After the words of Vladimir Putin about the collection of biomaterials from Russians for mysterious purposes, the topic of genetic weapons went to the news tops. Basically, the very idea of such WMD is ridiculed, but, unfortunately, everything is not so simple. What do we know about biogenetic weapons today? And why are they afraid of him in Russia and the United States?
On the eve of Russia, the US and the UK adopted a statement on measures against biological weapons, agreeing that "the world is facing serious challenges from the point of view of biological security." These include, in particular, the threat of the development, acquisition and use of biological weapons by state and non-state actors, as well as scientific and technological advances "which have the potential to be of great benefit, but can be used to cause harm."
A few days earlier, President Vladimir Putin had said during a meeting of the Human Rights Council that some foreign forces were collecting biological material from Russian citizens. After that, many, if not all, started talking about someone's attempts to create an unprecedented bioweapon of selective action.
To say that this is a hot topic is to say nothing. In the mass consciousness, genetic weapons sit somewhere between aliens in the service of the Pentagon and Hitler, who fled to the moon. It is not surprising that all these speeches caused an outbreak of emotional controversy in the media and social networks with the participation of not only specialized scientists, but also everyone who is not lazy. At the same time, sharply opposing opinions are expressed - from attempts to explain the meaning of genetic weapons from a purely military point of view to outright ridicule of the Russian authorities.
That is, the polarization did not follow the scientific path, but the political one. The liberal part has unambiguously declared the assumption of the presence of genetic weapons or their development as complete nonsense. For example, Mikhail Gelfand, known for his civic activism, “popularizer of science,” used the not entirely scientific term “crap” when he advocated for Americans who collect biomaterials in Russia.
In practice, the US Air Force announced a tender for the supply of 12 samples of RNA molecules and synovial tissue from Russians in the summer on the official portal of public procurement. According to the terms of the tender, donors must be citizens of the Russian Federation, Caucasians, without injuries of the musculoskeletal system, with negative tests for HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and syphilis. This strange tender was considered the reason for the president's statements, although he relied on counterintelligence data, and not on open sources.
After Putin's statement, the Americans tried, if not to justify themselves, then at least to clarify this strange situation. Bo Downey, a spokesman for the Air Force Training Command (AETC), said the agency is working to identify various biomarkers associated with injuries. For these studies, a contract for the purchase of RNA and synovium samples was published on July 19. Initially, the request did not indicate the desired place of origin of the samples, but to continue the study, samples from Russia were required, since the previous supplier provided biomaterials from citizens of the Russian Federation.
His lawyers explain the role of the Pentagon by the formal departmental affiliation of the medical institution. But why the first batch of biomaterial could not be taken from the same American pilots who are obliged to provide it simply under a contract? It seems like their joints are going to be treated, not Russian ones. I would like to look into the eyes of the original contractor who smuggled the Pentagon's order from the Russian Federation. Yes, smuggling.
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According to the newspaper VZGLYAD, the first report on biological weapons and the possible development of a genetic version for use against the population of the Russian Federation was submitted by the FSB back in 2007. At the same time, the first version of the law banning the export of biological samples from Russia was adopted. That is, the first batch of biomaterial for the needs of the US Air Force appeared in America bypassing Russian law, which, by the way, contains a detailed description of biomaterial samples.
Now, at the suggestion of the former chief sanitary doctor, and now the State Duma deputy Gennady Onishchenko, a new law on biological protection is being prepared. Parliament is going to consider it in December, but for now we will return to 2007.
At one time, the definition of an individual genome came into vogue. On the territory of the Russian Federation, ethnic groups, inclined to look for ancient and heroic ancestors, were carried away by this. Many scientists consider all these "searches for alleles" to be something on the verge of pseudoscience, but at some point the fad became almost widespread. The genetic material was voluntarily sent somewhere to America, and in response a paper came from which it followed that you were an ancient Scythian by so many percent. Many are proud of this, although the recognition of oneself as a genetic aria does not in any way affect the salary.
The massive nature of this phenomenon worried counterintelligence.
True, the "genetic suspicion" initially did not come from the FSB. Not so long ago, the British company Oxford Nanopore Technologies refused to sell the evolutionary genomics laboratories of Moscow State University a sequencer - a device for reading DNA, accusing the Russians of links with the military and the possible use of the data obtained for destructive purposes.
This is significant in itself: if genetic research in the West is indeed conducted for military or similar applications, people tend to suspect others of what they are doing.
