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DownStreet's Monthly
Straw Poll
. DownStreet's
Monthly Straw Poll:
Should the U.S. Stop Its
Genetic Engineering of Anthrax? Background:
This
month's Puzzling
Evidence: True Stories focuses on the relatively recent revelations
about U.S. government-sponsored experiments with biological warfare
agents, weapons, and manufacturing, including anthrax. The
revelations came roughly one week before the attacks of September 11th and
ran for a few days, after which, for understandable reasons, the news was
quickly submerged by more pressing matters. But in the wake of the
anthrax cases that have emerged since the attacks, attention is once again
beginning to focus on the issue. We urge you to
read this month's True
Stories for a fuller discussion. But for those of you who may
prefer not to, we will try to provide the highlights here.
On September 4th, the N.Y. Times reported
that, "Over the past several years the United States has embarked
on a program of secret research on biological weapons that, some
officials say, tests the limits of the global treaty banning such
weapons." The program was
started under the Clinton administration and is being continued and
up-graded under the Bush administration. It is run under the
auspices of the CIA, originally in a number of projects
collectively called Clear Vision. The initial
projects included experimentation with 'bomblets' for the effective
delivery of biological agents, and the building of a biological
weapons manufacturing facility in Nevada. The emphasis of the
Bush administration is on developing genetically engineered anthrax
that would be resistant to current known vaccines. Both
the Clinton and Bush administrations have maintained that the purpose
of the experiments was "defensive," i.e., to use the results
of the experiments in order to develop more effective counter-terror
measures, as well as more effective vaccines. Despite
the "defensive" claim, there have been continuing concerns
from the beginning, including some concerns from the State Dept. as
well as other nations around the world, that these experiments are in
direct violation of the 1972 international treaty called the
Biological Weapons Convention, which the U.S. had signed.
However, lawyers for the CIA and the White House under both the
Clinton and Bush administrations have said the U.S. is within its
rights under the treaty. Recently, despite the
fact that it has been signed by no less than 140 nations already, the
U.S. refused to sign an amendment to the BWC treaty that would
strengthen one of its long-standing loopholes -- the lack of effective
provisions for on-site inspection of any facilities involved in the
production of biological agents that could be used in warfare.
To be up front, for those of you who chose not to read the
full text in this month's True
Stories, we ended that piece with the following observation: ...
Call us crazy. But it would seem to us that the last thing we need
is a more virulent strain of anthrax, especially one that might fall
into the wrong hands.
That is just
one of the concerns we have concerning these revelations. But given
the current concerns about anthrax, we thought we'd put the question to
you: This Straw Poll is
no longer active.
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