Infomed USA: Response to Bolton's Claims on "Cuban Bioweapons Program"

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit


[Note: While some of the links in the "Notes" may remain online
indefinitely, some will be removed rather quickly, i.e., The New York
Times items, which remain available for free only for 2 weeks. Even
the State Dept. may remove their copies of Bolton's May 6, 2002
claims at some point in the future. Readers who are interested are
advised to obtain these documents soon. -- NY Transfer]


Response to US Undersecretary of State John Bolton's Claims on 
"Cuban Bio Weapons program"

The recent charges by John Bolton, Undersecretary of State, that Cuba
has offensive biological weapons or a program to develop them are
baseless but very serious. This is a very important topic to
understand - the gravity and implication of the charges are immense. 

source - Project Infomed USA Cuba Solidarity website 

http://www.cubasolidarity.net/boltonreply.html


Many media outlets covered an address on May 6 by US Undersecretary
of State John Bolton to the right-wing Heritage foundation. The
highlight for the media was Bolton professing a belief that Cuba
possesses offensive biological weapons capacity and that an
intelligence compromise within the US defense community contributed
to an underappreciation of the situtation in Cuba. His remarks are
posted at the US state department website.
http://www.state.gov/t/us/rm/9962.htm (1.)

Bolton's charge is an extremely grave one, and the evidence for it
must be considered.

Issues of biological weapons and Cuba are reviewed at considerable
length in the scientific literature by Raymond Zilinskas, in a
monograph published in Critical Reviews in Microbiology in 1999 (2.)

Since the Cuban government is so obviously suspicious of the US,
Zilinskas also considered whether he had seen evidence in the
material he reviewed that Cuba is interested in developing biological
weapons.

His answer is an unambiguous "no."

In an interview with the Miami Herald, Zilinskas observes that one
can never prove a negative the task the US would set for Cuba: `You
can never know for sure, but as far as I can see there's been no
evidence they're doing anything," said Raymond Zilinskas, a senior
scientist at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the
California-based Monterey Institute of International Studies. [...]
Castro's 12 accusations [of US biological attacks] raise the
possibility that Havana scientists may be researching methods to
counter biological warfare, Zilinskas added, `although that, too,
would stir up a terrible pot, and I don't believe it." (3)

Bolton's claim that defense analysts have not been attending to Cuba
is false. W. Seth Carus reports that the Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency (later subsumed into U.S. Dept of State) and the Federation of
Independent States were skeptical of claims that Cuba was developing
biological weapons, while Department of Defense groups traditionally
accepted the claims, as does some of the "open source" literature
(4.) Carus explains that the latter is so full of unreliable
accusations that "reviewing these reports, it appears that there are
at least 110 countries with offensive biological warfare programs."

Next, listen closely to Bolton refine his accusation against Cuba:

"Here is what we now know: The United States believes..."

In other words, the US does not have the ability to make accusations
of even minimal verifiability. No specific Cuban facilities or
organisms are named in Bolton's statement.

Bolton continues: "Cuba has maintained a well-developed and
sophisticated biomedical industry, supported until 1990 by the Soviet
Union. This industry is one of the most advanced in Latin America,
and leads in the production of pharmaceuticals and vaccines that are
sold worldwide."

If this were any other nation in the world, this would of course be a
good thing, not a bad thing. A baby born in Washington DC is twice as
likely to die in infancy than one born in Cuba's capitol; nearly
three times as likely if the DC baby has the misfortune to be
African-American. (5,6) Cuba delivers far better medical care to its
citizens than the US does, despite forty years of the US economic
blockade.

The essence of the charge, then, is that Cuba has a healthy,
successful biomedical program in spite of the blockade, and that is
all we know. The rest Bolton pretends to "believe" on behalf of his
fellow US citizens as their representative.

Despite their obvious weakness, the accusations against Cuba are
played in the press far more heavily than those against Libya and
Syria. Bolton's speech was more than 3700 words long. 614 words
address Cuba less than one-sixth of the speech yet it was that part
of the speech which was so frighteningly reported.

The real dangers the US presents to Cuba are to its health care
system and related industries. Bolton says in his speech: "States
that renounce terror and abandon WMD can become part of our effort.
But those that do not can expect to become our targets."

