Thousands of U.S. scientists are abandoning benign research in areas such as microbiology, asthma, immunology, epidemiology (the study of infectious disease), and other “meat and potatoes” areas of biomedical research in exchange for big-buck research grants from the Bush administration to work with lethal, but extraordinarily rare bugs such as anthrax, bubonic plague and small pox. Roughly $1.75 billion - more than half the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) 2003 funding - is being dumped into biodefense. The remaining $1.36 billion or so will go to the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). But, scientists are now reporting that even the bulk of these funds are being doled out to researchers who can prove their work is tied to biodefense. While just 6 Americans have so far died from pathogens wielded by terrorists, and no large-scale attack may EVER occur, millions of people around the world, including Americans, are suffering and dying each and every year from far less exotic bugs, research into which is chronically underfunded.

To get some perspective on just how skewed American research priorities are, especially under the Bush regime, consider the following array of facts, taken from World Health Organization statistics, the Merck Medical Manual, and recent reports in ”Nature” and “Science” magazines:

***** Just over half of ALL premature human deaths on planet Earth are caused by six major infectious diseases. Most of the victims are under 25 years of age. They are:

PNEUMONIA: This ancient foe of humanity is a growing problem in western countries where overuse and misuse of antibiotics have given rise to superstrains of causative pathogens. Drug-resistant pneumonia is now one of the most common causes of death in hospitals.

TUBERCULOSIS: The number one infectious bacterial killer globally, claiming over 2 MILLION lives each year. TB is making a rapid comeback in Russia and throughout Europe, with some superstrains of the disease appearing that are resistant to all antibiotics normally used to combat the disease.

MEASLES: The most contagious disease known to man – more contagious than small pox and influenza – this killer of children is still rampant in many third world nations. Most deaths are caused by opportunistic bacterial infections, including pneumonia.

MALARIA: If ever there was a disease that could be described as the scourge of humankind, this is it. Malaria causes a staggering 275 MILLION highly debilitating episodes of disease every year and kills 1.5 MILLION people. The only time the U.S. has dedicated substantial research funding to malaria is when corporate interests are at stake. For example, U.S. oil companies, eager to expand their operations in malaria-ridden areas such as Indonesia, are now donating money to malaria research. In a clear show of screwed up, jingoistic priorities, the Bush administration has dumped more resources into the “fight” against West Nile virus (another mosquito-borne disease), simply because it had the “audacity” to enter the U.S. and actually kill 215 Americans .

AIDS: An estimated 40 MILLION people (most experts say this is probably too low) around the globe are now infected with human immunodeficiency virus, better known as HIV. In the U.S. AIDS has now steadily moving up the list of the top 15 causes of death, rubbing shoulders with car accidents and murder. In some areas of Africa, one in three adults are infected. Yet the Bush administration has consistently diverted funding away from AIDS research (while making a bogus show of support) and has also undermined the one most effective line of prevention: clinics focused on birth control where safe sex practices are facilitated. Bush pulled American funding from any clinic performing abortions – and since most family planning clinics in poor regions were making abortions available, that means most clinics. Now thousands of desperately ill women with HIV/AIDS who become pregnant are doomed not just to die, but to bring an infected child, soon to be orphaned into hopeless poverty. An estimated 80 million children are now “AIDS orphans.” In any case, Bush’s attitude about AIDS was made painfully clear when he appointed Terry Thacker to the Presidential Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS. Thacker, an HIV-positive Christian activist has publicly proclaimed his ignorance by decrying AIDS as “a gay plague.”

DIARRHEAL DISEASE: This affliction is caused by a variety of bacteria and protozoans in tainted soil, food or water. Victims typically die from dehydration and other complications. The syndrome is epidemic in poor nations where clean water is unavailable. Each year, diarrheal disease claims the lives of at least TWO MILLION CHILDREN world wide under the age of five. Between 1991-2000, an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children died from diarrheal disease caused by tainted water, as a consequence of the Bush I administration’s destruction of the country’s water purification facilities. When Bush II claims that sanctions are what killed most Iraqis since Gulf War I, this is a lie. Lack of clean water due to the US targeting of water treatment plants was the top cause of mortality. In Afghanistan, in the wake of the relentless U.S. bombing, diarrheal disease is now the rise, esp. among encampments of displaced people.