The ill-fated US Air Force tender only looks like a pretext for the president's speech and the discussion that followed. The problem is somewhat deeper, it really exists and is being tracked. It's just that some aspects of the development of genetic biological weapons are not obvious and are vulnerable to speculation.
The Chronicles of Doctor Death
To date, there is no real evidence that genetic data for individual ethnic groups is used to develop weapons of mass destruction. Or - can be used. On this basis, genetic biological weapons of mass destruction can easily be classified as conspiracy theories.
However, history knows for sure a case when the development of genetic weapons was confirmed by a structured body of data and testimonies of many people already used in court.
South Africa during the apartheid era was one of the most advanced countries in the medical field in the world. Suffice it to recall that the first successful heart transplant in human history was performed in Cape Town. And in the early 1980s, in an atmosphere of strictest secrecy, the Strand project ("coast" in Afrikaans) began to work - a comprehensive program to create poisons, psychotropic substances and gene weapons, which was supposed to selectively target only black people. The main target was the members of the African National Congress (ANC), but the court proved that there were also attempts to use them in Namibia, Angola and Mozambique, and drugs were specially distributed among the black population of South Africa proper.
The program was headed by Wouter Basson, a military medic, cardiologist by the first profession, who received the rank of brigadier general and the nickname Doctor Death.
After the fall of the apartheid regime, the so-called Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), an extrajudicial body of the new black government, investigated everything that was associated with the horrors of the white oppressors. She quickly captured almost all the scientists and doctors working on the Strand project, and for several years consistently siphoned information out of them.
It is noteworthy that they were all Boers, not English-speaking South Africans. One of the defendants in the case - chemist Dan Hussen - testified that the program was divided into two unequal projects. The first involved the creation of what were called "dirty tricks" (vuil truuks), that is, "means of eliminating individuals", in other words, poisons and psychotropic substances. The second project "set the task of creating a fairly complex type of weapons of mass destruction that could be used in hostilities in Angola and Mozambique."
Localization in neighboring countries is a trick of lawyers. The competence of not only the TRC, but also the criminal courts of general jurisdiction of South Africa does not go beyond the borders of the state. Consequently, the participants in the Strand project could not be convicted of crimes committed against citizens of other countries and on foreign territory.
It was through this legal ploy that medical general Wouter Basson was acquitted in 1999 by the Pretoria Supreme Court, despite 46 proven murders. The fact is that experiments were carried out on captured Namibian rebels and on the territory of Namibia, and the corpses were then thrown from helicopters into the Atlantic Ocean. The rest of the murders with the help of chemicals were also committed not in South Africa (presumably, several British politicians were also poisoned with certain poisons).
Brigadier General Wouter Basson, aka Doctor Death (photo: Juda Ngwenya / Reuters)
Doctor Death's acquittal caused a crisis in relations between South Africa and Namibia, but the court of appeal in 2002 acquitted Basson a second time. The Namibians are not surrendering, and now the South African Constitutional Court seems to have decided to reconsider the case. But his prospects are weak, since, apparently, the materials of the Strand project migrated to the United States in time, and Wooter Basson had a powerful lobbyist and defender in the person of the Pentagon.
There is evidence that a kind of exchange of information took place in the 1980s. South African intelligence handed over to the Americans and the British a huge array of data on the activities of the KGB in Africa and on the organization and composition of the Soviet and Cuban military contingents in Angola, demanding materials of a chemical, biological and medical nature in exchange. So South Africa gained access to promising scientific research under the pretext of "organizing the protection of South African troops from the possible use of chemical and biological weapons by Cubans" in Angola.
Before the fall of apartheid, the process went in the opposite direction: Basson and his subordinate Ian Lawrence "returned" to the Americans what they had accumulated in 10 years (the Strand project was officially closed in 1992, after which mass arrests of scientists and intelligence officers began). Formally, it was a "humanitarian action": South Africa refused to develop any weapons of mass destruction, transferring the entire base to the Americans in confirmation of its goodwill.
All this is not conspiracy theories and not "crap", as Professor Gelfand puts it, but a legally confirmed story. Another thing is that most of the practical details of these ominous developments were promptly classified.
Viruses are racists too
It must be understood that the Boers started their research when the human genome had not yet been deciphered. The principle of their development was reduced to a simple identification of amino acids according to the principle "friend or foe". In short, the principle of operation is as follows: a special chemical compound, getting into the body, must “recognize” the amino acid as peculiar only to this genetic type. If the type is "alien", the mechanism of poisoning is triggered.
