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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BubbaFred who wrote (9597)	2/18/2003 12:17:34 AM
From: BubbaFred	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25898

The Sunshine Project News Release 11 February 2003 Pentagon Perverts Pharma with New Weapons Liability and Public Image in the Pentagon's Drug Weapons Research The conventional view is that pharmaceutical research develops new ways to treat disease and reduce human suffering; but the Pentagon disagrees. Military weapons developers see the pharmaceutical industry as central to a new generation of anti-personnel weapons. Although it denied such research as recently as the aftermath of the October theater tragedy in Moscow, a Pentagon program has recently released more information that confirms that it wants to make pharmaceutical weapons. And on February 5th, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went a big step further. Rumsfeld, himself a former pharmaceutical industry CEO (1), announced that the US is making plans for the use of such incapacitating biochemical weapons in an invasion of Iraq (see News Release, 7 February 2003). The Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) and the US Army's Soldier Biological Chemical Command (SBCCOM) are leading the research. Of interest to the military are drugs that target the brain's regulation of many aspects of cognition, such as sense of pain, consciousness, and emotions like anxiety and fear. JNLWD is preparing a database of pharmaceutical weapons candidates, many of them off-the-shelf products, and indexing them by manufacturer. It will choose drugs from this database for further work and, according to Rumsfeld, if President Bush signs a waiver of existing US policy, they can be used in Iraq. Delivery devices already exist or are in advanced development. These include munitions for an unmanned aerial vehicle or loitering missile, and a new 81mm (bio)chemical mortar round. Many of the Pentagon’s so-called "nonlethal" (bio)chemical weapons candidates are pharmaceuticals. Different names are used for these weapons ("calmatives", "disabling chemicals", "nonlethal chemicals", etc.). Used as weapons, all minimally aim to incapacitate their victims. They belong to the same broad category of agents as the incapacitating chemical that killed more than 120 hostages in the Moscow theater. That agent was reported to be based on fentanyl, an opiate that is also among the weapons being assessed by JNLWD. In the US, pharmaceutical fentanyl is sold by Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutica. Remifentanil, a closely related drug, is a GlaxoSmithKline product. US military contractors have identified a host of other agents manufactured by a Who's Who list of the pharmaceutical industry. In 2001 weapons researchers at the Applied Research Laboratory of Pennsylvania State University assessed the anesthetic drugs isoflurane and sevoflurane, produced by Syngenta and Abbott Laboratories, respectively. The same Penn State team recommended other drugs for "immediate consideration," some of which are in the chart below. The Pentagon is also interested in industry’s new ways to apply (bio)chemicals through the skin and mucous membranes, which could bring previously impractical drug weapons closer to reality by overcoming technical hurdles related to delivery of certain agents. Incapacitating (Bio)Chemical Weapons Candidates Cited by Pentagon Researchers DRUG LEGITIMATE USE COMPANY fentanyl analgesic Johnson & Johnson (and others) carfentanil veterinary anesthetic Wildlife Pharmaceuticals dexmeditomidine anesthetic Abbott Laboratories isoflurane anesthetic Abbott Laboratories sevoflurane anesthetic Syngenta pramipexole Parkinson's Disease Pharmacia CI-1007 experimental Pfizer (2) lesopitron experimental anxiolytic Esteve Pharmaceuticals MKC-242 experimental antidepressant Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation ketamine anesthetic Pfizer (and others) diazepam (Valium) anxiolytic Hoffman-LaRoche (and others) Questioning Industry's Role: The silence of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) and its members is becoming increasingly conspicuous. The Pentagon research described here has been underway for more than two years. It’s no secret that pharma is queuing up for lucrative biodefense contracts; but does industry's enthusiasm for defense dollars extend to weaponsmaking? If the pharmaceutical industry assists or accepts weaponization of its products, it will negatively transform the public's view of the nature of pharmaceutical research. Yet PhRMA's silence raises fundamental questions about industry's commitment to peaceful research. Will it work to prevent its drugs from being weaponized? Or are weapons viewed as an emerging new market? Will industry cooperate with the Pentagon to design weapons? Military researchers want such collaborations. What if drug stockpiles are diverted into weapons? Will industry be complicit by continuing to look the other way? Liability: Serious liability questions will be raised if these drugs are used as weapons in Iraq or elsewhere. Scores of innocent hostages died in the Moscow theater. Many survivors are likely suffering lasting, even permanent effects. If the US uses these weapons, more casualties are inevitable.(3) So long as the pharmaceutical industry does not make every possible effort to prevent the Pentagon’s perversion of its products, manufacturers should be held liable for the damage that weaponized drugs inflict. ------------------------------------------- NOTES (1) From 1977 to 1985, Rumsfeld was the President and CEO of Searle Pharmaceuticals. After Rumsfeld’s tenure, Searle was bought by Monsanto, which itself was subsequently taken over by Pharmacia. Pharmacia kept Searle when it spun-off Monsanto’s agricultural division as ‘new’ public company. (2)A merger between Pfizer and Pharmacia is pending. (3)A recent, concise paper explaining why these weapons will always cause substantial casualties has been published by the Federation of American Scientists. It can be downloaded at: fas.org