Aussie experiment will dose many species with hemorrhagis virus

[Guest guest]

Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease - biowarfare news update from Australia.

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(no man is an island.... ..... when it comes to the global spread of

disease, no island is and island isolated from the rest of the world -

diseases do spread from continent to continent).

 

According to my sources Environment Australia may have approved the spread

of Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease on food baits in Australia. The National

Registration Authority still

have to give their approval to the RHD baits which may be eaten by

Australian native animals

as well as rabbits. My sources indicate Environment Australia may be basing

their approval of

RHD on the supposed species specificity of RHD.

 

There is no monitoring or surveillance in Australia to monitor the effects

of RHD on

Australian animals including humans. RHD emerged for the first time in 1984

in China and there are no vaccines to protect any non rabbit species

including humans. CSIRO tests of RHD virus showed some Australian animals

testing positive to RHD and only 4 of each of a limited range of species

were tested with deliberately low doses of RHD.

 

If you are concerned about the possible effects of spreading RHD on food

baits

in Australia, please write to the Australian authorities and protest and

have your friends write

as well. RHD will not rid Australia of wild rabbits but blanketing our

continent with this hemorrhagic

virus will subject all species here including humans to high doses of RHD.

We do not want

to be the subjects of such a irresponsible experiment. Other scientists have

spoken out against the use of RHD as an agent of biowarfare (see the Rabbit

Information Service website).

 

Protest letter http://www.iinet.net.au/~rabbit/protester.htm

 

If you live in the USA you may want to join the Coalition Against RHD -

there have been 3

outbreaks of RHD in the USA. http://www.kindplanet.org/vhd/vhd.html

 

Also, the NRA (National Registration Authority) in Australia has been using

an annonymous reviewer to review the RHD bait information (we are trying to

find out who it is and what qualifications they have through an FOI appeal -

we have not received the appeal decision yet).

 

Here is a personal email I received from Dr Alvin Smith in reply to

questions I asked him about

RHD virus. Dr Alvin Smith is one of the most knowledgable scientists in the

world on

Caliciviruses

 

 

8/12/2001

 

Dear Mrs. Wegner:

 

Regarding your questions of risk to none target species when using RHD on

carrots or any other baits, this is bad stuff all over again. Every argument

we have used in the past is still valid and we used about all of them. I

guess that in the end those who push this through because of their own self

interests or their political motivations and without proper regard for

safety will ultimately be accountable for their actions. In the mean time,

God protect all the rest of us from them. We know enough to know that the

hemorrhagic component is the deadly joker in the deck and that anyone

depending on the species specificity of this virus as the sole defence

against it infecting humans or any other non-targeted species either does

not know their virology or they are listening to foolish advice. Public

Health has simply been placed on a tight rope, ie. RHD host specificity and

there is no safety net. Think about it. The only safeguard against disaster

is that of trusting that the virus will not move to and adapt to other

species.

 

Many of the agents most feared as bioweapons are not human agents, they are

animal disease agents that do " jump " species.The proof that devastating

mutational changes have already occurred with this virus is the rabbits

themselves. Before 1984 Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease did not exist. Now it

does. For those who want to promote the unlikely theory that the virus

existed in rabbits before 1984 but then over-night mutated into a killer

hemorrhagic virus rather than being introduced into rabbits from some other

species, give them their point. Then use this very example of RHD mutability

to destroy their assertions that the virus is so genetically dependable that

it will not mutate into unwanted forms, and can be trusted not to infect or

cause health problems for any other non-rabbit species. They can not have it

both ways. To believe that within 76 hours of a load of German rabbits

landing in China, this calicivirus mutates into a devastating killer virus

in a host that has been well adapted to the virus for years (thousands,

tens, millions, pick any length of time) takes a much greater faith in this

viruses propensity for mutational reconfiguration than is needed for the

virus to simply infect a new closely related(mammalian) species.

 

Surely no scientist and certainly no serious Public Servant will want to

argue that the RHD virus is safe and will not mutate to infect or become

deadly in any other species when its' sudden and deadly appearance in

rabbits can only be explained by cross species transmission or by rapid and

profound mutational changes. Of course such rapid genetic changes could have

been brought about by purposeful laboratory manipulations but the

ramifications of such things are simply unthinkable. This all leads to the

question of the propriety and advisability of why there is need for hiring

people who will make recommendations for spreading RHD baits but only do

this anonymously. I hope this answers some of the issues.

 

Highest Regards:

 

Dr. Alvin W. Smith

Head,

Laboratory for Calicivirus Studies