Jews & Eugenics - It Didn't Start With The Nazi's Part 2

For previous articles that cover the connections between Judaism and eugenics, please see here, here, here, here and here. See here for the connections between Judaism and Transhumanism, and here for the connections between Transhumanism and political control.

=============================================================================

The popular impression is that the eugenics movement was a racist, anti-Semitic Nazi ideology inspired by Anglo-American elites.

In point of fact, eugenics also managed to establish strong bridgeheads in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey. 

Jews played a modest but active role in the early eugenics movement. In 1916, Rabbi Max Reichler published an article entitled “Jewish Eugenics,” in which he attempted to demonstrate that Jewish religious customs were eugenic in thrust.

A decade and a half later Ellsworth Huntington, in his book Tomorrow’s Children, which was published in conjunction with the directors of the American Eugenics Society, echoed Reichler’s arguments, praising the Jews as being of uniquely superior stock and explaining their achievements by a systematic adherence to the basic principles of Jewish religious law, which he also viewed as being fundamentally eugenic in nature. In the Weimar Republic many Jewish socialists actively campaigned for eugenics, using the Socialist newspaper Vorwärts as their chief tribune.

Max Levien, head of the first Munich Soviet, and Julius Moses, a member of the German Socialist Party, believed strongly in eugenics. A partial list of prominent German-Jewish eugenicists would include the geneticists Richard Goldschmidt, Heinrich Poll, and Curt Stern, the statistician Wilhelm Weinberg (coauthor of the Hardy-Weinberg Law), the mathematician Felix Bernstein, and the physicians Alfred Blaschko, Benno Chajes, Magnus Hirschfeld, Georg Löwenstein, Max Marcuse, Max Hirsch, and Albert Moll.

The German League for Improvement of the People and the Study of Heredity was even attacked by the Nazi publisher Julius F. Lehmann as targeted subversion on the part of Berlin Jews.

Löwenstein was a member of an underground resisting the National Socialist government, and Chajes, Goldschmidt, Hirschfeld, and Poll emigrated. In America, when the revolutionary anarchist editor of the American Journal of Eugenics, Moses Harman, died in 1910, Emma Goldman’s magazine Mother Earth took over distribution. In 1933, the eugenicist and University of California professor of zoology Samuel Jackson Holmes noted the significant number of Jews in the eugenics movement and praised their “native endowment of brains,” while at the same time lamenting the racial bias suffered by the Jews, which caused many of their intellectuals to be wary of nonegalitarian worldviews.

The American Eugenics Society itself counted Rabbi Louis Mann as one of its directors, in 1935.One of the most prominent eugenicists was the American Herman Muller, whose mother was Jewish and who received the Nobel Prize in medicine, in 1946, for his work on genetic mutation rates. A communist, Muller spent 1933-1937 as a senior geneticist at the University of Moscow, when he wrote a letter to Stalin proposing that the Soviet Union adopt eugenics as an official policy. 

It was the eve of the Great Purges, and Stalin definitely disapproved of the idea, at which point Muller judged it wisest to leave for Scotland and then returned to the United States. It was in the middle of his Moscow sojourn that Muller’s eugenics treatise Out of the Night appeared in the United States. In 1932, Muller had spent a year in Germany and he was outraged by Nazi concepts and policies concerning race.

According to the National Library in Jerusalem, from the 1920s through the 1950s, some 200 Hebrew-language Parents’ manuals were published. These publications contained a coherent worldview, of which eugenics formed an integral part, subjecting Jewish mothers to an unremitting program of education, indoctrination, and regulation. During the British mandate, Jewish physicians in Palestine actively promoted eugenics. Dr. Joseph Meir, for whom the hospital in Kfar Sava is named, wrote in 1934:

Who should be allowed to raise children? Seeking the right answer to this question, eugenics is the science that tries to refine the human race and keep it from decaying. This science is still young, but it has enormous advantages…. Is it not our duty to insure that our children will be healthy, both physically and mentally? For us, eugenics in general, and mainly the careful prevention of hereditary illnesses, has a much higher value than in other nations. Doctors, athletes, and politicians should spread the idea widely: Do not have children unless you are sure that they will be healthy, both mentally and physically.

One researcher at Ben-Gurion University working on the topic “eugenicist Zionists,” came across a card file with notes written by the editors of a collection of Meir’s writings, published in Israel in the mid-1950s where the editors call the article “problematic and dangerous” and comment that “Now, after Nazi eugenics, it is dangerous to publish this article.”

In point of fact, knowledge of Jewish support for eugenics in pre-1948 Palestine was suppressed for many years. Dr. Max Nordau, the son of an Orthodox rabbi, was converted to Zionism by Theodore Herzl and became prominent in the movement. Nordau’s ideas, which including vigorously propagandizing eugenics, became so popular in the Jewish community that Nordau Clubs were created even in the United States.

Dr. Arthur Ruppin, the head of the World Zionist Organization office in Palestine, wrote in his book The Sociology of the Jews that “in order to preserve the purity of our race, such Jews [showing signs of genetic defects] must refrain from having children.”

In Israel today many eugenic practices have become widely accepted. According to Meira Weiss of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, In Israel, the Zionists’ eugenics turned into a selective prenatal policy backed by state-of-the-art genetic technology. 

There are now more fertility clinics per capita there than in any other country in the world (four times the number per capita in the United States). Abortion is subsidized if the fetus is suspected to be physically or mentally malformed. In cases where the husband’s sperm is not viable, donors fill out extensive health histories. The State supplies the sperm, which is screened for Tay-Sachs. 

Women over thirty-five routinely consent to amniocentesis tests and abort if genetic defects are discovered. Thus, the government is actively pursuing eugenics, although the chief motivation appears to be as least as much quantitative as qualitative. Surrogacy was legalized in 1996137, but only for married women. It too is paid for by the State. 

Jewish religious law does not delegitimize the children of unmarried women, thus making it possible to combine Jewish legal principles with modern legal practices. In vitro fertilization and embryo transfer are preferred by some rabbis as a form of fertility treatment that does not violate the literal Halakhic precepts against adultery.

Curiously, some rabbis refuse to condemn the use of non-Jewish sperm, since masturbation by non-Jews is not of explicit rabbinic concern, and also because Jewishness is passed exclusively through the mother. Children born to different Jewish mothers using the same sperm donor may even marry, since “they share no substance.” Other rabbis, however, consider the use of non-Jewish sperm an abomination. 139

The Israeli attitude toward cloning differs considerably from that prevalent in most other countries. Although human reproductive cloning is currently not permitted because the technology is not yet considered safe, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel sees no inherent religious interdiction in reproductive cloning as a form of treatment for infertility and even sees an advantage over sperm donation, which by using anonymous donors might subsequently lead to a marriage between brother and sister.

In 1998, although more than eight decades had passed since the appearance of Reichler’s 1916 essay, Noam J. Zohar, a professor of philosophy at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, responded to Reichler. Noting that Reichler’s emphatically pro-eugenics views were “shared… by more than a few Judaic circles today,” Zohar wrote that A program of individualized eugenics… would seem to be consonant with an attitude that was, at the very least, tacitly endorsed by traditional Judaic teachings.

Should it make a difference if the means for producing fine offspring are no longer determined by moralized speculation but instead by evidence-based genetic science? It seems to me that, insofar as the goal itself is acceptable, the change in the means for its advancement need pose no obstacle to its pursuit. 

This is so of course provided that the new means are not morally objectionable. To work out a Judaic response to the sort of new eugenics now looming on our horizon it will be necessary to evaluate the various specific means that might serve a modern individualized eugenics. I hope that some of the groundwork for that has been laid in this examination of traditional Judaic voices.

Jewish Eugenics Unveiled - No It Didn't Start With the Nazis

For previous articles that cover the connections between Judaism and eugenics, please see here, here, here and here. See here for the connections between Judaism and Transhumanism, and here for the connections between Transhumanism and political control.