The primary evidence Bolton presents with respect to biological
weapons in Cuba is the Cuban health research system, an integral part
of its fantastic public health system. The implication is that Cuba
must dismantle that research or be a "target." Cuba is being told to
gut the sort of program which we know in the US attracts energetic,
interested people to medical work, because its success in Cuba arouse
our ire.

Why is the government so angry about a successful system?

Cuba's success is fiscal as well as intellectual: in cooperation with
SmithKline Beecham, Cuba is marketing an encephalitis vaccine, the
best in the world of its type. Cuban biotechnology exports were
valued at $125 million a year as long ago as 1995 (7.) This economic
angle is vital: Cuban biotechnology energizes not only public health
but the Cuban economy in spite of our embargo.

In Bolton's view, Cuba must agree to abide by the US' decisions on
which countries are and are not permitted to have pharmaceuticals
industries as well as shuttering its domestic research and
development. This is the thrust of his "dual use" argument: that Cuba
has exported drugs, reagents and research equipment without asking
for permission.

The New York Times reported last fall that the Army wanted to find
out how to make anthrax the way a terrorist might, and so built a
facility for culturing microbes in Nevada. They used fermenters and
hardware store tubing for their reaction vessels, and could have
traveled to any of the 80+ countries in the world where virulent
anthrax is a native pathogen to get their stocks of anthrax spores.
(Mexico alone averages 10 anthrax fatalities per year) (8,9.)

Is the US proposing to halt the sale of microbrewery supplies
worldwide? Of course not.

Bolton's accusation that Cuba is developing biological weapons is
politically motivated and punitive. Its basis is Cuba's successful
and thus highly frustrating public health system. The accusation is
refuted by researchers in the field and by the total lack of evidence
provided by Bolton. If we accept the charge and permit the Bush
administration to apply its remedy, we will enervate Cuban biological
research and remove an economically and intellectually useful sector
of the Cuban economy - which benefits everyone in the world through
its advances - at gunpoint.

We must not let our government bluff us into attacking Cuba in this
way.

Notes

1. U.S. Department of State. May 6, 2002 "Beyond the Axis of Evil:
Additional Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction." John R. Bolton,
Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Available
online at http://www.state.gov/t/us/rm/9962.htm.

2: Critical Reviews in Microbiology, 25(3)173227 (1999.) "Cuban
Allegations of Biological Warfare by the United States Assessing the
Evidence." Raymond A. Zilinskas. This monograph focusses primarily on
Cuban allegations of US biological warfare, and rationalizes all of
them as being reports of Cuban epidemics which are explainable by
regional patterns of disease -- while admitting that there is good
evidence that weaponized toxins were introduced into Cuba by the US.
The logic he applies in each case he chooses for formal analysis is
essentially identical.

3: Miami Herald: June 23, 1999. "U.S. skeptical of report on Cuban
biological weapons." Juan O. Tamayo. Available online at
http://www.fas.org/news/cuba/990623-bio.htm.

4: Critical Reviews in Microbiology, 24(3):149-155 (1998.)
"Biological Warfare Threats in Perspective." W. Seth Carus.

5: Kaiser Family Foundation. Available online at
http://www.statehealthfacts.kff.org/cgi-bin/healthfacts.cgi?action=profile&area=District+of+Columbia&category=Health+Status&subcategory=Infants&topic=Infant+Deaths+by+Race%2fEthnicityAlso
of considerable interest is that nationwide in the US, the infant
mortality rate for African Americans is approximately twice that for
Cuban babies and approximately three times that for white US babies.

6: Cuban Ministry of Public Health (Cuba) and Central Intelligence
Agency (US.) http://www.aboutcuba.com/regions/havanacity/,
http://www.medicc.org/Medicc%20Review/1999/autum/html/health_news_from_cuba.html,
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cu.html#People

7: New York Times: May 7, 2002. "Washington Accuses Cuba of
Germ-Warfare Research." Judith Miller. Available online with
registration at
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/07/international/americas/07WEAP.html

8: New York Times: September 4, 2001. "Next to Old Rec Hall, a
'Germ-Making Plant.'" Judith Miller. Available online with
registration at
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/international/04BIOW.html

9: Associated Press: October 20, 2001. "Germ banks around the world
sell, trade or even give away anthrax." Will Weissert. Available
online at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2001/10/20/international1341EDT0588.DTL

 
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