arsenal as low
as $10 million ... in stark contrast to a low-estimate of $200 million for developing a single nuclear weapon."49
Kadlec then went on to state that, "Using biological weapons
under the cover of an endemic or natural disease occurrence provides an attacker the potential for plausible denial. In this context,
biological weapons offer greater possibilities for use than do nuclear
weapons."50
The biological weapons and genetic engineering research project,
Sunshine Project, reported that "researchers in the USA, UK, Russia
and Germany have genetically engineered biological weapons
agents, building new deadly strains .... Genetic engineering can
be used to broaden the classical bio-weapons arsenal ... bacteria can
not only be made resistant to antibiotics or vaccines, they can also
be made more toxic, harder to detect ... :'51
Back in the 1980's around the time the Rockefeller Foundation
launched its major genetic engineering rice project, the start of the
Gene Revolution, the US Pentagon quietly initiated military
applications of biotechnology. Citing the Russian threat, US military researchers, in highly classified research, began using the new genetic engineering techniques. Among the projects researched
was a genetically modified refined opium-like substance, whose
minute presence induced sleep, anxiety, submissiveness or temporary blindness.
Significantly, in the context of Terminator, GMO spermicides
and other developments of the Gene Revolution, the Bush
Administration rejected a ban on further bio-weapons development,
and at the same time refused to accept the Kyoto Protocol on global
warming and CO2 emissions. 52 The bio-weapons protocol was a
major issue among the list of things the new administration in
Washington unilaterally rejected. The media dutifully turned its
focus, however, to the Bush rejection of Kyoto, largely ignoring the
Administration's significant refusal to cooperate on banning biological and toxic weapons.
In one of his first acts after taking office in January 2001, Bush
announced that he refused to support a legally binding Biological
and Toxic Weapons Protocol (BTWC), leading to collapse of those
international talks. Little reason was given. A 2004 study by the
British Medical Association concluded that the world was perhaps
only a few years away from "terrifying biological weapons capable
of killing only people of specific ethnic groups:' citing advances in
"genetic weapons technology."53
"We're tempted to say that nobody in their right mind would
ever use these things:' remarked Stanford University biophysicist,
Professor Steven Block, a man with years of personal experience
with classified Pentagon and Government biological research. "But:'
Block added, "not everybody is in their right mind . .. :'54
next
Avian Flu Panic and GMO Chickens ,and
Genetic Armageddon: Terminator and Patents on Pigs
Notes
1. Melvin John Oliver et al., United States Patent, Control of Plant Gene Expression,
Patent no. 5,723,765, 3 March 1998, detailed description of the invention in
http://patftl.uspto.gov.
2. Geri Guidetti, "Seed Terminator and Mega-Merger Threaten Food and
Freedom, Food Supply Update: June 5,1998", The Ark Institute, http://www.arkinstitute.com/98/up0606.htm, 5 June 1998.
3. Melvin John Oliver, op. cit.
4. Hugh Warwick, Syngenta: Switching off Farmers' Rights?, Genetics Forum,
Bern, October 2000, http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Syngenta-Switching-OffRights.htm#exec.
5. Ibid.
6. Cooperative Research, March 3, 1998: Patent on Terminator Seeds Granted,
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/ entity. j sp? entity=us_ department of agriculture.
7. Zac Hanley and Kieran Elborough, "Re-emerging Biotechnologies:
Rehabilitating the Terminator", ISB News Report, June 2002, p. 1.
8. United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, op. cit.,
29 March 2004.
9. Martha L. Crouch, How the Terminator Terminates, lists.ibiblio.org lpipermaiUpermaculture/ 1999-January/005941.html, Indiana University, Bloomington,
Indiana, 1998.
10. US Patent and Technology Office, USPTO Patent Database, 3 March 1998.
11 . USA Today, "The Seeds of Warning for Biotech Companies", USA Today, 10D,
29 June 1999.
12. Robert B. Shapiro, Open Letter From Monsanto CEO Robert B. Shapiro To
Rockefeller Foundation President Gordon Conway and Others, http://www.monsanto.co.uk/news/ukshowlib.phtml?uid=9949,4 October 1999.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Willard Phelps, USDA spokesman, Interview with RAFl (now ETC), 10 March
1998, cited in http://www.cropchoice.com leadstry7f4c.html?recid=694.
16. Melvin J. Oliver, USDA molecular biologist and primary inventor of the technology, quoted in RAFl Communique, March 1998.
17. GRAIN, "Confronting Contamination: 5 Reasons to Reject Co-existence,
Contamination in Argentina and Brazil pays off for Monsanto", Seedling,
http://www.grain.org lseedling, April 2004.
18. RAFI, 25 February 2000, quoted in Jaan Suurktila, Problems with Genetically
Engineered Food Archive: RAFI Says Terminator Seeds on Fast Track,
http://www.psrast.orglprobobstarch.htm.
19. United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, op. cit.,
29 March 2004.
20. Ibid.
21. Ashok B. Sharma, "US Aid Agencies Instructed to Report Anti-GM Nations
to USAID", The Financial Express (India), http://www.mindfully.org/GE/
2003/USAID-Report-AntiGMI4jan03.htm, 14 January 2003.
22. European Commission, WTO and Agriculture: European Commission Proposes
More Market Opening, Less Trade Distorting Support and a Radically Better Deal
for Developing Countries, Press release, 16 December 2002.