[The following is the first essay from Jewish Eugenics and Other Essays, Three Papers Read Before the New York Board of Jewish Ministers, 1915, Bloch Publishing Company, New York, 1916.]

Jewish Eugenics

By Rabbi Max Reichler

Who knows the cause of Israel’s survival? Why did the Jew survive the onslaughts of Time, when others, numerically and politically stronger, succumbed? Obedience to the Law of Life, declares the modern student of eugenics, was the saving quality that rendered the Jewish race immune from disease and destruction. “The Jews, ancient and modern,” says Dr. Stanton Coit, “have always understood the science of eugenics, and have governed themselves in accordance with it; hence the preservation of the Jewish race.”

I. Jewish Attitude

To be sure eugenics as science could hardly have existed among the ancient Jews, but many eugenic rules were certainly incorporated in the large collection of Biblical and Rabbinical laws. Indeed there are clear indications of a conscious effort to utilize all influences that might improve the inborn qualities of the Jewish race, and to guard against any practice that might vitiate the purity of the race, or “impair the racial qualities of future generations” either physically, mentally, or morally. The Jew approached the matter of sex relationship neither with the horror of the prude, nor with the passionate eagerness of the pagan, but with the sane and sound attitude of the far-seeing prophet. His goal was the creation of the ideal home, which to him meant the abode of purity and happiness, the source of strength and vigor for body and mind.

II. Home of the Pure Bloods

The very founder of the Jewish race, the patriarch Abraham, recognized the importance of certain inherited qualities, and insisted that the wife of his “only beloved son” should not come from “the daughters of the Canaanites,” but from the seed of a superior stock.4 In justifying this seemingly narrow view of our patriarch, one of the Rabbis significantly suggests: “Even if the wheat of your own clime does not appear to be of the best, its seeds will prove more productive than others not suitable to that particular soil.” This contention is eugenically correct. Davenport tells of a settlement worker of this city who made special inquiry concerning a certain unruly and criminally inclined section of his territory, and found that the offenders came from one village in Calabria, known as “the home of the brigands.” Just as there is a home of the brigands, so there may be “a home of the pure bloods.” Eugenicists also claim that though consanguineous marriages are in most cases injurious to the progeny, yet where relatives possess “valuable characters, whether apparent or not, marriages between them might be encouraged, as a means of rendering permanent a rare and valuable family trait, which might otherwise be much less likely to become an established characteristic.” Abraham’s servant, Eliezer, so the Midrash states, desired to offer his own daughter to Isaac, but his master sternly rebuked him, saying: “Thou art cursed, and my son is blessed, and it does not behoove the cursed to mate with the blessed, and thus deteriorate the quality of the race.”

III. Early Marriages

The aim of eugenics is to encourage the reproduction of the good and “blessed” human protoplasm and the elimination of the impure and “cursed” human protoplasm. According to Francis Galton, it is “to check the birthrate of the unfit, and to further the productivity of the fit by early marriages and the rearing of healthful children.” The Rabbis may or may not have had such a definite purpose in mind, but their Halachic legislation and Haggadic observations naturally tended to bring about the same results. Early marriages were praised as most desirable. Rabbi Ishmael claimed that God was greatly displeased with the man who did not marry before the age of twenty. Rav Hunah refused to see Rav Hammuna, a man of great repute (adam gadol), after the former discovered that his visitor was a bachelor. “He who is not married,” runs a Talmudic saying, “is destitute of all joy, blessing, and happiness.” “He has no conception of the sweetness of life”; indeed “he cannot be regarded as a man at all.”

IV. Reproduction

Among the seven types not acceptable before God are included both the unmarried man and the married man without children. A man without children experiences death in life, and surely deserves our pity when he departs from this earth. For only he is dead who leaves no son behind to continue his work, while he who leaves even one worthy son is not really dead but merely sleeps. He who does not contribute his share to the reproduction of the race reduces the divine type, causes the Shechinah to depart from Israel, and is guilty of murder. The duty of reproduction is incumbent on all, both young and old. The Rabbis, like the eugenists of today, measured the success of a marriage by the number and quality of the offspring. In their judgments the main objects of marriage were the reproduction of the human race (leshem piryah veribyah), and the augmentation of the favored stock (lethikun havlad). Hence they advised that an extremely tall man should not marry an extremely tall woman, lest the children be awkwardly tall; nor should one of short stature marry a woman of the same size, lest their offspring be dwarfed. For the same reason, the intermarriage between blonds or between dark-complexioned people was not countenanced. A number of precautions in sexual relations were prescribed in order to prevent the birth of defectives, such as lepers, epileptics, the deaf and the dumb, the lame and the blind.

V. Intelligent Love

Raba advised every young man not to marry a girl before he knew all about her immediate family, especially about her brothers, for “children usually inherit the traits of their mother’s brothers. “Take your time,” counsels a Talmudic proverb, “before you ask a woman to be your wife”; in other words, “fall in love intelligently.” Other well-known Rabbinic maxims are: “a man drinketh not out of a cup which he hath not inspected,” and “a bride whose eyes are defective, ought to undergo a general physical examination.” In the opinion of Rabbi Jonathan both Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, and Saul, king of Israel, acted most indiscreetly by treating marriage in a rather frivolous manner. Eliezer said: “Behold the virgin which will say drink, and I will also draw for the camels, that is the woman whom the Lord hath appointed for my master’s son.” Suppose that woman had some physical defects, would she have been a suitable mate for Isaac? Similarly, Saul proclaimed: “The man who killeth Goliath, the king will give him his daughter.” If that man had been a slave or possessed other hereditary defects, would Saul have sanctioned the marriage?

VI. Non-Eugenic Marriages

The attempt to limit the multiplication of the undesirable elements in the Jewish race resulted in three kinds of prohibitions. First, prohibition against the marriage of defectives by reason of heredity (pesul yocyesin); secondly, the prohibition against the marriage of personal defectives (debar shebagufon); thirdly, the prohibition against consanguineous marriages (ervah). Besides the prohibition against defective marriages mentioned in the Mosaic code, the Talmud forbade on to marry into a confirmed leprous or epileptic family, or to marry a woman who had buried three husbands. The union between an old man and a young girl was condemned in unequivocal terms. Persons or families manifesting continuous antagonism to each other were advised not to intermarry. Great, in the eyes of the Rabbis, was the offense of him who married a woman from an element classed among the unfit. His act was as reprehensible as if he had dug up every fertile field in existence and sown it with salt. A quintuple transgression was his, for which he will be bound hand and foot by Elijah, the great purifier, and flogged by God himself. “Woe unto him who deteriorates the quality of his children and defiles the purity of his family,” is the verdict of Elijah endorsed by God. On the other hand, the mating of two persons possessing unique and noble traits cannot but result in the establishment of superior and influential families. When God will cause his Shechinah to dwell in Israel, only such which scrupulously preserved the purity of their families will be privileged to witness the manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

VII. Psychical Eugenics

The distinctive feature, however, of Jewish eugenics lies in the greater emphasis laid on the psychical well-being of posterity, in contradistinction to the merely physical well-being which is the chief concern of modern eugenists. At the Congress of Eugenics recently held at London, one of our modern eugenists, Professor Samuel C. Smith of the University of Minnesota, exclaimed: “if I were to choose my own father, I would rather have a robust burglar than a consumptive bishop.” The Rabbis, on the other hand, tell us that when the question came up whether or not the Gibeonites should be permitted to intermarry with the children of Israel, David tested them, in order to ascertain not so much their physical fitness but rather their psychical fitness, and found them wanting. He discovered that they did not possess the three “unit characters” peculiar to Israel, namely: sympathy, modesty and philanthropy. He there fore thought it eugenically inadvisable to allow their mating with a spiritually better-developed stock. Rabbi Levi enumerates nine undesirable psychical qualities which ought to be eliminated from amongst the Jewish race.

