We Must Have The Freedom To Choose & Respect Everyone's Choice

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Any information obtained here is not to be construed as medical
OR legal advice. The decision to vaccinate and how you
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Subject: ANTHRAX CLOUDS SILVER LINING

Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 07:46:09 -0800
From: karin schumacher <via@access1.net
Reply-To: Carolyn <ppva@velocity.net
Organization: vaccine information and awareness
To: via <via@access1.net
Subject: ANTHRAX CLOUD'S SILVER LINING

Carolyn wrote:

Anthrax Cloud's Silver Lining Bioport Corp. Lands Exclusive License to Produce Vaccine

Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. is the most visible corporate director of the Bioport Corp., which manufactures the anthrax vaccine. (Gary Cameron/AP Photo)

By Howard L. Rosenberg ABCNEWS.com March 12 - That ominous cloud of anthrax Pentagon bio-defense planners fear may fog some future battlefield could actually have a silver lining for Lansing, Mich.-based Bioport Corp. - and for its most visible corporate director, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William J. Crowe Jr.

That's because the company is the only licensed U.S. manufacturer of anthrax vaccine. Less than a month after it took over the business from the state-owned Michigan Biologic Products Institute (MBPI) last September, Bioport landed an exclusive $29 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to 'manufacture, test, bottle and store the anthrax vaccine.'

According to former Central Intelligence Agency military analyst Patrick Eddington, the estimated $60 million worth of anthrax vaccine Bioport is expected to produce for the Defense Department over the next five years could just be the beginning.

"The Pentagon has a $322 million, 10-year program to develop at least three, and perhaps as many as a dozen additional biological warfare vaccines," Eddington told ABCNEWS. "These have never really been tested, and most importantly, no one has provided data to validate the threat."

Vaccinations Begin

Whether or not the threat of any biological attack - including one with anthrax - is valid or not, last May the Defense Department began a program to vaccinate all 2.4 million soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines against the anthrax bacterium. The Pentagon pays $4.70 per shot and each member of the armed forces is supposed to get six shots over an 18-month period. That's a huge, guaranteed market for Bioport's product.

Less than a year ago, Bioport's predecessor, MBPI, was under fire from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for sloppy record-keeping after an inspection report raised questions about the anthrax vaccine's potency and sterility. The FDA even threatened to revoke the facility's license. Just a few months later, Bioport emerged as a leading bidder to take over the troubled company and purchased MBPI for $25 million after the Pentagon promised to ante up $15 million to renovate the plant.

Bioport's Multinational Directors Bioport Corp. was created solely to take over the assets of MBPI by Adm. Crowe, his partners in a company called Intervac L.L.C. and a group of former managers of the Michigan-based institute.

It is Intervac that has the most interesting history. According to Crowe's associate and spokesman, Jay Coupe, Crowe owns 22.5 percent of Intervac shares, though he hasn't "invested a penny" in the venture.

Another 30 percent of Intervac shares are owned by Nancy El-Hibri, a mother and homemaker in suburban Maryland and the rest of the company is in the hands of "I&F Holdings," a company directed by Nancy El-Hibri's father-in-law, Ibrahim El-Hibri, a Venezuelan citizen, and her husband, Fuad El-Hibri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent.

Fuad El-Hibri appears to be the real day-to-day director of Intervac and is listed by Dun & Bradstreet as the "chief executive" of Bioport. Mrs. El-Hibri laughed when questioned by a reporter for ABC about Intervac and referred the network to her husband who did not return a call.

Experts in defense policy suggested that the Pentagon would be highly unlikely to approve the sale to a foreign national of a company that is the sole manufacturer of a vaccine considered vital to national security.

Indeed, Coupe stresses that between Mrs. El-Hibri and Admiral Crowe, the majority of the stock in Intervac is held by Americans, since Mrs. El-Hibri is a U.S.-born citizen, her husband Fuad was educated at Yale and has applied for U.S. citizenship and Admiral Crowe "served this country for 51 years" including two terms as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Reagan administration and as ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1994-1997.

How Bioport Finds the Admiral

According to Coupe, when Crowe returned from England in 1997, he was approached by Fuad El-Hibri's father, Ibrahim El-Hibri. The elder El-Hibri, whom the admiral had met a decade before, invited Crowe to serve on the board of Intervac.

"The admiral is commonly referred to as the person who bought this," says Coupe, "and while I don't want to minimize his involvement, he's had no financial involvement either way - giving or getting any money."

Coupe says that Crowe's ownership of Intervac stock gives him a 13 percent share of Bioport.

Coupe took umbrage at the suggestion by anthrax vaccine critics that Crowe was profiteering on the vaccine's production: "The idea that he would do anything to jeopardize the American troops he led for half a century is ridiculous. He spends a lot of time working on Bioport because he wants to make sure it works and they produce a good product. Both he and I have been vaccinated against anthrax. He believes in the anthrax vaccine and vaccination. He also believes the threat {of anthrax as a weapon} is real."

The Bioport anthrax vaccine production line is currently operating and going through tests. The company expects to begin producing the vaccine for distribution to the Defense Department this summer.