23. Ashok B. Sharma, op. cit.
24. John Vidal, "US Dumping Unsold GMO Food on Africa", The Guardian,
7 October 2002.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Charles Benbrook, quoted in "Southern Africa's Food Aid Crisis Shamelessly
Engineered to Score 'Political Points' Says Leading US Agronomist", Norfolk Genetic
Information Network, ngin.tripod.com/270902a.htm, 27 September 2002.
28. Mark Townsend, "Blair Urges Crackdown on Third World Profiteering", The
Observer, 1 September 2002.
29. BBC News, Bush: Africa Hostage to GM Fears, 22 May 2003, http://
news.bbc.co.uki2/hi/americas/3050855.stm.
30. Jonathan Birchall, "Indonesia: Monsanto Agrees to US $1.5 Million Over Crop
Bribe", Financial Times (London), 7 January 2005.
31. Andrew Hay, "Environmentalists Fear Brazil's Lifting of GMO Ban;' Reuters,
7 March 2005.
32. Robin McKie, "GMO Corn Set to Stop Man Spreading His Seed", The Observer,
9 September 2001. McKie writes, "The pregnancy prevention plants are the handiwork of the San Diego biotechnology company Epicyte, where researchers have
discovered a rare class of human antibodies that attack sperm. By isolating the
genes that regulate the manufacture of these antibodies, and by putting them in
corn plants, the company has created tiny horticultural factories that make contraceptives ... Contraceptive corn is based on research on the rare condition,
immune infertility, in which a woman makes antibodies that attack
sperm ... Essentially, the antibodies are attracted to surface receptors on the sperm:'
said Hein. "They latch on and make each sperm so heavy it cannot move forward.
It just shakes about as if it was doing the lambada."
33. Ibid.
34. PRNewswire, Dow, Epicyte Enter Research, Licensing Agreement, 5 September
2000.
35. "Epicyte: Company of the Month': The San Diego Biotech Journal, June 2001,
http://www.biotechjournal.com/JournaIlJun200 1 /juneartA200 l.pdf.
36. Wyatt Andrews, "In Coming Harvests, Pharmaceutical Corn", CBS News,
http://www.muhammadfarms.com/News-Oct6-12-2002.htm. 8 October 2002.
37. The San Diego Biotech Journal, op. cit. See also Business Wire, Epicyte Receives
SBIR Grant to Fund HPV Antibody Development; Marks Fifth Grant for Epicyte to
Develop Sexual Health Products, 5 June 2001.
38. Biolex Acquires San Diego Based Epicyte Pharmaceutical, Company Press
Release, 6 May 2004. See http://www.biolex.comandhttp:/ /www.epicyte.com
39. S'ra DeSantis, "Mexico: Genetically Modified Organisms Threaten Indigenous
Corn", Z Magazine, July-August 2002.
40. "Clinical Trials of a WHO Birth Control Vaccine': The Lancet, 11 June 1988.
41. James A. Miller, ''Are New Vaccines Laced With Birth-Control Drugs?", HLI
Reports, Human Life International, Gaithersburg, Maryland; June-July 1995.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid. The author cites details of official WHO articles on birth control vaccines
including, "Vaccines for Fertility Regulation:' Chapter 11, pp. 177-198, Research
in Human Reproduction, Biennial Report, 1986-1987, WHO Special Programme
of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction, WHO,
Geneva, 1988.
45. James A. Miller, op. cit.
46. W.R. Jones, et aI., "Phase 1 Clinical Trials of a World Health Organisation
Birth Control Vaccine", The Lancet, II June 1988, pp. 1295-1298. The authors
write, "A birth control vaccine incorporating a synthetic peptide antigen representing the amino acid sequence ... of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG-beta)
was submitted to a phase 1 clinical trial. Thirty surgically sterilised female volunteers, divided into five equal groups for different vaccine doses, received two
intramuscular injections six weeks apart. Over a six-month follow-up ... potentially 281
contraceptive levels of antibodies to hCG developed in all subjects. In the highest vaccine dose group, the results gave promise of a contraceptive effect of six
months' duration." Also, G.P. Talwar, et aI., "Prospects of an Anti-hCG Vaccine
Inducing Antibodies of High Affinity ... ", Reproductive Technology, 1989, Elsevier
Science Publishers, 1990, Amsterdam, New York, p. 23l.
47. James.A. Miller, op. cit. Also World Health Organization, "Challenges in
Reproductive Health Research", Biennial Report, 1992-1993, Geneva, 1994, p. 186.
48. Winston Churchill, quoted in Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman, A Higher
Form of Killing, Noonday Press, New York, 1982. See also George Rosie, "Churchill's
Anthrax Bombs: UK Planned to Wipe out Germany with Anthrax': Sunday Herald,
London, 14 October 200 l.
49. Robert P.Kadlec, Biological Weapons for Waging Economic Warfare and Twenty First Century Germ Warfare, http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.millair chronicles/
battle/chp 1 O.html, and ... chp9.html.
50. Ibid.
5l. Sunshine: Biological Weapons and Genetical Engineering, Genetic Engineering
is Regularly Used to Produce Lethal Bacteria, http://www.sunshine-project.org/
bwintro/gebw.html.
52. Ibid.
53. Helen Nugent, "Gene Wars Only a Few Years Away, Say Doctors", London
Times, 26 October 2004.
54. Steven Block, quoted in Mark Shwartz, "Biological Warfare Emerges as 21st Century Threat", Stanford Report, news-service.stanford.edu/news/200 11 january 17 /bioterror-117 .html, 11 January 200 l.
2 comments:
Sure would be nice to see a current investigation into GMO, especially for the Glyphosate issue and cancer lawsuits.
yeah have at it, I'm done with all this bullshit
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