CDC-Oxford ‘Death Gene’ is Key to Brazilian Babies Microcephaly
by
Yoichi Shimatsu
The mobilization of 500,000 soldiers and public-health workers to spray pesticides across Brazil is effectively terminating a controversial British-American biotechnology project that has released millions of gene-engineered mosquitoes in a backfired experiment to combat the dengue fever virus (DENV). The Oxitec gene-manipulation technique called RIDL (Release of Insects carrying a Dominant Lethal) is widely suspected of spreading a new virulent strain of ZIKA virus, and the Brazilian outbreak in turn raises fears of a link to microcephaly or reduced brain size in human embryos. (Oxitec is a corporate spinoff of Oxford University, even though most of its researchers are with less prestigious British schools or from the United States.)
First of all, this essay explains how the recent cases of Brazilian microcephaly were not caused by ZIKA but are instead a “side effect” of the RIDL gene-transfer. The so-called Death Gene blockage, using the GATA binding protein, can affect the same gene in human embryos as in the targeted mosquito pupae. The OX513-A captive mosquito program releases protein-carrier male mosquitoes to mate with the wild local female mosquitoes. The lethal protein enters the eggs to disrupt embyonic growth, causing the offspring to self-destruct (auto-side) before they reach adulthood. However, these same mother mosquitoes can then transfer the dangerous protein into women, thereby seriously harming human embryonic development of the brain, nerves, heart and testicles. Damage to the GATA-1 protein in human embryos is associated with Down Syndrome, a brain disorder similar to Brazilian microcephaly. (While there are many other causes of microcephaly, the new Brazil type is extraordinarily severe.)
Second, as many critics of the Oxitec program have suggested, the captive mosquito population is “leaky”, with a survival rate of between 0.5 and 5 percent. In theory, the dengue virus (and the similar arbovirus ZIKA) should not be capable of replicating in the RIDL protein-tainted saliva of the wild female mosquitoes. In the field, however, humans inside the OX513-A test area continue to be infected with mosquito-transmitted ZIKA virus. As the lethal acronym suggests, the Oxitec method is riddled with flaws. These disturbing issues raise the possibility of the existence of a hidden agenda behind the Oxitec program, that is, to spread an embryo-death gene in Brazilian women for the purpose of a covert population-reduction program.
Third, this article exposes the multiple-tier connections of Oxitec and it parent company Intrexon with the covert biological-warfare establishment in Britain and the United States, through its venture-partner sponsors, including a former director of the CIA and a top pharmaceutical executive involved with the Pentagon stockpile of biowar agents. The surnames Woolsey and Kindler should ring alarm bells.
Fourth, the covert agenda of involuntary sterilization of impoverished women to reduce global population are linked to the Western corporate drive to control Brazil’s rich deposits of iron ore, gold, and offshore oil and gas. Geopolitical struggle for resources and influence is a factor in the ZIKA pandemic, with bounteous Brazil being a member of the BRICS group of emerging powers, while adjoining countries in Latin America and the Caribbean belong to the regional ALBA coalition.
Gene-Blocking Strategy
The Oxitec-Intrexon sales pitch consists of corporate hype of little value toward understanding the procedure called RIDL (Release of Insects carrying a Dominant Lethal). Its boast of 100-percent effectiveness in wiping out dengue-infected aeges aegypti female mosquitoes is one of its many deceptive claims. Here is a brief summary of how RIDL works to destroy pupae of mosquitoes (and also embryos of humans and other species).
The female aeges aegypti mosquitoes are blood-feeders in contrast to the shorter-lived males, which subsist on flowers and therefore are sater to handle and raise. The eggs of males can withstand a higher temperature than the female eggs, which die off with exposure to heat and are thus easily separated out.
When the hatched males become pupae, a gene-interfering protein called tTA is introduced into their bodies. The tTA (tetracycline-controlled Transcriptional Activation) makes the captive mosquitoes dependent on the antibiotic tetracycline. Without this antibiotic, the protein becomes activated and attaches to the GATA-transcription gene in the mosquito’s DNA, blocking organ maturation and thereby resulting in “auto-cide”.
