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CTRL report on Skull and Bones

From http://www.ctrl.org


[The following is from a "white paper" written for Japanese readership. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of ctrl.org or its editors]

George Bush, Skull & Bones and the New World Order

Paul Goldstein

Jeffrey Steinberg

George Bush, Skull & Bones and the New World Order

A New American View -- International Edition White Paper

April 1991

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction .............................ii
The Order of Skull & Bones.......... ......2
Initiation and Ritual......................7
The Spartan Model ........................10
Henry Stimson: Master Bonesman............13
Stimson's Kindergarten and the Cold War...16
Vietnam: The Bonesmen's Debacle.......... 19
Bush in Profile...........................23
The Order's Network.......................25
The New World Order.......................28
The Persian Gulf War......................31
Implications for Japan ...................34
Bibliography..............................38
Some Prominent Members....................39
Selected Quotations.......................43
Introduction

This special report is intended to assist the Japanese audience in more fully understanding the present policies of the United States under the administration of President George Bush. It explains the thinking behind America's military adventure in the Persian Gulf and its current attitudes toward the Middle East region.

In so doing, we provide a glimpse into the most powerful organization in America--the Order of Skull & Bones. This secret fraternity is based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where many of the leading members of the U.S. government and the American intelligence community received their formal education. The Order, as it is referred to by its members, is a bastion of White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture, which is at the core of the American 20th century outlook.

The reader will learn that President George Herbert Walker Bush's concept of the New World Order is an old idea, one which has its origins in the philosophy and beliefs of the secret Skull & Bones fraternity. Today in particular, this is the prevailing outlook of the U.S. government, many of whose most influential members, like the president himself, are part of the Skull & Bones network. These men seek to recreate the American imperium of the immediate post-World War II period, an era which President Bush frequently refers to as "the American Century."

The powerful men of Skull & Bones genuinely believe that they have a strategic and moral "right" to control world affairs. Consequently, they take upon themselves the authority to crush any rivalrous threat to U.S. imperial leadership, whether by current allies, such as Japan, Germany or Great Britain, or by Cold War adversaries, like the Soviet Union. The members of the Order, due to their narrow WASP upbringing, view with particular suspicion the maneuverings of Zionist Israel and its affluent, influential lobby in the United States.

Bush, his fellow Bonesmen and their like-thinking elitist allies in the American Establishment see themselves as New World Order warriors, an American samurai caste of sorts, whose mission is restoring American greatness. They intend to utilize the institutional networks of the U.S. government and key private agencies, such as the New York Council on Foreign Relations, to advance their purpose.

The Skull & Bones members believe in the idea of "constructive chaos." By keeping their true policy intentions secret, by constantly sending out mixed signals on all critical policy issues, they consciously seek to sow confusion among both their nominal "friends" and "enemies" alike.

The fulcrum for the policy of constructive chaos is, at present, the Middle East situation. Although U.S. military action in the region has for the time being subsided, America's military power will remain a critical determinant in the future of that vital zone of conflict. American military power is aimed at securing undisputed control over the vast reservoir of oil -- not at necessarily fostering any permanent alignment of local states or combinations of regional interests.

If President George Bush and his fellow true believers are successful, the United States will be first among equals in the New World Order. This is their goal. It is also the quest of the Bonesmen of the Order of Skull & Bones -- America's warrior aristocracy.

THE ORDER OF SKULL & BONES

Skull & Bones was founded at Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut in 1832. It is the oldest and most prestigious of Yale's seven secret societies. Among the others are: Scroll & Key, Book & Snake, Wolf's Head, Eliahu, and Berzelius. These fraternities serve as a recruiting ground for young men destined for careers in government, law, finance and other influential sectors of American life. Skull & Bones is the elite of the elite among these secret societies. Only Scroll & Key can claim a near equal influence on American affairs over the past 160 years.

Unlike the Greek fraternities on most other American university campuses, Skull & Bones and its similar secret societies exist exclusively at Yale. They are not part of any nationwide public association. The other elite Ivy League colleges, Harvard and Princeton have similar exclusive secret societies. Yet, even among these few universities, the secret societies of Yale -- led by Skull & Bones -- are unchallenged in their influence on American political affairs.

According to some accounts, the Skull & Bones secret society at Yale has an underground affiliation with two other societies which were simultaneously founded at two other locations. The number "322" that appears under the skull and crossbones on the Order's emblem is believed to indicate the year of its founding -- 1832 -- and the fact that it is the second lodge within an international system. By some accounts, the lodge holding the number "1" is in Germany and the lodge numbered "3" is based at another American college.

Since its founding, Skull & Bones has only inducted about 2,500 members. At any given time, only about 600 or so members of the Order are alive. This small number underscores the tremendous concentration of power in the hands of its members.

If the members of Skull & Bones were to select a Hall of Fame from among their own elite ranks, some of the people whose names would almost certainly appear at the top of the list would be:



* Alphonso Taft, a founding member of the Order who served as the Secretary of War under President Rutherford B. Hayes (1876-1880).

* William Howard Taft, the only man to ever serve as both the President of and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

* Henry Lewis Stimson, partner in the Wall Street law firm of Root and Stimson, Secretary of War under President Taft (1908-1912), Governor General of the Philippines (1926-1928), Secretary of State under President Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) and Secretary of War under Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (1940-1946).

* Averell Harriman, investment banker with Brown Brothers Harriman, director of the Lend-Lease program of the U.S. State Department (1941-1942), U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1943-1946), Governor of New York, Under Secretary of State for Asia (1961-1963), and presidential secret envoy to Soviet leaders Stalin, Krushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov.

* Robert Lovett, partner in Brown Brothers Harriman, Assistant Secretary of War for Air (1941-1945), Deputy Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Defense (1950), leading member of the New York Council on Foreign Relations.

* Harold Stanley, investment banker, founder of Morgan Stanley.

* Robert A. Taft, United States Senator (1938-1950).

* Prescott Bush, investment banker and partner in Brown Brothers Harriman, United States Senator from Connecticut, father of George Herbert Walker Bush

* George Herbert Walker Bush, United States Congressman (1964-1970), Chairman of the Republican National Committee, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, first American Diplomatic Liaison to the Peoples Republic of China, Director of the Central Intelligence Ageney (1975-1977). Vice President of the United States (1980-1988), President of the United States (1988- ).

* John Thomas Daniels, agro-industrialist, founder of Archer Daniels Midland.

* Hugh Wilson, foreign service officer, Counselor to Japan (1911- 1921), U.S. Minister to Switzerland (1924-1927), Assistant Secretary of State (1937-1938). Ambassador to Germany 1938), Special Assistant to the Secretary of State (1939-1941), Office of Strategic Services (1941-1945)

The members of the Order of Skull & Bones, true to their firm belief in "constructive confusion," have intentionally allowed a series of conflicting mythologies to spring up about the origins and history of their secret fraternity. According to one version of the Order's founding, it was an outgrowth of an earlier British or Scottish freemasonic grouping first established at All Soul's College at Oxford University in the late 17th century. Another version of the history of Skull & Bones is that it grew out of the German "nationalistic" secret .societies of the early 19th century. Still a third explanation is that Skull & Bones is an uniquely American institution which adopted some of the rituals of European freemasonry, but molded these rituals and beliefs into a new form.

Regardless of these conflicting accounts, it can be stated with certainty that the Order was first established on the Yale campus in 1832 It was officially incorporated only in 1856 under the name Russell Trust Association. According to virtually all the available biographical data on its early members, the money required to sustain the secret order's campus affairs and its broader role in placing its members into key positions of influence upon their graduation from Yale, derived from the opium trade in the Far East. That trade was set up by the British East India Company and was flourishing by the time the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 ending the American War for Independence. The East India Company during this period was controlled by the Baring Brothers Bank (Toward the closing decades of the 17th century, the British House of Rothschild would supplant the Baring Brothers as the controlling financial interests in the China opium trade.

Through the sponsorship of the Barings and also the Rothschilds, a number of leading New England families, some of whom had sided with Great Britain during the American Revolution, were brought into the opium trade as junior partners. These merchant families ran fleets of clipper ships and became in many cases fabulously wealthy as the result of their association with the British East India Company. Among these key New England merchant families were: Cabot, Coolidge, Forbes, Higginson, Sturgis, Lodge, Lowell, Perkins and Russell.

These New England merchant families founded the United Fruit Company and the Bank of Boston. The founding families of Skull & Bones included the Russell and Perkins families, Over several generations, however, all these families heavily intermarried and became, in effect, one extended power grouping.

William Huntington Russell incorporated Skull & Bones as the Russell Trust Association. Throughout the 20th century, the Russell Trust Association listed the New York City headquarters of Brown Brothers Harriman as its address.

Russell was valedictorian of his class at Yale in 1833. He and his Skull & Bones comrades considered themselves to be a special elite among the merchant banking and Puritan pilgrim elite of Yale. They took the Puritan beliefs of the early New England settlers, that they were "elected by God," and pre-ordained to rule North America.

The founding of Yale College in 1701 pre-dates the American Revolution by several generations. Many of the founders of Yale were righteous men of the Puritan heritage who devoutly believed in God and country. Some of these patriotic souls later made up the core of Benjamin Franklin's political coalition which ultimately broke with the mother country, Great Britain. Many graduates of Yale were active in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States.

Two critics of the Order, historian Antony Sutton and investigative journalist Ron Rosenbaum (himself a Yale graduate), both concluded that Skull & Bones has degenerated since its founding and has taken on more of the occult and ritualistic trappings of the majority of European freemasonic and Illuminati secret societies. Sutton charges that the Order is secretly known among its initiates as the "Brotherhood of Death" and has become an evil instrument in the hands of America's secret power elite. Rosenbaum claims that the society's Germanic origins are inherently wicked and pre-Nazi.

In a long 1977 article in Esquire magazine, Rosenbaum charged that the Skull & Bones building on the Yale campus houses remnants from Hitler's private collection of silver. While these stories cannot be dismissed out of hand, it must be noted that authors Rosenbaum and Sutton may be biased. As a young Jewish student at Yale, Rosenbaum was almost automatically excluded on religious grounds from the inner sanctum of the campus's secret societies. Sutton, a British-born eccentric historian, proudly admits his strong British biases, frequently citing philosopher John Stuart Mill as the spiritual mentor in his book on the Order.

Despite the possible personal biases in these two accounts of the history of the Order of Skull & Bones, it must be acknowledged that the membership of the society has tended over generations to converge upon a small group of New England families who have intermarried and then sponsored their sons and nephews into the Order. This kind of inbreeding always tends to produce narrow-mindedness and prejudice against outsiders, which can be a serious shortcoming, particularly among individuals responsible for charting the course of a nation as powerful as the United States.

It can be documented by comparing the family charts of the early Bonesmen that there is today a core group of no more than 20 to 30 families who form the nucleus of the Order. The majority are old-line Puritan families who came to North America in the very first wave of settlers in the 17th century. Among these prominent families are: Whitney, Lord, Phelps. Wadsworth, Allen, Bundy, Adams, Stimson, Taft, Gilman and Perkins. A second group of families in the Skull & Bones core earned fabulous fortunes during the 18th and 19th centuries and thus won a rite of passage into the New England elite, even though they were not among the earliest settlers. The leading Skull & Bones families in this second category are: Harriman, Rockefeller, Payne, Davison, Pillsbury and Weyerhauser.

A few of the Jewish banking families who made their way from Germany to the United States during the 18th and l9th centuries were eventually granted limited access to the WASP inner sanctums. Some families, like the Schiff, Warburg, Guggenheim and Meyer families, were unofficially designated as intermediaries between the New England WASPs and their cousins in London. This was especially true after the Rothschild interests supplanted the Anglican Baring group as the most powerful financial cabal in the City of London. Some of these German Jewish families became so absorbed into the WASP or Anglican society that they eventually converted from Judaism to Protestantism and were gradually ostracized from the Jewish aristocracy.

The WASP families, however, never saw the prominent Jewish investment banking families of America as equals. The Jews were considered politically and culturally different by the WASPs, and have never been accepted into the latter's inner circle. For the most part, these Jewish merchant bankers are viewed with suspicion and distrust by the members of the Order. Moreover, the Jewish fraternal societies, such as B'nai B'rith, were formed out of the British-based Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Their sponsors in America, the Rothschilds and the Cecil Rhodes Trust (also known as the British Round Table Group), are connected with the British Foreign Office and its secret intelligence apparatus.

INITIATION AND RITUAL

To be initiated into the Order of Skull & Bones, one must endure a ritual of selection called "tapping". It is conducted by 15 senior classmen of Yale University who make up the current membership of the secret society. They select 15 members of the junior class to be the Bonesmen the following year. Historically, Skull & Bones kept blacks, Jews and all other non-WASPs from its ranks. Within the last 30 years, however, token members from these groups have been occasionally selected to join. Thus, in the most recent list of initiates to the Order, there is one Yalie with a Jewish surname and even one with a Chinese name. According to author Rosenbaum, in recent years, the Order has inducted members of homosexual rights groups on the campus into its ranks.

Among the criterion for selection -- apart from family ties to the order, which has always been an important factor -- is what is referred to by historians and members as the "Three Ordeals." These ordeals are intended to measure the prospective Bonesman's ability to "make it" in the world beyond the university campus.

The first ordeal is boarding school. The overwhelming majority of Bonesmen, given their wealthy blueblood family pedigrees, attend one of the prestigious New England preparatory schools, i.e, private high schools. (Whereas a large number of the most elite of the Harvard University students attend Groton, a school with close ties to the Anglican-Episcopal Church, where they receive a thoroughly Anglophilic education, the preferred prep schools for the future Bonesmen are the two Puritan Calvinist-sponsored Phillips Academies.)

The second of the ordeals is that of nature. The prospective Bonesmen are judged on their skills as outdoorsmen. Hunting in the New England countryside or, better yet, traveling to distant locations like Africa, the jungles of South America or even the American badlands of the Plains states, is a prerequisite for admission to the Spartan elite ranks of the Order.

The third of the ordeals is war. The experience of combat during wartime is considered to be of special significance for the Bonesmen, who see themselves as the elite of the New England WASP warrior caste. Many Yale Bonesmen of President George Bush's generation, as the result of the outbreak of World War II, went directly from prep school into the military service prior to their entering Yale. For a majority of Bonesmen, the preferred military service has historically been with the U.S. Navy. During World II the Naval air corp was a particularly important track for future Bones initiates. In peacetime, participation at Yale in military officer's training is desirable but not essential. The commitment to enter some branch of the military upon graduation is viewed with favor.

After the formal selection of the next group of prospective Bonesmen, there is an invitation followed by a formal initiation ceremony. First the 15 senior class members who are the members of the Order select a group of junior class members who are to be "tapped" for Skull & Bones. A group of Bonesmen proceed to the dormitory room of the "tappee." Upon reaching the door, they pound loudly. When the prospective member opens the door, a Bonesman will tap him on the shoulder and yell, "Skull and Bones: Do you accept?" If the candidate accepts, a message wrapped with a black ribbon sealed by black wax with the skull and crossbones emblem and the mystical Bones number 322 is handed to the "tappee." The message appoints a time and a place for the candidate to appear on initiation night. Candidates are instructed to wear no metal objects or clothing.

According to a 1940 Skull & Bones document, the initiation ceremony involves the following kinds of things: "New man placed in coffin -- carried into central part of building. New man chanted over and reborn into society. Removed from coffin and given robes with symbols on it. A bone with his name on it is tossed into the bone heap at the start of every meeting."

Within the Skull & Bones Crypt, also known as "the Tomb," there is what is referred to as a "sacred room" with the number 322, On the arched wall about the vault entrance is inscribed in German: "Who was the fool, who was the wise man, beggar or king? Whether poor or rich, all's the same in death."

This quotation from a German Freemasonic ritual remains a source of controversy surrounding the origins of Skull & Bones. It is one of the bits of "evidence" cited by some of the Order's most ardent critics that the group is "Nazi like" and singularly "Germanic". In fact, the rituals of the Order are very much like the rituals employed by Scottish and English freemasonic lodges.

Some of the mystery and confusion surrounding these occult symbols and rituals is intentionally fostered by the Order itself. Among the principles taught to the members of the Yale secret society are the value of ambiguity and secrecy. These values are not taught as part of a purely mystical or occult quasi-religion. They are taught as valuable tools to be applied by the Bonesmen when they leave the insulated environment of the Yale campus and become officials of government, the intelligence community, the military or the private sector.

A careful study of the often confusing and self-contradictory behavior and public statements of President Bush and his closest advisers throughout the months of the Persian Gulf crisis of last year and war that followed offers a valuable example of how ambiguity and secrecy are applied by Bonesmen.

For the initiates of the Order, the question of whether secrecy and ambiguity are used for the purpose of accomplishing "good" or "evil" is of secondary importance. Secrecy and ambiguity are essential instruments for wielding power. The effective wielding of power is one of the overarching goals of all Bonesmen. The secret ties built up during the Bonesmen's senior year of active membership in the Order are maintained for life. Those ties link each Bonesman to every other initiate, especially to those initiates who were members of the Order in the same year.

Thus, every member of Skull & Bones is, in real and practical terms, part of a small elite group of young Yale graduates -- most from wealthy and powerful WASP families -- who enter the world of politics, business, finance, intelligence or education and who proceed to make their mark on the world.

According to several sources, President George Bush to this day frequently consults with several of his fellow Yale Bonesmen, and has, on occasion, called upon Skull & Bones members to carry out secret diplomatic missions for the White House.

THE SPARTAN MODEL

These rites of passage into the upper ranks of the WASP Establishment are capped by the experience the Bonesmen go through in their final year at Yale -- the year in which they actively participate in the Order. For the vast majority of the initiates, the process of inculcation with the ideas of WASP supremacy, an American Calvinist version of what British imperialist writer Rudyard Kipling called the "White Man's Burden," began at prep school.

According to the biographical accounts of a number of the leading Bonesmen, the prep school experience is paramount. At prep school, intellectual pursuits are encouraged, but special emphasis is also placed on athletic performance. Future Yale Bonesmen are expected to excel in some team sport, such as baseball and football, both American inventions. (Members of Skull & Bones were involved in the development of both games.) Team sports supposedly prepare the future Bonesman to accept leadership responsibility, and more importantly, teach him to "respect the rules of the game."

According to one biographer, when George Bush was a Yale undergraduate he was a member of the university baseball team. Although he was apparently not a very good baseball player, he eventually became captain of the Yale team. One day during the Yale baseball season, he excitedly visited his mother to proudly proclaim that he had hit his first home run. She reportedly looked back at him with patrician coolness, and asked, "Yes, George, but did your team win the game?"

The particular emphasis on team sports during the prep school and Yale years is, according to several historians, part of the Spartan training that is so essential to the Skull & Bones philosophy. In the world of Skull & Bones, one of the greatest virtues is the ability to steer the nation into war and to successfully prosecute the war.

To the Bonesmen, the use of military power is a natural and essential corollary to political power. The Bonesmen are taught that, although ideas have their place, to truly transform history, military force is almost always required. Critics of the Order have pointed out that this philosophy of power and the imperial use of military force comes straight from the chronicles of the Roman Empire -- especially the Roman Empire during its phase of decline and collapse.

The criticism may prove to be most prophetically true of the current generation of Bonesmen who are leading the United States under the presidency of George Bush. During the final phase of the Roman Empire, legions were deployed out around the world to conquer and subjugate vast territories, while back in Rome, there was a breakdown, a crisis in which the entire social and cultural fabric of the early Roman republic was eroding and giving way to something akin to the drug, rock-sex counterculture of today. The Roman imperial policy of attempting to gloss over the decadence at home by engaging in constant wars of expansion led ultimately to the total collapse of Rome.

In this regard, the Spartan-Roman imperial outlook of the American WASP warrior caste, exemplified by Skull & Bones, cannot be precisely compared to the Japanese samurai code of Bushido. The Japanese Bushido code emphasized honor among the warriors and presumed a fundamentally moral or ethical vision of the world.

No such emphasis on morality and honor exists in the code of Skull & Bones. On the contrary, the Skull & Bones philosophy, according to several of its most astute critics and historians, emphasizes the "double-cross system." The "double-cross" is symbolically represented by the crossbones on the emblem of the Order. According to this philosophy, anyone who is not an initiate is inferior, and can be lied to and manipulated to further the power of the WASP Establishment. To the extent that Japanese leaders view their American WASP counterparts as men of honor whose word is sacred and whose intentions are presumed to be virtuous, they will miss the fundamental character of the American imperium. This is of special importance today, with a leading member of the Skull & Bones system occupying the White House.

Skull & Bones philosophy first manifested itself at the American national political level in the late l9th century. At that time, the men of the Order adopted all the critical features of the British imperial system, especially the belief in the Anglo Saxon God-given right to rule over all the other races. Even countries like Japan, which were never colonial possessions of the Anglo-American combination, were viewed as inferior nations to be treated no differently from the colonies in Africa, India or Latin America.

In 1898, President William McKinley, one of the last of the American presidents to manifest any of the early republican (anti-British imperialism) traditions of the Founding Fathers, was under enormous pressure from the Skull & Bones-led American imperialists. Eventually, he went to war against Spain to "free" Cuba and seize the Philippines. This was the first time that the United States entered a war through devious manipulation and purely in order to expand its territories. It marked the beginning of a new epoch in American history which would forever alter the vision of the United States. It was the first evidence that the men of the Order were at the helm of the ship of state.

President McKinley's capitulation to the WASP warriors would prove to be fatal to himself and, some would say, for his country, too. The Spanish-American War of 1898 catapulted the Skull & Bones crowd into a position of dominance within the Republican Party. At the 1900 party presidential nominating convention, McKinley was forced to accept Teddy Roosevelt as his vice presidential running mate. The McKinley-Roosevelt slate was swept into office, in part as the result of the jingoist climate built up by the just-concluded Spanish-American War. Those circumstances were not all that different from the mood that prevails in America in the aftermath of the Gulf War of 1991.

Within months of his inauguration of 1901, President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist while traveling through Buffalo, New York. Thus, Teddy Roosevelt became president, and the Order of Skull & Bones for the first time moved into the White House. Roosevelt surrounded himself with Bonesmen. His successor in 1908, William Howard Taft, was himself a second generation member of Skull & Bones.

HENRY STIMSON: MASTER BONESMAN

According to a January 1991 article by the Washington syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, when President George Bush was making his final decision to use military force to crush Saddam Hussein and decimate Iraq, he spent most of the Christmas holidays closeted at Camp David reading a newly published biography of one of his true heroes, fellow Skull & Bones initiate Henry Stimson. While most White House advisers thought that the gulf crisis would be ultimately resolved through diplomacy, unbeknownst to them, President Bush had already decided on the use of devastating military force -- regardless of what measures the world community or the Iraqi leaders took to avert war. Intimate Bush advisers described the president as being in a "mesmerized" state of mind as he walked around the presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains with his Stimson biography, "The Colonel: The Life and Wars of Henry Stimson," under his arm at all times.

Indeed, for most contemporary Bonesmen, Henry Lewis Stimson, the quintessential WASP warrior, was the very personification of the Order's full ascent to power during the period of World War II.

A member of the Order's class of 1888, Stimson served seven U.S. presidents: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft (a fellow Bonesman), Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S Truman. As the Secretary of War under FDR and Truman, Stimson oversaw the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. Stimson personally decided on the use of that devastating weapon against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Years earlier, as the chairman of the American delegation at the London Naval Conference and as Secretary of State under President Hoover (1929-1933), Stimson had played a pivotal role in restricting the size of the Japanese Imperial Navy. He would be an architect of the FDR 's administration's economic provocations against Japan which ultimately helped induce Japan into the attack at Pearl Harbor, thus bringing the United States formally into World War II. And Stimson was also ultimately responsible for the FDR administration's decision to intern the Nisei (Japanese-Americans) after Pearl Harbor.

Yet, it was also Stimson who ordered American bombers to refrain from attacking the old Japanese imperial capital of Kyoto, a city rich in religious and historical tradition and artifacts. And, according to at least one of Stimson's biographers, it was also "the Colonel" who decided at the close of the war that the Japanese emperor should not be deposed. His sensitivity to Japanese culture and the importance of allowing Japan to retain honor even in defeat is widely to his close adviser, Joseph Grew, a longtime U.S. ambassador to Japan and an accomplished historian. Whether this report of Stimson's involvement in the decision to maintain the emperor is accurate or whether it underplays the role of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the fact remains certain that Stimson was the key policymaker overseeing the postwar occupations of both Japan and Germany.

To fully understand President George Bush's attitudes and policies toward Japan, one must first appreciate the overarching influence that Stimson had on the current occupant of the White House.

According to his British biographer Geofrey Hodgson, Stimson's membership in Skull & Bones was "the most important educational experience in his life." Unlike most of his fellow Bonesmen, Stimson earned his membership solely on the basis of his achievements at Yale -- not through family money. His parents were not wealthy, although his forefathers did come to America as early Puritan colonists. But Stimson made up for his lack of financial credentials by his fierce competitive spirit. As he himself put it, the "idea of a struggle for prizes, so to speak, has always been one of the fundamental elements of my mind, and I can hardly conceive of what my feelings would be if I ever was put in a position or situation in life where there are no prizes to struggle for."