This is in theory, and in its primitive presentation (high-browed scientists will correct it many times). It is not known whether the Boers, at their level of scientific knowledge, were in principle capable of isolating defective genes. Now this is a common thing.
It is known that some ethnic groups have an individual genetic makeup, which in some cases provokes specific hereditary diseases. Textbook examples: lactose intolerance among the Chinese and related ethnic groups of Southeast Asia, the absence of enzymes for the splitting of alcohol among the Paleo-Asian peoples (in a broad sense, from the Chukchi to the Indians), the Tay-Sachs and Martin-Bell syndromes in the Ashkenazi Jews, beta-thalassemia among isolated peoples of the Caucasus, muscular dystrophy among the Yakuts, "Mediterranean syndromes" among Greeks and natives of southern Italy.
As a rule, this is due to gene mutations caused by the circumstances of the formation of an ethnic group, the small number of the group of origin (Yakuts, small peoples of Dagestan), artificial overcrowding of the population and related traditional marriages (Ashkenazi). It is customary to explain the indigestibility of lactose by the Chinese by the later domestication of the cow in comparison with European peoples - the organism of the peoples of the region simply did not have time to get used to milk.
All this is not everyday racism, but medical circumstances that you just need to accept. Many do so. For example, among the Ashkenazi in the United States, for preventive purposes, it is customary to carry out a genetic examination before the wedding, since Tay-Sachs syndrome manifests itself in offspring only if both parents are carriers of the defective genes. If only one - the child will be born healthy, it may not even inherit the defective gene, which leads to a healthier community as a whole.
African peoples vary greatly in their genetic variation and formation history. But incurable sickle cell anemia in the United States is considered unique to the African American population. And mixed porphyria in English is called South African genetic porphyria.
Another example is that Africans and for some reason Georgians lack genes that can block HIV. And the most resistant to this virus ethnic groups unexpectedly turned out to be the Slavs and Balts.
The monstrous number of AIDS patients in South Africa and neighboring countries is not directly associated with the activities of Basson and the Strand project in general. Much more often, ritual cannibalism is remembered in the right place and out of place, which is not a horror story, but a fact of life. An acquaintance of the VZGLYAD newspaper columnist, a Russian-born nurse at a hospital in Cape Town, complained that almost every week she had to remove fingers, then liver, or something else undigested from her stomachs.
At the same time, some ANC leaders, including President Jacob Zuma, seriously argue that AIDS medicines, like AIDS itself, are an invention of whites, which means that there is no need to be treated - it will go away by itself if you go to a sorcerer. But in a general context, the percentage of people living with HIV in southern Africa looks suspicious. Nobody claims that Wooter Basson actually managed to create something like that. The main thing is that they worked on the Strand project, and the results of this work - whatever they were - ended up at the disposal of the United States.
The future belongs to someone
The main argument against even the theoretical possibility of creating a genetic biological weapon has been and remains convergence. There are no completely “pure” nations - with rare and isolated exceptions (Dayaks, Australian Aborigines, Andaman Islanders). That is, it is difficult to develop some kind of poison that acts exclusively on Russians due to the Russian genetic diversity.
For example, the population of the North and the Urals, which is considered to be primordially Russian, probably has genetic ties with the Finno-Ugric and Samoyed peoples since the 15th century. The colonization of the North was carried out by the forces of lonely men (ushkuyniks, princely warriors, later - Cossacks), who captured Perm women and Samoyedoks as wives. In the conditional state of Minnesota, no one will vouch for the genetic origin of this or that person either. That is, a racist virus in a free theory can work in Rwanda or Cambodia, but not in Europe, Russia and the United States.
Another thing is that biotechnology is now on the verge of a technological revolution, and no one will vouch when it happens and in which direction it will turn. If genetic biological weapons take on real forms, it will be worse than an atomic bomb - in this definition, President Putin is certainly right.
On the other hand, scientists-futurists have long been talking about a new round of eugenics, "human modernization", the creation of new races. All this only at first glance looks like the reincarnation of Jules Verne or the search for a yeti. Surely, specific government organizations are also engaged in something similar, despite international conventions banning the development and use of biological weapons.
Even worse, such technologies are already available not only to large states with their almost unlimited financial resources, but also to private laboratories that can be operated by God knows who, including mentally unstable geniuses. It was much the same with nuclear weapons. The Americans, as pioneers, needed a super-costly Manhattan project, on which all genius minds known to mankind worked. Now bungling a dirty bomb is a piece of cake.
Evgeny Krutikov