After growing wings in early adulthood, the tetracycline-dosed tTA-carrying males are released into the wild in large swarms to mate with wild local female mosquitoes. The tTA protein is transferred via mating into the target females. The mother mosquito is not immediately killed off (as she is not tetracycline dependent). The tTA penetrates her eggs, which like their father, requires tetracycline to prevent gene shutdown.
The female mosquito lays her eggs in a watery environment, and these tetracycline-dependent eggs hatch into pupae. As the pupae grow (while any tetracycline residue breaks down), the tTA is activated and attaches to the tetO complex surrounding the GATA gene sections of the mosquito DNA. The GATA gene sequence reverse-transcribe (encode with mirror effect to produce) GATA proteins, which provide the “master-plans” for embryonic development of organs and muscles. A blocked gene creates mangled proteins, meaning the pupae have no chance of becoming fully formed adult mosquitoes.
Mother Mosquito Bites Human
The obvious flaw in the Oxitec method is the fact that the female mosquito is not killed early on. To provide sustenance to the eggs in its sac, the mother mosquito feeds on the blood of birds and mammals, including humans.
Oxitec guarantees that the dengue virus cannot replicate inside the female’s saliva glands, due to the presence of RIDL, and therefore she represents no threat of infection to humans, other than an annoying bite. That claim has proven overly optimistic, considering the many cases of mosquito-derived ZIKA virus infections inside the field-test zones.
The situation becomes more serious when the mosquito bites a pregnant women, thereby transmitting the lethal gene-blocking protein. In the early development stage, human embryos are not much different from mosquito pupae. About 44 percent of genes in the DNA of mammals are shared with insects, due to common evolutionary ancestral species. Therefore, RIDL will have a disruptive effect on the GATA sequences in human DNA. In mammals, seven types of GATA proteins are crucial for development of embryos into healthy normal children.
Damage to the GATA-1 protein is associated with Down Syndrome, the diminished skullcap condition similar to the recent cases of microcephaly in Brazilian infants. Autopsies done on aborted fetuses indicate that the Brazilian microcephaly are far more severe than Down Syndrome, showing smoothness of the brain surface with a complete absence of the rills and wrinkles necessary for cognition and sensory functions. Notice how the news media are not discussing the severity of the damage. (ZIKA fragments were found in all microcephaly-affected babies, indicating the involvement of the Aedes aeqypti mosquito.)
Brain damage more severe than Down Syndrome is due to the tTA effect on production of the GATA-4 protein. GATA-4 interacts with a co-factor called FOG-2 (friend of GATA), to promote and manage development of the embryonic brain, nerves and heartbeat. The physical abnormalities caused by the Oxitec “death gene” on the other five GATA proteins can be expected to appear as the Brazilian infants grow further.
There is no possibility of remedy for these child victims of gene-technology abuse, and this medical fact should not just sadden us. We should all be enraged over how Oxitec and its sponsors in Intexon and its allied experts at Oxford, CDC and Pirbright Institute failed to detect the glaringly obvious flaws in the methodology. Oxitec-Intexon should be liable in law courts for massive damages to the affected populations. An even more alarming point is that these violations of gross biomedical malpractice are being covered up by donor foundations, government ministries, universities and the news media.
Yet the most sinister aspect of this scandal is that the permanent damage to infants and their mothers may not be an accident at all, but instead the aim of a deliberate population-reduction strategy focused on the impoverished black-majority region of a predominantly Catholic country. Is OX513-A an instrument of planned destruction of a distinct group, which fits the legal definition of genocide?
Populous Brazil is a country of 205 million inhabitants with an annual population growth rate of 8.52, predominantly Catholic where abortions are illegal. The ZIKA epicenter in the northeast is a predominantly black and poor region. Evidence from previous microcephaly-linked population reduction events, accompanied by a ZIKA outbreak, as laid out in the second section of this report below, leans heavily toward the affirmative, that Brazil is actually the target of biological warfare with the objective of genocide.
There are other troubling questions related to this catastrophe of gene engineering.