Although Stimson did not come from classic blueblood background, he married into wealth and power. His wife, Mabel White, came from a prominent Establishment family with longstanding ties to the Order. Thus, upon graduation from law school, Stimson became a partner in the law firm of Eliahu Root, President Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of War.

Although Stimson and Roosevelt would have a falling out in later years, early on Roosevelt and Root provided "the Colonel" with the critical sponsorship and training required to succeed in the world of Establishment politics. According to Stimson's biographers, Roosevelt would frequently taunt the young Bonesman about the fact that he, unlike the president, had never been in the military or fought in any wars. (Roosevelt had resigned as Under Secretary of the Navy to go off and fight in the Spanish-American War.) Thus, at the ripe old age of 44, Stimson joined the Army during World War I and served in the American Expeditionary Force in Europe.

Among the other lasting interests that Roosevelt would pass on to Stimson was his deep passion for the Pacific. Roosevelt was convinced that America's imperial destiny was dependent upon its domination of the Pacific Ocean and the Far East. The Spanish-American War, which marked the beginning of America's imperial phase -- and the virtual abandonment of the republican principles upon which the nation had been founded -- began the U.S. colonial occupation of the Philippines, which would continue through half of the next century. Ultimately, Stimson would himself serve as the American Governor General of the islands.

In 1900, Roosevelt wrote to Stimson: "Our people are neither craven nor weaklings, as we face the future high of heart and confident of soul, eager to do the great work of a great power... wish to see the United States the dominant power on the Pacific Ocean."

STIMSON'S KINDERGARTEN AND THE COLD WAR

Henry Stimson's towering influence on George Bush and many other current members and like-thinking allies of the Order was based not only on "the Colonel's" lifetime of achievements. It was also rooted in the fact that Stimson used the World War II period to groom a successor generation of young WASP warriors who would dominate American policymaking during the Cold War and beyond. Although not every member of what came to be known as the "Stimson's Kindergarten" was a member of Skull & Bones, or even a Yale graduate, many were. All were inculcated with the Skull & Bones philosophy and methodology of wielding power. It is through this alliance and patronage system that the influence of the Order has been extended far beyond its small membership roster.

Among the leading members of the "Stimson Kindergarten" were:



* John J. McCloy, who was Assistant Secretary of War and later served as the High Commissioner for Germany during the postwar occupation.

* Robert Lovett, a member of Skull & Bones and a partner in the Order's preeminent Wall Street investment house Brown Brothers Harriman. He became Stimson's Assistant Secretary of War (Air Section). Lovett remained an influential policymaker through the presidency of John F. Kennedy.

* Harvey Bundy, another Bonesman, who became Stimson's special assistant at the War Department. Harvey Bundy's two sons, McGeorge and William, fresh out of Yale University and Skull & Bones, joined their father on Stimson's personal staff. McGeorge Bundy would co-author Stimson's memoirs In Active Service in Peace and War.

* Dean Acheson, Assistant Secretary of State, Yale graduate (he was not a member of the Order, but, rather, of one of the other Yale secret societies, Scroll Key) and senior policy adviser to FDR and Truman, who ultimately made him Secretary of State.

* Gen. George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the armed forces during World War II and later Truman's Secretary of State.

This group of high-powered policymakers of World War II and immediate post war period were known as the "Stimson-Marshall-Acheson Circle." They shaped America's Cold War containment policy against the Soviet Union and Communist China, including the involvement of the United States in the Korean War. It was also this group which, for better or worse, directed the postwar reconstruction programs in Germany and Japan.

Another influential member of Skull & Bones, Averell Harriman, was personally responsible for the sacking of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. It was Harriman, a banker, intriguer and former American Ambassador to Moscow, who convinced President Truman to fire MacArthur.

The predominant role that Averell Harriman would play over the course of 40 years of postwar American policymaking underscores the fact that not all leading members of Skull & Bones share the identical policy outlook. While some members of the Stimson inner circle were critical of Harriman, whom they considered to be too personally ambitious (he was also a liberal imperial Democrat in a secret fraternity dominated historically by moderate Republicans), Harriman nevertheless stands out as one of the Order's most active figures. The fact that he was a business partner and social intimate throughout his adult life of fellow Bonesman and Republican Sen. Prescott Bush Sr., the father of the current president underscores that point.

Henry Stimson died in 1950, leaving behind a core group of political offspring led by members of his old secret society, Skull & Bones. In the final years of his life he was involved in helping to shape a number of postwar government agencies which would become bastions of power and influence for the Order for years to come. Through this active role in shaping the key institutions of the Cold War era, Stimson was able to establish a continuity of power that would more than compensate for the fact that no single figure among his "kindergarten" emerged as a clear successor, and that several, like McGeorge Bundy, would prove ultimately to be rather disappointing students.

The National Security Act of 1947 transformed Stimson's old War Department into the Department of Defense, a sprawling civilian bureaucracy which would in future years house many of the most important members of the Order. Robert Lovett, for example, would become the Secretary of Defense in 1950. The 1947 act also established the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as the permanent successor to the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In the early 1950s, the State Department's Office of Policy Coordination was merged into the CIA, giving the secret agency total control of America's clandestine operations. The National Security Agency (NSA) also was established, under the direction of the Department of Defense, vastly expanding America's signal intelligence capability.

Of all these agencies of the Cold War era, the CIA would stand out as a singular power center for Yale University alumni in general and Skull & Bones initiates in particular. The term "spooks," the well-known CIA term for a clandestine operator, was originally Yale campus argot for a secret society member. According to a recently published article in the Covert Action Information Bulletin, there is reportedly a "Bones club" within the CIA which helps promote the intelligence careers of members of the Yale secret society.

It should be pointed out that bureaucratic standing is not a real measure of power within the CIA. Very often, individuals in relatively insignificant positions within the organizational chart wield tremendous clout and maintain access to the most sensitive information and policy. Thus, for example, the present U.S. Ambassador to Beijing, James Lilley, a member of Skull & Bones and a career CIA man, is being suggested to replace William Webster as Director of Central Intelligence. For Lilley to step in as director of CIA would at this moment represent a demotion for the senior field operator. It is, however, a demotion he might accept as a personal favor to fellow Bonesman and longtime intimate pal George Bush.

The predominance of Yale graduates inside the CIA is also a part of the Stimson legacy. During World War II, many Yale students and even several leading faculty members entered the OSS. The X-2 Branch of OSS, the counterintelligence unit, was dominated by Yale students, as well as Yale English Literature professor Norman Holmes Pearson. One of the Yale men in X-2, James Jesus Angleton, went on to a legendary career as director of the CIA's counterintelligence staff.

Yale Skull & Bonesman and Stimson "Kindergartener" William Bundy assumed a senior post at CIA during the 1950s, as did Yale graduates Richard Bissell and Cord Meyer and Yale professor Sherman Kent.

VIETNAM: THE BONESMEN'S DEBACLE

According to author David Halberstam's best-selling critique of the Kennedy years, "The Best and the Brightest," the JFK presidency marked the high point of Skull & Bones postwar power. But it also marked the beginning of the secret fraternity's fall from the position of unchallenged power, and the beginning of America's precipitous decline as a world power. All these factors are summed up in one word: Vietnam.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy's Cabinet was largely handpicked by Skull & Bones elder statesman Robert Lovett, who was personally approached by Joseph Kennedy, the president's father, and asked to shape the direction of the new administration. Lovett had been one of the architects of the World War II industrial mobilization under President Franklin Roosevelt, which helped bring the United States out of the Great Depression. He had been a factional opponent of Averell Harriman within the Skull & Bones circles, initially opposing the Cold War containment doctrine and pushing the idea of Atoms for Peace during the early years of the Eisenhower presidency (l952-1960).

Kennedy had personally asked Lovett to join his Cabinet, but Lovett, a partner in Brown Brothers Harriman, preferred to shun formal government service. Instead, he placed a number of younger Bonesmen into the critical posts. McGeorge Bundy was appointed Kennedy's National Security Adviser. Averell Harriman was made Under Secretary of State for Asian Affairs, a position that placed him in charge of many of the most critical decisions along the way to disaster in Vietnam. William Bundy remained in a senior post at CIA.

The decision to escalate the American military involvement in Vietnam -- a rejection of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's prophetic warning that the United States should never engage in a ground war in Asia -- was made by members of the Order. According to some accounts, President Kennedy began to have serious second thoughts about escalating the war, particularly after several private Oval Office discussions with MacArthur.

With Kennedy's assassination, American soldiers began pouring into Southeast Asia. Harriman remained a fixture of Vietnam policy under President Lyndon Baines Johnson. McGeorge Bundy remained on as LBJ's National Security Adviser untill , when he left government service to assume the presidency of the Ford Foundation, the largest tax-exempt philanthropic agency in the United States. The Ford Foundation annually dispenses of nearly $3 billion in grants.

In his capacity as president of the Ford Foundation, Bundy helped finance the anti-Vietnam War movement. The National Student Mobilization Committee, the umbrella group for the entire New Left of the late 1960s and early 1970s, was led by David Dellinger, a Yale graduate. Episcopal Church activist William Sloan Coffin, a Bonesman, a second leading figure in the anti-war protest movement, had previously served as a CIA officer.

Thus, the Order had its hands in two critical elements of the policy debacle of the second half of the 1960s. Some leading Bonesmen helped shape the disastrous limited war strategy in Vietnam, while other members of the Order, at least tacitly, contributed to the growth of the drug-rock-sex counterculture by nourishing the New Left soil from which it sprang.

As a result of the Vietnam debacle, the "Stimson Kindergarten" literally drove itself out of the corridors of power which it had occupied without challenge for the previous 20 years. With the election of Richard Nixon as president of the United States in November 1968, a different team came into prominence. The politics of that team were personified by Henry A. Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.

In a May 1982 speech in London at the Chatham House headquarters of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Kissinger boasted that he was an enthusiastic follower of the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and that throughout his years in senior government posts under Presidents Nixon and Gerald Ford (1974-1976), he had always consulted more frequently with his counterparts in the British Foreign Office than he had with officials of his own government.

Although Kissinger had enjoyed early patronage from McGeorge Bundy, when the Bonesman was Dean of Harvard University and Kennedy's NSC adviser, the Kissinger era marked a low point in Skull & Bones' government power. The Central Intelligence Agency, a hub of the Order's clout, was decimated by scandals that only compounded the damage done to the Agency as the result of its role in the Vietnam disaster.

According to some respected writers, for example, Jim Hougan, author of "Secret Agenda," the CIA attempted to reverse the route by helping to bring down Richard Nixon in Watergate. There is significant evidence to bolster some of these accounts.

When Gerald Ford became president in August 1974 following Nixon's resignation, Skull & Bones made a brief comeback. In what came to be known as the "Saturday Night Massacre," Ford, in the autumn of 1975, removed Henry Kissinger from his post as NSC Adviser, replacing him with Gen. Brent Scowcroft. Kissinger ally James Schlesinger was fired as Secretary of Defense and replaced by Donald Rumsfeld. And CIA Director William Colby, who had dueled with Angleton, was fired and replaced by Skull & Bones member George Bush.

If these maneuvers were intended to be the first step in a more ambitious comeback by the WASP warrior faction, the plan was short-circuited with the election in November 1976 of Jimmy Carter as president. It would really not be until the inauguration of George Bush as president in January 1989 -- a dozen years later -- that Skull & Bones would resurface with the same degree of governmental power that it had enjoyed during the Stimson years. George Bush's selection as Ronald Reagan's vice presidential running mate in the 1980 and 1984 elections was the transition back to that power.

Many things had gone wrong in the years since Vietnam to drive the Bonesmen off the center stage. With more than a little input from Bonesmen like McGeorge Bundy and Averell Harriman, the United States had gone into a period of scientific, technological and industrial retreat. The Nixon decision on August 15, 1971 to remove the dollar from a fixed, gold-backed exchange rate system, had triggered a move toward double-digit inflation, urban decay, rising unemployment and soaring interest rates. The Kissinger-orchestrated Iranian-Middle East oil crisis in the early 1970s had contributed to a rate of deindustrialization that ultimately transformed the United State from the biggest creditor nation in the world to the world's biggest debtor nation. According to estimates compiled around the time of George Bush's inauguration as president, the total U.S. internal indebtedness had skyrocketed to more than $12 trillion.

Moreover, the period of the 1970s and 1980s had given rise to a new and powerful political-financial combination demanding a share of government clout. This new grouping, with its principle power bases in the U.S. Congress, in Hollywood and on Wall Street, was known as the Zionist lobby.

Although Jewish names had been prominent in the legal profession and on Wall Street since the founding of the American republic, in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and her Arab neighbors, Zionist power took on a whole different proportion. Again, Henry Kissinger's position in the Nixon administration symbolized the fact that the pro-Israel lobby had moved in with a vengeance to the corridors of power in the nation's capital. Even on Wall Street the 1970s and 1980s had seen a new generation of Jewish financiers come into power, replacing their more cultured and Anglicized predecessors. The WASP Establishment had developed a tolerance of and working relationship with the largely German Jewish bankers known among themselves as "Our Crowd." The new upstart Wall Street Zionists, however, were viewed by the WASPs as a collection of gangsters.

If the Skull & Bonesmen needed a legitimate justification for reviving their ever-present dislike of the East European Ashkenazic Jews, the Wall Street Zionists who became known as the so-called "New Crowd" provided them with all the excuses necessary. When Jonathan Jay Pollard, a Naval intelligence analyst, was arrested in November 1985 and charged with spying for Israel against the United States, there was a resurgence of more unabashed antisemitism among the Bonesmen and their blueblood upperclass mates. It has since become a hallmark of the Bush White House. Even when practical political affairs have demanded that the Bush administration deal with the American Zionist lobby or the right-wing Shamir government of Israel, there has been a distinctive undertone of distrust bordering on overt hostility.

BUSH IN PROFILE

Unlike Averell Harriman, who reportedly coveted personal political power and drew sharp criticism from some of his fellow Bonesmen, George Bush has been a long-term "project" of Skull & Bones. The Bush presidency in real and symbolic terms represents the effort by the Order to restore the lost spirit of the WASP warrior Henry Stimson. With the passage of time and the decay of the WASP elite, the Bush presidency may yet prove to be a tragic replay of past American dreams.

George Bush's career was sponsored every step of the way by Skull & Bones members, mostly of his father's generation. Prescott Bush (Skull & Bones Class of 1917), a Brown Brothers Harriman partner who would serve one term in Congress as senator from Connecticut, sent George to the traditional private preparatory school, Phillips Academy in Andover, New Hampshire, which grooms young New England squires for later studies at Yale.

It was while finishing his prep school training at Andover that Bush was first exposed to Henry Stimson. Reportedly, Stimson delivered a stirring patriotic speech to the Phillips student body in l940 arguing forcefully for American intervention in the war in Europe. Ironically, at that very moment on the Yale campus, the majority of Skull & Bonesmen were leading the America First movement, which opposed any such U.S. entanglement in Europe.

When war with Japan broke out a year later, George Bush enlisted in the Navy and was trained as a pilot. He flew more than 50 missions before being shot down in the Pacific. At Yale after the war, Bush captained the baseball team and followed his father's footsteps into the Order.

Political legends have it that George Bush shunned his family's patronage and went off on his own to launch a business career as an oil wildcatter, or speculator, in Texas. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Bush moved to Texas to work for Dresser Industries selling oil drilling equipment. The job was arranged for him by his father with Dresser president Neil Mallon, who was a fellow member of Skull & Bones. Desser, according to several sources, had close ties with the CIA.

After a few years with Dresser, George Bush set up his own company, Zapata Oil, to explore new oil fields in Texas and Mexico. Again, Bush was heavily backed by member of his family. Uncle George Herbert Walker, also a Skull & Bonesman, put up a large amount of capital, as did Brown Brothers Harriman. Lazard Brothers, a Jewish brokerage house with longstanding friendly ties to the New England WASPs, put up some money as well, at the urging of Andre Meyer, the owner of the Washington Post Corporation and the father of the current Post publisher Kathanne Graham. Zapata Oil sunk the first offshore well for the Kuwaiti government.

Even with that kind of backing, George Bush was less than a success as a businessman. In 1964, a longtime Bush friend, William Farrish III of Scotland, bought the majority of shares in Zapata for $3.2 million to keep the business afloat, while George, in a major career shift, ran for U.S. Congress from a wealthy district in Houston, Texas. He won.

During his three terms in Congress (Bush lost the 1970 Senate race to Lloyd Bentsen), George Bush distinguished himself as an advocate of zero population growth and a defender of the eugenics movement. Both of these positions, radical for their day, were probably the result of Bush's close friendship with William Draper Jr. -- a fellow Bonesman and a longtime advocate of population reduction schemes in the Third World.

The 1970s were for George Bush years of grooming in high-level politics and foreign policy. During the Nixon re-election campaign of 1972, George Bush was the chairman of the Republican National Committee. He later joined the chorus calling for Nixon's resignation. After a tour as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Bush was sent off to Communist China as the Chief Liaison Officer prior to the formalization of diplomatic relations. Bush shared the Beijing experience with Winston Lord, a fellow Skull & Bones member who was the CIA station chief. Lord went on to become president of the New York Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in 1983. (The Lord family founded the city of Hartford, Connecticut, has a large number of Skull & Bones members on its family tree, and set up one of the most powerful old-line Wall Street law firms, Lord Day Lord.) In 1975, George Bush completed his "grooming" with a brief stint as Gerald Ford's CIA director.

In 1980, Bush ran a short-lived campaign against Ronald Reagan for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. Future running mate Reagan cut short Bush's 1980 presidential hopes by defeating him soundly in the primary election in New Hampshire, in the heart of New England. Reagan blasted Bush for his membership in the internationalist Trilateral Commission, which had attained notoriety because 20 members of the unpopular Carter administration had served on the commission. Bush's campaign was otherwise noteworthy because a significant number of his campaign volunteers were CIA officials; his campaign organization was directed by six top Agency and Pentagon retirees.

THE ORDER'S NETWORK

With Bush in the White House, the WASP Establishment is seeking to re-conquer lost territory, not only within the domain of national politics, but within the financial community, the legal profession and big business. A struggle between some elements of the WASP crowd and the Jewish "New Crowd" on Wall Street has been playing out in the newspapers and federal courts for the past six years, beginning with the criminal indictments of junk bond dealers Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken and the bankrupting and criminal prosecuting of the powerful Zionist-run brokerage house Drexel Rurnham Lambert.

To some extent these wars reflect the kind of scramble that always takes place during a financial crisis and shakeout, when certain formerly powerful financial institutions are wiped out and others profit from their rivals' adversity. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the House of Morgan came out on top. Not coincidentally, Morgan Guaranty Trust and Morgan Stanley have been cornerstones of the Skull & Bones grouping on Wall Street since their founding during the last century. Founding partner Harold Stanley was a Bonesman.

One hub of the Order's postwar economic power, the major multinational oil corporations, have clearly benefited greatly from President Bush's "charming little colonial war" in the Persian Gulf. The leading oil companies which are linked to the Order are: Standard Oil Trust Corporation, Shell Oil of America, Creole Petroleum Corporation and Pennzoil Corporation. The founder and present chairman of the board of Pennzoil started out in the oil business in partnership with George Bush in Zapata Oil. It is interesting to note in the context of the Bonesmen's deep involvement in the world petroleum business that George Bush, during his early days as a Texas oilman, had worked closely with the Kuwaitis.

Eight major Wall Street and Washington, D.C. law firms stand out as practically wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Order of Skull & Bones. Each of these firms was founded by members of the Order, and each of these firms continues to provide up-and-coming Order initiates in the legal community with training, credentials and connections. A review of the major corporate clients of these firms would reveal many of the most powerful companies among the Fortune 500.

[Dig]

The Skull & Bones law firms are:



* Lord Day Lord

* Davis Polk Wardwell

* Simpson Thacher Bartlett

* Debevoise Plimpton Lyons & Gates

* Cravath Swaine & Moore

* Covington & Burling

* Dewey Ballantine Palmer & Woods

* Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy.



In addition to their corporate clientele and their direct involvement in government through the frequent appointment of partners to Cabinet posts, these firms also specialize in handling the personal financial affairs and investment portfolios of the leading WASP families. In this respect, the Skull & Bones-centered WASP Establishment imitates the Venetian model. During the height of power of Venice, which was the trading capital of the Byzantine Empire, the leading families used their personal wealth to establish insurance companies, family funds and cultural programs through which they extended their political power.

Today, the prominent law firms listed above play a special role in directing the affairs of the leading tax-exempt foundations which shape the culture and public opinion of the United States and many foreign countries. We have already seen that McGeorge Bundy, a leading Bonesman, left his position as National Security Adviser to President Lyndon Johnson in 1966 to assume the presidency of the Ford Foundation. During the nearly two decades that Bundy spent directing the $3 billion tax-exempt fund, he arguably wielded more power than he did during his six years as the National Security Adviser to two presidents. Under the Bundy reign the Ford Foundation spent hundreds of millions of dollars to launch the environmentalist movement and funded scores of projects devoted to population reduction in the Third World.

From its early decades, the Order has concentrated much of its efforts at establishing, controlling and, in some instances, capturing the major tax-exempt philanthropic foundations of America. The Russell Sage Foundation, which specializes in "social control" programs, was founded by Bonesmen. Among the leading functions of the Russell Sage Foundation today is the maintaining of a centralized tracking of the finances of all the large tax-exempt foundations in the United Sta

es. The Peabody Foundation, the Slater Foundation and several of the Rockefeller foundations were all either started by members of the Order or have been dominated by Bonesmen from their inception. Other major family funds, like the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment, were wrestled from family control by the Skull & Bones apparatus. During the tenure of McGeorge Bundy, two members of the Ford family resigned from the Ford Foundation in disgust over the direction in which Bundy had taken the philanthropic agency.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER

Between 1983-1986, the British-born conspiracy theorist Antony Sutton wrote a series of pamphlets about the Order of Skull & Bones. According to informed sources, Sutton was one of several historians who were provided with a large file of the Order's internal documents, including minutes of some meetings, descriptions of rituals, and what would appear to be a rather complete list of its members from its founding through to the early 1980s. The short pamphlets were compiled into one volume and published as a book in 1986.

For someone closely following the just-concluded Persian Gulf War and attempting to gain some insight into George Bush's performance during that largely orchestrated affair, one recurring theme in the Sutton volume stands out like a sore thumb: the New World Order.

According to the Skull & Bones documents used by Sutton in his somewhat flawed profile of the Order, the creation of a New World Order is a primary goal of the Bonesmen and has been for decades. For the initiates into the Order, the term New World Order has a very specific meaning.

It is a world dominated by American military power and American control over all strategic raw materials. Just as the Greek city-state of Sparta provided the Skull & Bones with the image of a WASP warrior caste, the Persian Empire, with its system of coalitions of satrap armies, provides the model for the Bonesmen's New World Order. The image of Secretary of State James A. Baker III traveling from foreign capital to foreign capital demanding military legions or chests of gold to finance the war for a New World Order is an image straight out of the chronicles of the Persian Empire.

According to the recent biography of Henry Stimson, the man who inspired President Bush was firmly convinced that it was essential for America to go to war once every generation or so. It was, for Stimson, a spiritually cleansing process which enables the nation to rally behind a cause and overcome its weaknesses and shortcomings in one grand burst of military fervor. The romantic mystique of the purgative powers of combat is key to understanding the political philosophy of Skull & Bones.

Although America's Vietnam debacle remains a bitter memory of the Bonesmen's failure in war, the recent Persian Gulf conflict, with its massive overkill and the use of highly advanced weapons and technologies, is now the new glorious symbol of the WASP warrior caste's reincarnation. When President Bush vowed that the Gulf War would not be another Vietnam, he was speaking first and foremost to his fellow Bonesmen -- not to the American people. If such thinking smacks of dangerous fantasy on the part of a major world power in the modern era, it is indeed.

On a more practical political level, the Gulf War was a gambit to save the Bush presidency from a mounting pile of domestic financial woes, not the least of which was the savings and loan (S&L) crisis and a pending series of failures of major commercial banks. In the months preceding the Gulf showdown, the president's own son, Neil Bush, came under intense media scrutiny for his role in the failure of a large S&L in Colorado. Neil's photograph, testifying under oath before a congressional committee probing fraud among top S & L managers, became a familiar front-page feature in every major newspaper in America, threatening dangerous popular disillusion with the Yale Bonesman in the White House. With a U.S. federal government deficit projected at nearly a half a trillion dollars for Fiscal Year 1991, in large part because of the S&L crisis and a shrinking business tax base, the Democratic Party majority in the U.S. Congress was pressing for deep cutbacks in defense spending now that the Cold War had ended.

