Dr. Bosworth
is a university professor working in Japan and the author of
Biotech Empire: The Untold Future of Food, Pills, and Sex (Amazon).
The alarm has
been sounded. Politicians, pharmaceutical executives and media
conglomerates would have us believe that a 1918-style pandemic is a
real threat. The 1918 pandemic, however, evolved out of conditions
unique to World War I, for four specific reasons that are not true
of today…
Why 2009 Flu is
Not 1918 Flu
First, World War
I was characterized by millions of troops living in waterlogged
trenches along the Western Front. This war zone became fertile
ground for an opportunistic virus, as medical literature reveals:
a landscape that
was contaminated with respiratory irritants such as chlorine and
phosgene, and characterized by stress and overcrowding, the partial
starvation in civilians, and the opportunity for rapid passage of
influenza in young soldiers would have provided the opportunity for
multiple but small mutational charges throughout the viral genome.
(1)
Second, the war
witnessed the growth of industrial-scale military camps and
embarkation ports, such as Etaples in France, enabling the flu virus
to enter into another phase of accelerated mutation. On any given
day, Etaples was a makeshift city of 100,000 troops from around the
British Empire and its former dominions. These soldiers concentrated
into unsanitary barracks, tents and mess halls.
Today, many
cities and nations have dense concentrations of people; none of
these, however, are geographically isolated under the conditions of
trench warfare and World War I-style deployments. Of course, there
are smaller, sub-populations of people in prisons (prone to
multi-drug resistant tuberculosis), in military barracks (prone to
respiratory pathogens and meningococcal infections) and on cruise
ships (prone to the Norovisus) all proof of the connection between
human confinement on the one hand and infectious disease on the
other.
Third, after the
war, ships such as the USS Alaskan became floating Petri dishes.
Thousands of soldiers were packed like sardines for the long voyage
home, allowing the virus to reverberate within hermetically-sealed
units.
Fourth,
returning troops were stuffed into boxcars for the train trip back
to military bases, where they infected new recruits. Later, it was
documented that Army regiments whose barracks allowed only 45 square
feet per soldier had a flu incidence up to ten times that of
regiments afforded 78 square feet per man. (2)
The 1918 flu
virus became pandemic because, during World War I, the normal
host-pathogen relationship was abandoned when millions of young men
crowded into geographical confinement. In World War I, a flu virus
was presented with a seemingly limitless number of hosts almost
all young, male, and with compromised immune systems. Unconstrained
and unchecked by the usual habits of human behavior, the virus went
rogue.
Flu viruses are
smart, but they are not suicidal: if the host becomes extinct the
virus will become extinct too. The evolutionary strategy, from the
virus’s perspective, is to stay one step ahead of the immune systems
of both humans and animals but not two steps ahead. The flu virus
aims to infect and reproduce without killing a critical mass of the
hosts, of the herd, so the virus s virulence is ameliorated after it
becomes fatal for people on the margins of the host population the
weak and the elderly. World War I disrupted this synchronized,
co-evolutionary relationship between flu viruses and human
populations.
No flu since
1918 has been strong enough to produce, in millions of people, a
cytokine storm, which is an immunological over-reaction leading to
pulmonary edema (the lungs filling with fluid) – the curse of those
with the strongest immune systems, normally between 20 and 40 years
of age.
In normal flu
pandemics, even in severe ones, the flu virus kills a portion of the
weak and elderly. This appears to be the case in 1837 for Germany
and in 1890 for Russia in 1890, though reliable medical evidence is
scarce. It was certainly true for the Asian flu of 1957 and the Hong
Kong flu of 1968, neither of which were significantly fatal for
young adults. The flu 1976-1977 has been exposed as a boondoggle, a
fraud, with far more people dying of the vaccine than from the flu
itself.
Indeed, 1918 was
an aberration. Since then, no flu has scythed away so many people:
some 500,000 Americans and anywhere between 25 – 50 million people
worldwide in three waves: first in March, then in August (the
deadliest wave), and in then again in November of 1918, lasting into
the spring of 1919.
The origins of
the 1918 pandemic can be traced back to the trenches of the Western
Front in 1915, 1916, and 1917 to the world s first large-scale
industrial and international war. There was no other cause: If WWI
had not been fought, it is inconceivable that the 1918 flu pandemic
would have been so severe. Today, in 2009, absent the conditions of
WWI, it is preposterous for political and medical authorities to
claim that the swine flu is a menace to society.
The Mysterious
Origins of the H1N1 Swine Flu Virus
If the current
H1N1 swine flu virus does become abnormally lethal, there would be
three leading explanations: first, that the virus was accidentally
released, or escaped, from a laboratory; second, that a disgruntled
lab employee unleashed the virus (as happened, according to the
official version of events, with the 2001 anthrax attack); or third,
that a group, corporation or government agency intentionally
released the virus in the interests of profit and power.
Each of the
three scenarios represents a plausible explanation should the swine
virus become lethal. After all, the 1918 flu virus was dead and
buried until, that is, scientists unearthed a lead coffin to
obtain a biopsy of the corpse it contained. Later, researchers
similarly disturbed an Inuit woman buried under permafrost. (3)
The US Armed
Forces Institute of Pathology, with a scientist from the Mount Sinai
School of Medicine, then began to reconstruct the 1918 Spanish flu.