VIII. Eugenics and Religion

The Jew took his spiritual mission as representing a “kingdom of priests and a holy kingdom” quite seriously and used all possible eugenic means to preserve those rare emotional and spiritual qualities developed during centuries of slow progress and unfolding. Intuitively he felt the truth, so well expressed by a modern student of eugenics, that “Religion would be a more effective thing if everybody had a healthy emotional nature; but it can do nothing with natures that have not the elements of love, loyalty, and devotion.” The Rabbis would say: Religion can do nothing with natures that have not the elements of sympathy, modesty, and philanthropy. Hence they urged that a man should be willing to offer all his possessions for the opportunity of marrying a member of a psychically well-developed family. The marriage between the offspring of inferior stock and that of superior stock, such as the marriage between a scholar and the daughter of an am- Haaretz, or between an am-Haaretz and the daughter of a scholar, was considered extremely undesirable and was condemned very strongly. Moreover, no Rabbi or Talmid Chacham was allowed to take part in the celebration of such a non-eugenic union. An historical case is cited by Rabbi Eliezer to prove that one should always select his soul-mate from amongst the spiritually better-developed families. Moses married a daughter of Jethro, a heathen priest, and the result was that one of his grandsons, Jonathan, became an idolatrous priest. Aaron, on the other hand, married the daughter of Abinadab, and history records the name of his grandson Phinehas as the hero who defended the honor and purity of Israel. Parents living normal and righteous lives are not only a blessing to themselves but also to their children and children’s children, until the end of all generations; while parents living abnormal and immoral lives bring ruin and calamity not only on themselves but also on their children and children’s children, to the end of all generations.

IX. Heredity

A parallel to the “rough eugenic ideal” of marrying “health, wealth and wisdom” is found in the words of Rabbi Akiba, who claims that “a father bequeaths to his child beauty, health, wealth, wisdom and longevity.” Similarly, ugliness, sickness, poverty, stupidity and the tendency to premature death, are transmitted from father to offspring. Hence we are told that when Moses desired to know why some of the righteous suffer in health and material prosperity, while others prosper and reap success; and again, why some of the wicked suffer, while others enjoy success and material wee-being; God explained that the righteous and wicked who thrive and flourish, are usually the descendants of righteous parents, while those who suffer and fail materially are the descendants of wicked parents.

X. Priceless Heritage

Thus the Rabbis recognized the fact that both physical and psychical qualities were inherited, and endeavored by direct precept and law, as well as by indirect advice and admonition, to preserve and improve the inborn, wholesome qualities of the Jewish race. It is true that they were willing to concede that “a pure-bred individual may be produced by a hybrid mated with a pure bred,” for they found examples of that nature in Ruth the Moabitess, Naamah the Ammonitess, Hezekiah and Mordecai. As a general eugenic rule, however, they maintained that one cannot produce “a clean thing out of an unclean,” and discouraged any kind of intermarriage even with proselytes. Their ideal was a race healthy in body and in spirit, pure and undefiled, devoid of any admixture of inferior human protoplasm. Such an ideal, though apparently narrow and chauvinistic, has its eugenic value, as the following suggestive quotation from a well-known eugenist clearly indicates. “Families in which good and noble qualities of mind and body have become hereditary, form a natural aristocracy; and if such families take pride in recording their pedigrees, marry among themselves, and establish a predominant fertility, they can assure success and position to the majority of their descendants in any political future. They can become the guardians and trustees of a sound inborn heritage, which, incorruptible and undefiled, they can preserve in purity and vigor throughout whatever period of ignorance and decay may be in store for the nation at large. Neglect to hand on undimmed the priceless germinal qualities which such families possess can be regarded only as a betrayal of a sacred trust.”


References

1. Cf. also _Social Direction of Human Evolution, by Prof. William E. Kellicott, 1911, p. 231.

2. Sir Francis Galton defines eugenics as “the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of the race.”

3. Cf. Ps. Cxxviii, 3-4. The National Conference on Race Betterment which met recently at Battle Creek declared that “the core of race betterment consists in promoting more and better homes.”

4. Gen. Xxiv, 3-4.

5. Ber. Rabbah 59, 11.

6. _Heredity in Relation to Eugenics_, by Charles B. Davenport, New York, 1911, p. 183.
7. _Social Direction of Human Evolution_, p. 154; _Heredity in Relation to Eugenics_, p. 185. The Biblical expression “a bone of my bones” (Gen. Ii, 23), refers, according to the Rabbis, to a man who marries one of his relatives. (Bere****h Rabbah 18,5). The marriage between uncle and niece is also recommended. (Yebamoth 63b).

8. Ber. Rabbah 59, 12; cf. Gen. ix, 25-26.

9. Kiddushin 29b.

10. Ibid.

11. Midrash Lekach Tob, Gen. 2, ed. Buber p. 21.

12. Ber. Rabbah ch. 17.

13. Yalkut Gen. ii, 23.

14. Pesachim 113b.

15. Nedarim 64b.

16. M. K. 27b.

17. B. B. 110b.

18. Yebamoth 63b.

19. Ibid. 64a.

20. Ibid 63b, 64a.

21. Ibid 62b. Cf. Koheleth Rabbah 7, 8, also _Social Direction of Human
Evolution_, p. 124, concerning pathological defects of first born and
earlier members of the family.

22. Cf. Tur Eben Haezer ch.25.

23. Bechoroth 45b.

24. Sifra, Mezora ch. 3.

25. Pesachim 112b.

26. Nedarim 20a.

27. B. B. 110a.
28. Yebamoth 63a.

29. Kethuboth 75b.

30. Shir Hashirim Rabbah 4, 1-3; cf. Taanith 24a.

31. Taanith 4a.

32. Tur Eben Haezer, Piryah Veribyah, ch. 4.

33. Deuteronomy xxiii, 2.

34. Yebamoth 64a.

35. Niddah 64a. It is interesting to note that a late authority insists that the same rule should apply to a man who buried three wives. Cf. Beer Heteb to Eben Haezer, Ishoth 9, 2.

36. Sanhedrin 76a; cf. also Yebamoth 106b and Ruth Rabbah 3, 10.

37. Kiddushin 71b. Cf. _Heredity in Relation to Eugenics_, p.8, where the suggestion is made that the curious antipathy of red-hairled persons of the opposite sexes for each other, may be an eugenic antipathy.

38. Kiddushin 70a.

39. Aboth Derabbi Nathan, ch. 26.

40. Cf. Kiddushin 71a.

41. Kiddushin 70a.

42. Bamidbar Rabbah 3,4.

43. Kiddushin 70b.

44. Yebamoth 79a.

45. Nedarim 20b.

46. _Heredity in Relation to Eugenics_, p. 225

47. Pesachim 49b.

48. Kiddushin 49b; cf. also Pesachim 49b.

49 Pesachim 49b.

50. B. B. 109b.

51. Yoma 87a>

52. _Heredity in Relation to Eugenics_, p.8.

53. Eduyoth 2, 9.

54. Yer. Kiddushin 1,7.

55. Berachoth 7a.

56. Yebamoth 63a.

57. Bamidbar Rabbah, Chukath ch. 19.

58. Pesachim 112b, Kiddushin 70b.

59. Yer. Kilayim ch. 1.

60. See _Social Direction of Human Evolution_, p. 238.

Unholy Grail: The Quest for Genetic Weapons (And How These Technologies Are Being Used For Political Control, Stasi Stalking and Eugenics)

Besides the article below, please watch this video documentary called "Playing God."  Bio-weaponry can bring about much of the technologies that I am talking about here, here and here. This can be used in conjunction with the DARPA-Smart Grid which allows for full spectrum dominance and Reality-TV like forms of torture. This is a form of political control and eugenics. Much of this technology, (including the internet itself,) has been spearheaded by Raytheon and BBN technologies. All of this is happening right now, as we speak. When you see this video here about being hooked up as a "human node" and having your brain monitored 24/7 like a rat in a laboratory, this is what they are talking about.