On the international stage, the reunification of Germany, clearly the most dramatic event of 1990, posed new challenges to the Bush team. Germany was about to emerge as the dominant power in continental Europe by virtue of its advanced industrial infrastructure and its long tradition of independent political dealings with Moscow. Just months before the outbreak of the Gulf crisis, Germany's Chancellor Helmut Kohl had met with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and signed a long term economic assistance pact. As a result, Gorbachev dropped all remaining objections to the immediate reunification of Germany.

At that point, the Bush administration changed its tactics. Previously, in sharp contrast to the Thatcher government in Great Britain, it had been nominally in favor of German reunification. But at the Houston economic summit of the Group of Seven Industrialized Countries in the summer of 1990, the United States blocked (with Britain) Germany's plan of unconditional economic aid to the Soviet Union. President Bush took the position that the Soviet Union must submit to International Monetary Fund requisites as a precondition for any substantive economic assistance.

In the Far East, Japan's continuing growth in manufacturing also posed a threat to Washington's desire to retain superpower status. If President Bush and his Bonesmen coterie were unaware of a stunning historical analogy, their British "cousins" were quick to pick up on the parallels between the global strategic situation in July 1990 and the identical international situation that existed 100 years earlier.

In the 1890s, France, under the brilliant political leadership of Foreign Minister Gabriel Hanataux, was attempting to forge a Eurasian alliance with Germany, Russia and Meiji Japan. The idea was to link continental Europe with Japan and China through a series of large overland infrastructure projects, beginning with the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Through treaties covering key areas of economic and security matters, Hanataux hoped to create a zone of prosperity, built on a foundation of rapid economic growth and extensive trade.

Such a political-economic common interest alliance threatened the imperial hegemony of Great Britain. At the turn of the 20th century, Britain looked to the United States (as its English-speaking ally) to join in sabotaging the Hanataux plan. Through the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, Britain and her American junior partner (by then led by Henry Stimson's old mentor Teddy Roosevelt) managed to disrupt the French-German-Russian-Japanese economic axis. Two world wars and the Great Depression were the consequences of that interference.

THE PERSIAN GULF WAR

It was against this historical backdrop that President Bush, invoking the World War II imagery of his Skull & Bones idol Henry Stimson, went to war against Iraq. There is even speculation that President Bush was personally instrumental in luring Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait, thereby provoking the American-led military response. Many news accounts have emphasized that a two-hour private meeting between the president and Margaret Thatcher in the Aspen, Colorado vacation chalet of U.S. Ambassador Henry Catto on August 2, 1990 helped finalize Bush's decision to immediately deploy military force.

Recently, an astute Japanese analyst drew a disturbing parallel between Bush and FDR, who was greatly influenced by Stimson. According to the writer, FDR lured Japan into World War II through an intricate series of economic warfare maneuvers which left Japan with little choice but to strike-back. In much the same way, said the analyst, Bush had lured Saddam Hussein into Kuwait in order to launch a new Gulf War that would have consequences reaching far beyond Iraq and the Middle East.

As a result of the military victory over Iraq, the United States is in the process of establishing a string of permanent military bases throughout the Persian Gulf and Near East. The oil sheikdoms of the region, led by Saudi Arabia, are now thoroughly dependent on the American military presence to ensure the survival of their regimes. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is effectively captured by Washington. American bankers aided by U.S. gunboats now are setting world oil prices. Thus, one consequence of the Persian Gulf War is that the United States now has an oil weapon -- pointed principally at Germany and Japan. Ironically, America's two chief economic rivals have paid out a total of $27 billion to date to help finance a Bush administration military adventure which put the oil weapon in Washington's hand.

Another telling example of how the Order's man in the Oval Office intends to administer a crumbling U.S. domestic economy while imposing the New World Order on the rest of the world is to be found in the recent buyout of the majority of stock in Citicorp, the largest U.S. commercial bank, by Saudi Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz. Citicorp is one of the major American commercial banks on the verge of collapse, but which is considered by the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve System to be "too big to fall." The stock purchase amounted to a Saudi Royal Family bail-out of Citicorp, using the increased profits being enjoyed by the House of Saud as a result of the massive jump in Saudi oil production since the beginning of the Gulf crisis in August 1990.

There points up a striking difference between the role of the United States in World War II and the Bush administration's handling to date of the Middle East crisis. During World War II, the United States went through a genuine economic revival. Skull & Bones historian Samuel Huntington described it as a "neo Hamiltonian" policy, a reference to the first United States Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Beginning in 1939, America became a major supplier of military and industrial goods under the Lend-Lease program to the European states fighting Hitler. At the same time, the federal government began issuing low-interest credits to revive the nation's manufacturing base which had been gutted by a decade of economic depression. The industrial buildup accelerated once the United States formally entered .World War II, leading to the establishing of entirely new industrial sectors, such as aerospace and petrochemicals.

This time around -- at least to date -- there has been no such marshaling of the U.S. domestic industrial base. Despite moderate increases in the production of certain high-tech weapons systems, the U.S. economy continues its gradual slide into what could be a new depression. Unemployment is greater than at any point in the last decade. Some sociologists fear that the complete disintegration of America's urban centers could produce new race-riots as early as the summer of 1991.

The single greatest challenge to George Bush and the Order is: Can they capitalize on the current revival of the American spirit to reverse the disastrous post-industrial society dogmas, and launch their own version of the World War II neo-Hamiltonian industrial recovery? So far, some doomsayers claim, it appears that Bush and his administration plan instead to direct their efforts at looting and blackmailing the rest of the world -- especially the gulf oil sheikdoms, Japan and Germany -- into bailing out the bankrupt U.S. financial houses and federal government and financing the posting of American-led foreign legions at every corner of the globe where there are large deposits of strategic raw materials. If this policy is not altered, George Bush may soon find himself presiding over a new disaster that will make the Vietnam debacle appear insignificant in comparison.

The politics of the New World Order appear to be borrowed largely from the pages of the decline and fall of the British Empire. Political columnist Patrick Buchanan, an early vocal opponent of the Bush Persian Gulf strategy, warned as early as August 1990 that the White House was falling into the trap of British "balance of power" politics, the very politics that left Great Britain on the scrap heap of world powers at the close of World War II, and put Winston Churchill, the architect of World War II and the Cold War, out of a job.

Since the crushing military defeat of Iraq by a technologically far superior American-led coalition, the Bush administration has vacillated on a postwar policy for the region. It has pursued a pragmatic power balancing game which is rife with potential problems. The two key elements of the American balance-of-power politics in the region are the preservation of a weakened but territorially whole Iraq to offset the other would-be regional-powers Iran and Syria. At the same time, it is tilting toward a nominally more "pro-Arab" position with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

While the harsh reparations terms being imposed upon a war-devastated Iraq are probably, in the mind of Bush, aimed at dissuading any future regional military power from launching-cross-border aggressions, they amount to the slow, excruciating extermination of the population of that country. As one seasoned observer noted recently, earlier air wars had caused greater immediate losses of life, due to the inaccuracy of bombs and rockets, but had generally left basic infrastructures intact. The precision bombing of Iraq's entire infrastructure has caused what a United Nations team has called an "apocalypse." The greater loss of life will occur in the aftermath of the combat as a country with 16 million inhabitants is suddenly thrown into a "pre-industrial" state with no electricity, no water or other necessities. American humanitarian aid, administered by occupying troops, will not offset this apocalypse -- especially if harsh war reparations and asset seizures deprive Iraq of the financial resources needed to begin a rebuilding process.

Regardless of the fact that the United States has not thrown the full weight of its military presence behind the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, the shortsightedness of the present Bush policy may very well lead to a Lebanon-type protracted civil war in Iraq. Such a war could potentially spread throughout the region.

IMPLICATIONS FOR JAPAN

Throughout this short study of the Order of Skull & Bones, emphasis has been placed on the philosophy, the rituals and the modus operandi of the Bonesmen who have devoted their post-Yale careers to world politics. This particular emphasis was chosen in order to provide the Japanese reader with an insight into how the Bush presidency views the rest of the world, so that it will be possible for Japan to better understand what it faces in the post-Persian Gulf War strategic environment.

The implications of Skull & Bones domination over American policymaking under the Bush presidency are enormous. Japan must be prepared to meet what amounts to a fundamentally new challenge. Few of the postwar experiences in U.S. Japanese relations will have prepared the Japanese government and the leaders of Japanese industry and finance for-what they now face.

In the recent past, the policy of Washington toward Japan has been simply to use political leverage, mostly related to Japan's regional security concerns, to exact compromises and concessions in the economic and financial sphere. But the United States, under its policy of free trade, privatization of the monetary and credit mechanisms, and the transition to post-industrial service-oriented forms of economic activity at home, has suffered a gradual but steady decline over the past 20 to 30 years. Japan, meanwhile, has prospered under a more protectionist and industry oriented policy.

In the past decade, Japan has been increasingly thrust into the role of scapegoat for the decline of American prosperity, while at the same time coming under mounting pressure to help finance the United States out of its economic mess. The pressures upon Japan to bail out its postwar big brother have caused tensions between Washington and Tokyo, but the Cold War had provided a common security interest that generally offset the occasional rough language.

Under the George Bush Skull & Bones regime at the White House all that has changed. True to the Bonesmen's credo of constructive chaos and global political domination by the WASP Establishment, the United States is now out to dominate U.S.-Japanese relations with a degree of brutal frankness that will fly in the face of all previous American sensitivities to Japan's honor. Gone are the days of former U.S. Ambassador Michael Mansfield, who always sought to maintain a public climate of friendship and cooperation between the two nations even when behind the scenes he was taking the toughest of stands on the most divisive issues.

Under the American-led New World Order, Japan can expect to be treated with far less respect publicly. It can expect that the Bush administration, including his coterie of former top CIA men now working directly out of the Oval Office, will be constantly interfering, covertly in the internal affairs of Nippon.

This shift in style has held sway since the Bush inauguration and the subsequent appointment of Michael Armacost as U.S. Ambassador to Tokyo. Armacost has assumed the posture of a Roman pro-consul, dictating policy to a weak satrap, rather than to engage, in diplomatic dialogue. Armacost's performance even before the recent events in the Persian Gulf reestablished American military might as the defining factor in world affairs -- should have provided the Japanese leadership with a clue as to the shift under way in Washington's new policy approach.

The Bush policy can best be described as a sophisticated containment policy. The new approach to Pacific affairs was telegraphed in the early days of the Bush administration when the president deployed three of his most trusted senior spooks to three critical Asian diplomatic posts: Armacost was sent to Tokyo; Bush's vice presidential national security aide and former career CIA operator Donald Gregg was sent to Seoul; and John Lilly, another career CIA man and a fellow Yale Skull & Bones member, was sent to Beijing. The fact that three of the CIA's most experienced clandestine field operators were assigned the senior diplomatic posts says a great deal about the Bush administration's intentions to conduct sophisticated political-warfare and sow confusion among the three major nations of the Far East. Bush clearly intends to pursue the historic Skull & Bones mission of extending America's dominion over the entire Pacific region. The idea of even paying lip service to equal partnership between Washington and Tokyo is over, at least for the time being.

The process of internally weakening Japan's resistance to this overarching domination by Washington's New World Order began with the Recruit scandal, when the Takeshita government was brought down through a U.S.-inspired secret intelligence operation. One of the primary targets of that operation was Yashuhiro Nakasone, the former prime minister and the architect of Japan's post-1973 effort to develop independent ties to the oil-producing Arab states of the Persian Gulf.

It is important to understand that Bush's WASP warriors, while adopting a similar approach of non-compromise and domination over Israel and the Zionist lobby inside the United States, will not hesitate to use the Jewish lobby as an instrument for bashing Japan into line. Thus, Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher went out of his way to encourage the Anti-Defamation League's leadership convention, which he addressed last year, to join with the Bush administration in pressuring Japan to submit to American free trade demands.

The Bush administration will at times encourage the Zionist lobby and Israel to mercilessly attack Japan and will at other times severely criticize Zionist "insensitivity" to Tokyo. This will all be part of the Bush strategy to dominate the Pacific Rim by playing one country or faction off against another, using hard cop-soft cop and other classic techniques of the intelligence trade.

Japan will be offered a limited junior partner status in the New World Order, while coming under mounting pressure to continue providing tribute to finance the American imperium. Above all else, Japan will be forbidden from developing any independent foreign policy toward its neighbors, the Soviet Union, the Arab world or anyone else. Such programs as the Global Infrastructure Fund, to the extent that they pose an alternative to the U.S.-dominated international regime, will be vetoed.

As a subservient junior partner in the New World Order arrangement, Japan's financial and economic muscle will be used as the piggy-bank for U.S. imperial objectives. The $14 billion "contribution" to the U.S.-led Gulf-War coalition was another benchmark in the transition in U.S.-Japanese relations, as was President Bush's abrupt cancellation of his long-sheduled state visit to Tokyo. When the chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) attempted to visit Kuwait immediately after the gulf cease-fire in March l991, the U.S. State Department refused to grant him permission to go into the American-occupied territory. These intentional diplomatic affronts should be understood as telling signs of the new American-Japanese relationship.

On the other-hand, President Bush also suddenly scheduled a brief summit with Japanese Prime Minister Kaifu in Newport Beach, California for April 4, 1991. One purpose of the sudden meeting was to lay out clear parameters of acceptable behavior on the part of the Japanese government when the prime minister meets later in April with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Japanese Soviet relations, like all other crucial Japanese foreign relations, will be expected to conform with those of the U.S.

An essential blackmail "stick" that the Bush administration intends to hold over Tokyo is-Japanese dependency on Persian Gulf oil. As-the result of the Gulf War and the post war American military occupation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other-key oil-producing sheikdoms, the Bush administration will exert unabashed control over world oil supplies -- and prices. In the New World Order, Japan's oil supply will be increasingly linked to concessions on a range of monetary and economic issues, including the Global Agreements on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) talks, which broke up last year as the result of largely Japanese and continental European resistance to the pure free-trade system sought by Bush and Thatcher. Assistant Treasury Secretary David Mulford, a former senior official at White Weld Securities, Inc., which restructured Saudi Arabia's entire financial apparatus, has recently announced that he will seek to prosecute Japan for its violations of the GATT regulations that call upon Tokyo to surrender government control over interest rate policies to the international banking community.

The Bush presidency, with its ambitious drive for domination over former friends and foes alike, poses an unprecedented challenge to Japan. While this is neither the time nor the place to offer a solution to the growing dilemma, the profile of the men of Skull & Bones in this white paper should provide the Japanese reader with helpful insights into the nature of the American WASP warrior class and the secret society which spawned it.

Bibliography

"Bush Boy's Club: Skull and Bones." Covert Information Action Bulletin, Winter, 1990.

Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest. Random House, New York, 1969.

Hodgson, Godfrey. The Colonel: The Life and Wars of Henry Stimson. Alfred Knopf, New York, 1990.

Isaacson, Walter and Evan Thomas. The Wisemen: Six Friends and the World They Made. Simon and Schuster, New York, l986.

"Membership List of All Skull and Bones Members From 1833-1950." The Russell Trust Association, New Haven, Conn., 1949.

Ranleagh, John. The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1986.

Rosenbaum, Ron. "Skull and Bones: An Elegy for Mumbo Jumbo." Esquire Magazine, September, 1977.

"Skull and Bones: A Short History." Executive Intelligence Review, January 30, 1980.

Stimson, Henry and McGeorge Bundy. In Active Service in Peace and War. Octagon Press, New York, 1949

Sutton, Antony C. America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones. Liberty Press, Billings, Mont., 1986.

Winks, Robin. Cloak and Gown Scholars in the Secret War William Morrow, New York, 1987.

Some Prominent Members of Skull & Bones:

William F. Buckley, Jr. (Bones Class of 1950):

Founder of National Review, the leading conservative magazine in the United States. Brother James (Skull & Bones l944) is now a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals. William F. Buckley, Jr., former CIA officer in Mexico, also built the political grassroots conservative movement in the U.S. in the 1960s. President Bush and Buckley have recently split over Buckley's strong pro-lsraelism.

McGeorge Bundy (Skull & Bones initiate of 1940):

Scion of the Skull & Bones Bundy family. Father Harvey H. Bundy was Skull & Bones, as was brother William P. Bundy. McGeorge served in the War Department during World War II as Henry Stimson's assistant and later became the National Security Adviser to President Kennedy. William Bundy became a CIA official and later served in key positions at the Departments of State and Defense. McGeorge headed the Ford Foundation (1968-1980) and William chaired the Council on Foreign Relations (1972-1983).

George Bush (initiated in 1948):

President of the United States. Comes from a complete Bones family. Father Prescott, a Bones initiate of the class of 1917. Uncle George Herbert Walker, Bones Class of 1927. U S Federal District Court Judge John Walker is also a relative and a Bonesman.

Alfred Cowles (Class of 1913):

Built the Cowles Communication empire based on the Des Moines (lowa) Register and the Minneapolis (Minnesota) Star and Tribune. These two newspapers play a significant role in shaping the early presidential primaries, especially in Iowa.

Hugh Cunningham (Bones 1934):

CIA man from 1947 to 1973. He served in top positions in the Clandestine Services, the Board of National Estimates and later as Director of Training.

Thomas Daniels (initiated in 1914):

Founder of the largest agro-business and grain cartel company in Minnesota -- Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM). Served in the Foreign Service and later during World War II as head of the Fats and Oils Section of the War Production Board. ADM Corporation's new head Dwayne Andreas is one of the most powerful figures in U.S.-Soviet trade relations. Daniels's only son, John (Bones 1943), also works in ADM. The bank which underwrites ADM stock issues is the Morgan Stanley investment bank

Richard Ely Danielson (Skull & Bones 1907):

Past publisher of the Atlantic Monthly magazine, one of the leading magazines for seeing which policy line on a variety of issues is coming out of the Eastern Establishment.

Russell Wheeler Davenport (initiated in 1923):

Fortune magazine writer and editor, made this magazine the leading authority on financial matters in the United States. Davenport created the Fortune 500 companies list.

Henry P. Davison (Bones Class of l920):

Key senior partner in the Morgan banking and financial trust networks. His fellow Bonesman Harold Stanley (1908) founded the investment bank Morgan Stanley. Davison and his family helped set up the Guaranty Trust Corporation which became Morgan Guaranty Thomas Cochran (1904 Bonesman) was one of the most powerful partners in the Morgan bank. The influence of the Morgan banking system can be seen in its relationship with the hierarchy of U.S. intelligence. The head of the Office of Strategic Services, Gen. William Donovan, worked as a Morgan intelligence operative in the 1920s and prepared the intelligence reports for the Morgan banking concerns on developments in Europe. F. Trubee Davison became CIA Director of Personnel in 1951 and placed key Bonesmen in the right positions inside the CIA.

Averell Harriman (1913 initiate):

Scion of the Harriman railroad family. His brother Roland (Skull & Bones 1917) ran the investment bank Brown Brothers Harriman. Averell was one of the most powerful members of the Skull & Bones fraternity, His government posts ranged from Ambassador to Russia during World War II and various State Department positions to chief negotiator on the Vietnam Talks. Confidential adviser to Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and later Nixon and Carter. His investment banking firm is virtually a Skull & Bones bank&Mac220;nine senior partners are from Skull & Bones. President Bush's father worked in Brown Brothers Harriman after helping to merge several companies in the United Rubber Corporation of America.

Winston Lord (Bones Class of 1959):

Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (1983-l988). Former State Department official and CIA officer in Asia. China expert. Six members of the Lord family were Skull & Bones, including Charles Edwin Lord, former Comptroller of the Currency, Department of the Treasury. Oswald Bates Lord (Skull & Bones l926) married Mary Pillsbury of the Minnesota based Pillsbury Flour Corporation. Winston Lord is their son.

Robert A. Lovett (1918 initiate):

Put together the Brown Brothers Harriman merger and later organized the aviation industry mobilization for World War II. Became part of the most exclusive power group in World War II under Henry Stimson. Lovett was one of the five or six most powerful men in the United States for nearly 40 years until his death in 1986.

Henry Luce (initiated in 1920):

Built the Time-Life publishing empire. Became the leading publicist of the "American century" doctrine.

Dino Pionzio (Bones Class of 1950):

CIA deputy chief of station in Chile during the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende. Now works at the investment firm Dillion Read.

Alphonso Taft (initiated in 1833):

Secretary of War (1876), Attorney General (1876-1877) and later Minister to Austria and Russia. Co-founder of Skull & Bones.

Robert A. Taft (1910 initiate):

Speaker of the House of Representatives (1921-1926) and Senator (R-Ohio). Leader of the Isolationist movement in the 1930s. His son Robert A. Taft, Jr., also senator from Ohio, led the right-wing of the Republican Party in the 1950s and 1960s. Robert A. Taft, Jr., however, was the only member of the Taft family who was not Skull & Bones.

William H. Taft (Skull & Bones 1878):

President of the United States (1908-1912) and appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1921-1930). Secretary of War (1904-1908). Trustee, Carnegie Institution. Part of the long line of Tafts who served in the U.S. government.

William Collins Whitney (initiated 1863):

Secretary of the Navy (1885-1889). Promoter of the Naval Shipyards and financier. Part of the Whitney family which sent eight of its members to Yale to become Skull & Bonesmen. Family intermarried with the Payne, Harriman and Vanderbilt clans. The Whitneys became some of Wall Street's most powerful financiers through the Guaranty and Knickerbocker Trust Companies.

Current U.S. senators who are Skull & Bones members:

Sen. Jonathan Bingham (D-N.M.).

Sen. David Boren (D-Okla.) is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.); Former Navy Secretary and on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.): Recently killed in an airplane crash. was a Bonesman as was his father. The Heinz family has one of the largest food-producing companies in the world.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.): Formerly on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kerry is now on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Selected Quotations:

-- During the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, two Skull & Bones advisers to President Kennedy, McGeorge Bundy and Robert Lovett, met in the west wing of the White House to discuss strategy. According to author Godfrey Hodgson, there was a photograph of master Bonesman Henry L. Stimson, their mentor, on Lundy's desk. "All during the conversation the old Colonel seemed to be staring me straight in the face," recalled Lovett. Finally, he said to Bundy, "Mac, I think the best service we can perform for the president is to try to approach this as Colonel Stimson would."

-- At the Potsdam summit in 1946 when President Truman first met Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Stimson told the president: "The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him."

-- Commenting on the plan of Robert Morgenthau, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary, to deindustrialize Germany after World War II, Stimson wrote: ". . . just such a crime as the Germans themselves hoped to perpetrate on their victims . . . a crime against civilization itself?" He added rather ironically that the plan was like "a beautiful Nazi program! This is to laugh!"

-- "They possessed a common background, common experience, and a common liking for old wines, proper English and Savile Row clothing," wrote the biographer of former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew. A top level diplomat and State Department powerhouse during the first half of the 20th century, Bonesman Hugh Wilson adds, "The Foreign Service [is] a pretty good club."

-- "These men helped establish a distinguished network connecting Wall Street, Washington, worthy foundations and proper clubs," wrote historian and former JFK aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. "The New York financial and legal community was the heart of the American Establishment. Its household deities were Henry L. Stimson and Elihu Root; its present leaders, Robert A. Lovett and John J. McCloy; its front organizations, the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie foundations and the Council on Foreign Relations."

-- British author Godfrey Hodgson stated in an essay on the American Establishment that it was "characteristic of these men to take on the burdens of world power with a certain avidity... It reflected a grim but grand duty that was a legacy from half-buried layer of New England Puritanism."

-- Averell Harriman's father, owner of the largest railroad company in the United States at the turn of the century, told his son: "Great wealth is an obligation and responsibility. Money must work for the country."

-- "I scoffed at Harvard's Porcellian club. It was too smug. But to get into Bones, you had to do something for Yale, wrote Averell Harriman. He would frequently return to the "Tomb on High Street." During the Paris Peace Conference on the Vietnam War, Harriman was quite upset about not being able to attend a "Bones Reunion." In the book The Wise Men, Harriman is described as willing to talk openly about national security affairs, but "he refused, however, to tell [even] his family anything about Bones... so complete was his trust in Bones's code of secrecy..."

-- Stimson during the liberation of France in 1944 wrote about the need for France's reconstruction following the Nazi occupation of France: "America cannot supervise the elections of a great country like France. Consequently, we must eventually leave the execution of the State Department formula to the French themselves... where we ourselves will assume responsibility in part or more for its execution according to Anglo-Saxon ideals."

-- Stimson on Austria and Germany following World War II: "They [the British] haven't any grasp apparently of the underlying need of proper economic arrangements to make peace stick... If they restore Austria to her position in which she was left by the Versailles arrangement 25 years ago, why they would reduce her to a non-self-sustaining state [is beyond me]... Central Europe after the war has got to eat. She has got to be free of tariffs in order to eat."

