A Killer Fungus Waits in the Wings
Kawell, JoAnn
Scientist David Sands calls the microscopic life form a infections. These are difficult to treat and frequently "silver bullet," a sure-fire weapon that would win fatal, especially in those with...
...That's because it is a violation of international law to use biological agents as weapons of war...
...5. Bigwood: "My position is that if Fusarium was applied in Peru, it was done so secretly by the CIA in the early and mid-1980's, and has since spread...
...Despite their public relations concerns, however, Bush Administration offi- cials continue to promote the program as essential to drug war victory...
...According to Bigwood, such evidence would be difficult and expen- sive to come by...
...If, as Bigwood believes may be the case, the Sharon Stevenson have dedicated an entire Website, CIA did test coca-killing fusarium in Peru's Huallaga Val<<www.mycoherbicide.net>>, to documenting con- ley in the early and mid 1980s, that experiment was sincerns that the fungus could cause widespread environ- gularly unsuccessful...
...7 By 1996, Huallaga coca production had fallen drastically-a decline that was attributed to the continuing fusarium epidemic combined with massive manual eradication and aid which induced farmers to switch to legal crops...
...3 infections were then reported in the valley, these did A huge number of plants are susceptible to infection nothing to brake the rapid expansion of Huallaga coca by one strain or another of Fusarium oxysporum-U.S...
...Ag/Bio Con boasts of its "development of novel virulence enhance- ment of mycoherbicides...
...erythrosyli Forma Specialis Nova," Plant Disease, May 1997...
...They have reportedly included money for further mycoherbicide research in their latest drug war budget, but this time around the funding will apparently be routed through Pentagon budget lines, rather than those of civilian agencies like USDA, and the amount has not been disclosed...
...they also reported serious, but at first unidenti- next editor...
...officials have long been fond of talking about their "war on drugs," they bristle when critics refer to the fusarium program as "biological warfare" rather than "biological control...
...gardeners may be most familiar with the strains that fre- It was not until 1988, however, that the researchers in quently attack tomatoes and cucumbers...
...There is still no definitive evidence that any of the Huallaga outbreaks were the result of a purposeful infection, or that fusarium has been, or is being pur- posely applied to coca fields elsewhere...
...5 Although scattered fusarium mental damage and threaten human health...
...It killed a handful, of plant species...
...The JoAnn Kawell is the author of Going to the Source: A History farmers described low-flying planes spewing a strange of the War on Cocaine (forthcoming...
...chemical herbicide] spraying test program ceased, but, I must recognize that it is possible...
...Rick Bragg, "Marijuana-Eating Fungus Seen as Potent Weapon, but at What Cost...
...1 The Florida fusarium for use in a fungus at issue is a mutant marijuana eradication prostrain of Fusarium oxyspo- gram, but state environrum, and the plant it kills is coca...
...fied, fungal infections in their coca fields...
...agencies already tested or applied 130 cargo planes to bombard coca fields with fusarium- the fungus in Andean coca fields, or did recent fusarium laden grass seed-a product to be supplied by Ag/Bio outbreaks in the region occur naturally...
...enthusiasm about it...
...Coca: UNDCP and the Biological War on Drugs in Colombia" and Jim Hogshire, "Biological Roulette: The Drug War's Fungal Solution," Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1998...
...7. "Estados Unidos ensaya armas biologicas en Peru," Tiempo (Lima), May 14, 1990...
...It is also illegal to introduce pathogens to an environment where they don't occur naturally...
...Although the U.S...
...3. See also Martin Jelsma, "Fungus vs...
...Researcher Jeremy Bigwood and journalist ic journals...
...Ag/Bio Con tried to sell use in the drug war...
...Is the particular Con, a Montana company of which Sands, a professor strain used in the program one which mutated in of plant pathology at Montana State University, is vice- Hawaii, or was it transferred to Hawaii from Peru on president...
...agenda...
...That is why officials insist that the fusarium strain they want to use in Colombia is one which first appeared in the region rather than in Hawaii...
...6 ent group of plants...
...desire to use the fungus for coca Now the United States is pressing Colombia to give control is now far from secret, controversy rages about a the fungus a key role in coca fumigation...
...4. Maia Szalavitz, Feed Magazine, September 12,1999, <<www.feedmag.corn/essay/es2431ofi.htmI...