Howard L. Rosenberg is a producer for ABCNEWS' 20/20. He is the author of Atomic Soldiers (Beacon, 1980) and has written for numerous newspapers and magazines

SECOND ANTHRAX ARTICLE

From: karin schumacher <via@access1.net
Subject: ANTHRAX VACCINE
TO: All Local, State, And Federal Mayors, Assemblymen, Representatives, Senators  All Local, National, International Electronic, Print News Agencies On The Planet, All Universities In North America, South America, And Europe, All Toy Manufacturers In The United States and Canada

FROM: GRANDPARENTS, PARENTS, BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND CONCERNED FAMILY,
FRIENDS, AND YOUNG AMERICANS CONCERNED ABOUT THE INOCULATION OF
MILITARY PERSONAL WITH THE ANTHRAX VACCINATION.

RE: ANTHRAX VACCINATIONS

The authors of this letter are concerned parents, children, and interested parties. Please note that many parents, children, and interested parties have contacted their elected officials throughout the United States about the forced anthrax vaccinations. So far, the response has been unsatisfactory.

We demand the following:

1. that you immediately stop the forced inoculation of the United States military men and women with the Anthrax vaccination until further outside, independent studies and testing can be performed. Researchers unaffiliated with the Pentagon must be were permitted to conduct these studies on the vaccine. "The Pentagon should invite major civilian US public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health and major non-governmental organizations such as the American Public Health Association, to participate actively in the design, testing, implementation, and oversight of this plan. It would be tragic if these agencies were only brought in later, as was done with nuclear bomb-test fallout and Agent Orange to write a post-mortem analysis." (The Anthrax Dilemma, by Victor W. Sidel, MD, Meryl Nass, MD, Tod Ensign, JD, LLM)

2. that all military vaccinations, including those which are about to come in the next few years as part of the Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program be made voluntary.

3. THAT ALL PUNISHMENTS BE RESCINDED AND SERVICE MEMBERS REINSTATED IF THEY SO CHOOSE.

The Department of Defense, the Federal Drug and Food Administration, and medical authorities throughout the United States have admitted there is no data to support the long term safety of this vaccine. In terms of effectiveness, the animal data suggest the vaccine is likely to be ineffective in humans. An F.D.A. report of the *only* plant in America that makes Anthrax vaccine says: "The manufacturing process for Anthrax vaccine is not validated." The report reveals that several batches of the vaccine actually failed the potency test. Some were so old they were expired · but they were not tossed out! Many were improperly re-dated and medical corpsmen in the military are concerned about other batches that are about to be injected into our sons and daughters in military service. There is also empirical data suggesting that the vaccine may have been and may be a cause for what is termed Gulf War Syndrome. We are also demanding that as our elected representative you directly answer the following questions.

1. How can politicians pontificate about Human Rights to the world when they permit profit to be the motive for the violation of our sons and daughters human rights, the future human rights of their younger brothers and sisters, and the human rights of good people around the world who have come and will come to serve in our country and way of life?

2. Has our government ever used private citizens as guinea pigs?
a. Were studies performed on 412 black individuals infected with syphilis, depriving them of a proven cure for the purpose of a 40-year study of the disease's effect--which, untreated, is nearly always death. (The Tuskeegee Experiments conducted by U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS)
b. Has the United States Government conducted extensive radiation experiments over a number of years on individuals without their consent. "They included," "235 babies in five states who were injected with radioactive iodine, 100 retarded Massachusetts children who had been fed radioactive cereal, 800 pregnant Tennessee women who had been exposed to radioactive substances and eight people injected with various isotopes of strontium at the University of California Hospital at San Francisco." (DOD activity exposed in the Albuquerque Tribune.)
c. How many other atrocities are still hidden?

3. Did a chief medical officer for the DOD, Dr. Arthur Friedlander, MC Colonel and head of Bacteriology at Fort Detrick's USAMRIID, writing in a textbook published in 1994 [Brachman PS and Friedlander AM: Anthrax. In Plotkin SA and Mortimer EA (eds): Vaccines, ed 2. Philadelphia, WB Saunders, 1994, pp.729-739], state:

"Although the importance of the toxins in pathogenesis suggests that antiserum may have a role in treating serious infections, no product is available for human use."

"The current vaccine against anthrax is unsatisfactory for several reasons. The vaccine is composed of an undefined crude culture supernatant absorbed to aluminum hydroxide. There has been no quantification of the protective antigen content of the vaccine or of any of the other constituents, so the degree of purity is unknown. Standardization is determined by an animal potency test. The undefined nature of the vaccine and the presence of constituents that may be undesirable may account for the level of reactogenicity observed. The vaccine is also less than optimal in that six doses are required over 18 months, followed by annual boosters. There is also evidence in experimental animals that the vaccine may be less effective against some strains of anthrax."?

4. Did Dr. Meryl Nass confirm that this remained the case in Sept 1998? [Yes, she did.]

5. Did Kathryn Zoon, head of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research of FDA, state in a letter to Patrick Eddington on April 28, 1998 that "data for clinical studies conducted on the long-term health effects of taking the Anthrax vaccine have not been submitted to the FDA." ?

6. If the answers to questions 2 through 5 "yes," than why would a young person consider enlisting in the US military in the face of this Anthrax inoculation?

7. In the face of so much data, why are there so many Gulf War Veterans who did not go to the Gulf ill, and there families who are becoming ill, not being provided proper attention or so much as acknowledgment that the vaccine cocktails they received may be a cause?

8. Did President Eisenhower warn us about an unholy alliance that was developing between retired military personnel and private industry?

9. Does (2.5 million military men and women) x (6 shots) x $3.5 = over $50 million?

We do not want your apology after the damage is done. We are talking about our children.