-- Stimson was "opposed to a Carthaginian Peace" in which Germany was reduced to a non functioning society. He wrote, "The Ruhr and Saarland... [must not] be turned into a second rate industrial land . . . regardless of what it means to Germany... [rather] to the welfare of the entire continent "

-- In 1948, the debate within the U.S. government over the creation of the state of Israel was reaching critical intensity. President Truman was the "dark horse" candidate to defeat the Republican nominee, Thomas Dewey. Truman thought he needed the Jewish groups to mobilize in his support in order to get elected. He also believed that after so many years of suffering and persecution, the Jews deserved a homeland of their own. However, his most trusted foreign policy advisers, George Marshall, Dean Acheson and Robert Lovett, were, according to the book The Wise Men, "all dead set against the birth of Israel... However humanitarian a Jewish homeland might seem... it posed a real risk to U.N. national security. It was absolutely vital that the U.S. maintain its pipeline to Mideast oil. Supporting the Zionist cause would only antagonize the Arabs." Lovett said, "Israel was one ally too many "

-- On Japan, Stimson and McGeorge Bundy wrote their book On Active Service in Peace and War: "Since 1937, when the Japanese attacked China, Stimson had been urging, as a private citizen, an embargo on all American trade with Japan, and this attitude he carried with him into the Cabinet [when he became Secretary of War]." Stimson prepared a memorandum in 1940 pointing out how Japan had yielded before American firmness, in her withdrawal from Shantung and Siberia in 1919 and her acceptance of naval inferiority in 1921. "Japan," Stimson wrote, "has historically shown that she can misinterpret a pacifistic policy of the United States for weakness. She has also historically shown that when the United States indicates by clear language and bold actions that she intends to carry out a clear and affirmative policy in the Far East, Japan will yield to that policy even though it conflicts with her own Asiatic policy and conceived interests. For the United States now to indicate either by soft words or inconsistent actions that she has no such clear and definite policy towards the Far East will only encourage Japan to bolder action."

-- On December 7, 1941, Stimson wrote in his diary: "When the news first came that Japan had attacked us, my first feeling was of relief that the indecision was over and that crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people. This continued to be my dominant feeling in spite of the news of catastrophes which quickly developed. For I feel that this country united has practically nothing to fear, while the apathy and division stirred by unpatriotic men have been hitherto very discouraging."

-- On the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Stimson wrote in an article for Harper's Weekly in 1947: "My chief purpose was to end the war in victory with the least possible cost in the lives of men in the armies which I had helped to raise. In the light that no man, in our position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hands a weapon of such possibilities for accomplishing this purpose and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and afterwards looked his countrymen in the face."

-- At the Truman White House in the presence of Secretary of State James Byrnes, Adm. Leahy and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, according to his biographer: "Stimson had argued consistently for a commitment to allow the Japanese to keep their Emperor, not because- with the memory of Manchuria in his mind he had any special sympathy for him, but because only the Emperor could persuade the Japanese to surrender and therefore save American lives."

[Dig]

Skull and bones links
Elihu Yale was born near Boston, educated in London, and served with the British East India Company, eventually becoming governor of Fort Saint George, Madras, in 1687. He amassed a great fortune from trade and returned to England in 1699. Yale became known as quite a philanthropist; upon receiving a request from the Collegiate School in Connecticut, he sent a donation and a gift of books. After subsequent bequests, Cotton Mather suggested the school be named Yale College, in 1718. A statue of Nathan Hale stands on Old Campus at Yale University. There is a copy of that statue in front of the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Yet another stands in front of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts (where George H.W. Bush ('48) went to prep school and joined a secret society at age twelve). Nathan Hale, along with three other Yale graduates, was a member of the "Culper Ring," one of America's first intelligence operations. Established by George Washington, it was successful throughout the Revolutionary War.  http://www.whale.to/b/skull1.html
Tim Russert asks the President Sunday (2/08/2004) about Skull and Bones and the President confirms he is a member by saying he can't talk about it. Part of the transcript below.

http://www.infowars.com/print/Secret_societies/kerry_bush_sb.htm
President Bush: Politics. I mean, this is—you know, if you close your eyes and listen carefully to what you just said, it sounds like the year 2000 all over again.

Russert: You were both in Skull and Bones, the secret society.

President Bush: It's so secret we can't talk about it.

And those who argue that Skull and Bones is just a harmless fraternity or boy scout's club, may ask themselves whether it is okay for leaders of open and democratic societies, to be members of secret organizations whose agendas are not to be disclosed to the public.

http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm
"My senior year, I joined Skull & Bones, a secret society, so secret, I can't say anything more."

George W. Bush, President of the United States

Some more of many links on Bush connections to the JFK assassination:

http://www.ciajfk.com/home4.html

http://www.davidicke.net/tellthetruth/coverups/bronfmanbush.html

http://www.angelfire.com/ky/ohwhy/Bush.html

http://www.hereinreality.com/familyvalues.html

http://www.lizmichael.com/bushykno.htm

http://forums.alternet.org/guest/motet?show+-ugYR2t+-chjz+Currents+908+1

http://www.jrryan.cc/poetry/what_know.htm

http://www.sumeria.net/politics/kennedy.html

"How could it -- the Holocaust -- have happened in a modern, industrialized, educated nation?

http://www.russellmangum.com/bushworks/skulls.htm
The discrepancy between the kind of society many Germans thought they were building and the reality of the horror of the Third Reich presents one of the most intriguing questions of our age. "How could it -- the Holocaust -- have happened in a modern, industrialized, educated nation?

Fly Skull and Bones over White House

http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/Speaking%20Out/Fly%20Skull%20and%20Bones%20over%20White%20House%202-23-04.htm
To the editor:

George Bush Jr. belongs to a secret society called Skull and Bones. This conjures up the image of the flag used by pirates on the seas: A black flag with a white skull and crossed bones.

The fact this club is extremely secret should alert people to the possibility that devious plans for the world may be being plotted. Bush was never elected, but appointed by the Supreme Court of which seven of the nine judges are fellow republicans.

Now, Vice President Dick Cheney has gone duck hunting with Supreme Court Judge Scalia, even though Cheney has a case coming up before the Supreme Court. Clearly a conflict of interest.

If the Skulls and Bones' agenda is to reduce the citizens of other countries to skull and bones, they are definitely succeeding. Maybe a Skull and Bones flag would be more appropriate flying over the White House than the American flag.

Terri Campbell,

Cañon City

Death's Head: Piracy, Plunder and Foreign Policy

http://www.rense.com/general48/deathead.htm

THE US FLIES THE JOLLY ROGER - WITH SKULL AND BONES LEADERS AT THE HELM - By: Dorothy Anne Seese

http://www.etherzone.com/2003/sees062503.shtml


Since 1973, the SCP has been a frontline ministry confronting the occult and explaining why they are making an impact on our society. http://www.scp-inc.org/

New Book all about the Skulls http://www.secretsofthetomb.com/

Dmoz directory entry on the skulls http://dmoz.org/Society/Organizations/Student/Fraternities_and_Sororities/Local_Groups/Yale_University/Skull_and_Bones/Opposing_Views/

Comprehensive S&B info http://megspace.com/politics/important/

More proof of Bush family membership - The Washington Post: Feb 24th 2000 George W. Was 'Skulls and Bones' Member at Yale http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28930-2000Feb24.html

Background to Skull and Bones http://www.dcia.com/skull.html

New York Observer investigation http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=2511

The investigation continues http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=2943

Rites of initiation http://www.americanfreedomnews.com/afn_articles/bones.htm

Skull and Bones video http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/popoff/DailyNews/010423harris_video_popoff/index.html

Esquire article http://www.freedomdomain.com/secretsocieties/skull02.html

The Tomb http://dmoz.org/Society/Organizations/Student/Fraternities_and_Sororities/Local_Groups/Yale_University/desc.html

Background To The Skull and Bones http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/3/skullandbones.htm

Information on Antony Sutton http://trineday.com/sutton-memorial/

Buy Sutton's book on the Skull and Bones here http://ctrl.org/sutton/index1.html
References:

'America's Secret Establishment, an introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones' published by Liberty House

Press, Billings, Montana in 1986 is available priced £28.75 from Bloomfield Books, 26 Meadow Lane, Sudbury,

Suffolk, England, CO10 2TD. Telephone 0044 (0)1787 376374.

The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones, Ron Rosenbaum, Esquire magazine, September 1977.

New book on Skull & Bones out. (September 2002)
Alexandra Robbins, 'Secrets of the Tomb' 240 pages, Little Brown & Company; ISBN: 0316720917; 1st edition (September 2002)

Tony refused permission to be editor of open directory project page critical of the skull and bones

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 21:05:53 -0800 (PST)
From: staff-app@dmoz.org
To: tony@gaia.org
Subject: Open Directory application - gozza
Cc: admin@dmoz.org (Open Directory Project)

Dear Tony Gosling,

Thank you for your interest in becoming an Open Directory Project editor.

After careful review, we have decided not to approve your application at this time. The most common reasons a reviewer will deny a new application include, but are not limited to,

* Incomplete application. Insufficient information has been provided in some fields including reason, affiliation and/or Sample URLs.

* Improper spelling and grammar.

* Sample URLs are inappropriate for the category which one has applied to edit. They may be too broad, too narrow, completely out of scope, poor quality, or in a language inappropriate for the category. All non-English sites are listed in the World category. Applications for World categories that include sites only in English will be denied. Likewise, applications for World categories that include sample URLs in languages other than the one appropriate for the applied category will be denied.

* Not properly disclosing affiliations with websites that are, or have the potential of being, listed in the category.

* Titles and descriptions of sample URLs (and other information provided) were subjective and promotional rather than unbiased and objective. ODP editors do not rank or write website reviews. ODP editors provide objective and unbiased descriptions of websites and their content.

* Self-Promotion. Application which leads us to believe that the candidate is interested primarily in promoting his/her own sites or those with which the applicant is affiliated. The ODP is not a marketing tool, and should not be used to circumvent the site submission process. If this is an applicant's motivation for joining, then we ask him/her not to apply. Editors found to be inappropriately promoting their own site will be promptly removed.

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[PainInDaBrain]

i gotta read all this...lol

[Triadtropz]

great post sane...daddy bush is the most in your face criminal. who's never even suspect that ever lived...the guys like teflon when he gets to hell I'm sure he will be in charge...these guys started the baker act the most unconstitutional weapon they yield..to boot it's the carlisle group supplying the mental hospitals they send their victims too..

[Dig]

great post sane...daddy bush is the most in your face criminal. who's never even suspect that ever lived...the guys like teflon when he gets to hell I'm sure he will be in charge...these guys started the baker act the most unconstitutional weapon they yield..to boot it's the carlisle group supplying the mental hospitals they send their victims too..

Here are the keys to the kindom of knowledge concerning how the entire society of Skull and Bones like the Thule Society is just a complete and powerless impotent slave to the Queen Bitches....


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WAKE UP BONESMAN!

DO YOU KNOW WHOM YOU SERVE?

DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE PUPPET STRINGS LEAD?

DO YOU KNOW THE ENEMY?


Elihu Yale


President of Fort St George (Madras)

For which YALE UNIVERSITY is named.

Yes that is a metal slave collar around the neck of that negro boy.

Yes ELIHU YALE is a servant to the BRITISH EMPIRE

ELIHU YALE is a servant to the EAST INDIA TRADING COMPANY

SLAVES, DRUGS, WEAPONS

ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE!

SIR GEORGE HW BUSH, KNIGHT COMMANDER TO THE BRITISH EMPIRE


ADOLF HITLER, AN AGENT FOR THE BRITISH EMPIRE, SLAVE TO THE MONARCH

[37]

The first name in biomedical research in the United States is...

More Than a Century of Science for the Benefit of Humanity

Founded by John D. Rockefeller, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was incorporated on June 14, 1901. It was the first institution in the United States devoted solely to biomedical research--
to understanding the underlying causes of disease.(..and reproducing them.) 

 
ROCK U.

[Dig]

Interview with author of "Hitler was a British Agent"

http://crashrecovery.org/hallett/cloak_hallett.mp3

[Dig]

The first name in biomedical research in the United States is...

More Than a Century of Science for the Benefit of Humanity

Founded by John D. Rockefeller, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was incorporated on June 14, 1901. It was the first institution in the United States devoted solely to biomedical research--
to understanding the underlying causes of disease.(..and reproducing them.) 

 
ROCK U.

The Rockefeller File by Gary Allen
http://www.voxfux.com/features/rockefeller/ch1-4.html

The Great Oil Octopus
1911
(255 pages)
http://books.google.com/books?id=IdRHAAAAIAAJ

The Rockefeller Family (Part 1)
http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2009/08/rockefeller-family-part-1.html

Monday, August 17, 2009
The Rockefeller Family (Part 1)

On Sept. 23, 1994 at a UN Ambassadors’ dinner, David Rockefeller said, “This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long. We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”

The financier and original owner of the World Trade Center complex was none other than David Rockefeller. The United Nations (new world order government) exists on land donated by his father.

Three days after the 9/11 attacks, CFR member Gary Hart said, "There is a chance for the President of the United States to use this disaster, to carry out a phrase that his father used ... and that is a New World Order."

Back in 1976, Congressman Larry P. McDonald said, "The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control.... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent." He was later killed in a Korean Airlines 747 that was shot down under suspicious circumstances

The first notable member of the family, William Avery Rockefeller, was a con man, thief and indicted child molester who eventually deserted his wife and six children to marry a twenty year-old (Nelson Rockefeller later did the same abandoning his wife of 31 years for Happy Fitler Murphy). Author William Hoffman tells us that “The thing the children most remembered about their father [William Avery] was the delight he took in getting the better of them in business deals. He would con them out of something they considered important, then lecture them on the necessity of always being alert.”

“William ‘Big Bill’ Rockefeller, who sold cancer ‘cures’ from a medicine wagon, taught him to leap into his arms from a tall chair. One time his father held his arms out to catch him but pulled them away as little John jumped. The fallen son was told sternly, ‘Remember, never trust anyone completely, not even me.’” -Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy (46-7)

His son John D. Rockefeller was often called the most ruthless American and was the world’s first billionaire. He was a civil war profiteer who by 1870 owned Standard Oil, the largest corporation in the country, which by 1880 controlled 95% of the oil production in America.

“When John D. founded Standard Oil, it was just one of the 27 other refineries in the Cleveland area, and by no means the biggest. But the ambitious businessman – who once declared that ‘competition is a sin’ – soon devised a plan to take on or destroy his competitors. The simplicity, audacity, and ruthlessness of his scheme is breathtaking. He bribed and coerced the railroads serving the oil producing region to give him a kickback, or rebate, not only on his own shipments, but also on every barrel his competitors sent by rail. The more they shipped, the more he made! Rockefeller’s rebate formula enabled him to reduce his own prices and drive the other oil refineries out of business using their own money!” -Gary Allen, "The Rockefeller File"

“As the history of Standard Oil by any author, pro or con, clearly shows, Rockefeller was of a deeply conspiratorial, scheming nature, always planning years ahead with a clarity of vision that went far beyond anything any of his associates had to offer." -Ferdinand Lundberg, "The Rich and Super-Rich"

In 1872 his reputation was further blemished by a conspiratorial scandal between the refiners and the railroads with South Improvement Company. By 1881 he controlled a near monopoly of the petroleum industry in America. By 1888 Standard Oil had expanded into the markets of Asia, and Western Europe, selling more oil oversees than in the US. This same year the New York Senate committee launched an investigation and lawsuit into Standard Oil’s questionable business practices. In 1896 Standard Oil contributed $250,000 to Republican William McKinley’s campaign for president against antitrust legislation supporter Democrat William Jennings Bryan. By 1907 there were seven different lawsuits pending against Standard Oil, arguing, among other things, contempt of court for disobeying an 1892 suit to dissolve the trust. Also that it was twenty times the size of its closest competitor.

"U.S. Supreme Court on May 15, 1911, couched its decision in these clear terms: 'Seven men and a corporate machine have conspired against their fellow citizens. For the safety of the Republic we now decree that this dangerous conspiracy must be ended by November 15th." -Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy (48)

In the dissolution, Standard Oil broke into eight other companies, which have since consolidated right back into what we now know as Amoco, Chevron, and Exxon/Mobil.


“The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen … At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.” -NY Mayor John F. Hylan, 1922

[trailhound]

Speaking of skull and bones they still have not made it clear that they found her head

[Satyagraha]

Speaking of skull and bones they still have not made it clear that they found her head

Yes, I noticed that as well... also what was up with the autoclave? The alarm set off by steam from the autoclave? 

[trailhound]

pilikia wrote

Yes, I noticed that as well... also what was up with the autoclave? The alarm set off by steam from the autoclave? 

 It was reported that the steam/alarm combo was not related to the killing. not sure how they know that of coarse they didnt say.

[Dig]

Maybe we should watch this movie again with the understanding that Yale University is a Level 4 Bioweapon research center and that Annie might have stumbled on a cure for the planned Outbreak...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Outbreak (film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreak_(film)

Outbreak (1995) is a suspense film starring Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Spacey. The film was directed by Wolfgang Petersen. In addition, Outbreak features Cuba Gooding, Jr., Donald Sutherland, and Patrick Dempsey.

The film focuses on an outbreak of a fictional Ebola-like virus called Motaba. Its primary settings are government disease control centers USAMRIID and the CDC, and the fictional town of Cedar Creek, California. Outbreak shows how far the military and civilian agencies might go to contain the spread.

The film was released in March 1995 and proved a solid box office success. The film was nominated for various awards but failed to garner any major award nominations. It also raised various "what-if" scenarios: media outlets began to question what the government would really do in a similar situation and if the CDC has plans in case an outbreak ever does occur. A real-life outbreak of the Ebola virus occurred in Zaire only a few months after the film was released.


Plot

The Motaba virus is discovered in a mercenary camp in Africa in 1967 and kept top secret. Two soldiers order the camp bombed to cover up the discovery of the virus.

Thirty years later the virus resurfaces in Africa. Colonel Sam Daniels (Dustin Hoffman), a USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) virologist is sent to investigate the Motaba case. He and his crew gain information about the virus and return to the United States where he asks his superior, Brig. General Ford (Morgan Freeman), to put out an alert. Ford, who knows the virus is not new, tells Sam it is unlikely to show up. Neither of them know one of the host animals, a White-fronted Capuchin Monkey, has been illegally brought to the United States. Jimbo Scott (Patrick Dempsey) takes the monkey to Cedar Creek, California. During the trip, the monkey infects Jimbo with the virus.

Once Jimbo arrives at the pet store the owner tells him he got the wrong gender, but only after the monkey has infected him. Jimbo releases the monkey into the woods. Jimbo starts to show signs of infection on his plane trip to Boston, where he gets off the plane and kisses his girlfriend, infecting her. They are both hospitalized. A CDC (Centers for Disease Control) scientist, Robby Keough (Rene Russo) who also happens to be Sam's ex-wife, investigates the infections. Jimbo, his girlfriend, and the pet store owner die from the virus. Robby finds that no one else in Boston was infected.

While the techs at a Cedar Creek hospital run tests on the pet store owner's blood, one of them reaches into a spinning centrifuge. The vial inside breaks, splattering the tech and infecting him. He goes to a packed movie theater and exposes numerous citizens of Cedar Creek to the virus. Sam learns of the infection and wants to be sent there, but Ford orders him to go to New Mexico to investigate an outbreak of Hantavirus to prevent him from learning too much about the Motaba virus. Sam disobeys the order and flies to Cedar Creek, joining Robby and the rest of her team.

Based on the number of people infected, Sam realizes that the virus has mutated to be able to spread by air. At first, Ford orders Sam arrested, but after learning of the airborne mutation, he lets him continue. They find out about the pet store owner and believe that a host animal at the store may be carrying antibodies. Searching the store, they find a monkey; the monkey is already sick, but they contain and examine it. Meanwhile, a state of martial law has been declared in Cedar Creek, and the U.S. Army has taken control of the town to contain the outbreak.

A mystery serum, E-1101 (6/11/01?), is introduced to those suffering from Motaba. Daniels wonders what this is and administers it to the infected monkey obtained from the pet store. The monkey recovers and Daniels realizes that E-1101 is not experimental, that it was designed to cure Motaba, and people knew about the virus beforehand. However, the serum does not help the residents of Cedar Creek, since it has mutated in this outbreak.

Several accidents quickly happen - Casey's (Kevin Spacey) protective suit tears when his air line stretches too far and he is infected with the virus. While Robby is treating Casey, his sudden spasms cause her to jab herself with a dirty needle and become infected. Sam confronts Ford about the serum and learns about Ford's involvement in the African village. Ford admits that he withheld the information on the virus due to national security- its potential to be turned into a biological weapon for the military.

Sam then learns from Ford of Operation Clean Sweep, a plan by the military to bomb the town of Cedar Creek, with approval from the president. Maj. General Donald McClintock (Donald Sutherland), who was Ford's partner in the African camp and the one responsible for its destruction, is planning to use the bombing of Cedar Creek to cover up the virus' existence to advance his weapon agenda. To prevent Sam from finding a cure, McClintock has him placed under arrest by implicating Sam as a carrier of the virus. This leads Sam and Major Salt (Cuba Gooding Jr.) on a frantic search to find the host animal to save the town, Casey, and Robby. By flying on a helicopter to the ship that carried the host animal, Daniels obtains and broadcasts on the news a picture of the host monkey, which a viewer realizes her daughter is playing with in their backyard. She calls the station, and Sam and Salt arrive at the family's house. The daughter coaxes out the monkey, which Salt tranquilizes. Upon learning from Sam that the host animal has been captured, Ford agrees to delay the bombing to buy some time.

On the way back, they are confronted by McClintock (who also came by helicopter to prevent them from returning to Cedar Creek). Sam has Salt fire a missile into the trees to trick McClintock with a decoy helicopter crash. Returning to Cedar Creek, Salt mixes the monkey's antibodies with the E-1101 to create an anti-serum in time to save Robby but not Casey. Sam discovers Operation Clean Sweep is in progress and becomes aware that McClintock won't call off the bombing. He and Salt take it upon themselves to fly in the way of the bomber to stop it. With support from Ford, Sam is able to stay in the way of the plane long enough to convince the pilot and his bombardier that information was withheld from them. The bombardier detonates the bomb over water instead of the town. Ford, having had enough of McClintock's agenda, relieves him of command and places him under arrest for withholding information from the President. McClintock promises to take Ford down with him. Sam and Robby make up, and the remaining residents of the town are successfully cured.

[Dig]

Was she "in the know" about these plans...

Nice belt buckle Chan!

Click for larger size

[Dig]

What really happened in 1994?

What exactly is the "Yale Arbovirus Research Unit"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Treatment of a Laboratory-Acquired Sabiá Virus Infection
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/333/5/294


Michele Barry, M.D., Mark Russi, M.D., M.P.H., Lori Armstrong, Ph.D., David Geller, M.D., Ph.D., Robert Tesh, M.D., Louise Dembry, M.D., Jean Paul Gonzalez, M.D., Ali S. Khan, M.D., and Clarence J. Peters, M.D.


Arenaviruses are a group of RNA viruses several of which have the potential to cause a deadly syndrome of hemorrhagic fever. In humans these viruses are usually transmitted by exposure to infected rodent excreta; occasional laboratory or nosocomial infections have been reported.1 Sabiá virus is an arenavirus that was first isolated in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1990 from an agricultural engineer who presented with a hemorrhagic fever syndrome and ultimately died. Necrosis of the liver was found at autopsy. The virus was subsequently characterized as a new member of the Tacaribe complex of the family Arenaviridae.2 A laboratory technician in Brazil who was involved in the characterization of the agent was also infected and had a severe nonfatal illness. Neither patient was treated with ribavirin.2

We now report a third case of Sabiá virus infection, which was successfully treated with ribavirin. We also discuss occupational exposure, the clinical course of the illness, and biosafety management in a university-hospital setting.

Case Report

Occupational Exposure

On August 8, 1994, a 46-year-old virologist working alone in a biosafety-level-3 laboratory used a high-speed centrifuge to clarify a harvest of infected Vero cells containing Sabiá virus. The centrifuge contained six 250-ml bottles in a rotor with an intact O-ring to seal the contents during centrifugation. Each screw-capped polycarbonate bottle contained approximately 200 ml of tissue-culture fluid. The centrifuge was run at 10,000 rpm for 10 minutes (10,200xg) at a temperature setting of 4°C. The virologist observed no indication of a problem during the centrifugation process. On opening the lid of the rotor to remove the centrifuge bottles, he noted that the outside of one bottle was wet and that fluid had leaked into the bottom of the rotor. No obvious break was identified at the time, and the virologist was wearing a surgical mask, a disposable solid-front gown, and gloves. He had no abrasions or scratches on his hands.

The virologist used a second pair of gloves during the decontamination of the rotor, but did not wear a positive air-purifying respirator, although it was available. He decontaminated the spillage by pouring a concentrated solution of sodium hypochlorite (5.25 percent) directly into the rotor bucket as well as inside and outside the bottle that had leaked. The combined bleach and liquid in the rotor were then absorbed with paper towels. After the incident, the virologist continued working alone in the laboratory for another three to four hours. All his protective garments as well as other contaminated material in the laboratory were autoclaved. Initially, he did not report the incident because he believed that no exposure to virus had occurred.