Had Iran or North Korea engaged in Frankenstein experiments
(complete with ransacking graves) to reverse engineer the 1918 virus
the US and the UK would have gone ballistic at the UN Security
Council.
Interestingly,
numerous doctors and scientists suspect that the swine flu virus was
cultured in a laboratory. A mainstream Australian virologist, Adrian
Gibbs – who was one of the first to analyze the genetic properties
of the 2009 swine flu believes that scientists accidentally
created the H1N1 virus while producing vaccines. And Dr. John Carlo,
Dallas Co. Medical Director, This strain of swine influenza that s
been cultured in a laboratory is something that s not been seen
anywhere actually in the United States and the world, so this is
actually a new strain of influenza that s been identified. (4)
Because of this, the 2009 swine flu virus has a rather suspicious
pedigree.
The Propaganda
Campaign
Across the
mainstream media, reports announce one swine flu death after another
(even though ordinary flu kills about 35,000 Americans each year).
Upon closer scrutiny of what passes for journalism, the victims
have underlying health problems, or a common underlying health
condition, or significant medical conditions.
One news
headline even blared: Swine flu mother dies after giving birth,
leaving her premature baby fighting for life, and only later,
buried deep in the story underneath, did it explain that she had
other medical problems which included being confined to a
wheelchair because of a serious car accident.
Citizens the
world over are increasingly skeptical of hyped headlines followed by
smaller-print caveats. They are uneasy with the effort to create
doublethink a term coined by George Orwell in 1984 and a
reference to holding two contradictory ideas in one s mind
simultaneously, paralyzing critical thought.
The media has
never been in the habit of reporting the cases of people who, for no
known reason, die of the flu. Out of the 35,000 Americans who die
each year from flu-related illnesses, some are bound to be
relatively young and healthy. It happens. This year, however, their
stories are front-page news.
More recently,
news reports now claim that the H1N1 swine flu can affect people in
the lungs and lead to pneumonia. This, however, is what separates
the flu from the common cold in the first place; and this is why
tens of thousands of elderly people die of flu-related symptoms each
year. Fox News even claimed that this one morphs and mutates and
comes back in different ways , (like all flu viruses). In short,
the media now uses the flu s own ordinary symptoms to fuel fear.
Fortunately, a
growing wave of online media challenges the propaganda. Back in
1976, there were no rival voices, and the Center for Disease Control
s manipulative television commercials dominated the airwaves.
Fortunately, as a testament to official shamelessness, these videos
are now archived and searchable on the Internet under the title of
1976 Swine Flu Propaganda.
Now, like then,
the US government s pandemic policy alternates between the
ridiculous and the repugnant. The government s flu website is
revealing. First, the historical section on the 1918 virus is
intellectually dishonest, making absolutely no link between the
unique conditions of World War I and the flu pandemic; instead, the
site propagates the erroneous notion that this virus came out of the
blue. (5)
Second, the site
announces an absurd American Idol-style video contest: Create a
Video About Preventing or Dealing With the Flu & Be Eligible to Win
$2500 Cash! (Congress has earmarked 8 billion dollars for swine flu
prevention and can only offer $ 2,500 to the proles or, rather, to
the one prole who, rising above mediocrity, best parrots the Party
Line.)
And third, the
site encourages the use of Twitter to stay informed There is
something mildly disturbing about the US federal government
promoting Twitter as a form of resistance to foreign
authoritarianism, while, simultaneously, using social networking to
further federalize and protect the abuse of power at home.
1976 Flu + 1984
political control = 2009 Swine Flu Hoax
In sum, it
appears that the 2009 swine flu pandemic will not be 1918. It might
be a 1976-style hoax, however, serving profit and power – with a bit
of Orwell s 1984 thrown in for good measure.
Andrew Bosworth,
Ph.D.
Author of Biotech Empire (Amazon)
Notes
1. JS Oxford, A
Sefton, R Jackson, W Innes, RS Daniels, and NPAS Johnson, World War
I may have allowed the emergence of Spanish influenza, The
Lancet/ Infectious Diseases Vol. 2 February 2002.
2. Byerly CR. 2005. Fever of War: The Influenza Epidemic in the U.S.
Army during World War I. New York, NY: New York University Press.
3. Ann H. Reid, Thomas G. Fanning, Johan V. Hultin, and Jeffery K.
Taubenberger, Origin and Evolution of the 1918 Spanish Influenza
Virus Hemagglutinin Gene, PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences of the United States of America. Division of Molecular
Pathology, Department of Cellular Pathology, Armed Forces Institute
of Pathology, Washington, DC. Communicated by Edwin D. Kilbourne,
New York
4. Paul Joseph Watson, Medical Director: Swine Flu Was Cultured In
A Laboratory, This strain of swine influenza that s been cultured
in a laboratory is something that s not been seen anywhere actually
in the United States and the world, so this is actually a new strain
of influenza that s been identifiedApril 26, 2009.
5.
http://www.flu.gov/
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