- South Africa, Israel Have Sought "Ethnic Bombs"

by Kellia Ramares
(Special Note: Please see here and here for the previous cushy
 relationship between South Africa and Israel. See here
for how Zionism moves against the United Nations)

[Since the attacks of 9-11-01 there has been a great deal of discussion and speculation as to whether or not gene-specific bioweapons might be used as a weapon of war or, in the gloomiest of scenarios, as an instrument of global population reduction to alleviate the inevitably drastic consequences of Peak Oil. FTW asked radio public affairs producer and investigative journalist Kellia Ramares to take a critical look at whether such weapons actually exist. While not definitively establishing that such weapons do exist, Ramares had documented, in chilling detail, both their scientific feasibility of such weapons and the fact that many nations have been actively pursuing them for some time. - MCR]

"...to the extent that any country was going to attack us with nuclear weapons then we obviously have a nuclear response. With respect to biologicals and chemicals, we have indicated it would be a swift, devastating response and overwhelming force. We have not indicated what that might entail. We've left that deliberately open."

-- Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen in an interview for the PBS "Frontline" program "Plague Wars" aired on 10.13.98.

Mar. 4, 2003, 00:30 PST (FTW) -- Biological and chemical weapons are as old as the discovery of poison. Examples of chemical warfare go back at least as far as Ancient Greece, where Solon of Athens poisoned his enemy's water supply during the siege of Krissa in 6th Century B.C.E. 1 In Europe, biological weapons, in the form of the bodies of plague victims being catapulted over the walls of a besieged city, go back to at least the year 1346.2 In 18th Century North America, Indian populations were given smallpox-infected blankets during the French and Indian War.3  In modern times, there is evidence of a World War II-era Japanese biological weapons program and Japanese use of plague against the civilian Chinese population of Chiang king Province.4  Out of World War II came the mushroom cloud that still haunts the popular imagination. But the still-unsolved anthrax attacks in the U.S. in October 2001 and the White House's insistence that Iraq is concealing chemical and biological weapons has again brought these types of weapons to public attention.

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention,5 prohibits the development, production and stockpiling of biological and toxic weapons. The BTWC was signed on April 10, 1972, and entered into force on March 26, 1975. The Convention is a disarmament treaty, meant to "exclude completely the possibility" of biological agents and toxins being used as weapons by abolishing the weapons themselves.6

The United States, the United Kingdom, and several countries thought by the United States Government to have bioweapons programs are original signatories to the BTWC. These include the Russian Federation, Iran, South Africa, South Korea and Syria.7 North Korea, Iraq and Libya subsequently signed the convention.8 The United States ratified the BTWC on March 26, 1975.9  Non-signatories include several former Soviet republics in volatile Central Asia: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.10

The BTWC forbids work on offensive biological weapons. Perhaps the most egregious violation of the Convention has been the former Soviet Union's offensive biological weapons program. 11

The Convention allows defensive biological work, such as the development of vaccines. However, the line between defensive and offensive work is very thin; in order to make a vaccine or an antidote, one must first learn how a pathogen works, and that information could be put to offensive use.

Biological and Chemical Weapons: Is their use inevitable?

In 1997, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen reported that more than 25 countries had or may be developing nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons and the means to deliver them, and that a larger number were capable of producing such weapons, potentially on short notice.12

There are a number of reasons why, despite the BTWC, the use of biological and chemical weapons becomes more and more likely:

1) It is extremely difficult to monitor the creation of bioweapons because there are no critical raw materials, e.g. uranium or plutonium, the mining, manufacture or transportation of which could be evidence of the creation of the weapon; a small amount of a bioagent can do a lot of damage, so no major stockpiling is needed; 13

2) Bioweapons are cheap compared to conventional and nuclear weapons, and can be economically developed through computer modeling. Furthermore, bioweapons do not require a large and expensive delivery infrastructure of conventional weapons, i.e. planes, aircraft carriers, missiles, etc.14 For example, anthrax was sent through the U.S. mails in 2001;

3) The spread of human, animal or crop disease can be made to look like an "act of God" with no one able to trace the perpetrator(s); 15

Additionally, smaller states with little or no nuclear capability can view chemical and biological weapons as a counterforce to the heavy nuclear and conventional capabilities of the United States, which is threatening possibly nuclear "preemptive action" under the so-called Bush Doctrine"16

Biological and chemical weapons can be used by countries, corporations, terrorist groups, organized crime and disaffected or mentally ill individuals who would not have the means to build up a conventional or nuclear arsenal. Properly deployed, they have the capability of rapidly killing more people than a nuclear weapon. In an interview for the PBS television program Frontline in 1998, then Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen said, "If you look at the impact that a biological weapon can have, in terms of its cost and consequence, you will find that it does not take a great deal to develop it in terms of money. It has a major consequence if you were to, for example, take roughly 100 kilograms (about 220 pounds) of anthrax and you were to properly disperse [it], that would have the impact of something like two to six times the consequence of a one megaton nuclear bomb."17

Moreover, the May 1997 Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review stated:

...the threat or use of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) is a likely condition of future warfare, including in the early stages of war to disrupt U.S. operations and logistics. These weapons may be delivered by ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, aircraft, special operations forces, or other means. To meet this challenge, as well as the possibility that CBW might also be used in some smaller-scale contingencies, U.S. forces must be properly trained and equipped to operate effectively and decisively in the face of CBW attacks. This requires that the U.S. military to continue to improve its capabilities to locate and destroy such CBW, preferably before they can be used, and defend against and manage the consequences of CBW if they are used. But capability enhancements alone are not enough. Equally important will be adapting U.S. doctrine, operational concepts, training, and exercises to take full account of the threat posed by CBW as well as other likely asymmetric threats. Moreover, given that the United States will most likely conduct future operations in coalition with others, we must also encourage our friends and allies to train and equip their forces for effective operations in CBW environments."18

The adaptation to future warfare involving CBW is being done in such as way as to increase the likelihood of such a war. The United States, and perhaps other nations as well, is engaging in so-called defensive research known as "threat assessment."  That means creating the threat or a simulant of it, and testing its delivery by various means in order to assess how harmful it could be.

Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, Chair of the Federation of American Scientist's Working Group on Biological Weapons and Director of the Federation's Chemical and Biological Arms Control Program, has written that the outcome of threat assessment "may be a covert international arms race to stay at the cutting edge of BW development, using defence as a cover." 19

To make matters worse, the United States is moving toward more secrecy about the general conduct of its defensive research, a practice which could make other nations suspicious about the true nature of the research. It also appears that the U.S. is up to lawyerly tricks to evade the requirements of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. Dr. Rosenberg has reported:

It is startling to find, in the Assessment Report of a meeting of US and UK defense officials, that 'in the US these [relevant treaties, including the BWC] do not apply to the Department of Justice (DOJ) or Department of Energy.' Therefore, the Report lists as one of the Recommended Actions for the US: 'If there are promising technologies that DoD is prohibited from pursuing, set up MOA [memoranda of agreement] with DOJ or DOE.' The US delegation to this event - the Non-Lethal Weapons Urban Operations Executive Seminar, held in London on November 30, 2000 - was led by four US Marine Corps Generals, including one who was Staff Judge Advocate to the Commandant of the Marine Corps.20

Chemical and biological weapons (CBW) create the possibility of warfare in which battlefields are intentionally or unintentionally rendered obsolete, as it may not be possible to confine diseases or chemicals to a limited geographical area. They also ensure a future of warfare, perhaps a very near future, in which civilians are not "collateral damage" but the prime targets. And the combination of a lowered moral barrier towards CBW, the stirring up of age-old ethnic hatreds, and advances in genome research within the last decade has brought the genocidal possibility of genetic weapons, i.e., weapons that target some component of the genetic makeup (genome) of its victim, closer to reality.