Case Presentation and Clinical Course

On August 16, 1994, the virologist noted myalgias, a mild headache, a stiff neck, and fever while driving home to New Haven, Connecticut, after a weekend visit to Boston. He treated himself with ibuprofen for two days before seeking medical care. On questioning, he described recrudescences of Plasmodium vivax infection that had never been treated with primaquine. He was concerned that this fever could represent a relapse of malaria. He initially did not recall any serious laboratory exposures. On physical examination he appeared mildly ill, with a temperature of 37.6°C (99.8°F), a pulse of 89 beats per minute, and a blood pressure of 130/80 mm Hg. The only remarkable features were mild conjunctival injection and shotty cervical nodes in the anterior chain. Laboratory studies performed that afternoon revealed a hematocrit of 42 percent, a white-cell count of 2600 per cubic millimeter, a platelet count of 138,000 per cubic millimeter, and an alanine aminotransferase level of 63 U per liter; urinalysis revealed moderate proteinuria (2+). After a smear proved negative for malaria, further review of possible infectious exposures led the patient to recall the August 8 laboratory incident with Sabiá virus.

The patient was immediately hospitalized and treated with intravenous ribavirin at a dosage used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for other arenavirus infections (a loading dose of 30 mg per kilogram of body weight, followed by a dose of 15 mg per kilogram every six hours for four days, and then by a dose of 7.5 mg per kilogram three times daily for six days). Pretreatment blood samples were sent for viral culture and examination by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the presence of Sabiá virus RNA. PCR testing for Sabiá virus was reported to be positive on hospital day 2. The reverse-transcription PCR technique produces a fragment of 180 base pairs by using one primer specific for arenavirus in combination with one specific for Sabiá virus. Controls consisted of Sabiá virus RNA extracted from infected cell monolayers and normal human serum (Rico-Hesse R: personal communication).

Figure 1 shows the patient's temperature curve and laboratory values during hospitalization. No hemorrhagic manifestations were observed. His white-cell and platelet counts reached a nadir on hospital day 2: total white-cell count, 1300 per cubic millimeter; absolute neutrophil count, 650 per cubic millimeter; and platelet count, 98,000 per cubic millimeter. His serum alanine aminotransferase values peaked at 128 U per liter on day 10 of hospitalization. During treatment, his hematocrit dropped, and aminotransferase levels increased. He also reported a severe headache. The patient was sent home with a white-cell count of 3800 per cubic millimeter on August 29 after 10 days of intravenous ribavirin.


View larger version (10K):

Figure 1. Laboratory Findings in a Patient Infected with Sabiá Virus.

The patient was exposed to Sabiá virus on August 8, 1994, and became symptomatic on August 16. To convert values for total bilirubin to micromoles per liter, multiply by 17.1; to convert values for calcium to millimoles per liter, multiply by 0.25; and to convert values for phosphate to millimoles per liter, multiply by 0.3229.

Blood samples were collected daily from the patient before ribavirin therapy was begun and during the rest of his hospitalization. The serum samples were used to inoculate cultures of Vero E-6 cells maintained at 37°C, and the cultures were examined for the presence of Sabiá virus antigen 10 days after inoculation with the use of an indirect fluorescent-antibody technique with mouse ascitic fluids that were reactive to the Tacaribe group and specific for Machupo virus and a commercial fluorescein-labeled goat antimouse IgG antibody. Uninfected Vero cells served as controls. Cells inoculated with a serum sample obtained on admission to the hospital and before ribavirin therapy was begun were positive for viral antigen. IgM and IgG antibodies to Sabiá virus antigen (infected Vero cells) were subsequently detected by indirect fluorescent-antibody testing in a serum sample drawn during convalescence 35 days after the clinical onset of the illness. Serum samples obtained before this time were negative for Sabiá virus antibodies and served as negative controls. Attempts to isolate the virus from urine, semen, and blood were repeatedly negative after ribavirin therapy was begun.

Biosafety Management and Contact Surveillance

After PCR confirmation of infection with Sabiá virus, the patient was transferred to a negative-pressure isolation suite.3 The suite consisted of an anteroom with lower pressure than the surrounding hallway and two patient rooms with lower pressure than the anteroom. The patient remained in the same room throughout his hospital stay; the other patient room was used for the temporary storage of waste and for decontamination.

Once materials entered the negative-pressure isolation suite, they were considered to be contaminated. Items were double bagged and held in the adjacent negative-pressure storage room before being transported in an enclosed cart to the autoclave. Larger items were wiped with disinfectant before removal. Disposable items were bagged on removal from the room, autoclaved, and incinerated.

Throughout the patient's hospitalization universal precautions were used by all health care workers who came in contact with him or his specimens.4 Precautions were upgraded after PCR confirmation to include the use of fit-tested masks with high-efficiency particulate air filters, gowns, and gloves by all persons entering the patient's room and laboratory workers processing the patient's specimens. The number of health care workers who came in contact with the patient or his specimens was restricted.

Additional precautions were implemented in the laboratories to reduce the risk of potential exposure to aerosols from infected body fluids. All specimens were double bagged and carried by hand to the laboratories by the patient's physician. Chemistry specimens were processed in a negative-pressure room. Samples were spun in a sealed centrifuge, and serum was treated with Triton X-100 (10 µl of 10 percent Triton X-100 per milliliter of serum) to inactivate the virus. Hematologic specimens were processed in a Coulter counter that did not require removal of the top of the tube, and the effluents were treated with sodium hypochlorite and then autoclaved. The Coulter counter was also cleaned after use with several cycles of diluted bleach. Other laboratory tests were carried out within a biosafety cabinet.

All contacts of the patient were identified and stratified into risk groups. One hundred thirty-nine contacts were identified, consisting of workers providing patient care, hospital laboratory workers, colleagues, friends, and family members. No exposure had occurred that would have placed any contact at high risk of contracting the virus. However, all contacts were notified that a possible exposure to Sabiá virus had occurred, and they were enrolled in a medical-surveillance program. As part of the surveillance program, all contacts were interviewed, answered a questionnaire, and provided a blood sample for testing at the CDC; six weeks later, they completed a follow-up questionnaire and provided a second blood sample.

The contacts were also instructed to take their temperatures twice daily over the six-week period and to monitor for early symptoms of the disease. They were given a telephone number that was staffed 24 hours a day by physicians with expertise in occupational medicine and infectious diseases and who were familiar with the index case. No symptoms suggestive of Sabiá virus infection occurred in the group under surveillance during the six-week follow-up period; however, one subject had a viral syndrome with leukopenia and mild hepatitis just after the end of the six-week observation period. A serologic test (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) for arenavirus infection and PCR testing for Sabiá virus RNA were negative, and a serum sample obtained during convalescence was also negative for IgM and IgG antibodies to Sabiá virus antigen.

A protocol was generated with the emergency department for the triage and care of any secondary cases. The plans included restricting the number of health care workers who came in contact with people who might have been secondarily infected; immediately notifying the clinical laboratories, the hospital epidemiology department, the state health department, and the CDC of any additional suspected cases; isolating other potentially infected persons in a negative-pressure isolation suite; and having physicians familiar with the index patient clinically evaluate such persons.

Discussion

We describe the third confirmed case of Sabiá virus infection. The two previous cases were identified in Brazil.2 Four other arenaviruses (Lassa, Junin, Machupo, and Guanarito) have been associated with a hemorrhagic disease in humans.1 Each of these agents has a distinct geographic distribution, although they cause similar clinical manifestations and high mortality.1 Wild rodents serve as reservoirs for these arenaviruses; humans usually become infected by contact with contaminated rodent excreta. Little is known about the mode of transmission of Sabiá virus or its source in nature.

We believe that Sabiá virus was most likely transmitted to the investigator by aerosol, probably when the centrifugation rotor was opened and the leak was observed or during the decontamination process. [THIS WAS DEPICTED IN THE 1995 MOVIE OUTBREAK!!!! WAS THIS A PLANNED ATTACK TO SPREAD VIRUSES AND WAS DONE ON PURPOSE? WATCH THE MOVIE IT IS ALMOST LIKE IT WAS A PURPOSEFUL SABATOGE LIKE THE LIGHT BULB IN THE MOVIE "THE SOLDIER"!The 8-day incubation period in this case is consistent with that of other arenaviral illnesses (range, 6 to 21 days).1,3 We chose to treat the patient early with intravenous ribavirin, a guanosine analogue, since clinical studies have shown it to be effective in diminishing mortality in Lassa fever if given early in the course of illness.5 Clinically, our patient had an excellent response; he became afebrile and asymptomatic within 48 hours, in contrast to the other two patients with Sabiá virus infection, who had a prolonged course with hemorrhagic symptoms. His severe leukopenia and thrombocytopenia rapidly improved, and no further virus was detected in his blood by culture after treatment was initiated. The mild hemolysis was thought to be due to ribavirin therapy and is a well-described effect of the drug.6 The late peak in aminotransferase values, although not dramatic, was unusual, since it was asynchronous with the recovery from leukopenia and thrombocytopenia. It could have been caused by an adverse effect of the ribavirin not previously described, infection, or immunologic recovery from Sabiá virus. Hepatocellular damage and hepatitis have been described with Sabiá virus and other arenaviruses.1,2 The patient's late immunologic response, as reflected by the finding of IgG and IgM antibodies to Sabiá virus, may have been modified by treatment with ribavirin, or it may represent the natural response to Sabiá virus infection.

Since a number of nosocomial outbreaks have been described among hospital personnel attending acutely ill patients with arenavirus infections, a high level of precaution was instituted at our hospital, as recommended by the CDC.3 Although extensive experience in West Africa with Lassa fever has shown that universal precautions and nursing using barrier precautions generally prevent the transmission of Lassa virus in hospitals, we also instituted negative-pressure isolation, limited the number of hospital personnel caring for the patient, and required personnel potentially exposed to blood aerosols to wear respirators with high-efficiency particulate air filters.3,4 Clinical laboratory specimens were processed to minimize workers' exposure to aerosolized virus, and routine automated equipment for chemistry specimens was not used unless the specimen was first treated with Triton X-100. Contact surveillance with a follow-up of six weeks (well within the incubation period of arenaviral illnesses) identified no secondary cases.

Researchers need to recognize the risk of occupational exposure to Sabiá virus by aerosol. Ribavirin treatment may modify the clinical course of Sabiá virus infection. Although standard universal precautions may be adequate to prevent nosocomial spread, additional biosafety precautions should be considered when one is dealing with arenaviruses and other dangerous viruses whose mechanisms of transmission are unknown.


We are indebted to Ms. Carolyn Karbowski for assistance in the preparation of the manuscript, to Dr. Mark Cullen for his thoughtful comments, to Dr. Petrie Rainey for suggesting the Triton X-100 treatment, and to the Yale–New Haven Hospital house staff, laboratory workers, and nursing personnel for the professional care offered to this patient under unusual circumstances.


Source Information

From the Department of Internal Medicine (M.B., M.R., D.G., L.D.) and Yale Arbovirus Research Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health (R.T.), Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.; the Special Pathogens Branch, Division of Viral and Rickettsial Diseases, National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta (L.A., A.S.K., C.J.P.); and Institut Français de Recherche Scientifique pour le Développement en Coopération, Paris (J.P.G.).

Address reprint requests to Dr. Barry at the International Health Program, Yale University School of Medicine, 20 York St., New Haven, CT 06504.

References

Peters CJ, Johnson KM. Arenaviridae: lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, Lassa virus, and other arenaviruses. In: Mandell GL, Bennett JE, Dolin R, eds. Mandell, Douglas and Bennett's principles and practice of infectious diseases. 4th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1995:1572-9. 
Lisieux T, Coimbra TL, Nassar ES, et al. New arenavirus isolated in Brazil. Lancet 1994;343:391-392. [CrossRef][Medline]
Management of patients with suspected viral hemorrhagic fever. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 1988;37:Suppl:1-15.
Fisher-Hoch SP, Price ME, Craven RB, et al. Safe intensive-care management of a severe case of Lassa fever with simple barrier nursing techniques. Lancet 1985;2:1227-1229. [Medline]
McCormick JB, King IJ, Webb PA, et al. Lassa fever: effective therapy with ribavirin. N Engl J Med 1986;314:20-26. [Abstract]
Canonico PG, Kastello MD, Spears CT, Brown JR, Jackson EA, Jenkins DE. Effects of ribavirin on red blood cells. Toxicol Appl Pharmacol 1984;74:155-162. [CrossRef][Medline]


This article has been cited by other articles:

Larson, R. A., Dai, D., Hosack, V. T., Tan, Y., Bolken, T. C., Hruby, D. E., Amberg, S. M. (2008). Identification of a Broad-Spectrum Arenavirus Entry Inhibitor. J. Virol. 82: 10768-10775 [Abstract] [Full Text]   
Kimman, T. G., Smit, E., Klein, M. R. (2008). Evidence-Based Biosafety: a Review of the Principles and Effectiveness of Microbiological Containment Measures. Clin. Microbiol. Rev. 21: 403-425 [Abstract] [Full Text]   
SBRANA, E., XIAO, S.-Y., GUZMAN, H., YE, M., TRAVASSOS DA ROSA, A. P. A., TESH, R. B. (2004). EFFICACY OF POST-EXPOSURE TREATMENT OF YELLOW FEVER WITH RIBAVIRIN IN A HAMSTER MODEL OF THE DISEASE. Am J Trop Med Hyg 71: 306-312 [Abstract] [Full Text]   
Gavin, P. J., Katz, B. Z. (2002). Intravenous Ribavirin Treatment for Severe Adenovirus Disease in Immunocompromised Children. Pediatrics 110: e9-9 [Abstract] [Full Text]   
Murphy, F. A., Johnson, K. M. (1995). An Exotic Viral Disease Acquired in a Laboratory. NEJM 333: 317-319 [Full Text] 

[Dig]

More planned outbreaks, studied for how many can be exposed?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Air Evacuation under High-Level Biosafety Containment: The Aeromedical Isolation Team1
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no2/christopher.htm

George W. Christopher and Edward M. Eitzen, Jr.


U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, Maryland, USA Military contingency operations in tropical environments and potential use of biological weapons by adversaries may place troops at risk for potentially lethal contagious infections (e.g., viral hemorrhagic fevers, plague, and zoonotic poxvirus infections). Diagnosis and treatment of such infections would be expedited by evacuating a limited number of patients to a facility with containment laboratories. To safely evacuate such patients by military aircraft and minimize the risk for transmission to air crews, caregivers, and civilians, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases maintains an aeromedical isolation team. This rapid response team, which has worldwide airlift capability designed to evacuate and manage patients under high-level containment, also offers a portable containment laboratory, limited environmental decontamination, and specialized consultative expertise. This article also examines technical aspects of the team's equipment, training, capabilities, and deployments.


Air evacuation of patients with potentially lethal, contagious infections poses unique challenges and risks to air crews and medical personnel. Evacuation of such patients is relevant to military contingency operations because troops may be placed at risk for hemorrhagic fevers and other infections during deployment to tropical environments or by adversaries' use of biological warfare agents.

Evacuation of patients to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) would afford the immediate availability of biosafety level 4 laboratories (designed for the study of pathogens requiring maximum biological containment for laboratory safety) and facilitate rapid diagnosis of diseases due to pathogens posing extraordinary laboratory safety hazards. Furthermore, USAMRIID has the only fixed patient-care suite in the world designed for medical care under maximum biological containment. To safely evacuate a limited number of patients to the containment-care suite and provide medical care while minimizing the risk for transmission to air crews, caregivers, and civilians, USAMRIID maintains an aeromedical isolation team (1-3).


The Aeromedical Isolation Team

The purpose of the isolation team is to safely transport patients with potentially lethal communicable diseases for which no effective vaccines, chemoprophylaxis, or specific therapies exist. These would include patients with an unknown disease pending identification of the pathogen, patients with viral hemorrhagic fevers (notably those due to filoviruses and arenaviruses), and those suspected of being affected by a biological attack (Table 1) (3). Etiologic diagnosis and medical care would be provided at USAMRIID. Table 1. Infections and conditions requiring containment care during transport    
   
Arenavirus infection    
    Argentine hemorrhagic fever (Junin virus)    
    Bolivian hemorrhagic fever (Machupo virus)    
   Brazilian hemorrhagic fever (Sabiá virus)    
   Lassa fever    
   Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever (Guanarito virus)    
Bunyavirus infection    
  Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever    
Filovirus infection    
  Ebola    
  Marburg    
Orthopoxvirus infection    
  Monkeypox    
  Variola    
Pneumonic plague until sputum cultures are  negative    
Any unknown virulent communicable disease     pending diagnosis    
Suspected biological–warfare—caused infection   
   


USAMRIID can simultaneously deploy two teams, each consisting of one physician, one registered nurse, and four to six medics. Each team can transport and manage one patient. In addition, the team can deploy a portable containment laboratory with rapid diagnostic assays, including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays and polymerase chain reaction (PCR), as well as standard clinical laboratory support, for all agents listed in Table 1 (in development: Machupo, Sabiá, and Guanarito viruses).

Deployable on rotary and fixed-wing military aircraft, the team conducts in-flight training and can deploy within 6 to 12 hours of notification. Although a military asset, the team has been mobilized for situations involving civilians. Requests may be forwarded through local and state health departments to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or through the Federal Bureau of Investigation and are then reviewed by the Directorate of Military Support. Evacuation of non-U.S. citizens from other countries to the United States would require coordination through the Department of State, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
Biosafety Containment under Field Conditions

Maximum biological containment is designed to prevent transmission of highly hazardous pathogens and is accomplished in two steps. First, the health-care worker wears an impermeable suit consisting of a lightweight polyvinyl chloride (PVC) coverall, a separate hood, and vinyl boots (Figure 1). A HEPA-filtered respirator powered by a rechargeable battery supplies air under positive pressure for breathing and cooling. HEPA filters are certified to remove 99.7% of particles 0.03 µm to 3.0 µm diameter; each filter is tested with particulate aerosol challenge studies before delivery. Air enters at a rate of 170 L/min through an intake port near the top of the hood and exits through an exhaust valve at its base. Two-way radios permit communication between team members and patients. The suit and respirator ensemble has been tested by the manufacturer by particulate aerosol challenge and meets the standards of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for working in environments with respiratory hazards.

Click here to view enlarged image

Figure 1: Aeromedical isolation team members in field-protective suits equipped with battery-powered HEPA-filtered respirators transporting the stretcher isolator, a light-weight unit designed for initial patient retrieval. The team trains on several types of military aircraft, including the C-130 transport shown in the background.


Second, the patient is isolated within a sealed container under negative air pressure maintained by a battery-powered HEPA-filtered ventilation system providing five air exchanges per hour (Figure 1). Two isolators are used: the stretcher isolator, a lightweight unit for initial patient retrieval (Figure 1), and the Vickers aircraft transport isolator (VATI), a larger unit for definitive transport and in-flight care (Figure 2; Table 2).

Click here to view enlarged image

Figure 2: The Vickers aircraft transport isolator (VATI), designed for prolonged patient transportation and in-flight care.


The design and construction of the isolators are similar to that of transparent flexible PVC isolators for gnotobiotic animals in biomedical research; the isolators were adapted both for in-patient and transport use (4-7). Challenge studies have demonstrated the efficacy of containing aerosolized T-2 bacteriophage during both hypobaric and isobaric conditions (. The HEPA filters are certified to remove 99.7% of all particles 0.3 µm to 3 µm in diameter. Isolators have been used to treat in-patients with suspected Ebola, Lassa, and Marburg hemorrhagic fevers (5,6). The utility and safety of these isolators for in-patient care have been questioned (9), and their use in hospitals is not recommended (10,11). However, transport isolators, the only available technical means of reliably maintaining airborne isolation in a military transport aircraft, have been successfully used for the aeromedical evacuation of patients with suspected Ebola fever (6) and suspected (7) and proven Lassa fever (9). Table 2. Dimensions of portable isolators

Isolator   Length
(cm)   Width
(cm)   Height
(cm)   Weight
(kg)    

Stretcher   221   69   86   45    
Vickers   221   91   152   112    
   aircraft               
   transport               



Both isolators feature transparent PVC envelopes suspended from metal frames by detachable plastic rings. Both envelopes include gloved sleeves, transfer and docking ports for patient entry, and transfer and supply ports for introducing supplies. Electrical current is supplied by rechargeable batteries or the aircraft electrical system. Both isolators can be equipped with portable oxygen tanks, intravenous fluids and tubing, medication, and portable defibrillators.

Aeromedical Evacuation Process

The patient must be evaluated and stabilized before transport to ensure survival en route. Only patients likely to survive transport would be evacuated. The physiologic effects of altitude, effect of confinement on patient-care delivery, and psychologic effect of confinement within the isolator must be considered. Mechanical ventilation cannot be provided in the VATI, and suction capabilities are limited; therefore, acute respiratory failure and presence of gas trapped within closed body cavities that may pressurize at high altitudes (e.g., pneumothorax or intestinal gas due to ileus or bowel obstruction) contraindicate evacuation. Evacuation of patients with conditions requiring special in-flight management, e.g., hemodynamic instabilty and severe anemia (<2.5 million erythrocytes/cc or <7.0 g hemoglobin/100 ml) (12), may also be contraindicated.

The patient is placed inside the stretcher isolator and carried to a transfer point near the aircraft. There the stretcher isolator and team members are decontaminated with a 5% hypochlorite solution. During the decontamination procedure, the patient breathes portable oxygen from a mask, and the ventilation intake port is sealed to prevent chlorine gas from entering the isolator. The portals of the isolators are then connected with an airtight sleeve, and the patient is transferred to the VATI (Figure 3). The sleeve is clamped at two points before being heat-sealed and cut, maintaining air-tight seals throughout the transfer. The cut ends are decontaminated and covered with PVC seals, which are then attached to the isolators with pressure-sensitive tape. Both isolators are maintained under negative air pressure until decontaminated at USAMRIID. Equipment is removed, placed in bags, and returned to USAMRIID for decontamination of respirators and radios and disposal or decontamination of coveralls.

Click here to view enlarged image

Figure 3: Patient’s view of an aeromedical isolation team member providing care through a half-suit in the Vickers aircraft transport isolator (VATI).


The patient is transported on standard military transport aircraft (C-130 or C-141), which maintain an internal cabin atmosphere equivalent to approximately 8,000 feet above sea level while at altitude (26,000 feet to 35,000 feet). This level of air pressure is considered adequate to protect commercial airline passengers (13) and results in an arterial blood hemoglobin oxygen saturation of approximately 90% in healthy persons. However, because the VATI maintains negative air pressure, the partial pressure of oxygen inside the VATI is lower than that of ambient atmosphere. This lower pressure would be hazardous for persons with respiratory failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In addition, rapid decompression could place the patient at further risk. Accordingly, the VATI is deployed with portable oxygen tanks, tubing, and masks capable of delivering 100% of needed oxygen.

Design features of the VATI that facilitate in-flight care include its larger size, additional glove ports, two half-suits, 12 cones at the base of the envelope for introducing wires and tubing, two sleeves for intravenous therapy, and two large pockets for placing waste supplies. Diagnosis and therapy, which can be delivered in the VATI, include monitoring cardiac function, blood-pressure, and oxygen saturation of the blood; providing oxygen supplementation, intravenous therapy, and phlebotomy; and determining hemoglobin and hematocrit levels and serum electrolytes (by using a portable hand-held laboratory analyzer) (Figure 3). Because the use of glove ports limits manual dexterity, team members practice these skills on each other during on-ground and in-flight training exercises. Endotracheal intubation, manual ventilatory assistance with a bag and valve device, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation are practiced on mannequins in the isolators. To minimize the risk of puncturing the isolator, no glass bottles or instruments with rough or sharp edges are used. Phlebotomy is minimized, and a needleless intravenous system is used.

After arriving at USAMRIID, the patient is transferred from the VATI into the containment-care suite through a plastic sleeve connected to a port on an outside wall.
Aeromedical Isolation Team Deployments

The first of several team deployments occurred during the October 1989 epizootic of Ebola hemorrhagic fever among cynomolgus monkeys (Maccaca fascicularis) imported from the Philippines and held at a primate quarantine facility in Reston, Virginia (14-16). Because Ebola virus had been isolated only in association with epidemics of human disease in Africa, which had death rates of 53% to 88%, potential transmission of Ebola to animal handlers in the facility and secondary transmission to other members of the community were of concern. Aeromedical isolation team and additional personnel from USAMRIID were deployed. Animal handlers were trained in the use of suits and respirators, containment methods, decontamination, and waste disposal; 450 monkeys were humanely euthanized; and team members obtained specimens of blood and tissue for histopathologic and virologic studies and sealed and decontaminated the facility by paraformaldehyde fumigation followed by conventional disinfectants (16).