Overall, these six diseases will kill over 100 MILLION humans in the coming decade, while, through debilitation, loss of income, and other consequences of illness, devastating the quality of billions of other lives. If these afflictions seem too ”primitive” to be much of a threat to “sophisticated,” healthy westerners (sadly, this is the arrogant attitude of many rightwingers, including Bush), don’t get too comfortable. The U.S. has its own growing scourge of illnesses – many of them about as primitive as they get. Seven common pathogens cause up to 12 MILLION cases of illness and 4,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. These bugs are largely found in water, soil, or food – they do not come in a white-powder-filled envelope or with a color-coded warning: Campylobacter jejuni, Clostridium perfingens, Escherichia coli (Ecoli) strain 0157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus (the same bug that causes ear infections, sinusitis, and septicemia and likes to target the elderly and children under 5), and Toxoplasms gondii

Unfortunately, the incidence and severity of these infections are getting worse, not better, as the pathogens rapidly develop resistance to drugs. America has the resources to avert millions of deaths globally, and tens of thousands here in the U.S. in the coming decade, if only its government could get its priorities straight. Instead, an estimated 20,000 scientists at 1,000 American labs are now involved in some form of biodefense-related research.

. Here’s a typical example of what is happening: Rod Welch, researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was, until the Bush regime, working to find antidotes to the toxin produced by the lethal strain of Ecoli (E.coli 0157:H7). This nasty bug infects tens of thousands of Americans every year, hundreds of whom, mostly children, elderly, and those with weakened immune systems, die. Welch’s work, if successfully completed, may have saved much annual suffering and death for decades to come. So where is Rod now? Recruited by the Bush Reich to begin new studies into bioweapons agents that may never infect, let alone kill, a single human being. The bugs Welch and other subverted researchers were studying, pre-Bush, kill people here and now . But these researchers are succumbing, by the droves, to the dirty glint of Bush gold – gold that seems earmarked for everything but the public good.

In addition to making biodefense research an over-inflated priority, Bush is also throwing other roadblocks in the way of researchers seeking to make a meaningful contribution. Some insiders have said that the Committee on Human Research is now so bogged down by abortion politics they are barely giving any attention at all to patient safety in clinical trials. At the EPA, a massive focus SHOULD be placed on many areas of scientific research, especially environmental monitoring (accurately tracking pollutants)– an area of research that cannot be underestimated in importance. Instead, the focus is on developing schemes for manipulating environmental data to corporate advantage and in trying to get rid of anyone with a liberal, environmentalist mind set. A few months back, the EPA introduced a new scheme called “appreciative thinking” (the stuff of corporate seminars). Seems harmless enough? A “survey” was passed out in the name of this new program to EPA employees by Henry L. Longest II, administrator of the EPA's Office of Research and Development. The survey was supposedly designed to determine the employee’s attitude toward “positive change," but the questions seemed more geared at trying to identify any freewheeling liberals. Sample true/false statement: “I’ve often imagined being sexual with a friend, colleague, or acquaintance.” “I become self-conscious when using public toilets" (if you don't you must be a liberal?). Although the ensuing outcry caused the survey to be canceled, the direction of the EPA was made abundantly clear.

The NIH is now becoming more open to “donations” by “corporate sponsors,” which, of course, removes them further and further from scientific impartiality. Some of the “donations,” while seeming “noble” on the surface are, at second perusal, questionable. For example, Bill Gates, who has had his back amply scratched by the Federal Courts under Bush, being let off very lightly in the anti-trust case against him, has donated $200 million to the NIH for a program devoted to addressing “grand challenges” in biomedical research. But if Gates really were a global philanthropist without an eye to personal advantage, why not give the $200 million to the World Health Organization, which already has identified the grand challenges and knows exactly where the money is most needed? Once corporate sponsors become routine, where will it end? As it is, the big pharmaceutical companies now get much of their research for blockbuster drugs funded by taxpayers via NIH. With this administration’s funding priorities already skewed away from the public good, increased corporate influence at NIH cannot bode well.