So far, there is no proof that genetic weapons targeting any organism have actually been developed. But several countries have researched or are researching the subject. The possibilities for genetic weapons range from botanical pathogens that could wipe out a region's crops in an act of military or economic warfare, or terrorism, to the ultimate Hitlerian nightmare: the "ethno-bomb," a weapon targeted at unique or nearly unique genetic characteristics of a population. n (For the purposes of this article, pathogens that can harm anyone, but which are distributed, intentionally or accidentally, to a specific racial or ethnic group are not considered "ethno-bombs" or "ethnic weapons." A strong case for HIV being a laboratory created virus distributed intentionally or accidentally to Central Africa and the New York gay community via smallpox and hepatitis B vaccines is made by Dr. Leonard Horowitz in Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola - Nature, Accident or Intentional?, (Tetrahedron, Inc., Rockport MA, 1996). In the worst case scenario of unintended consequences, government and corporate genome research intended for legitimate medical applications may someday provide the knowledge required to develop genetically specific ethnic weapons.

"Ethno-Bombs": Warnings were raised a decade ago

In 1993, RAFI, Rural Advancement Foundation International, now the ETC Group - Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration,21 raised concerns that the gathering of human genetic material by, among other organizations, the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) could make feasible the development of ethnically targeted viruses.22

RAFI's executive director, Pat Roy Mooney wrote: "Not since we warned, at the beginning of the 1980s, that herbicide manufacturers were buying seed companies in order to develop plant varieties that liked their chemicals, has RAFI borne the brunt of so much abuse.23

But in 1996, Dr. Vivienne Nathanson, the British Medical Association's (BMA) Head of Science and Ethics told a congress of the World Medical Association that ethnically targeted genetic weapons were now possible, and she cited as example the possibility of designing an agent that could sterilize or pass on a lethal hereditary defect in specific ethnic groups.24

In 1999, the BMA issued a report called Biotechnology, Weapons and Humanity25, which warned that genetic knowledge could be misused to develop weapons aimed at specific ethnic groups. The executive summary, available online, stated:

Over the last few decades, rapid advances in molecular biology have allowed the heritable material (DNA) of different organisms to be interchanged. The Human Genome Project and the Human Genetic Diversity Projects are allowing the identification of human genetic coding and differences in normal genetic material between different ethnic groups.

During the review conferences on the BTWC, an increasing level of concern has been expressed by national governments over the potential use of genetic knowledge in the development of a new generation of biological and toxin weapons.

Legitimate research into microbiological agents, relating both to the development of agents for use in, for example... agriculture, or to improve the medical response to disease-causing agents, may be difficult to distinguish from research with the malign purpose of producing more effective weapons.

 Research that could be used to develop ethnic weapons has historically been based upon natural susceptibilities, or upon the absence of vaccination within a target group. Genetic engineering of biological agents, to make them more potent, has been carried out covertly for some years, but not as an overt step to produce more effective weapons. In genetic terms, there are more similarities between different people and peoples than there are differences. But the differences exist, and may singly or in combination distinguish the members of one social group (an "ethnic" group) from another.26

Rapid Advances: How fast is fast?

Advancements in genome research have occurred at an amazing pace The U.S. Human Genome Project expects to complete the Human DNA Sequence in the spring of 2003,27 two years ahead of the original schedule. RAFI's (now ETC Group's) Pat Roy Mooney has written:

The amount of genetic information being stored in the international gene banks is doubling every 14 months... A quarter century ago, it took a laboratory two months to sequence 150 nucleotides (the molecular letters that spell out a gene). Now, scientists can sequence 11 million letters in a matter of hours. The cost of DNA sequencing has dropped from about US$100 per base pair in 1980 to less than a dollar today [early 2001] and will be down to pennies by 2002. Standard gene sequencing technology once required at least two weeks and $US20,000 to screen a single patient for genetic variations in 100,000 SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms). Now 100,000 SNPs can be screened in a few hours for a few hundred dollars.28

Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) are small genetic variations that occur in individuals. But studies are also being done by the SNP Consortium, an organization of private biotechnology firms, 29 to see how they vary from group to group. The groups being studied are African Americans, Asians and Caucasians.

Sequencing the Human Genome: What do genes say about race?

The Human Genome Project has shown that 99.9% of human DNA is identical throughout the species and that there are more genetic variations within groups than between groups.30 Thus, race, as we think of it socially, is a cultural construct, rather than a genetic one.

Yet, our eyes tell us that there are differences. All humans would look alike otherwise. It is also well known that certain ethnic groups have predispositions to certain illnesses. Something must account for those predispositions.  Is that something in the .1% of non-identical genes scattered throughout humanity? More specifically, is that something explained by Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms?

When it comes to the development of "ethno-bombs," it's the study of SNPs that most worries Edward Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project31 and a former RAFI staff member. It's the primary focus of the Sunshine Project to prevent new breakthroughs in biotechnology from being applied for military purposes. In an interview with FTW in January, 2003, Hammond said of SNPs:

What these are, put in more simple language, are little, small differences in the genetic code that are in all of us, but ones which can be at least theoretically related to a particular ethnic group or a particular kind of people. And so the fear is that these discoveries that there are some very minor genetic differences that do seem to roughly break down somewhat along culturally defined ethnic lines could become exploitable, particularly once we reach the point where genetic constructs that could be created by science could take advantage of a group of these. What I mean by that is that there are very, very few genetic differences that in and of themselves are markedly different from one population to another. However, if you could do a combination of factors, a combination of small differences in genes there might be ways to roughly create something that you would call a genetic weapon.

If we arrive at the point where genetic weapons are possible, and I do believe that this will happen, the thing that I'm most concerned about are not the individual "disease" genes that have been identified in the past.[Ethnically related genetic disorders such as Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle Cell Anemia, or Tay-Sachs Disease]. Rather it is a combination of genes that occur in particular frequencies in different populations and by targeting the absence or the presence of a particularly small group of genes that seems to have some sort of ethnic association, than by that way, I think genetic weapons may become possible.

The rapid developments in genome mapping have enabled the Human Genome Project32 to meet all its goals for 1994-1998, and to add two new goals for 1999-2003: the determination of human sequence variation [mapping the SNPs] and functional analysis of the operation of the whole genome [understanding how the whole system works]. These are two goals vital to creating ethnic-specific genetic weapons.33

Genetic weapons development: terrorists won't try this at home

We cannot be sure how many states are trying to develop genetic weapons. But we can be sure that the entities trying to develop them are states (possibly with the help of large corporate contractors) and not terrorist groups. This is because only states can manage the complex science genetic research requires.  Dr. Claire Fraser, President and Director of the Institute for Genomic Research (Tigr) says that although genetic data on human pathogens are public, no one knows enough to turn this information into bioweapons. Speaking out against calls to classify now public genome data, Fraser told BBC News Online: "I want to debunk the myth that genomics has delivered a fully annotated set of virulence and pathogenicity genes to potential terrorists. I have heard some describe genome databases as bioterror catalogues where one could order an antibiotic-resistance gene from organism one, a toxin from organism two, and a cell-adhesion molecule from organism three, and quickly engineer a super pathogen, This just isn't the case."34

Of course, once states create these weapons, it may be possible for terrorist groups to buy or steal them.

Who's been doing what?

Since all biological and chemical weapons are illegal, and since ethnic weapons are especially abhorrent, countries doing research in these areas don't brag about it. Nor do the corporate media take much notice. Number 16 on Project Censored's list of the 25 top censored stories for the year 2000 was "Human Genome Project Opens the Door to Ethnically Specific Bioweapons."35 But in recent years, some information has surfaced in government reports or corporate media indicating that some countries have been researching the possibility of ethnic weapons.

South Africa: Apartheid regime sought "black bomb"

In the 1980s, South Africa's apartheid regime ran a biological weapons program called "Project Coast". According to an April 2001 U.S. Air Force Report36 one of the program's goals was to develop a "black bomb" via genetic engineering research. The "black bomb" would weaken or kill blacks but not whites.37

In addition to the "black bomb," Project Coast planned to build a large-scale anthrax production facility to produce anthrax for use against black guerrilla fighters inside or outside of South Africa38, and to develop a drug that would induce infertility and could be given surreptitiously to blacks, perhaps under the pretext of a vaccine.39 None of these goals were achieved. However, in one of the appendices to the USAF report, the authors asked, "In its genetic engineering experiments, how close was South Africa to a "black bomb"? Are other countries developing similar biological weapons?"40

Israel: CBW program finds genetic differences between Arabs and Jews

On November 15, 1998, the Sunday Times of London ran a front-page article reporting that the Israelis were planning an ethnic bomb.41 The article stated that the Israelis were trying to identify distinctive genes carried by some Arabs, particularly Iraqis. "The intention is to use the ability of viruses and certain bacteria to alter the DNA inside their host's living cells. The scientists are trying to engineer deadly micro-organisms that attack only those bearing the distinctive genes."