Respiratory transmission was suggested by the epizootic spread among monkeys housed in separate cages (with no opportunity for physical contact [16]) and by subclinical human infections. Serologic evidence of recent Ebola infection developed in four of the five animal handlers; only one had percutaneous blood exposure. None became ill, which suggested that the epizootic strain was not virulent for humans (17), and none of the 42 USAMRIID personnel participating became infected. The Ebola isolates from infected primates represented a newly described strain, Ebola Reston, genetically and taxonomically distinct from related human pathogens identified in Africa.

In another episode, an aeromedical isolation team member was deployed to Linkoping, Sweden, in January 1990 to assist in implementing biosafety containment for a patient suspected of having a viral hemorrhagic fever after returning from eastern Africa (1).

During November 1995, the team was deployed with a senior medical advisor after construction workers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, uncovered a buried cache of biological munitions. Some of the munitions, produced during the U.S. offensive biological warfare program (1942–1969) (18), were intact, but most were perforated due to corrosion of the munition casings. The munitions were brought inside a bunker by the U.S. Army Technical Escort Unit and sampled inside the VATI. Samples of liquid bomb fill and adjacent soil samples were transported in sealed containers on ice packs in accordance with U.S. Department of Transportation regulations by military aircraft to USAMRIID, the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, D.C. The bomb fill contained nonviable gram-negative bacteria (identified as Brucella suis by strain-specific PCR); soil samples tested positive for Brucella DNA and antigens and cultures yielded normal commensal flora but no growth of Brucella sp. Background soil and groundwater tested negative for Brucella DNA and antigens. All munitions were drained, and the fill and casings were sterilized by autoclave before disposal. Documents later retrieved confirmed that the munitions were bomblets filled with B. suis and used at the base from June to October 1954 to train personnel in viability testing and handling of biological weapons. After training was completed, the munitions were heated in a ground portable heater with an ambient temperature of 104°C for 4 hours each of 2 days, with the temperatures of the innermost munitions reaching 70°C to 74°C, and then buried.

Although not deployed, the team was on alert during 1994 for a laboratory-acquired Sabiá virus infection (Brazilian hemorrhagic fever) at Yale University (19) and during the 1995 Ebola epidemic in the former Zaire.

1An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 84th Panel Symposium of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Aerospace Medical Panel, Aeromedical Support Issues in Contingency Operations, Session VII, Control of Communicable Diseases, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 1 October 1997.

Lt. Colonel Christopher is chief of the Containment Care Medicine Department, Operational Medicine Division, USAMRIID. His interests include medical care delivery under biological containment and the formulation of medical practice guidelines for the care of biological warfare casualties.

Colonel Eitzen is chief of the Operational Medicine Division, USAMRIID. He directs the division in multiple activities to enhance medical biological defense, including medical education programs; collaboration of basic scientific, medical, public health, and operational communities; and consultative expertise for military and other government agencies.

Address for correspondence: George W. Christopher, USAMRIID, ATTN: MCMR-UIZ-T, 1425 Porter Street, Fort Detrick, MD, 21702-5011, USA; fax: 301-619-2312; e-mail: george_christopher@detrick.army.mil.
References

Hill EE, McKee KT. Isolation and biocontainment of patients with highly hazardous infectious diseases. Journal of the U.S. Army Medical Department 1991;PB 8-91-1/2:10-4.

Wilson KE, Driscoll DM. Mobile high-containment isolation: a unique patient care modality. Am J Infect Control 1987;15:120-4.

Franz DR, Parrott CD, Takafuji ET. The U.S. Biological Warfare and Biological Defense Programs. Textbook of military medicine, part I. In: Sidell FR, Takafuji E, Franz DR, editors. Washington: TMM Publications; 1997. p. 425-36.

Trexler PC. An isolator system for the maintenance of aseptic environments. Lancet 1973;1:91-3.

Trexler PC, Edmond RED, Evans B. Negative-pressure plastic isolator for patients with dangerous infections. BMJ 1977;559-61.

Clausen L, Bothwell TH, Isaacson M, Koornhof HJ, Gear GHS, McMurdo J, et al. Isolation and handling of patients with dangerous infectious disease. S Afr Med J 1978;53:238-42.

Clayton CJ. Containment aircraft transit isolator. Aviated Space Environ Med 1979;50:1067-72.

Hutchinson JP, Gray J, Flewett TH, Emond RTD, Evans B, Trexler PC. The safety of the Trexler isolator as judged by some physical and biological criteria: a report of experimental work at two centres. The Journal of Hygiene 1978;81:311-9.

Fisher-Hoch SP, Price ME, Craven RB, Price FM, Forthall DN, Sasso DR, et al. Safe intensive-care management of a severe case of Lassa fever with simple barrier nursing techniques. Lancet 1985;2:1227-9.

Centers for Disease Control. Management of patients with suspected viral hemorrhagic fever. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 1988;37:1-15.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Update: management of patients with suspected viral hemorrhagic fever—United States. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 1995;44:475-9.

Johnson A Jr. Treatise on aeromedical evacuation: I. Administration and some medical considerations. Aviated Space Environ Med 1977;48:546-9.

National Academy of Sciences. The airliner cabin environment-air quality and safety. Washington: National Academy Press; 1986. p. 8.

Centers for Disease Control. Ebola virus infection in imported primates—Virginia, 1989. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 1989;38:831-9.

Jahrling PB, Geisbert TW, Dalgard DW, Johnson ED, Ksiazek TG, Hall WC, et al. Preliminary report: isolation of Ebola virus from monkeys imported to USA. Lancet 1990;335:502-5.

Dalgard DW, Hardy RJ, Pearson SL, Pucak GJ, Quander RV, Zack PM, et al. Combined simian hemorrhagic fever and Ebola virus infection in cynomolgus monkeys. Lab Anim Sci 1992;42:152-7.

Centers for Disease Control. Update: filovirus infections among persons with occupational exposure to nonhuman primates. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 1990;39:266-7.

U.S. Dept of the Army. U.S. Army Activity in the U.S. Biological Warfare Programs. Washington: U.S. Dept of the Army; 24 February 1977;2. Publication DTIC B193427 L.

Barry M, Russi M, Armstrong L, Geller D, Tesh R, Dembry L, et al. Brief report: treatment of a laboratory acquired Sabiá virus infection. N Engl J Med 1995;333:294-6.

[Dig]

YALE IS A BIOWEAPON LEVEL 4 FACILITY FOR THE MANUFACTURING OF THE MOST GENOCIDAL VIRUSES THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN

THE CHAIR OF THE PHARMACOLOGY DEPARTMENT BELIEVES HE IS GOD

THE CHAIR IS AN OFFICER IN THE ISRAELI ARMY

THE CHAIR HAS A HISTORY OF STEALING $900 MILLION FROM OTHER PEOPLE/COMPANIES

THE CHAIR IS A BOARD MEMBER OF COMPUGEN THAT IS SET UP TO PUMP AND DUMP PHARMA STOCKS AND HELP CREATE PANDEMICS/VIRUSES

THE CHAIR HAS A HISTORY OF SEXUALLY MOLESTING WOMEN HE BELIEVES HE CAN OVERPOWER

HE CANCELED A CLASS TO MEET ANNIE IN THE BASEMENT

d'uh! I think it was the lab tech, d'uh!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LOCATION Yale University — New Haven, CT

AGENT Sabia Virus (currently Biosafety Level 4, though not designated as such in 1994)

DESCRIPTION Yale Virologist contracted sabia virus and subsequently exposed 75 co-workers in the laboratory.

SOURCE Barry M., Russi M., Armstrong L., et al. "Brief report: treatment of a laboratory acquired Sabia virus infection." New England Journal of Medicine 1995; 333:294-6

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Look at the rest of the total fricking insanity at the document titled...

MISTAKES HAPPEN


Yup just a bunch of mistakes:

www.bostonmobilization.org/library/accidentslist.pdf

[sociostudent]

More planned outbreaks, studied for how many can be exposed?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Air Evacuation under High-Level Biosafety Containment: The Aeromedical Isolation Team1
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no2/christopher.htm

George W. Christopher and Edward M. Eitzen, Jr.


U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, Maryland, USA Military contingency operations in tropical environments and potential use of biological weapons by adversaries may place troops at risk for potentially lethal contagious infections (e.g., viral hemorrhagic fevers, plague, and zoonotic poxvirus infections). Diagnosis and treatment of such infections would be expedited by evacuating a limited number of patients to a facility with containment laboratories. To safely evacuate such patients by military aircraft and minimize the risk for transmission to air crews, caregivers, and civilians, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases maintains an aeromedical isolation team. This rapid response team, which has worldwide airlift capability designed to evacuate and manage patients under high-level containment, also offers a portable containment laboratory, limited environmental decontamination, and specialized consultative expertise. This article also examines technical aspects of the team's equipment, training, capabilities, and deployments.


Air evacuation of patients with potentially lethal, contagious infections poses unique challenges and risks to air crews and medical personnel. Evacuation of such patients is relevant to military contingency operations because troops may be placed at risk for hemorrhagic fevers and other infections during deployment to tropical environments or by adversaries' use of biological warfare agents.

Evacuation of patients to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) would afford the immediate availability of biosafety level 4 laboratories (designed for the study of pathogens requiring maximum biological containment for laboratory safety) and facilitate rapid diagnosis of diseases due to pathogens posing extraordinary laboratory safety hazards. Furthermore, USAMRIID has the only fixed patient-care suite in the world designed for medical care under maximum biological containment. To safely evacuate a limited number of patients to the containment-care suite and provide medical care while minimizing the risk for transmission to air crews, caregivers, and civilians, USAMRIID maintains an aeromedical isolation team (1-3).


The Aeromedical Isolation Team

The purpose of the isolation team is to safely transport patients with potentially lethal communicable diseases for which no effective vaccines, chemoprophylaxis, or specific therapies exist. These would include patients with an unknown disease pending identification of the pathogen, patients with viral hemorrhagic fevers (notably those due to filoviruses and arenaviruses), and those suspected of being affected by a biological attack (Table 1) (3). Etiologic diagnosis and medical care would be provided at USAMRIID. Table 1. Infections and conditions requiring containment care during transport    
   
Arenavirus infection    
    Argentine hemorrhagic fever (Junin virus)    
    Bolivian hemorrhagic fever (Machupo virus)    
   Brazilian hemorrhagic fever (Sabiá virus)    
   Lassa fever    
   Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever (Guanarito virus)    
Bunyavirus infection    
  Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever    
Filovirus infection    
  Ebola    
  Marburg    
Orthopoxvirus infection    
  Monkeypox    
  Variola    
Pneumonic plague until sputum cultures are  negative    
Any unknown virulent communicable disease     pending diagnosis    
Suspected biological–warfare—caused infection   
   

DAAAMMMMN, those are the worst of the worst infectious diseases, too. God help us ALL.

[Dig]

DAAAMMMMN, those are the worst of the worst infectious diseases, too. God help us ALL.

"Brazilian hemorrhagic fever (Sabiá virus)"

That is the one that happened at Yale University in a possible sabatoge as depicted in the movie "Outbreak"

Can you give us some background?

[sociostudent]

"Brazilian hemorrhagic fever (Sabiá virus)"

That is the one that happened at Yale University in a possible sabatoge as depicted in the movie "Outbreak"

Can you give us some background?

I'll try. Give me 20 minutes to look it up. I know that anything with "hemorrhagic fever" is gonna end up looking like this scenario:

[sociostudent]

CBRNE - Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers
Author: David C Pigott, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Contributor Information and Disclosures

Updated: May 29, 2009
Introduction
Background

Viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs) are a group of febrile illnesses caused by RNA viruses from several viral families. These highly infectious viruses lead to a potentially lethal disease syndrome characterized by fever, malaise, vomiting, mucosal and gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding, edema, and hypotension. The 4 viral families known to cause VHF disease in humans include the Arenaviridae, Bunyaviridae, Filoviridae, and Flaviviridae. General characteristics of these viral families can be found in the table below.Table 1. Viral Families Causing Viral Hemorrhagic Fever
Arenaviridae

Arenaviridae are spread to humans by rodent contact and include Lassa virus in Africa and several rare South American hemorrhagic fevers such as Machupo, Junin, Guanarito, and Sabia. Lassa virus is the most clinically significant of the Arenaviridae, accounting for serious morbidity and mortality in West Africa.

Lassa fever first appeared in Lassa, Nigeria, in 1969. It has been found in all countries of West Africa and is a significant public health problem in endemic areas. In populations studied, Lassa fever accounts for 5-14% of hospitalized febrile illnesses. Its natural reservoir is a small rodent whose virus-containing excreta is the source of transmission.


    <EM>Mastomys</EM> rodent, natural host of Lassa v...
    Mastomys rodent, natural host of Lassa virus. Image courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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    <EM>Mastomys</EM> rodent, natural host of Lassa v...

Mastomys rodent, natural host of Lassa virus. Image courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Bunyaviridae

This group includes Rift Valley fever (RVF) virus, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus, and several hantaviruses. The RVF and CCHF viruses are both arthropod-borne viruses. RVF virus, an important African pathogen, is transmitted to humans and livestock by mosquitos and by the slaughter of infected livestock. CCHF virus is carried by ticks and causes a fulminant, highly pathogenic form of VHF notable for aerosol transmission of infective particles. Outbreaks of CCHF have occurred in Africa, Asia, and Europe.

    Bunyavirus infection. Ecchymoses encompassing lef...
    Bunyavirus infection. Ecchymoses encompassing left upper extremity one week after onset of CCHF. Ecchymoses often are accompanied by hemorrhage in other locations: epistaxis, puncture sites, hematemesis, melena, and hematuria. Image provided by Robert Swaneopoel, PhD, DTVM, MRCVS, National Institute of Virology, Sandringham, South Africa.

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    Bunyavirus infection. Ecchymoses encompassing lef...

Bunyavirus infection. Ecchymoses encompassing left upper extremity one week after onset of CCHF. Ecchymoses often are accompanied by hemorrhage in other locations: epistaxis, puncture sites, hematemesis, melena, and hematuria. Image provided by Robert Swaneopoel, PhD, DTVM, MRCVS, National Institute of Virology, Sandringham, South Africa.

Many hantaviruses are spread worldwide, causing 2 major syndromes: hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) and hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS). They are divided into Old World hantaviruses (such as the prototypical Hantaan virus of Korea), which generally cause HFRS, and New World hantaviruses, causing HPS. Rodents carry both types. A previously undiscovered Hantavirus, Sin Nombre virus, was the cause of an outbreak of highly lethal HPS in the southwestern US in 1993.

Filoviridae

The most notorious of the VHF viruses, including Ebola and Marburg viruses, belong to the Filoviridae family. Ebola virus first was described in 1976 after outbreaks of a febrile, rapidly fatal hemorrhagic illness were reported along the Ebola River in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Sudan. Sporadic outbreaks have continued since that time, usually in isolated areas of central Africa. An outbreak in Kikwit, Zaire, in 1995 led to 317 confirmed cases, with an 81% mortality rate. Two thirds of the patients were among health care workers caring for infected individuals. An outbreak in Uganda in late 2000 resulted in 425 cases and claimed 225 lives.

In September 2007, the cause of a VHF outbreak in the Congo was identified as Ebola. Ebola has 4 distinct subtypes: Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, Ebola-Ivory Coast, and Ebola-Reston, a form that causes illness in nonhuman primates, and as has been recently discovered, in pigs.1 A 2007 Ebola outbreak in Uganda, however, has been attributed to a new form of Ebola. This new Ebola subtype, which appears to be closely related to Ebola-Ivory Coast, has been given the proposed name Bundibugyo Ebola virus (named after the Bundibugyo district in Western Uganda).2

The natural reservoir of Ebola virus remains unknown, although some recent studies have suggested that bats may be a potential reservoir for Ebola.3

    Ebola virus. Electron micrograph courtesy of the ...
    Ebola virus. Electron micrograph courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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    Ebola virus. Electron micrograph courtesy of the ...

Ebola virus. Electron micrograph courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Marburg virus, named after the German town where it first was reported in 1967, is another highly pathogenic member of the Filoviridae family that is traced to central Africa. As in Ebola, the natural host for the virus is unknown. Marburg virus was contracted by a traveler to central Africa in 1987 and has been endemic since 1998 in Durba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in persons exposed in gold mines. Marburg virus was determined to be the causative agent in a 2004-2005 outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in Angola that led to 252 confirmed cases and 227 deaths (90% case-fatality rate).

    Marburg virus. Negative stain image courtesy of t...
    Marburg virus. Negative stain image courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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    Marburg virus. Negative stain image courtesy of t...

Marburg virus. Negative stain image courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Flaviviridae

Yellow fever and dengue fever are the most well known diseases caused by flaviviruses. Both are mosquito-borne; yellow fever is found in tropical Africa and South America, and dengue fever is found in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. They are notable for their significant effect on prior military campaigns and their continued presence throughout endemic areas.
Pathophysiology

The primary defect in patients with viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) is that of increased vascular permeability. Hemorrhagic fever viruses have an affinity for the vascular system, leading initially to signs such as flushing, conjunctival injection, and petechial hemorrhages, usually associated with fever and myalgias. Later, frank mucous membrane hemorrhage may occur, with accompanying hypotension, shock, and circulatory collapse. The relative severity of the clinical presentation may vary depending on the virus in question, amount, and route of exposure.

In acute disease, patients are extremely viremic, and messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) evidence of multiple cytokine activation exists. In vitro studies reveal these cytokines lead to shock and increased vascular permeability, the basic pathophysiologic processes most often seen in viral hemorrhagic fever infection. Another prominent pathologic feature is pronounced macrophage involvement. Inadequate or delayed immune response to these novel viral antigens may lead to rapid development of overwhelming viremia. Extensive infection and necrosis of affected organs also are described. Hemorrhagic complications are multifactorial and are related to hepatic damage, consumptive coagulopathy, and primary marrow injury to megakaryocytes. Aerosol transmission of some viral hemorrhagic fever infections is reported among nonhuman primates and likely is a mode of transmission in patients with severe infection.

Multisystem organ failure affecting the hematopoietic, neurologic, and pulmonary systems often accompanies the vascular involvement. Hepatic involvement varies with the infecting organism and is at times seen with Ebola, Marburg, RVF, CCHF, and yellow fever. Renal failure with oliguria is a prominent feature of HFRS seen in Hantavirus infection and may be seen in other VHFs as intravascular volume depletion becomes more pronounced. Bleeding complications are particularly prominent with Ebola, Marburg, CCHF, and the South American arenaviruses.
Frequency
United States

Cases of viral hemorrhagic fever in the United States are extremely rare and usually are found in patients who recently have visited endemic areas or among those with potential occupational exposure to hemorrhagic fever viruses. Lassa fever has been reported in the United States in travelers from West Africa and was most recently reported in the United States in August 2004. In 1994, a virologist working with Sabia, a Brazilian HF virus, accidentally contracted the disease. Sporadic cases of HPS due to Sin Nombre virus continue to be reported throughout the southwestern United States.4

No human cases of Ebola or Marburg virus disease have been reported in the United States. In 1989, an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever among imported macaque monkeys in Reston, Virginia, led to the discovery of Ebola-Reston, a variant of Ebola virus that originated in the Philippines and does not cause disease in humans.
International

Lassa fever is responsible for an estimated 100,000-300,000 infections per year, with 5,000 deaths. Cases have been reported throughout West Africa, particularly in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. Other arenaviruses are responsible for sporadic VHF outbreaks throughout South America.

Rift Valley fever (RVF) virus and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) are responsible for intermittent epidemics in Africa (for RVF) and in areas of Africa, Asia, and Europe (for CCHF). HFRS due to Hantavirus infection continues to be an ongoing health concern, particularly in Asia, affecting up to 200,000 patients annually.

Ebola virus appears sporadically in endemic areas of the former Zaire and Sudan. Ebola virus also has been reported in Gabon, the Ivory Coast, and Uganda. Outbreaks appear to propagate in hospital settings, often involving health care providers.

Yellow fever continues to be a serious problem in tropical areas of South America and Africa, where vaccination is not widespread. The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 200,000 cases per year occur in Africa. Dengue HF is endemic in Southeast Asia, and more than 1 million cases occur annually.
Mortality/Morbidity

Case-fatality rates of patients with VHF vary from less than 10% (eg, in dengue HF) to approximately 90%, as has been reported in patients with Ebola-Zaire and the recent Angola Marburg outbreak. The most recent outbreak of Ebola-Sudan in Uganda had a 50% case-fatality rate.

Complications from VHF infection include retinitis, orchitis, hepatitis, transverse myelitis, and uveitis. In patients who recover from Lassa fever infection, deafness is the most common complication. Spontaneous abortion also is common. Renal insufficiency is associated with HFRS infection.
Race

No racial predilection has been identified, although cases have originated in African areas.
Sex

No predilection for either sex has been identified.
Age

VHF affects all ages according to exposure and local demographics.
Clinical
History

    * Obtain a detailed travel history, paying particular attention to recent travel to tropical or rural areas, such as Central or South America (yellow fever, arenaviruses), West Africa (Lassa fever), or to endemic portions of Central Africa (Ebola, Marburg, RVF, CCHF). Ask about contact with potential arthropod or rodent reservoirs.
          o Since the natural reservoir for Ebola and Marburg viruses is unknown, contact with infected monkeys or humans is not a prerequisite for transmission of infection.
          o Direct contact with rodents infected with hemorrhagic fever viruses (eg, arenaviruses, hantaviruses) is not necessary for transmission of infection, since aerosolized excreta may transmit infection.
    * Contacts of patients with known viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF), especially family members or health care workers caring for infected patients, are at risk for infection if appropriate barrier precautions are not used.
          o Transmission of VHF has occurred from the reuse of unsterile needles and syringes used for treatment of infected patients.
          o Transmission of VHF also has occurred to individuals handling the deceased in preparation for burial or to individuals involved in the slaughter of infected livestock (as in RVF or CCHF).
    * Because of their extreme pathogenicity and potential for transmission by fine particle aerosol, VHF viruses are considered potential biological warfare agents. In addition, Dr Ken Alibek, the former Deputy Director of the once massive Soviet bioweapons program, Biopreparat, claims Soviet scientists successfully had produced a stable Marburg virus biological weapon that could be delivered as an aerosol.
          o Large numbers of military personnel with VHF symptoms suggest such an attack.
          o An outbreak of VHF in a nonendemic area also suggests a biological warfare attack.
    * Incubation periods for VHF vary from 2-21 days.
    * The initial symptoms correspond to development of viremia and include the following:
          o High fever
          o Headache
          o Fatigue
          o Abdominal pain
          o Myalgias
          o Prostration
    * In more advanced disease, signs and symptoms include the following:
          o Hematemesis and bloody diarrhea
          o Generalized mucous membrane hemorrhage
          o Rash
          o Altered mental status and cardiovascular collapse (preterminal events)

Physical

Depending on the progress of the disease, patients with viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) initially may present with minimal signs, suggesting a more benign viral syndrome. Maintain a high index of suspicion. As the disease progresses, more classic findings are present as follows:

    * Fever
    * Pharyngitis
    * Conjunctival injection
    * Nondependent edema
    * Petechial or ecchymotic rash
    * GI bleeding
    * Hypotension and/or shock
    * Most hemorrhagic fevers, except Rift Valley fever, can produce a variety of cutaneous findings that are principally caused by vascular instability and bleeding abnormalities. Such findings include flushing, petechiae, purpura, ecchymoses, and edema.
    * The Old World arenavirus causing Lassa fever results in the greatest amount of edema of any of the hemorrhagic fever viruses. Additionally, no bleeding abnormalities are present.
    * The New World arenaviruses (Junin, Machupo, Sabia, and Guanarito) cause less edema and variable amounts of petechiae, purpura, ecchymoses, palatal hyperemia, and mucosal hemorrhage.
    * The most severe hemorrhage from a hemorrhagic fever virus follows infection with the Congo Crimean hemorrhagic fever virus.
    * Hantaviruses can cause a relatively distinctive eruption with a petechial eruption around the neck and on the anterior and posterior axillary folds, arms, and trunk. A sunburn-like flush is seen on the head, neck, and upper chest and back and may be accompanied by facial edema. Sometimes, a morbilliform eruption occurs. Oral and conjunctival surfaces may develop severe hemorrhages.


    Bunyavirus infection - Hantaan virus. Patient wit...
    Bunyavirus infection - Hantaan virus. Patient with Korean hemorrhagic fever caused by Hantaan virus demonstrating typical 'sunburn flush' of cheeks, chin, and base of neck. Photo courtesy of John Huggins, PhD.

[ CLOSE WINDOW ]

    Bunyavirus infection - Hantaan virus. Patient wit...

Bunyavirus infection - Hantaan virus. Patient with Korean hemorrhagic fever caused by Hantaan virus demonstrating typical 'sunburn flush' of cheeks, chin, and base of neck. Photo courtesy of John Huggins, PhD.