To put Bush’s funding priorities in a very simple but stark perspective, consider this: He pledged a MINIMUM of $26 billion to Turkey as a bribe to allow the deployment of thousands of troops along Iraq’s northern border to facilitate a war that will benefit only the oil companies, defense companies and reconstruction contractors. This blood money is EIGHT TIMES MORE than Bush has pledged for the entire NIH, NIAID budget and the alleged “biodefense” of 260 million Americans .

Researchers trying to put a positive spin on this indefensible rip-off point to the “secondary benefits” that may come out of this research. Tony Fauci of NIAID last fall gushed about how biodefense work helped the Centers for Disease Control better respond to West Nile Virus, which killed 215 Americans. This is hardly an achievement to write home about when at least TEN MILLION people globally will die this year from far more common and under-researched diseases. Many of these diseases, especially diarrheal illnesses, TB, and AIDS, are incurred and proliferated by the devastated living conditions wrought by past wars, many funded or conducted by the U.S. Since the 1991 Gulf War, an estimated 1.5 Iraqis (both adults and children) have died from diseases and other causes (malnutrition, landmines, etc.) directly traceable to the consequences of war). Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers are still suffering from Gulf War syndrome, brought on by exposure to the substances that “go with the territory of modern warfare.” How many more thousands of people will be suffering and dying in the next decade from the affects of a new war, long after the “smart bombs” have fallen? While the Bush scientists spend billions to find a new and better cure for an anthrax epidemic that may never happen, new antibiotics and treatments for old, sure killers like TB are not being developed, or are coming along at an underfunded snail’s pace.

In any case, the most likely “secondary benefit” that will come out of the intensive biodefense research now being conducted is a vast zoo of bioengineered superpathogens. In their never-ending effort to anticipate exotic, possible-but-unlikely scenarios, biodefense researchers routinely genetically manipulate pathogens. In fact, the use of microbes intentionally engineered to be resistant to drugs or to secrete ever more toxic substances has become so rampant that the Department of Human Services plans to start requiring researchers to routinely report such work. Incredibly enough, they are not at present required to.do so. Given such envelope-pushing practices, if a bionightmare occurs in the U.S., it is much more likely to be the result of an act of carelessness by one of the several thousand U.S. researchers handling mutant microbes than an act of intentional terrorism by a band of fanatics. Afterall, if “scientific experts” could manage to put the wrong heart into a 17-year-old girl with the entire world watching, what makes anyone imagine there won’t be deadly accidents occurring with tens of thousands of researchers working under cover of secrecy with deadly pathogens?

Just as scary, as scientists press forward with new, ever-more exotic future-scenario “biodefense research,” they do not appear to be devoting equal time to solving existing biodefense problems. Take the problem of the lethal side effects caused in a significant percentage of recipients of the small pox vaccine. What the Homeland “Security” people and the American media have failed to inform the public is that the smallpox vaccine was discontinued in 1972 because of its side effects (as weighed against the dwindling need) and that thousands of doses of vaccine now being passed out have been retrieved from 30-year-old discontinued stocks. Some may work. Some may not. But what a windfall for the producers, who are now making a profit off a commodity they were formerly having to pay to keep in safe storage.

In any case, mass vaccination is neither necessary nor desirable. According to the Merck Medical Manual, the small pox vaccine can be effectively administered up to seven days AFTER infection (the vaccine, in most cases, will render an active infection nonfatal). By waiting, the victim avoids needless vaccine-related dangers while gaining the double benefit of surviving the illness AND acquiring permanent natural immunity. This seems to make far more sense than the running the risks involved in mass vaccination on the very slight chance that a bioattack MAY someday occur. The risks posed by the vaccine are very real and very ugly. During the mass vaccination drive against “swine flu” back in the last year of Gerald Ford’s presidency, the results of the vaccine killed or crippled thousands of Americans, while only half a dozen unvaccinated people died from the virus.