- – Human clinical studies and animal testing has never been conducted on the longterm effects of tTA in the bodies of girls and women of child-bearing age, along with their infants.
- – Presumably tTA, which can pass via the tiniest amounts of mosquito semen and saliva, is readily transferred via human saliva, urine, semen, blood and other body fluids, making it a highly contagious pathogenic biochemical.
- – Mammals and birds (domesticated and wild) are probably also affected and could be carriers of tTA, the so-called death gene, opening the prospect of extinction of entire species.
- – Tetracycline is the only means to prevent tTA interference with GATA genes in humans and animals, yet nobody knows the cumulative risks of lifelong use of that antibiotic, The known side effects of tetracycline include vaginal candida infection, sore throat, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting and skin photosensitivity. Pediatricians recommend children not to drink milk when administered tetracycline.
- – The survival rate for female mosquitoes treated with tTA is estimated between 0.5 percent to 5 percent. That cohort, if feeding on the tetracycline-rich blood of cattle, pigs, chickens, along with the naturally occurring antibiotics in swamps, can result in continuing reproduction of lethal protein-carrier mosquitoes. Moscamed, the Brazilian partner company of Oxitec, has released tens of millions of gene-carrier mosquitoes.
A Simultaneous ZIKA Outbreak
If direct intervention by the RIDL protein is the likeliest cause of Brazilian microphaly, why then is there a simultaneous ZIKA virus outbreak affecting women? And what is the combined impact of ZIKA and GATA malfunction in maternal health and infant care?
Since gene analysis on the Brazilian strain of the ZIKA virus is yet to be completed, only general assessment can be made at this time. Outbreaks of avian influenza and ebola are associated with environmental changes hostile to their “reservoirs” (host species). As in most viral outbreaks, major environmental or manmade pressure on host organisms (in this case mosquitoes) would spur ZIKA toward greater virulence and rapid transmission in humans, resulting in a pandemic.
Nature will find strategies to fight back against shocks, including the sudden introduction of a so-called “death gene”. The complexity of biochemistry within a biological community is the downfall of biotechnology. Genetic engineers and pharmaceutical researchers isolate proteins and enzymes in their test tubes, while conveniently forgetting that the holistic system of the body is not a simplistic mechanism. A cloistered methodology dooms biotech to being Frankenscience, a factory for monstrous mutants that invariably turn against their creators.
More troubling questions remain: Along what pathway did ZIKA virus, which is not endemic to the Americas, arrive to Brazil? Why and for what purpose? And,most urgent of all, is ZIKA being used as a cover for gene-based biowarfare?
Section 2: Gene-based Biological Warfare
The first major outbreak of Zika virus occurred in April and May 2007 on Yap island, a part of the Federated States of Micronesia in the South Pacific. Of the island’s 7,400 residents, antibodies against Zika were found in 74 percent of the population. No deaths were attributed to ZIKA, and none of the patients were hospitalized. Long-term nerve damage known as Guillaine-Barre Syndrome was reported. In the following year, local health workers reported an increase in cases of microcephaly in newborns, a claim disputed in other reports.
The Yap outbreak was an extraordinary phenomenon for several reasons. Over the past 60 years since its discovery by the Rockefeller Institute in a monkey in the Zika Valley of Uganda, only 14 cases in humans had been reported. The distance from the coast of East Africa to Yap is 11,000 kilometers, and not a single resident of Yap had ever visited Africa. A few Filipinos, presumably medical workers, had contact with Zika virus, but none were reported in Yap.
Yap is an isolated island community making it an ideal “laboratory” for an illegal human experiment and clinical study. The nearest major island is Guam, the former headquarters of the U.S. Naval Research Lab 2, which had since been relocated to Indonesia (where it supplied lab assistants to the notorious “super-flu” researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka at University of Wisconsin). The local health care system is primarily funded with U.S. foreign aid.