The article reported that the program was based at Nes Tziyona, Israel's main biological and chemical weapons research facility, and that an unnamed scientist there said that while the common Semitic origin of Arabs and Jews complicated the task, "They have, however, succeeded in pinpointing a particular characteristic in the genetic profile of certain Arab communities, particularly the Iraqi people." The report also quoted Dedi Zucker, a member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) as saying, "Morally, based on our history, and our tradition and our experience, such a weapon is monstrous and should be denied."

Israel has never signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.42  

The Human Genome Diversity Project

The HGDP is an international project based at the Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.43 HGDP is not a part of the Human Genome Project. The HGDP is of grave concern to people who believe ethnically targeted genetic weapons are on the horizon. Among these people is Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg. When asked by FTW via email if she was concerned that the Human Genome Project and the Human Genome Diversity Project will pave the way for genotype-specific weapons, she replied simply. "Yes."

The FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) list of the HGDP does deal briefly with the issue of ethnic weapons:

Could these samples be used to create biological weapons
that were targeted at particular populations?

Genocidal use of genetics is not possible with any currently known technology. On the basis of what we know of human genetic variation, it seems impossible that it will ever be developed. The Project would condemn and bar any effort to use its data for such purposes. The highly visible nature of the Project and its ethical constraints should make even the attempt less plausible.44

This answer is unsatisfactory on a number of levels. First of all, it was written in late 1993 and early 1994.45

Subsequent revelations have indicated that such weapons are being attempted. That the Project would bar efforts to use its data for such purposes is unenforceable. The Project is putting its data in the public domain. How could it stop a government from surreptitiously using that data? The "highly visible nature of the Project and its ethical constraints" could make it unlikely that members of the Project would use the data for weapons development while they were members of the project. But what would prevent them from doing so in subsequent research for third parties?

Lastly the conclusion that "on the basis of what we know of human genetic variation, it seems impossible that it will ever be developed is likely premised on   a false assumption that Edward Hammond pointed out in his interview with FTW:

One of the things that people say is that, 'Well, look. You're never going to be able to develop a genetic weapon that is perfect. Whatever combination of genes or whatever gene you target, is never going to have 100% occurrence in the population that you target. And in almost all likelihood, your own population is going to have that sequence.' In other words, even in the "best case scenario" of somebody who was evil enough to try to develop this kind of weapon, it's never going to be perfect. It's only going to get 70, 80% of the enemy are going to potentially be subject to being affected by this weapon and you might have 5, 10, 15% of your own people potentially subject to this weapon. And so experts will say, 'You know, nobody's crazy enough to do that. Nobody would actually do that because, think of the risk that would pose to their own people. And think of the fact that it really isn't going to work against all of the enemy.'

I really don't think that that kind of rationality pervades the people that would potentially do this. And if you look at what happens in ethnic conflicts, certainly rationality and calculation about what ends you are willing to go to, to get the other guy don't play out like that. So I think that there's a certain willful ignoring of the reality of how conflict takes place when people say that these aren't potentially practical weapons.

In light of the Israeli research into the genetic differences between Arabs and Jews, who share Semitic origin, and in light of the overwhelming evidence that the United States Government had foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks and allowed them to occur, resulting in the deaths of thousands of U.S. citizens, no one should assume that any weapon, genetic or not, would not be developed because some of the developer's people might suffer the same fate as the targeted "enemy."

The U.S.  and the "Dual Use" Dilemma: Treatments or Weapons?

A genome is the complete DNA makeup of an organism, be it human, animal or plant. Research on genomes could lead to greater understanding of how disease pathogens or genetic defects operate. 

This, in turn, could lead to medical breakthroughs: gene therapies, treatments that take into account the individual genetically-based responses to medications, or treatments for conditions for which certain population subgroups are susceptible. For example, NitroMed, Inc., a private biopharmaceutical company that is developing nitric oxide (NO)- enhanced medicines, is testing a drug called BiDil‰, which is designed to improve survival in African Americans with heart failure.46  A trial involving 600 African American men and women is now in progress, with the results expected in early 2004.47

But genome research, like many other forms of biological and chemical research, is "dual use." And the U.S. Government appears to be very interested in its military applications. Note that the government's Joint Genome Institute (JGI) 48 is not under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services. It is part of the Department of Energy, which often works hand-in-glove with the Defense Department.

DOE's own explanation for its involvement in the
Human Genome Project betrays military roots:

After the atomic bomb was developed and used, the U.S. Congress charged DOE's predecessor agencies (the Atomic Energy Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration) with studying and analyzing genome structure, replication, damage, and repair and the consequences of genetic mutations, especially those caused by radiation and chemical by-products of energy production. From these studies grew the recognition that the best way to study these effects was to analyze the entire human genome to obtain a reference sequence. Planning began in 1986 for DOE's Human Genome Program and in 1987 for the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) program. The DOE-NIH U.S. Human Genome Project formally began October 1, 1990, after the first joint 5-year plan was written and a memorandum of understanding was signed between the two organizations.49

The JGI website describes the Institute as "virtual human genome institute" that integrates the sequencing activities of the human genome centers at the three JGI member institutions: Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley, and Los Alamos National Laboratories. JGI partner institutions include Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Stanford Genome Center."50 The Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge laboratories are well known as nuclear weapons research facilities. Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos are seeking to install high containment microbiology labs in their facilities. These labs could work with virulent organisms such as live anthrax, botulism, plague. Opponents of biowarfare are concerned that the United States is violating the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention by genetically modifying anthrax.51

-- Kellia Ramares earned a B.A. degree in economics, with honors, from Fordham University in New York in 1977. She also earned a law degree from Indiana University-Bloomington in 1980. She has been a reporter for KPFA-FM in Berkeley, CA for nearly four years. There, her specialty is toxics reporting. Kellia is also an Associate Producer for WINGS - Women's International News Gathering Service, a Contributing Editor for OnlineJournal.com and a reporter for Free Speech Radio News, which is heard in over 50 stations throughout the United States. Kellia's latest project is R.I.S.E. - Radio Internet Story Exchange, a weekly Internet-based public affairs program. 

ENDNOTES

1. (Crowley, Michael. Disease by Design: De-Mystifying the Biological Weapons Debate. Basic Research Report, Basic Publications, http://www.basicint.org, Number 2001.2 November 2001 Section 2)

2. (Ibid.)

3. (Ibid.).

4. (Ibid.) 

5. (a copy is available at the website of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/docs/bw-btwc-texts.html)

6. (Rosenberg, Prof. Barbara Hatch, "Defending Against Biodefence: The Need for Limits," p.1 http://www.fas.org/bwc/papers/defending.pdf)

7. (a list of signatories is available at http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/docs/bw-btwc-sig.html) 

8. (Ibid.)

9. (a list of ratifications is at http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/docs/bw-btwc-rat.html)

10. (http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/docs/bw-btwc-nonsig.html).

11. (Dr. Ken Alibek, the head of the then-Soviet Union's biological warfare program, Biopreparat,  described the Soviet Union's offensive weapons development in a PBS Frontline program called "Plague War" which aired on 10.13.1998. The transcript of Frontline's entire interview with Alibek is athttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plague/interviews/alibekov.html).

12. (Cohen, William S., "Proliferation: Threat and Response," U.S. Department of Defense, 1997, http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/prolif97/)

13. (Mooney, Pat Roy, "Technological Transformation: The Increase in Power and Complexity is Coming just as the 'Raw Materials' are Eroding" The ETC Century - Development Dialogue 1999:1-2  Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Uppsala Sweden, p. 33 http://www.dhf.uu.se)

14. (Ibid.)