The CDC acknowledges that out of every 10,000 or so people given the small pox vaccine, at least one will be afflicted by a nightmarish condition called severe vaccine-induced disease, in which the small pox virus (the vaccine contains live virus) viciously attacks the immune system. After personally treating several such cases, smallpox vaccine expert Vincent Falginiti described what he witnessed this way: “The virus literally ate up their entire bodies.” Clinical photos show victims with injuries reminiscent of napalm burns. The only antidote at present is vaccine immune globulin (VIG). As of about January 1, 2003, there were, at most, only 700 doses of VIG left in the entire U.S. New VIG is being hastily manufactured, but guess who the primary producer is? Dynport, a military contractor with connections to the Carlyle Group (the company founded by Bush, Sr. and his cronies) and a history of high-level flim flam, political intrigue, and incompetence.

It seems outrageous that such a situation could persist without internal outcry. In fact, there has been an outcry by a growing number of researchers in a broad range of fields against Bush’s science policies, from climate change to biodefense. The Bush response to dissent? A systematic blackballing of dissenters. Complain, or even appear likely to complain, and you are out of a job. A November 21, 2002 letter to the DHS by concerned scientists demanded to know why nominees being considered for posts at NIH are grilled in their interviews as to how they vote and how they feel about key rightwing points such as abortion and gun control. Those answering “incorrectly”, such as the University of New Mexico’s William Miller, are dumped promptly from consideration for the job. (His case prompted the formal complaint).

The Space Shuttle disaster may be but the first glimpse of the tip of a deadly iceberg set afloat by the “politics first, competence second” hiring and firing policy that permeates the Bush regime. NASA, like all other science-related agencies, has been undergoing a purging of liberals and critics, be they liberal or conservative. Many science insiders say the new NASA chief and Bush pal Sean O’Keefe, is little more than a bean counter and corporate yes man, not the science savvy leader such an agency must have to succeed. When O’Keefe appeared at a press conference right after the disaster, it was clear that the primary thing on his mind was how the Bush regime would appear to the public. In his 10 minute statement, delivered with a chilling lack of emotion, he made more references to Bush’s PR response to the tragedy than he did to the deceased men and women and their families.

But the Bush administration is a corporation filled with yes men and schemers, not a government run by leaders. America’s real interests have no place on the Bush agenda – let alone the interests of the rest of the world. So, while one billion human beings go each day without clean drinking water or a full stomach, 600,000 die annually just from air pollution-induced respiratory crises, and thousands of new cases of asthma are diagnosed in American children each week, the Bush corporation, in the time-honored tradition of Nestle, Exxon, or Phillip Morris, issues official denials and looks the other way. G.W. and pals can show up for any summit, any time, any place, regardless of protests or security risks if it involves opportunities to make or manipulate money. Summits addressing environmental and humanitarian issues apparently bore the hell out of them. Thus, while Bush has shown up for all World Economic summits, he blew off last summer’s World Summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg. As to any environmental/global warming summit – forget it!

In the last few years, several reports have conclusively linked global security to poverty and unsustainability.: A “failed nation” (the new politico euphemism for war-torn, poverty ridden country) is more likely to be a security risk. Last October, even the CIA published a report warning that in such nations, communicable diseases such as HIV can become rampant, setting the stage for further economic disasters and creating a powder keg of a situation. Instead of heeding such warnings, Bush appears to take such reports as his template for international policy. His entire long-term “security policy” is based on a scheme to lay waste to an ever-lengthening list of poor nations (Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korean, and, probably Libya, Iran, and Indonesia, to name a few) and, thereby create more failed nations and more international powder kegs.

Hitler sought to achieve a “Godderdammerung” – a razing of civilization as it was known so that he could create a distorted new world in his own twisted image. Bush’s priorities, if allowed to be exercised to their extreme, will most surely represent another Godderdamerung. In its wake will arise a Brave New World whose overtaxed resources will all be subverted to the cause of protecting the precious butt of G. W. Bush and his corporate minions.