Into the Wild Blue Yonder
A dozen-member team of American epidemiology experts flew to Guam and then Yap during that Zika outbreak. The research observer delegation was led by a U.S. Air Force colonel, a veterinarian assigned in the previous year to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) as an attache of the U.S. Health Department’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. His teammates included a female Air Force medical official with top-security clearance; and several researcher from the CDC Vector-Based Diseases laboratory at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. One physician was dispatched by the Pasteur Institute hospital in Tahiti, and antiterrorism medical expert in Micronesia completed the roster. (Due to the risks of international crime and terrorism, their names and positions are not mentioned here.)
The tandem appearance of Zika virus and microcephaly in Yap is identical to the current situation in Brazil. By 2007, several methods to insert blocking genes or RNA fragments into mosquitoes had already been developed and field tested. So the question arises: Did the Pentagon deliberately introduce the Zika virus to Yap or merely respond to a mystery outbreak?
Could the U.S. military be so cynical as to conduct live-testing of a virus on an unsuspecting island population? Judging from the repeated nuclear-weapons tests near inhabited islands in the Marshalls archipelago from 1946 to 1962, the answer is: The Pentagon has no qualms about using civilians as guinea pigs for weapons development, and Zika virus was surely a candidate for the national biowarfare stockpile.
By odd coincidence, on the following year, a researcher from CDC-VBD lab in Fort Collins contracted ZIKA infection in Senegal and transmitted the virus to his wife in Colorado through sexual intercourse after his return home from Africa. Was this researcher, now a senior lab supervisor, gathering ZIKA samples? And were there others ahead of him prior to the mysterious outbreak in Yap?
The next outbreaks occurred in 2010 in Cambodia and 2013 in Tahiti and Bora Bora, French Polynesia, both locations some 8,000 kilometers from Yap. The presence of Pasteur Institute staffers during the Yap outbreak could account for the Tahitian outbreak, and travel between Africa and Southeast Asia was well-established. These probabilities do not exclude the scenario of more illegal medical tests.
Demographics Affirm Population Control
A decade of demographic data from Yap affirms a plausible scenario that the relatively mild (as compared with dengue fever) ZIKA was used as a cover for a planned population-limitation project. Some 66 percent of the infected Yap islanders were women, and the isolated island’s population growth has been negligible from 2000 to 2015, expanding by less than 150 individuals.
By 2007, the deployment of novel gene-blocking strategies was feasible. Existing methods included RNA inference (RNAi), DNA alteration (gene drive) and RIDL
What the Yap “experiment” failed to achieve was net population reduction. If you are in the business of culling the human herd, the challenge is: Can biotechnology cut the birthrate without overt killing hundreds of adults, causing a panic that wrecks the local economy, as happened to the mining sector in Guinea during the ebola outbreak?
Seven years later, with the 2014 outbreak in Brazil, the negative impact on female reproductive fecundity is apparently more successful than the experiment in Yap. Brazilian women have reportedly suffered intense ovulation dysfunction and miscarriages indicative of total destruction of their eggs in follicles.
Science skeptics and pro-GM stooges are probably asking by now: Is there any proof that CDC had access to gene-delivery mosquitoes as early as the ZIKA outbreak in Yap? Quit your yapping, kids, because CDC was already cooperating to breed more varieties of mosquitoes with Oxitex in 2006. Named after the Oxitec affiliate 360 Genomics, the OX3604C mosquitoes were loaded with the RIDL death gene.
By 2008, CDC researchers were conducting field trials of Oxitec-3604C in Chiapas, Mexico, the heartland of the Zapatista movement in the very same year that their militant commandantes were declaring support for the Palestinian struggle. Need we say more?
Pirbright Institute of Veterinary Science
Enter the RIDLer himself, Luke Alphey, founder of Oxitech from the Pirbright Institute, and John Mumford at Imperial College, co-leaders of an international research coalition that in 2008 received a major from the WHO for “The Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) Innovative Vector Control Business Line”. The grant was delivered conveniently in the same year that Alphey sent his death-gene mosquitoes into the Zapatista stronghold in Chiapas.