15. (Ibid.)

16. (see Section 5 of The National Security Strategy of the United States of America at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss5.html, and  The National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction athttp://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/WMDStrategy.pdf)

17. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plague/interviews/cohen.html)

18. (Cohen, William S., "The Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review," U.S. Department of Defense, May 1997. http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/qdr/).

19. (Rosenberg, op.cit. p. 3)

20. (Ibid.)

21. (http://www.etcgroup.org)

22. (Mooney, op.cit. p. 34).

23. (Ibid. p. 34)

24. (The Genetics Forum, "Genetic Weapons Threat?" The Splice of Life, Vol. 3 No. 4, February 1997. http://www.geneticsforum.org.uk/warfare.htm)

25. (Harwood Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1999)

26. (http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/Biotechnology%2C+weapons

+and+humanity+-%28m%29?OpenDocument&Highlight=2,biotechnology)

27. (U.S. Human Genome Project Five-Year Research Goals, 1998-2003,.http://www.ornl.gov/TechResources/Human_Genome/hg5yp/)

28. (Mooney, op. cit. pp. 25-26).

29. (http://snp.cshl.org/ The member companies are: AP Biotech, AstraZeneca, Aventis, Bayer, Bristol-Meyers Squib, F.Hoffman-LaRoche, Glaxo Wellcome, IBM, Motorola, Novartis, Pfizer, Searle, SmithKline Beecham, and Wellcome Trust)

30. (Aidi, Hisham, "Race and the Human Genome,"http://www.africana.com/DailyArticles/index_20010129.htm).

31. (www.sunshine-project.org)

32. (http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/)

33. (Dando, Malcolm, Appendix 13A. "Benefits and threats of developments in biotechnology and genetic engineering," SIPRI Yearbook 1999: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1999, pp. 2-3.)

34. (Whitehouse, Dr. David,  "DNA databases 'no use to terrorists,' BBC News Online January 15, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2660753.stm)

35. (http://www.projectcensored.org/stories/2001/16.html). 

36. (Burgess, Dr. Stephen F. and Purkitt, Dr. Helen E., "The Rollback of South Africa's Chemical and Biological Warfare Program," USAF Counterproliferation Center, Air War College, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, April 2001,http://www.au.af.mil/au/awcgate/awc-cps.htm)

37. (Ibid. p.21 and p.105 n60). 

38. (Ibid. p. 21)

39. (Ibid. p. 105 n62).

40. (Ibid. p. 84, n17)

41. (Mahnaimi, Uzi and Colvin, Marie, "The Israelis are making a virus that will target Arabs: Israel planning 'ethnic' bomb as Saddam caves in", London Times, November 15, 1998).

42. (http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/docs/bw-btwc-nonsig.html).

43. (www.stanford.edu/group/morrinst/hgdp.html)

44. (http://www.stanford.edu/group/morrinst/hgdp/faq.html#Q12)

45. (http://www.stanford.edu/group/morrinst/hgdp/faq.html).

46. (Press Release: NitroMed and Merck Form Strategic Collaboration, January 7, 2003, http://www.nitromed.com/press/01-07-03.htm)

47. (Ibid.)

48. (http://www.jgi.doe.gov/)

49. (The Department of Energy and the Human Genome Project Fact Sheet,http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/project/whydoe.html)

50. (http://www.jgi.doe.gov/whoweare/members.html)

51. (Ramares, Kellia, "As Bush threatens Iraq with nukes, US ramps up its own biowarfare research", http://www.rise4news.net/ramp.html ).

More Information on Judaism and Eugenics - Jewish Eugenics Pre-Dates Hitler's Master Race

Besides the article below.... I previously posted information on the connections between Judaism and eugenics here and here. Also, see these books for Judaism as an evolutionary strategy. But it goes even deeper than this, it is a political project of control. For more about this, please see here, here, here and here. This is a continuation of the ideology and the foreign policy that was driving the British Empire. Or, more specifically... that Zionism was one of the ideas behind the later part of the British Empire, and it's still a major force in our world today.

=============================================================================

 *** According to the Israeli daily newspaper quoted below, before the Nazi Third Reich in Germany plotted to create a Master Race from the European gene pool, Zionists had already established a racial purification program to create the perfect Jewish bloodline. ***

A shocking new study reveals how key figures in the pre-state Zionist establishment proposed castrating the mentally ill, sterilizing the poor and doing everything possible to ensure reproduction only among the `best of people.'

Castrating the mentally ill, encouraging reproduction among families "numbered among the intelligentsia" and limiting the size of "families of Eastern origin" and "preventing ... lives that are lacking in purpose" - these proposals are not from some program of the Third Reich but rather were brought up by key figures in the Zionist establishment of the Land of Israel during the period of the British Mandate. It turns out there was a great deal of enthusiasm here for the improvement of the hereditary characteristics of a particular race (eugenics). This support, which has been kept under wraps for many years, is revealed in a study that examines the ideological and intellectual roots at the basis of the establishment of the health system in Israel.

In the Yishuv (pre-state Jewish community) in the 1930s there were "consultation stations" operating on a Viennese model of advice centers for couples that wished to marry and become parents. In Austria, with the Nazis' rise to power, they served for forced treatment. Here the stations were aimed at "giving advice on matters of sex and marriage, especially in the matter of preventing pregnancy in certain cases." They distributed birth-control devices for free to the penniless and at reduced prices to those of limited means. In Tel Aviv the advice stations were opened in centers of immigrant populations: Ajami in Jaffa, the Hatikvah Quarter and Neveh Sha'anan.

These are some of the findings of a doctoral thesis written by Sachlav Stoler-Liss about the history of the health services in the 1950s, under the supervision of Prof. Shifra Shvarts, head of the department of health system management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. They were presented at the annual conference of the Israel Anthropological Association at Ben-Gurion College.

The father of the theory of eugenics was British scholar Francis Galton. It was he who coined the term - which literally means "well-born" - at the end of the 19th century. The aim of the eugenics movement was to better the human race. Galton proposed a plan to encourage reproduction among "the best people" in society and to prevent reproduction among "the worst elements."

Forced Sterilization

Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Galton drew many followers and his ideas spread rapidly to other countries in Europe (among them Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and Belgium), to the United States and to some countries in South America. In various countries, laws were passed that allowed for the forced sterilization of "hereditary paupers, criminals, the feeble-minded, tuberculous, shiftless and ne'er-do-wells." In the United States, up until 1935, about 20,000 people - "insane," "feeble-minded," immigrants, members of ethnic minorities and people with low IQs - were forcibly sterilized, most of them in California. The Californian law was revoked only in 1979. According to Dr. Philip Reilly, a doctor and executive director of the Shriver Center for Mental Retardation, in 1985 at least 19 states in the United States had laws that allowed the sterilization of people with mental retardation, (among them Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Vermont, Utah and Montana).

"Eugenics is considered to be something that only happened in Germany," says Stoler-Liss. "Germany was indeed the most murderous manifestation of eugenics, but in fact, it was a movement that attracted many followers. In every place it took on a unique, local aspect. It is interesting to note that both in Germany and in Israel a link was made between eugenics, health, and nationalism."

Stoler-Liss first encountered the eugenics texts of doctors from the Yishuv when looking for instruction books for parents for a research project for her master's degree. "I presented a text at a thesis seminar and then the instructor of the workshop said to me, `But why aren't you saying that this is a translated text?' I replied: `No, no, the text isn't translated.' `In Israel,' he said, `there are no such things.'"

She decided to look into whether there was only anecdotal and non- representative evidence, doctors and public figures here and there who supported eugenics - and she found many publications that promoted eugenics. Supporters of the idea were key figures in the emerging medical establishment in Palestine; the people who managed and created the Israeli health system.