    * The greatly feared filoviruses (Marburg and Ebola) exhibit characteristic exanthems that are best seen in fair-skinned patients. Soft palatal hyperemia accompanies the flu-like prodrome and is followed between days 5 and 7 by a nonpruritic, centripetal, pinhead-sized papular, erythematous exanthem. Within 24 hours, this can develop into large and coalescent, well-demarcated, sometimes hemorrhagic macules and papules. In severe cases, hemorrhage exudes from mucous membranes, venipuncture sites, and body orifices.
    * Dengue virus causes a characteristic erythematous exanthem with striking islands of sparing.

    Patient with morbilliform exanthem of dengue feve...
    Patient with morbilliform exanthem of dengue fever. Note islands of sparing characteristics for dengue. Photo courtesy Duane Gubler, PhD.
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/830594-diagnosis
Differential Diagnoses
Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation
   Salmonella Infection
Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome
   Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
Leptospirosis in Humans
   Thrombocytopenic Purpura
Malaria
   Tick-Borne Diseases, Relapsing Fever
Other Problems to Be Considered

Typhoid fever
Shigellosis
Meningococcemia
Rickettsial infections
Acute leukemia
Idiopathic or thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura
Workup
Laboratory Studies

    * Because of risks associated with handling infectious materials, perform the minimum necessary laboratory testing for diagnostic evaluation and patient care.
    * A complete blood count often indicates leukopenia and thrombocytopenia. These findings may not be present in Lassa fever.
    * Elevated hepatic transaminases are observed in viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) and are predictive of high mortality in Lassa fever infection.
    * Prothrombin time, activated partial thromboplastin time, international normalized ratio, and clotting times are prolonged.
    * A disseminated intravascular coagulation profile including fibrinogen level, fibrin degradation products, and platelet count may be useful.

Other Tests

    * Most patients are viremic at the time of presentation (Hantavirus is an exception). Specific viral diagnosis can be made using serologic tests, including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and polymerase chain reaction. Difficult cases may require tissue cultures. During the 2000-2001 Ebola outbreak in Uganda, reverse transcriptase-PCR (RT-PCR) emerged as a very effective means for detecting Ebola virus in patient serum, plasma, and whole blood.
          o Because of the need for specialized microbiologic containment and handling of these viruses, initiate contact with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; Atlanta, GA) as soon as possible and prior to transport of specimens for virus-specific diagnosis. Specific state and federal statutes govern the shipment of highly infectious disease agents.
          o The CDC and the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID; Frederick, MD) are among the 8 Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory facilities in the US with such diagnostic facilities. At least 7 more are under construction.
    * Report all suspected cases of viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) immediately to local and state public health departments and to the CDC.
Treatment
Prehospital Care

Supportive care is based on the patient's physiologic condition. Because most patients requiring prehospital evaluation and transport are in the early stages of the disease, universal precautions should be adequate. In patients with respiratory symptoms (eg, cough, rhinitis), use face shields and high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter masks.
Emergency Department Care

    * Fluid resuscitation and supportive care are the mainstays of emergency department therapy. Intravenous crystalloids, oxygen, and cardiac monitoring are the most appropriate initial steps in the treatment of patients in whom viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) is suggested.
    * Administer blood and blood products as clinically indicated.
    * Avoid intramuscular injections and the use of aspirin or other anticoagulants.
    * Minimize invasive procedures because of the risk associated with viral transmission from sharp objects.
    * Place patients in a private room.
          o A negative pressure room is not necessary during early stages of the disease but may be necessary if patients have prominent cough, vomiting, diarrhea, or hemorrhage.
          o Prevent nonessential staff and visitors from entering the room.
    * All staff entering the room should wear gloves and gowns.
    * Persons coming within 3 feet of the patient should wear face shields or surgical masks with eye protection (including side shields). Use HEPA filter masks if patients have prominent respiratory, GI, or hemorrhagic symptoms.
    * If large amounts of blood or other body fluids are present in the environment, use leg and shoe coverings.
    * Before exiting the room, discard all used protective barriers and clean shoes with a hospital disinfectant or solution of household bleach. If possible, use an anteroom for putting on and removing protective barriers and for storing supplies.

Medication

No specific antiviral therapy is available for Ebola or Marburg virus infection. The use of convalescent serum (ie, sera from patients who have survived infection) is suggested as a possible therapy. Late during the 1995 Kikwit, Zaire, outbreak, 8 Ebola patients received blood transfusions from Ebola survivors. Of these, 7 survived. However, no clear evidence exists that links their survival directly to this therapy.

Lassa fever and HFRS due to Hantavirus infection have been treated effectively with IV and oral ribavirin. Because of this, ribavirin has been recommended as a potential treatment for other arenaviruses and bunyaviruses. Treatment is most effective when given early in the clinical course. Ribavirin also is recommended for postexposure prophylaxis.

Development of a Lassa virus vaccine is continuing at CDC. Yellow fever vaccine is readily available and is both safe and effective. Argentine HF (Junin) vaccine is also effective and may protect against Bolivian HF as well. Rift Valley fever and Hantaan (HFRS) vaccines are also available. Although there is no approved vaccine for either Ebola or Marburg virus, significant progress has been made in developing an effective experimental vaccine. In March 2009, however, after a German researcher sustained a needlestick while working with Ebola virus, a decision was made among Ebola experts and researchers to administer an experimental Ebola vaccine that has shown effectiveness in nonhuman primate studies. Initial reports indicate that this effort may have been successful.5 Other recent efforts have focused on postexposure prophylaxis for filovirus exposure and have achieved success using a primate model.6
Antivirals

The goals in the use of antivirals are to shorten the clinical course, prevent complications, prevent the development of latency and/or subsequent recurrences, decrease transmission, and eliminate established latency.

Ribavirin (Virazole)

Nucleoside analog with antiviral activity; may significantly reduce mortality in Lassa fever and Hantavirus infection if treatment begun within 6 d of onset.
Follow-up
Further Inpatient Care

    * Hospitalize patients with suspected or confirmed viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) infection because of the significant risk for nosocomial spread of the infection.
    * Notification of local and state public health departments and CDC may provide resources for further epidemiologic investigation into the source of the infection.
    * Appropriate barrier precautions should remain in place throughout the hospital course because of the highly pathogenic nature of viral hemorrhagic fever infection and because various causes of viral hemorrhagic fever often are clinically indistinguishable.

Deterrence/Prevention

    * As the natural reservoirs for Ebola and Marburg virus infection remain unknown, no specific prevention measures are established. Recent studies have suggested that contact with fruits bats may be responsible for some cases of filovirus infection.
    * Efforts are underway in West Africa to educate people in high-risk areas about ways to decrease rodent populations, thereby reducing transmission of Lassa fever.
    * Strict barrier precautions in the treatment of patients with known or suspected viral hemorrhagic fever infection reduce nosocomial transmission.

Complications

    * Complications from viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) infection include retinitis, orchitis, encephalitis, hepatitis, transverse myelitis, and uveitis.
    * In patients who recover from Lassa fever infection, deafness is the most common complication. Spontaneous abortion also is common.
    * Renal insufficiency is associated with HFRS infection.

Patient Education

    * For excellent patient education resources, visit eMedicine's Bioterrorism and Warfare Center. Also, see eMedicine's patient education articles Biological Warfare and Personal Protective Equipment.

Miscellaneous
Medicolegal Pitfalls

    * Failure to admit patients for supportive therapy and definitive diagnosis
    * Failure to maintain appropriate isolation precautions or failure to prevent unnecessary patient-staff contacts
    * Failure to exclude other possible diagnoses that may require specific therapies

Special Concerns

    * For more information, see CDC Fact Sheets on VHF.

[sociostudent]

Arenaviruses, including BHF
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/Fact_Sheets/Arenavirus_Fact_Sheet.pdf
What are the Arenaviridae?
The Arenaviridae are a family of viruses whose members are generally associated with rodent-transmitted disease in humans. Each virus usually is associated with a particular rodent host species in which it is maintained. Arenavirus infections are relatively common in humans in some areas of the world and can cause severe illnesses.

The virus particles are spherical and have an average diameter of 110-130 nanometers. All are enveloped in a lipid (fat) membrane. Viewed in cross-section, they show grainy particles that are ribosomes acquired from their host cells. It is this characteristic that gave them their name, derived from the Latin "arena," which means "sandy." Their genome, or genetic material, is composed of RNA only, and while their replication strategy is not completely understood, we know that new viral particles, called virions, are created by budding from the surface of their hosts’ cells.

Vero E6 tissue culture cell infected with an arenavirus.  Image shows extracellular virus particles budding from the cell surface. Click the image to see a high-resolution version.   Image courtesy Cynthia Goldsmith, MS, Infectious Disease Pathology Activity, DVRD, NCID, CDC.  
When were the members of this virus family recognized?     Go to top of page

The first arenavirus, lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), was isolated in 1933 during a study of an epidemic of  St. Louis encephalitis. Although not the cause of the outbreak, LCMV was found to be a cause of aseptic (nonbacterial) meningitis. By the 1960s, several similar viruses had been discovered and they were classified into the new family Arenaviridae. Since Tacaribe virus was found in 1956, new arenaviruses have been discovered on the average of every one to three years. A number of arenaviruses cause hemorrhagic disease. Junin virus, isolated in 1958, was the first of these to be recognized. This virus causes Argentine hemorrhagic fever in a limited agricultural area of the pampas in Argentina. Several years later, in 1963, in the remote savannas of the Beni province of Bolivia, Machupo virus was isolated. The next member of the virus family to be associated with an outbreak of human illness was Lassa virus in Africa in 1969. Most recently, Guanarito and Sabia viruses were added to this family.
What viruses are included in the virus family?    Go to top of page

The arenaviruses are divided into two groups: the New World or Tacaribe complex and the Old World or LCM/Lassa complex. Viruses in these groups that cause illness in humans are listed below:
Virus    Disease
Lassa virus    Lassa fever
Junin virus    Argentine hemorrhagic fever
Machupo virus    Bolivian hemorrhagic fever
Guanarito virus    Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever
Sabia    Brazilian hemorrhagic fever

 
What kinds of animal hosts do these viruses have?    Go to top of page

These viruses are zoonotic, meaning that, in nature, they are found in animals. Each virus is associated with either one species or a few closely related rodents, which constitute the virus’ natural reservoir. Tacaribe complex viruses are generally associated with the New World rats and mice (family Muridae, subfamily Sigmodontinae). The LCM/Lassa complex viruses are associated with the Old World rats and mice (family Muridae, subfamily Murinae). Taken together, these types of rodents are located across the greater proportion of the earth’s land mass, including Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. One notable exception is Tacaribe virus, found in Trinidad, which was isolated from a bat.
How are arenaviruses spread?    Go to top of page

The rodent hosts of arenaviruses are chronically infected with the viruses; however, the viruses do not appear to cause obvious illness in them. Some Old World arenaviruses appear to be passed from mother rodents to their offspring during pregnancy, and thus remain in the rodent population generation after generation. Some New World arenaviruses are transmitted among adult rodents, likely via fighting and inflicting bites. Only a portion of the rodents in each host species is infected at any one time, and in many cases only in a limited portion of the host’s geographical range. The viruses are shed into the environment in the urine or droppings of their infected hosts.

Human infection with arenaviruses is incidental to the natural cycle of the viruses and occurs when an individual comes into contact with the excretions or materials contaminated with the excretions of an infected rodent, such as ingestion of contaminated food, or by direct contact of abraded or broken skin with rodent excrement. Infection can also occur by inhalation of tiny particles soiled with rodent urine or saliva (aerosol transmission). The types of incidental contact depend on the habits of both humans and rodents. For example, where the infected rodent species prefers a field habitat, human infection is associated with agricultural work. In areas where the rodent species’ habitat includes human homes or other buildings, infection occurs in domestic settings.

Some arenaviruses, such as Lassa and Machupo viruses, are associated with secondary person-to-person and nosocomial (health-care setting) transmission. This occurs when a person infected by exposure to the virus from the rodent host spreads the virus to other humans. This may occur in a variety of ways. Person-to-person transmission is associated with direct contact with the blood or other excretions, containing virus particles, of infected individuals. Airborne transmission has also been reported in connection with certain viruses. Contact with objects contaminated with these materials, such as medical equipment, is also associated with transmission. In these situations, use of protective clothing and disinfection procedures (together called barrier nursing) help prevent further spread of illness.
http://www.nrt.org/production/NRT/NRTWeb.nsf/AllAttachmentsByTitle/A-1009WMDQRGBHF/$File/07BrazilianHemorrhagicFever(BzHF)QRG.pdf?OpenElement

Brazilian hemorrhagic fever
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Brazilian hemorrhagic fever
Virus classification
Group:    Group V ((-)ssRNA)
Family:    Arenaviridae
Genus:    Arenavirus
Species

Sabiá virus

Brazilian hemorrhagic fever (BzHF) is an infectious disease caused by the Sabiá virus, an Arenavirus. The Sabiá virus is an enveloped RNA virus and is highly infectious and lethal. [1]

The incubation period is between 7-16 days, during which signs and symptoms can develop. Initial signs and symptoms can include fever, eye redness, fatigue, dizziness, muscle aches, loss of strength, and exhaustion. Severe cases show signs of bleeding under the skin, internal organs, or from body orifices like the mouth, eyes, or ears. Severely ill patients show shock, nervous system malfunction, coma, delirium, and seizures.[1]

The Sabiá virus can be acquired through inhalation, ingestion, the eyes, and contact with urine, saliva, blood, or feces of rodents.[1]

The Sabiá virus is a Biosafety Level 4 pathogen.[1]

To date, there have only been three reported infections of the Sabiá virus. Only one known case of naturally contracted Sabiá virus occurred in a woman staying in the village of Sabiá, outside of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1990. Two other cases occurred in a clinical setting. One of the scientists who was infected was treated with ribavirin. [2] [3]


This virus has also been implicated as a means for bioterrorism, as it can be spread through aerosols. [4]

[unitedstrokesofamerica]

Wow, this is getting really scary. This is not some little swine flu virus, this is F@*$ING EBOLA.  EBOLA really......  

 ribavirin  the "cure" for Sabiá is scary enough.



Ribavirin
Dosage Form: tablet, coated

Ribavirin monotherapy is not effective for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C virus infection and should not be used alone for this indication (see WARNINGS).

The primary clinical toxicity of Ribavirin is hemolytic anemia. The anemia associated with Ribavirin therapy may result in worsening of cardiac disease that has led to fatal and nonfatal myocardial infarctions. Patients with a history of significant or unstable cardiac disease should not be treated with Ribavirin (see WARNINGS, ADVERSE REACTIONS, and DOSAGE AND ADMINISTRATION).

Significant teratogenic and/or embryocidal effects have been demonstrated in all animal species exposed to Ribavirin. In addition, Ribavirin has a multiple dose half-life of 12 days, and it may persist in non-plasma compartments for as long as 6 months. Ribavirin therapy is contraindicated in women who are pregnant and in the male partners of women who are pregnant. Extreme care must be taken to avoid pregnancy during therapy and for 6 months after completion of therapy in both female patients and in female partners of male patients who are taking Ribavirin therapy. At least two reliable forms of effective contraception must be utilized during treatment and during the 6 month posttreatment follow-up period (see CONTRAINDICATIONS; WARNINGS; and PRECAUTIONS, Information for Patients and Pregnancy, Teratogenic Effects, Pregnancy category X).
Ribavirin Description
Advertisement

Ribavirin is a nucleoside analogue with antiviral activity. The chemical name of Ribavirin is 1-β-D-ribofuranosyl-1H-1,2,4-triazole-3-carboxamide and has the following structural formula:

C8H12N4O5 M.W. 244.2

Ribavirin is a white to off-white powder. It is freely soluble in water and slightly soluble in anhydrous alcohol.

Ribavirin is available as a light-pink to pink, round standard normal convex, coated tablet for oral administration. Each tablet contains 200 mg of Ribavirin and the following inactive ingredients: calcium phosphate dibasic, croscarmellose sodium, iron oxide black, iron oxide red, iron oxide yellow, magnesium stearate, polyethylene glycol, polyvinyl alcohol, povidone, talc, and titanium dioxide.
Mechanism of Action

Ribavirin is a synthetic nucleoside analogue. The mechanism by which the combination of Ribavirin and an interferon product exerts its effects against the hepatitis C virus has not been fully established.
Ribavirin - Clinical Pharmacology
Pharmacokinetics

Multiple dose Ribavirin pharmacokinetic data are available for HCV patients who received Ribavirin in combination with peginterferon alfa-2a. Following administration of 1200 mg/day with food for 12 weeks mean ± SD (n = 39; body weight > 75 kg) AUC0-12hr was 25,361 ± 7110 ng·hr/mL and Cmax was 2748 ± 818 ng/mL. The average time to reach Cmax was 2 hours. Trough Ribavirin plasma concentrations following 12 weeks of dosing with food were 1662 ± 545 ng/mL in HCV infected patients who received 800 mg/day (n = 89), and 2112 ± 810 ng/mL in patients who received 1200 mg/day (n = 75; body weight > 75 kg).

The terminal half-life of Ribavirin following administration of a single oral dose of Ribavirin is about 120 to 170 hours. The total apparent clearance following administration of a single oral dose of Ribavirin is about 26 L/h. There is extensive accumulation of Ribavirin after multiple dosing (twice daily) such that the Cmax at steady state was four-fold higher than that of a single dose.
Effect of Food on Absorption of Ribavirin

Bioavailability of a single oral dose of Ribavirin was increased by coadministration with a high-fat meal. The absorption was slowed (Tmax was doubled) and the AUC0-192h and Cmax increased by 42% and 66%, respectively, when Ribavirin was taken with a high-fat meal compared with fasting conditions (see PRECAUTIONS and DOSAGE AND ADMINISTRATION).
Elimination and Metabolism

The contribution of renal and hepatic pathways to Ribavirin elimination after administration of Ribavirin is not known. In vitro studies indicate that Ribavirin is not a substrate of CYP450 enzymes.
Special Populations
Race

A pharmacokinetic study in 42 subjects demonstrated there is no clinically significant difference in Ribavirin pharmacokinetics among Black (n = 14), Hispanic (n = 13) and Caucasian (n = 15) subjects.
Renal Dysfunction

The pharmacokinetics of Ribavirin following administration of Ribavirin have not been studied in patients with renal impairment and there are limited data from clinical trials on administration of Ribavirin in patients with creatinine clearance < 50 mL/min. Therefore, patients with creatinine clearance < 50 mL/min should not be treated with Ribavirin (see WARNINGS and DOSAGE AND ADMINISTRATION).
Hepatic Impairment

The effect of hepatic impairment on the pharmacokinetics of Ribavirin following administration of Ribavirin has not been evaluated. The clinical trials of Ribavirin were restricted to patients with Child-Pugh class A disease.
Pediatric Patients

Pharmacokinetic evaluations in pediatric patients have not been performed.
Elderly Patients

Pharmacokinetic evaluations in elderly patients have not been performed.
Gender

Ribavirin pharmacokinetics, when corrected for weight, are similar in male and female patients.
Drug Interactions

In vitro studies indicate that Ribavirin does not inhibit CYP450 enzymes.
Nucleoside Analogues

In vitro data indicate Ribavirin reduces phosphorylation of lamivudine, stavudine, and zidovudine. However, no pharmacokinetic (e.g., plasma concentrations or intracellular triphosphorylated active metabolite concentrations) or pharmacodynamic (e.g., loss of HIV/HCV virologic suppression) interaction was observed when Ribavirin and lamivudine (n = 18), stavudine (n = 10), or zidovudine (n = 6) were coadministered as part of a multi-drug regimen to HCV/HIV coinfected patients (see PRECAUTIONS, Drug Interactions).

In vitro, didanosine or its active metabolite (dideoxyadenosine 5’-triphosphate) is increased when didanosine is coadministered with Ribavirin, which could cause or worsen clinical toxicities (see PRECAUTIONS, Drug Interactions).
Drugs Metabolized by Cytochrome P450

There was no effect on the pharmacokinetics of representative drugs metabolized by CYP 2C9, CYP 2C19, CYP 2D6 or CYP 3A4.

Treatment with peginterferon alfa-2a once weekly for 4 weeks in healthy subjects was associated with an inhibition of P450 1A2 and a 25% increase in theophylline AUC (see PRECAUTIONS, Drug Interactions).

[TahoeBlue]

What really happened in 1994? What exactly is the "Yale Arbovirus Research Unit"

Right... investigated search YARU and MARU ...

see: Personal recollections of the 1957 H2N2 flu pandemic --by JTCoyoté

People Of Interest: Richard Shope (Father) (Swine flu), Robert Shope (Son) (swine Flu), Erich Traub (german nazi), Robert Traub (ticks and fleas) (American Nephew?), Taubenberger (Erich Traub's son? or a relative?)

"Carroll reports that Yale (Yale Arbovirus Research Unit, or YARU) worked closely with Plum Island on Rift Valley fever virus. Carroll also reports that the future head of YARU (Shope) had worked with Ft. Detrick in its human experimentation program, Operation Whitecoat. "

"Dr. Robert Shope's Yale Arbovirus Research Unit (YARU) across Long Island Sound held twenty-seven different strains of West Nile virus in its New Haven, Connecticut, freezers until 1995, when he moved to the University of Texas and took his strains with him. YARU and Plum often trafficked in viruses, most notably the dangerous Rift Valley fever virus in 1977. Had Dr. Shope shared West Nile virus reference samples with his friend Plum Island director Dr. Roger Breeze--the island laboratory being the only official location where foreign animal germs like West Nile virus are supposed to be studied?"

Also see: Taubenberger: More of a psychopathic evil scientist than Pianka

[Dig]

The media is setting up the failed defense...

First the media is saying that motive is not essential for the prosecution...BULLSHIT!

Second they are now trying to convince the public that the defense the public defender has been ordered to use is the best defense possible...BULLSHIT!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Experts: Defense in Yale Killing Has Tough Job
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,552701,00.html
Sunday, September 20, 2009  


NEW HAVEN, Conn. —  Defending a Yale University lab technician charged with murder against what appears to be a mountain of forensic evidence might mean trying to convince jurors that the crime scene was contaminated because police didn't immediately shut down the lab where the victim was found, legal experts said.

Raymond Clark III is charged with murder for the death of Yale graduate student Annie Le. Le vanished from a research building in Yale's medical school complex on Sept. 8; her body was found hidden in a wall recess five days later, on what was to be her wedding day.

Police charged Clark after reviewing some 300 pieces of evidence, including DNA samples taken from him a day before he was arrested. Clark's bond was set at $3 million, and he did not enter a plea.

Officials found DNA from Le and Clark in the ceiling and in the recess where Le's body was found, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told The Hartford Courant newspaper on condition of anonymity.

The evidence is so overwhelming that police believe they don't necessarily have to uncover Clark's motive for the killing to convince jurors of his guilt, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

That likely leaves Clark's attorneys with going after how that evidence was gathered — rather than what it showed — and have prosecutors defend their decision not to seal the lab building until Le's body was found.

"You attempt to attack the investigative process as well as the conclusions," said William Dow III, a prominent New Haven-based defense lawyer, who does not represent anyone in this case.

One of Clark's attorneys, public defender Joseph Lopez, groused Saturday about law enforcement officials' anonymous leaks of details in the case. He said his office would file a complaint with the state attorney's office because the leaks to news media raise "serious concerns" and are a "disturbing situation." [Finally, I mean WTF? anonymous source after anonymous source leaking only information about this guy to paint a picture for the viewers that so far has no basis in fact whatsoever.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

OK, here are a few of the things that I would do:

#1 Supeana all communication records from the time of the disappearance (Tuesday the 8th) until today and ongoing up to the trial of all employees and all agents, subsidiaries, and affiliates of America On Line Time Warner. Subpeana all communications of Shlessenger for the past 10 years. Subpeana all records of the current president of Yale University.  

#2 Subpeana all records relating to the decision not to make the autopsy public, the arrest warrant public, the discovery of all video, databases related to the entry/exits of emplyees, all research being done by Annie Le ad Schlessinger.

#3 Subpeana all corporate records of Facebook and MySpace paying attention to how these social networks deliver information to so called "law enforcement" agencies as well as the media and private investigative firms.

#4 Subpeana all records between President Bush and the congress from 9/11/2001 until the signing of the Patriot Act. Gather all documentation concerning this anti-constitutional piece of legislation. Also subpeana all records and findings concerning the still unsolved Anthrax case which allowed the push for the patriot act. Lastly subpeana all records related to the Chandra Levy investigation that also assisted in the signing of the draconian edict of tyranny called the patriot act.

#5 Subpeana all records by the Warren Commission, the FBI, and the CIA concerning Harriman, Bush, and Rockefeller (all bonesmen) assassination of John F. Kennedy. Subpeana all records of Skull and Bones influence on WWII, Vietnam, and Iraq I and II. Subpeana all of Lyndon Johnson's psychological records after staying clear of the nomination for a second full term. Get a search warrant for the tomb (I think this is over 100 years over due). Subpeana all records of initiation/membership paying close attentionto anyone that has said a word about this case to the authorities , the media, or university emplyees.