...the war on drugs Florida Congressman Bill McCollum Despite these known dangers, using fusarium to get used the same words to rid of drug plants has long describe it in 1998, when been on the U.S...
...he proposed that the Unit- Scientists can select and even create the DEA was funding ed States spend $23 mil- research on marijuana and lion dollars for continued new, more powerful forms of this opium poppy-killing strains study of mycoherbicides- in the 1970s, In 1999, fungi that kill plants-for readily mutable fungus...
...Early last year, number of murky issues with important implications: with official U.S...
...Humans can also contract fusarium Two years later, in May 1990, the Peruvian newspaper Tiempo reported Huallaga farmers' suspicions that "biological arms" were being used against their coca...
...Lab tests of soil and plant samples showed residues of the coca her- bicide tebuthiuron-aerial eradication was then sup- posed to be on hold in Peru-and the fungus was iden- tified as fusarium oxysporum...
...Department of Agriculture...
...sanction, Sands reportedly tried to sell Was the program originally cooked up by the CIA...
...There are hun- Hawaii discovered a fusarium mutation they described dreds of strains, and each one can infect one, or at most as especially "virulent" and "highly aggressive...
...9. Ag/Bio Con promotional document boasts of the company's Mycoherbicide Program for the Elimination of Illicit Drug Crops, March 25, 1999 p.20 <<http://www.montananormli.org/msudocs/agbiocon/display.phtml?im age...
...9 Though U.S...
...8, Last year, for instance, Bigwood and Stevenson collected "reports of Fusarium spraying emanating from the Sucumblos region of Ecuador on the Colombian border...
...She will be NACLAs smoke...
...2. Sands and colleagues have made MSU/Bozeman a center of drug plant mycoherbicide research carried out under contract from the U.S...
...2 imported coca plants...
...Colom- research in Hawaii and Peru, work which Bigwood says bian scientists have petitioned their government to con- Sands and his colleagues repeated later under more tinue withholding approval for fusarium use in that respectable USDA auspices and then reported in scientifcountry...
...These are difficult to treat and frequently "silver bullet," a sure-fire weapon that would win fatal, especially in those with damaged immune systems...
...It was first discovered mental officials nixed the plan out of concern that that in 1988 on dying coca plants at a U.S...
...So far, the Colombian government has refused to sign Bigwood says there is evidence that "by 1983 at the off on the program and many observers are far from latest" the CIA was underwriting anti-coca fusarium sharing in the official U.S...
...the fungus could be spread easily from farm to farm on farmers' boots, by insects, or even the wind...
...They investigated these by telephone and later by an on-site visit and determined these to be untrue...
...Department of the strain, which could supposedly affect only marijuaAgriculture-owned research station on the Hawaiian na, might mutate and attack other plants 4 island of Kauai...
...The following year Colombia officially replaced Peru as the world's leading coca producer...
...But the fungus mutates easi- coca faster than other strains- in as little as seven ly, and a slight mutation could allow it to infect a differ- months as compared to several years...
...http://jeremybigwood.net/Lectures/GWU-WOLAJB/jbs gwu4.htm>> 6. David C. Sands et al., "Characterization of a Vascular Wilt of Erythroxylum Coca Caused by Fusarium oxysporum f.sp...
...The New York Times, July 27, 1999...
...Tiempo quoted one local investigator who considered the fungus more of a threat to local coca farmers than herbicides which had to be applied to each individual field...
...For McCullom, see Press release, July 22, 1998, office of Bill McCullom, 8th District, Florida...
...The researchers date the discovery to 1988, Bigwood has said it occurred in 1987...
...I have no hard information on whether other things have been sprayed since the U.S...
...production which continued into the next decade...
...A Killer Fungus Waits in the Wings 1. For Sands, see <<http://jeremybigwood.net/Lectures/GWU-WOLAJBfjbs gwu6.htm...
...But the ease with which even natural infections spread continues to fuel speculation and rumor of secret applications...
...Have Colombian President Pastrana on the idea of using C- the CIA or other U.S...
...8 And although the mutant strain found in Hawaii was not, as some early critical reports had it, the result of genetic engineering, scien- tists can select or even create new, more powerful forms of this readily mutable fungus...
Vol. 35 • July 2001 • No. 1