Virology Arose from Veterinary Science
In my 8-part article series on ebola and biological warfare, posted at rense.com, this writer showed how virology emerged out of veterinary science in the U.S., Britain-Canada and Germany due to the military need to protect horses for cavalry and cannon transport. Pirbright institute, located in a military-owned area of Sussex, was a leader in anthrax studies and porcine flu. The veterinary institute also has a laboratory in Berkshire near the British military college of science. These overlaps are just too telltale.
Alphey, who wrote a paper in 2000 advocating a by then well-known gene-suppression strategy for insect-borne contagious diseases, is one of the generation of veterinarians and plant biologists that favors gene-suppression and bioinfomatics as opposed to old-style vaccines or pesticides.
Gene interference is also different from the splicing (or literally shooting) of genes into DNA, the infamous methods used by Monsanto. The newer strategy exploits the natural biological habits of insects, especially mating, to insert proteins and RNA fragments to block gene expression of DNA, thereby preventing the creation of proteins, enzymes, antibodies and other natural agents. Despite reassurances of safety in using nature’s own biochemistry, gene interference has the potential for irreversible damage, since gene interference once in place cannot be undone.
Powered with evermore funding from donors including the Gates Foundation and the UK government’s biotechnology fund, Oxitec was able to woo the Brazilian government, all the way up to then President Dilma Rousseff, with sweet talk about the low risks and high rewards of releasing “sterile male mosquitoes”. The strategy known as SIT (sterile insect technique) has been greatly improved since the pioneering work in the 1950s of R.C. Bushland and E.F. Knipling. Despite research advances, Oxitec made a point of not going public with the risks of its RIDL gene-blocking method. U.S. federal regulators have rejected Oxitec requests for field tests with fruit flies due to the lack of risk assessment.
Unimpeded by any doubts on risk assessment, the ZIKA virus took another magical mystery tour in 2014, “levitating” 10,000 kilometers into Brazil, which can be plausibly blamed on travelers from Tahiti landing in nearby Suriname and French Guiana.
As if the combination of ZIKA virus and the Death Gene was not enough of a career achievement, Luke Alphey visited the USGS center in Hawaii in 2013 to promote mosquito-delivered gene-suppression for bird-borne malaria. Now that malaria is finally being pushed back by Chinese herbal medicines, as recognized with a Nobel Prize, why would this aspiring Professor Moriarty want to experiment on migratory birds in the Pacific? Is the world’s most populous country just too tempting to pass up? What’s it all about, Alphey?
The Herd Masters
Investors in and donors to Oxitec include elite globalist supporters of birth control and depopulation policy:
The British pharmaceutical-funded Wellcome Trust is a major investor in Oxitec. This medical charity supports the Sanger Institute, whose founder Margeret Sanger was a pioneering advocate of birth control, eugenics and reduction of non-WASP races and religious groups. Besides the Oxitec gene-blocking method, Wellcome also supports development of the wolbachia bacteria to eliminate mosquitoes. Wellcome Trust chairman Sir William Castell has served as the CEO of GE Health and BP petroleum.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated more than 300,000 US dollars toward the Oxitec mosquito-release trial in the Cayman Islands and in Brazil. Bill Gates has his detractors in India and other developing nations for his ardent support of population reduction.
Next comes Oxitec’s new parent company, Intrexion, owned by venture cap partners CIA veteran James Woolsey and former Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler, spooky operators who each deserves a bullet (or dash) to himself:
- – Jeff Kindler, a board member of the vomit burrito chain Chipolte (owned by Elon Musk’s brother Kimbal, aka E.Coli). Kindler has cooperated with Clinton Global Initiatives and sits on the board of SIGA Technologies, which delivers Category A pathogens to Department of Defense BioSecurity Level-4 labs and antidotes to the Strategic National Stockpile. SIGA produces therapies related to dengue, ebola and Lassa fever (none of which have proven effective). Kindler was also chief of the partner group of another infamous biowarfare outfit called McDonald’s.