#6 Subpeana all records related to project paperclip and Shlessenger's involvement with this operation.

#7 Subpeana all records concerning Compugen and the contributions made by Roche, Baxter, J&J, etc.

#8 Subpeana all records concerning the bioterror breach of 1994 involving YAMU.

#9 Subpeana all records of the East India Trading Company and its relationship to Yale University. Request the assistance of John Coleman and demand that the defense pay for his services as an expert in this field.

#10 Subpeana all WHO, CDC, HHS, FDA, AMA, DoD records on anything to do with pandemics, biowarfare, bioweaponry, Fort Detrich, YAMU, USAMRIID, SARS, Swine Flu, Bird Flu, flu of 1918, vaccine program of 1976, or anything to do with the combination of big pharma, military, population reduction projects,  cold springs harbor eugenics, etc.

#11 Request grand jury investigations into all mentioned items to create a 50 state movement for sunshine in some of the most horrific abuses of power via secrecy the word has ever known.

Now there are another 100 things to do, but if this kid does just that and enough freedom loving people supports him loudly, they will deliver him to his home in a limousine with a basket of fruit, brand new furniture, computer equipment and you will never hear a word about him in the media again.

[Dig]

You know, something about bioterror "weird shit" and wedding dates...

Another scenario from the movie Outbreak (and 12 monkeys) seems to be planned by the CDC, a CDC bioweapons expert, and his future son in law...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TB man 'sorry' over plane trips
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6712281.stm
Friday, 1 June 2007

A US tuberculosis patient who triggered a health scare by boarding two transatlantic flights has apologised to passengers he may have endangered. "I'm very sorry for any grief or pain that I have caused," Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old lawyer, told ABC TV.  Mr Speaker, who flew to Europe for his wedding last month, knew he had TB but said he did not know he posed a risk. Health officials had told him he was not contagious and had not forbidden him to travel, he said.  Wearing a medical mask, he told ABC's Good Morning America programme he hoped fellow passengers could "forgive me and understand that I really believed that I wasn't putting people at risk". Mr Speaker added that he had tape recordings to prove his claim that he was only advised against travelling, but not barred by officials. "At every turn it was conveyed to me that my family, my wife, my daughter, that no-one was at risk," he said.

Quarantine
The ABC interview took place at a specialist clinic in Denver, where Mr Speaker is under quarantine. US and European authorities have launched a worldwide search for people who may have come into contact with him during two transatlantic flights. Mr Speaker was found to have a rare strain of tuberculosis, and the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) says the risk of contracting the drug-resistant disease[/b is low. Nevertheless it was recommending that people who sat in the same row or in the two rows in front of or behind him to be checked. Mr Speaker travelled from Atlanta to Paris on 12 May to get married and spend his honeymoon in Europe. He returned from Prague to Montreal on 24 May and continued his journey into the US by car. The personal injury lawyer was initially placed under federal quarantine at an Atlanta hospital - the first such order since 1963. He is restricted to a special "negative pressure" room that traps and cleanses air particles, and medical staff will wear masks when in contact with him. TB is rare in the US. Last year there were 13,767 recorded cases or 4.6 cases per 100,000 Americans.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is obviously a false flag patsy set up when a border patrol agent is told after a passport is flagged, "LET HIM PASS THAT IS AN ORDER". This guy was an obvious set up bioterror patsy and took the oddest travel routes known to man, going on like 5 flights in a few days to infect as many people as possible like in 12 monkeys.  And here is his father in law...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TB traveler's father-in-law works at CDC
http://www.ajc.com/health/content/health/stories/2007/05/31/0601meshtb.html
By ALISON YOUNG, JEFFRY SCOTT
Published on: 06/01/07

Two twists emerged Thursday in the story of the Atlanta lawyer infected with tuberculosis who flew to Europe and sneaked back into the country. His new father-in-law is a TB specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. And questions are flying on how the man crossed freely into the United States from Canada when he should have been stopped by Homeland Security.

The father-in-law of Andrew Speaker, 31, who was diagnosed with TB last January, is a TB specialist at the CDC.

CDC officials confirmed Thursday that Robert C. Cooksey, a microbiologist at CDC, prepared his son-in-law's specimens for DNA testing as part of his regular duties, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, meantime, said it is investigating why a Border Protection agent let Speaker return to the U.S. by automobile on May 24 after Speaker's passport had been flagged in a national border security database. "Not even the finest law enforcement agency is immune to human error," said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke, confirming that Speaker's passport was scanned by a Border Protection officer when he came into the country through Champlain, N.Y. Speaker left Atlanta and Grady Memorial Hospital — where he had been quarantined under guard for three days — before daylight Thursday. He was flown to Denver to be treated at National Jewish Medical and Research Center, which specializes in his form of TB, known as extensively drug-resistant TB or XDR TB, which is resistant to almost every form of drug treatment.

In the Denver hospital Thursday night, Speaker's wife, Sarah Speaker, a protective mask dangling from her neck, stepped outside her husband's room long enough to thank the Journal-Constitution for maintaining the family's privacy when other media did not. But she said the newspaper is free to use his name now. Speaker said it had been a grueling day for the family and declined to talk further. Television crews were set up outside the hospital before 5 a.m. Thursday and continued broadcasting into the evening. The couple recorded a segment Thursday that will air Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America." According to the network's Web site, Speaker will ask for "forgiveness from the airline passengers he exposed to a rare strain of tuberculosis."

Tape recording of meeting
Speaker told the Journal-Constitution he has a tape recording of his meeting on May 10 with Fulton County health officials that will substantiate his contention that he was not told he could not travel. He did not immediately make the tape available to the newspaper. Speaker's saga — of flying to Greece to get married and spend his honeymoon, then avoiding federal authorities who had banned him from flying on U.S. airlines — has become an international sensation while apparently exposing vulnerabilities in the network monitoring the movement of contagious patients across national borders. In a statement released by the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, Speaker's father-in-law, Cooksey, said in his job at the CDC he comes in contact with a wide range of organisms, including TB. As a precaution he is tested regularly. "I do not have TB, nor have I ever had TB," Cooskey said in the statement. "My son-in-law's TB did not originate from myself or the CDC's labs, which operated under the highest levels of biosecurity."

Speaker told the Journal-Constitution this week that it is believed he contracted the disease while on a trip to Asia to do goodwill ambassador work and raise money for hospitals.

The bacteria that is in Speaker's lungs did not match any other DNA fingerprints of TB that CDC has catalogued,

but during Wednesday's news conference, CDC officials said that database is so new that it is not unusual to find a sample that doesn't match any on file. Speaker said in an earlier interview with the Journal-Constitution that he continues to feel great and has never had any symptoms. "I could trot a marathon and be perfectly fine," he said Tuesday. Indeed, the man and the rest of the world wouldn't even know he has XDR TB if he hadn't received a chest x-ray for another reason. It detected a small mass on the upper right lobe of his lung. Further testing revealed it was tuberculosis. That testing involved having Speaker spit in a cup, then examining his sputum, which has been smeared across glass, under a microscope. He's considered "smear negative" because TB germs could not be seen.

But on further testing the sample was able to grow TB in a culture, a process that can take weeks. That means he is "culture positive" for TB. "So my contagion level is very, very low. But I'm culture positive," Speaker told the Journal-Constitution on Tuesday. About two months ago, county health officials had him start taking a four-drug combination commonly used to treat TB cases. Meanwhile, government health officials tested his family members, his fiancee and other close contacts. "They all came up negative," he said.

'He's a wonderful guy'
By early May, health officials had determined that the drugs weren't killing the TB germs in Speaker's body. And with tests showing his TB was in fact resistant to many key treatments, he was diagnosed with multi-drug resistant TB and taken off the medications. With that diagnosis, he said TB experts told him the best place in the world to seek treatment was National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver. According to a biography posted on a Web site connected with Speaker's law firm, the young lawyer attended the U.S. Naval Academy, graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in finance, then attended University of Georgia's law school.

He is in private practice with his father, Ted Speaker, an unsuccessful candidate for a judgeship in 2004, the same year his son was admitted into the Georgia Bar. Andrew Speaker recently moved from an upscale condominium complex in anticipation of his wedding, former neighbors told The Associated Press. He also wrote in an application to become a board member of his condo association that he was going to Vietnam for five weeks as part of the Rotary Club to act as an ambassador. His wife, Sarah, is a third-year law student at Atlanta's Emory University. "He's a great guy. Gregarious," said Pam Hood, a former neighbor. "He's a wonderful guy. Just a very, very pleasant man." Staff writers Kevin Duffy, Bill Hendrick and The Associated Press contributed to this article.

[Satyagraha]

Right... investigated search YARU and MARU ...

People Of Interest: Richard Shope (Father) (Swine flu), Robert Shope (Son) (swine Flu), Erich Traub (german nazi), Robert Traub (ticks and fleas) (American Nephew?), Taubenberger (Erich Traub's son? or a relative?)


"Dr. Robert Shope's Yale Arbovirus Research Unit (YARU) across Long Island Sound held twenty-seven different strains of West Nile virus in its New Haven, Connecticut, freezers until 1995, when he moved to the University of Texas and took his strains with him. YARU and Plum often trafficked in viruses, most notably the dangerous Rift Valley fever virus in 1977. Had Dr. Shope shared West Nile virus reference samples with his friend Plum Island director Dr. Roger Breeze--the island laboratory being the only official location where foreign animal germs like West Nile virus are supposed to be studied?"

From the "White House Initiative for Global Climate Change website:
http://clinton2.nara.gov/Initiatives/Climate/Video/shope-56.html

Nobel Laureates
Dr. Robert Shope
(Professor at University of Texas, Director of the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit for 24 years)

Robert Shope has devoted his career to the study of viruses carried by mosquitoes, ticks, and other biting insects. These viruses can cause life-threatening diseases in humans such as malaria, dengue and yellow fevers, and encephalitis. Since receiving hi s medical degree in 1954 from Cornell University, he has spent many years in Malaysia, Brazil, and other tropical sites studying these insect-borne diseases. He was a Professor of Epidemiology at Yale University's School of Medicine from 1975 to 1995, and served as the Director of the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit. During that period he was awarded many honors, including the Walter Reed Award from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He is presently a Professor in the Departments of Path ology and Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you, Mr. President. Health and the environment are closely linked. If there is a 6 °F warming, the heat alone in North American cities, such as Washington, D.C., will result in an excess of deaths, especially in elderly people who do not adapt well to severe warmth. We had an example in July of 1995 in Chicago, Illinois. There the temperature exceeded 90 °F night and day for a prolonged period, and there were 465 deaths recorded in Chicago related to the heat.

My own personal experience is with diseases transmitted by ticks, mosquitoes, and other biting insects. Let me talk about dengue virus. This causes a disease in people which typically gives them high fever, headache, muscle aches and pains, and sometimes a rash. There is a more severe form of dengue, dengue-hemorrhagic fever, in which the case mortality rate is about 10 percent. This virus is transmitted by a mosquito that lives in and around homes in warm climates. The mosquito is killed by a hard freeze ; therefore, it's northern limit is about Memphis, Tennessee, at the present time. In the last decade, we've seen a steady increase in the numbers of cases of dengue in tropical America, including Mexico. This disease is now literally on our southern border. I cannot tell you whether dengue epidemics will occur in the United States, but with climate change and warming, the mosquito will thrive further north.

These same factors apply to the vector of malaria, also a mosquito. Malaria is a disease that, worldwide, kills approximately 2 million people each year. It's a tropical disease, but recently has occurred in small outbreaks in the United States, in New Jersey, New York, and Texas, and with warming we can expect these outbreaks to continue and to enlarge.

The factors that I've talked about argue for controlling the environment while we still have time, and I will say that the best insurance is preparedness. There are many other diseases directly affected by rainfall and warming –– St. Louis encephalitis, t he tick-borne Lyme disease, and the newly recognized rodent-associated Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which broke out in 1993 in the southwestern part of the United States. Each nation in the world has its own set of diseases, some of which affect Americans abroad or can be transported and introduced into the United States. Therefore, the problem of climate change and health is of common interest among nations as are the solutions. Thank you.
 

[sociostudent]

From the "White House Initiative for Global Climate Change website:
http://clinton2.nara.gov/Initiatives/Climate/Video/shope-56.html

Nobel Laureates
Dr. Robert Shope
(Professor at University of Texas, Director of the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit for 24 years)

Robert Shope has devoted his career to the study of viruses carried by mosquitoes, ticks, and other biting insects. These viruses can cause life-threatening diseases in humans such as malaria, dengue and yellow fevers, and encephalitis. Since receiving hi s medical degree in 1954 from Cornell University, he has spent many years in Malaysia, Brazil, and other tropical sites studying these insect-borne diseases. He was a Professor of Epidemiology at Yale University's School of Medicine from 1975 to 1995, and served as the Director of the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit. During that period he was awarded many honors, including the Walter Reed Award from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He is presently a Professor in the Departments of Path ology and Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you, Mr. President. Health and the environment are closely linked. If there is a 6 °F warming, the heat alone in North American cities, such as Washington, D.C., will result in an excess of deaths, especially in elderly people who do not adapt well to severe warmth. We had an example in July of 1995 in Chicago, Illinois. There the temperature exceeded 90 °F night and day for a prolonged period, and there were 465 deaths recorded in Chicago related to the heat.

My own personal experience is with diseases transmitted by ticks, mosquitoes, and other biting insects. Let me talk about dengue virus. This causes a disease in people which typically gives them high fever, headache, muscle aches and pains, and sometimes a rash. There is a more severe form of dengue, dengue-hemorrhagic fever, in which the case mortality rate is about 10 percent. This virus is transmitted by a mosquito that lives in and around homes in warm climates. The mosquito is killed by a hard freeze ; therefore, it's northern limit is about Memphis, Tennessee, at the present time. In the last decade, we've seen a steady increase in the numbers of cases of dengue in tropical America, including Mexico. This disease is now literally on our southern border. I cannot tell you whether dengue epidemics will occur in the United States, but with climate change and warming, the mosquito will thrive further north.

These same factors apply to the vector of malaria, also a mosquito. Malaria is a disease that, worldwide, kills approximately 2 million people each year. It's a tropical disease, but recently has occurred in small outbreaks in the United States, in New Jersey, New York, and Texas, and with warming we can expect these outbreaks to continue and to enlarge.

The factors that I've talked about argue for controlling the environment while we still have time, and I will say that the best insurance is preparedness. There are many other diseases directly affected by rainfall and warming –– St. Louis encephalitis, t he tick-borne Lyme disease, and the newly recognized rodent-associated Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which broke out in 1993 in the southwestern part of the United States. Each nation in the world has its own set of diseases, some of which affect Americans abroad or can be transported and introduced into the United States. Therefore, the problem of climate change and health is of common interest among nations as are the solutions. Thank you.
 

Oh, that's a real shocker, right there. 

[Satyagraha]

"Brazilian hemorrhagic fever (Sabiá virus)"

That is the one that happened at Yale University in a possible sabatoge as depicted in the movie "Outbreak"

Can you give us some background?

Sabia virus incident at Yale University.
Am Ind Hyg Assoc J.  1997; 58(1):51-3 (ISSN: 0002-8894)
Gandsman EJ; Aaslestad HG; Ouimet TC; Rupp WD
Office of Environmental Health and Safety, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.
http://www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/9018837

An incident involving a human exposure to a newly isolated arenavirus, Sabia virus, in the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit occurred at Yale University on August 8, 1994. A senior-level visiting research scientist was exposed to Sabia virus while purifying the virus from a large volume of tissue culture fluid. The exposure resulted in development of a Sabia virus infection followed by recovery of the patient. The incident resulted in a comprehensive review by a Yale faculty committee and an external expert committee. As a result, a number of new practices and procedures were added to Yale's biosafety policy for investigating infectious agents in BL-3 facilities.

[Satyagraha]

Résumé de : ANSARI (MZ) & SHOPE (RE) - 1994 - Epidemiology of arboviral infections. Public Health Reviews, 22 (1-2), pp. 1-26.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.pasteur.fr/recherche/banques/CRORA/res6/re3266.htm

OBJECTIVE: To review the current state of knowledge regarding the epidemiology of arboviruses.

DATA SOURCES: Computerized literature searches, identification of papers through review of article bibliographies, and Yale Arbovirus Research Unit, USA.

STUDY SELECTION: Articles documenting research pertaining to the epidemiology of arboviruses with emphasis on factors that increase or decrease the spread of these infections. DATA EXTRACTION: The review articles were extracted independently by the authors.

DATA SYNTHESIS: Arboviral infections are a global health problem accounting for significant morbidity and mortality in human and animal populations. They belong to the families Togaviridae, Flaviviridae, Bunyaviridae, Reoviridae, and Rhabdoviridae, and are transmitted to humans and domestic animals by the bite of infected arthropods. Rodents and birds are significant vertebrate hosts, while humans are usually not involved in the maintenance and spread of most arboviruses. Ecologic changes and human behavior are important in the spread of these infections. Clinical features range from mild fevers to fatal encephalitis. Surveillance, immunization, and vector control are important methods of prevention.

CONCLUSION: It appears that the distribution and spread of arboviruses is greatly influenced by human behavior and ecologic changes in the environment. Awareness regarding these and other factors, such as travel history, history of bites of arthropods, concurrent epidemic pattern in the community, and knowledge of surveillance data are useful ways of identifying these infections. Future research may be directed toward methodical search for new arboviruses and their relation to human and animal disease.

[sociostudent]

Sabia virus incident at Yale University.
Am Ind Hyg Assoc J.  1997; 58(1):51-3 (ISSN: 0002-8894)
Gandsman EJ; Aaslestad HG; Ouimet TC; Rupp WD
Office of Environmental Health and Safety, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.
http://www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/9018837

An incident involving a human exposure to a newly isolated arenavirus, Sabia virus, in the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit occurred at Yale University on August 8, 1994. A senior-level visiting research scientist was exposed to Sabia virus while purifying the virus from a large volume of tissue culture fluid. The exposure resulted in development of a Sabia virus infection followed by recovery of the patient. The incident resulted in a comprehensive review by a Yale faculty committee and an external expert committee. As a result, a number of new practices and procedures were added to Yale's biosafety policy for investigating infectious agents in BL-3 facilities.

Yeah, that would all be more accurate if you replaced:
"newly isolated...virus" with "new bioweapon we took from a single exposure down in Sao Paulo and that we were creating in a large volume of tissue culture fluid, for some damn reason" and
"senior-level visiting research scientist" with "eugenicist/bioweapons researcher"

[Satyagraha]

> Summer 2004 > In Memoriam
Virologist Robert E. Shope  
http://ysm.research.yale.edu/article.jsp?articleID=92
By Brendan Black

Esteemed virologist Robert Shope, professor emeritus in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale School of Medicine, and professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), died January 26 from complications of pulmonary fibrosis. He was 74 years old.

Born in Princeton, NJ, in 1929, Shope received a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Cornell University in 1951 and an M.D. in 1954 from Cornell Medical School. For 30 years Shope served as a faculty member at Yale University, gaining national prominence in the field of virology. He led several organizations including the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit and the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Throughout his career, Shope researched thousands of viruses and arboviruses carried by insects and other arthropods and led investigations on a wide variety of diseases including Rift Valley fever, Lassa Fever, and yellow fever.

After retiring from Yale University in 1995, Shope served on the faculty at UTMB at Galveston as the co-director of the University’s Center for Biodefense Studies.

Shope is recalled by colleagues and friends as being an active and upbeat man who treated everyone the same regardless of age, education, or social status. UTMB has named a laboratory after him in honor of his contributions to the university and the scientific community.

[Satyagraha]

Yeah, that would all be more accurate if you replaced:
"newly isolated...virus" with "new bioweapon we took from a single exposure down in Sao Paulo and that we were creating in a large volume of tissue culture fluid, for some damn reason" and
"senior-level visiting research scientist" with "eugenicist/bioweapons researcher"

Socio - he died of 'pulmonary fibrosis'... ? Hmmm.
(How'd he get fibroids in his LUNGS?)

[Satyagraha]

Can anyone crack this open? I get zip, zilch... but I doubt the info is gone.. just 'hard' to find...

World Reference Center and Arbovirus Diagnosis.
The Yale Arbovirus Research Unit serves as the arbovirus reference center for the world. ... Title : World Reference Center and Arbovirus Diagnosis. ... Subject Categories : MEDICINE AND MEDICAL RESEARCH;
stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA092601 - [cache] - Ask

[Satyagraha]

Jean-Paul Gonzalez

Research Center for Emerging Viral Diseases
IRD UR 178
Center for Vaccine Development,
Institute of Science and Technology for Research and Development,
Mahidol University Salaya campus
Tel/Fax: (66) (0)2 441 0227
E-mail: frjpg@mahidol.ac.th

Present Position

Research Unit Director Emerging Diseases & Information Systems (UR178), IRD, France.
Co-Director of the Research Center for Emerging Viral Diseases (RCEVD)

Education

M.D., Docteur en Médecine Université de Bordeaux II, 1974
Ph.D., Faculty of Sciences, Clermont Ferrand University, 1984

Experiences

1979 Researcher , ORSTOM Laboratory, Pasteur Institute, Bangui

1981 Guest Researcher, Special Pathogen Branch, Centers for Diseases Control, Atlanta , USA

1984 Chief of Laboratory, Laboratory of arbovirus and virus of hemorragic viral fever, Pateur Institute, Bangui

1987 Chief of Service, Laboratory of experimental virology, Pateur Institute, Dakar, Senegal

1991 Professor Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale Arbovirus Research Unit, Ecole de Médecine Université, USA

1997-present
Visiting Professor of Microbiology, Research Center for Emerging Viral Disease, Center for Vaccine Development, Institute of Science and Technology for Research and Development, Mahidol University , Thailand

 

[Satyagraha]

 
Seems clear that Yale is command central 'braintrust' for arbovirus BIOWEAPONS.
Rockefeller funded, total NWO... deadly place for people like Annie Le ...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.jmedcbr.org/Editor%20Bios/Woodall.html

John P. Woodall, PhD
Brazil    

     

John (Jack) Woodall is a graduate of Cambridge University, UK, and received his PhD from London University, UK. 

His career began in Africa as Scientist in Her Majesty’s Overseas Research Service, at the East African Virus Research Institute, Entebbe, Uganda. 

Subsequently he joined The Rockefeller Foundation as director of its Belem Virus Laboratory in Brazil.  When the Foundation ended its association with its overseas virus laboratories, he became a Research Fellow at the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit in New Haven CT, and then head of the Arbovirus Laboratory, New York State Health Dept., Albany NY.  (Note: YARU initial startup funding by Rockefeller Foundation... they OWN YARU.)

Shortly after that he became a staff member of the U.S. Public Health Service and director of the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) San Juan Laboratories in Puerto Rico, which carried out research on dengue and schistosomiasis.  In 1981 he moved to the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, first in the Laboratory Unit, and then as Epidemiologist in the Division of Health Statistics (later Division of Health Situation & Trend Assessment). 

He was a member of the WHO Gulf Emergency Task Force in support of the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Iraq, and Leader of the WHO delegation to the Third Review Conference on the Biological Weapons Convention, and to the Ad Hoc meetings of the Verex committee, both in Geneva. 

On retirement from WHO after 13 years, he returned to the Arbovirus Laboratory, New York State Health Dept., Albany, NY, as director. From 1998-2007 he has been visiting professor, Institute of Medical Biochemistry, and director, Nucleus for the Investigation of Emerging Infectious Diseases, at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He retired from that post in 2007.

He was a co-founder of ProMED-mail, the online outbreak early warning system of the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED) of the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID), and Web Site Editor and Council member (ex officio), American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene. 

He is a member of the Biological Weapons Working Group of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Washington DC, and Board member, Sabin Vaccine Institute, Washington DC.  He has been editor of various publications for WHO, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute & Sabin Vaccine Institute, is a reviewer for the Emerging Infectious Disease Journal, the Journal of the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene, and Virus Reviews & Research, and is presently a monthly columnist for The Scientist magazine.

His interests are arbovirus epidemiology, using the internet for rapid dissemination of disease outbreak information, and biodefense.

[Satyagraha]

Good source for digging...

http://canarydb.med.yale.edu/

[sociostudent]

Sane, have you been hearing what's on Nancy Grace right now? She's talking some major doublespeak. They're saying that there was blood on the patsy's equipment and that the "camera caught him in the lab with her" or something. I thought she was killed in the basement. 

[luckee1]

I thought she was asphixiated too!

[sociostudent]

I thought she was asphixiated too!

If her head was removed, then 2 things would make sense:

1. blood splatter (it puts the "traumatic" in "traumatic asphyxiation")
2. the fact that her body fit into a 2-ft space.

I'm just saying... The real killers probably used the cleaning equipment to clean up the mess from the decapitation, then let the patsy take the fall for the whole thing by carefully planting his DNA during the "mop up".

What do ya'll think?