One of the most prominent eugenicists of the Mandatory period was Dr. Joseph Meir, a well-known doctor who acquired his education in Vienna, served for about 30 years as the head of the Kupat Holim Clalit health maintenance organization, and after whom the Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava is named. "From his position at the very heart of the Zionist medical establishment in the land of Israel in the mid-1930s, he brought young mothers the gospel of eugenics, warned them about degeneracy and transmitted the message to them about their obligation and responsibility for bearing only healthy children," says Stoler-Liss.

Thus, for example, in 1934 Dr. Meir published the following text on the first page of "Mother and Child," a guide for parents that he edited for publication by Kupat Holim: "Who is entitled to give birth to children? The correct answer is sought by eugenics, the science of improving the race and preserving it from degeneration. This science is still young, but its positive results are already great and important - These cases [referring to marriages of people with hereditary disorders - T.T.] are not at all rare in all nations and in particular in the Hebrew nation that has lived a life of exile for 1,800 years. And now our nation has returned to be reborn, to a natural life in the land of the Patriarchs. Is it not our obligation to see to it that we have whole and healthy children in body and soul? For us, eugenics as a whole, and the prevention of the transmission of hereditary disorders in particular, even greater value than for all other nations! ... Doctors, people involved in sport and the national leaders must make broad propaganda for the idea: Do not have children if you are not certain that they will be healthy in body and soul!"

`Problematic and Dangerous'

In its full version, the article, which was published in the "Health Guard" section of the now defunct labor Zionist newspaper Davar, the doctor proposed castrating the mentally ill. Stoler-Liss found many more examples in the "Mother and Child" books that were published in 1934 and 1935 and in journals like Eitanim, which was edited by Dr. Meir.

"The support of Dr. Meir and other senior people in the health system for these ideas has been kept under wraps for many years," claims Stoler-Liss. No one today talks about this chapter in the history of the Yishuv. In the mid-1950s Dr. Meir's articles were collected into a book that came out in his memory. The article mentioned above was not included in it. Stoler-Liss found a card file with notes scribbled by the editors of the volume. They defined the article as "problematic and dangerous." "Now, after Nazi eugenics," wrote one of the editors, "it is dangerous to publish this article."

During the latter part of the 1930s, adds Stoler-Liss, when word came out about the horrors that eugenics in its extreme form is likely to cause, they stopped using this word, which was attributed to the Nazis. Overnight eugenics organizations and journals changed their names and tried to shake off any signs of this theory. Dr. Meir, however, during all the years he was active, continued to promote the ideas of eugenics. At the beginning of the 1950s, he published an article in which he harshly criticized the reproduction prize of 100 lirot that David Ben-Gurion promised to every mother who gave birth to 10 children. "We have no interest in the 10th child or even in the seventh in poor families from the East. In today's reality, we should pray frequently for a second child in a family that is a part of the intelligentsia. The poor classes of the population must not be instructed to have many children, but rather restricted."

"I'm not making a value judgment," says Stoler-Liss. "Zionism arose at a certain period, in a certain ideological atmosphere - there were all kinds of ideas in the air and there were also eugenicist Zionists. Some of the doctors were educated in Europe, and at that time the medical schools taught not only medicine but also the theory of eugenics."

Judaism of Muscle

Dr. Meir was not the first Zionist leader who supported eugenics. According to studies by Dr. Rapahel Falk, a geneticist and historian of science and medicine at Hebrew University, other major Zionist thinkers - among them Dr. Max Nordau, Theodor Herzl's colleague, a doctor and a publicist, and Dr. Arthur Ruppin, the head of the World Zionist Organization office in the Land of Israel - presented the ideas of eugenics as one of the aims of the Jewish movement for national renewal and the settlement of the land.

Prof. Meira Weiss, an anthropologist of medicine at Hebrew University, describes in her book "The Chosen Body" how the settlement of the land and work on the land were perceived by these Zionist thinkers as the "cure" that would restore the health of the Jewish body that had degenerated in the Diaspora. In Nordau's terms, a "Judaism of muscle" would replace "the Jew of the coffee house: the pale, skinny, Diaspora Jew. "At a time when many Europeans are calling for a policy of eugenics, the Jews have never taken part in the `cleansing' of their race but rather allowed every child, be it the sickest, to grow up and marry and have children like himself. Even the mentally retarded, the blind and the deaf were allowed to marry," wrote Ruppin in his book "The Sociology of the Jews." "In order to preserve the purity of our race, such Jews [with signs of degeneracy - T.T.] must refrain from having children."

"Many people dealt with eugenics as a theoretical issue," says Stoler-Liss. "They even set up a Nordau Club with the aim of researching the racial aspects of the Jewish people and ways of improving it. What was special about Dr. Meir and the group that joined him was that for them eugenics was a very practical matter." They wanted to pursue applied eugenics.

The main institution was the advice station. The first station was opened in 1931 in Beit Strauss on Balfour Street in Tel Aviv. The aim was to work in "pleasant ways," through persuasion and choice. As Stoler-Liss explains: "Why should people work against their personal interests? It is here that the connection to the national interest comes in. If I understand that by having a baby I will harm the national interest, the building of the land, the `new Jew,' I will refrain from giving birth. But just to make certain, Meir told the doctors, in the event that a woman comes to you who is `a risk' for giving birth to a sick baby, it is your obligation to make certain that she has an abortion."

"Gynecologist Miriam Aharonova also wrote extensively on the subject of eugenics," adds Stoler-Liss. "In articles for parents under headings such as `The Hygiene of Marriage' she gives a list of eugenic instructions for parents - from the recommended age for giving birth (between 20 and 25), to the recommended difference in age between the father and the mother (the reason for which is the betterment of the race) to a list of diseases that could infect the spouse or "be transmitted through heredity to their descendants after them." In the diseases, she mentions "syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, alcoholism, narcotics addiction (fondness for morphine, cocaine, etc.) and diseases of the mind and the nerves." In the volume of "Mother and Child" published in 1935, says Stoler-Liss, the publication and discussions by doctors who supported eugenics was greatly expanded. Why, in fact, did they not use force? The establishment had a great deal of power over immigrants and refugees.

"The medical establishment's power was limited at that time. This was an establishment that developed hand in hand with the system it was supposed to strengthen and suffered from constant shortages: a shortage of doctors, a shortage of nurses and a shortage of equipment. It had to examine, treat, inoculate and so on. We are talking about the period of the British Mandate. When at long last there was a state, eugenics theory declined. My explanation is the change of generations: that generation had come to an end professionally, and a new generation with more national motivation came along that was not educated at the European universities during that period. They had already seen what the Nazis had done with it and the ideological identification was lower. The ideas themselves seeped in but they're not using the same rhetoric."

Has Eugenics Really Vanished?

The eugenic chapter in the history of Western culture has been closed, but have eugenics really disappeared?

"Eugenic thinking is alive and well today," asserts Stoler-Liss. "It is expressed mainly in the very high rate of pre-natal tests and genetic filtering [of genetically deviant fetuses]. Mothers are very highly motivated to give birth only to healthy children and the attitude toward the exceptional, the different and the handicapped in Israeli society is problematic."

At hospitals today future parents are offered a plethora of genetic tests that diagnose the fetus before birth. Some of them are aimed at identifying serious disorders, like Tay-Sachs disease, a degenerative disease that causes a painful death in infancy. Others, however, are aimed at screening fetuses with conditions like deafness and sterility, the bearers of which can lead full and satisfying lives.

SOURCE: Haaretz, "`Do not have children if they won't be healthy!'", By Tamara Traubmann, 11 June 2004.

Excellent Books to Read Regarding Jewish Identity and Jewish Evolutionary Group Strategy

Before reading the books below, it might be helpful to see this, this, this, this, this and this. Also, read this and this about Zionism's rewriting of the history of the UN resolution that declared Zionism as racism.

1. The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements - by Kevin MacDonald

2. Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism - by Kevin MacDonald

3. Understanding Jewish Influence: Background Traits for Jewish Activism - by Kevin MacDonald