- – James Woolsey is a professional spy know to pull the “wool over the eyes”: Cold Warrior, jingoistic propagandist for the Iraq Wars, rabid supporter of Israeli airstrikes against Palestinian “terrorists”, and all-round menace to peace everywhere. As CIA director from 1993-95, Woolsey was so odious that President Bill Clinton never dared sit alone with him in the same room. Physical presence did not matter to the CIA boss who created the electronic surveillance program later criticized by Edward Snowden and continued his privacy invasions as a board member of Booz, Allen and Hamilton.
In a PBS public television interview, a paranoiac Woolsey said that the threat of bio-terrorism required the national security authority to “form a partnership with the life-sciences industry to get the right types of research done on the right types of vaccines and antibodies.” (Frontline, “Plague War”, Oct. 13, 1998) In hindsight, it would be more than naive to believe this gray bureaucrat could amass the fortune to run two private equity funds, Lux and Paladin, both with major investments in biowarfare technologies, including acquisition of Oxitec. He’s just minding the stockpile for his former employer.
Biological warfare is not and cannot be purely a defensive program of stockpiling antidotes, since the craft demands access to the toxin. Since new variants of old diseases are constantly mutating, a strong defensive biowar program needs to keep up with the offensive potions from the Jones in England, the Jongs in Pyongyang and the Julyas in Russia. So whatever the pious declarations of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, bioweapons arsenals are expanding, most recently with the sort of gene-suppression technology perfected and tested by Luke Alphey, now owned by Woolsey’s Intrexon.
Old Boys Vs. New Kids on the Bloc
Not by any coincidence, Woolsey was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. The support for Brazilian mosquito-release program is an Anglo-American gentlemen’s club in the spirit of Cecil Rhodes, dedicated to reducing the cost of “the white man’s burden” and keeping wealth in the hands of an Atlanticist corporate elite.
Today, the old boy network is being outpaced by the harder-working BRICS group of Brazil. Russia, India, China and South Africa, and in the Latin America and Caribbean region, by ALBA (the Bolivarean Alliance for our Peoples of the Americas). The singular disadvantage, and Achilles heel, of most of these new power centers is their geographic location in contagion-originating zones. As Woolsey asserted to PBS, bioweapons like anthrax “can be cultured from what you get from many cow pastures, and making it is a little bit harder than running a micro-brewery.”
In other words, the means to wipe out the BRICS and ALBA is right there in the soil, water or buzzing in the air. What’s at stake in Brazil is its treasury of iron ore, gold, offshore oil and gas, and soybean farms. Pathogens, natural or laboratory-produced, that can reduce the native population are key to installing efficient foreign control of these resources and reducing social-welfare costs.
Please Don’t Call It Genocide
Reproductive choice is a fundamental human right when it comes to buying contraceptive pills or a box of condoms in rich societies. In the developing countries with pervasive poverty, the task of imposing population limits requires stealth and disinformation. “We are here to help you poor people fight these terrible diseases.” Sure, the Devil can quote the Gospel when he really means Genocide.
As opposed to those older methods of surgical removal of ovaries, gene interference against female reproductive organs is a kinder and gentler method of involuntary sterilization. ZIKA-infected mothers suffering ovarian pain from “gene therapy” might beg to differ about the pain and bleeding. Against mosquito-borne sterilization, women in the developing world have no defense except to escape deep into the mountains or paddle to islands remoter than Yap.
The Western corporate elite is aware of their social guilt yet accept the sin as one of the responsibilities of global governance. HIV-AIDS, SARS, avian influenza, West Nile, MERS and ZIKA, and the Death Gene . . . enough’s enough, gentlemen, when will this nightmare ever end? I think we know the answer to that.
How about ethical alternatives? What if, instead of sneak sterilization of impoverished mothers through bogus vaccination campaigns and gene interference, Bill Gates steps forward publicly to express his belief in population limits and lead by example with a generous act of self-castration? That should get the ball rolling.
Author: Yoichi Shimatsu is a science writer based in Hong Kong. The author discloses only one conflicting interest–producing low-cost organic citronella oil for effective deterrence of mosquitoes and other blood-feeding insects, including biotechnology investors; a smart investment given the aforementioned intelligence. Contact the author at: yoishimatsu@yahoo.com.