Here's a tidbit on the stuff. What worries me is the non-target effects. Of course I'm always concerned about bad aim.
Background on the Agents and Proposals to Deploy Them
Pleospora sp. (Photo: Zillinsky/CIMMYT)
Pleospora papaveracea is a fungal pathogen that attacks opium poppy (Papaver somniferum). Candidate strains for use in crop eradication were isolated in the 1980s by the Institute of Genetics in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. At the time, the facility was part of the Soviet Union's offensive biological weapons program.[1]
P. papaveracea is now nearly ready for use. In February 1998, UNDCP signed a contract[2] with the Tashkent Institute of Genetics to develop the fungus and related technology, including mass production of fungal spores and field tests in four neighboring countries. The field tests and the development of production systems are due to be finished in 2001.[3] There is an imminent danger that deployment in eradication programs will start as early as 2003. The P. papaveracea project is funded by the UK and US Governments and implemented through the UNDCP-Institute of Genetics contract. In addition to the Tashkent project, the US Department of Agriculture is conducting its own research into P. papaveracea in its laboratories in Beltsville, Maryland.[4]
Fusarium oxysporum is a well-known plant pathogen causing damage and large losses in food and industrial crops worldwide. Researchers of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have developed highly virulent strains that attack cannabis (marijuana), potato, corn, and coca plants, the source of cocaine. The strain favored by the US is named EN-4 and was isolated in 1987 during USDA-funded experiments at a government coca plantation on Hawaii. Work to isolate F. oxysporum strains to attack cannabis has been ongoing at least since the early 1970s, when the US Drug Enforcement Agency and USDA funded research at the University of California at Berkeley.[5] After extensive investigation of 1970s and 80s US Fusarium research, including interviewing participants and extensive Freedom of Information Act requests, MacArthur Foundation grantees Jeremy Bigwood and Sharon Stevenson recently concluded that most of the early US work conducted on Fusarium was a project of the US Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA later passed control of the work to other government institutions to allow overt US Congress funding.[6]
F. oxysporum EN-4 is awaiting its first field trial. In 1999-2002, the US applied significant pressure on the Colombian government to agree to field test the fungus. Field testing of the EN-4 pathogen, often referred to as a mycoherbicide by the US government, was introduced as a legal condition for the release of nearly US $1,300,000,000 in (mainly military) aid to Bogotá for its "Plan Colombia" counterinsurgency and anti-narcotics efforts.
The USA and UNDCP believe that P. papaveracea and F. oxysporum are of global significance .[7] The total potential target acreage planted in illicit crops is well in excess of one million hectares. The bulk of the world's opium is produced in Afghanistan and nearby Central Asian countries. To the south in India, the world's largest licit crop of opium poppy is produced for pharmaceuticals (France and Australia are also major producers). In the Americas, Colombia and Mexico have significant production of illicit opium and heroin, mainly for the US market.
Although it has no clear mandate to do so from governments, the Vienna-based United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) has acted as an intermediary between the US and Colombia, offering its service as a pass through to "internationalize" the US EN-4 funding. UNDCP has promoted a secretive arrangement in which it receives the US money, passing it on to the Colombian government in the form of contracts for field trials. UNDCP's attempted "internationalization of the EN-4 program has been welcomed by the United States, which views UNDCP's involvement as lending intergovernmental legitimacy to its controversial research.
In a memorandum obtained by non-profit researchers under the US Freedom of Information Act, US Secretary of State Colin Powell urged UNDCP Director Pino Arlacchi to seek further international partners for the project, "we urge UNDCP to solicit funds from other governments, in order to avoid the perception that this is solely a USG initiative" (USG = US government).[8] The effort to find other sponsors failed. No other government was willing to finance the research. But both the US and UNDCP continued.
The UNDCP-Colombia negotiations for a contract to conduct the US-financed field tests were beset with leaks from angry and concerned people in both UNDCP and the Colombian government. Senior Colombian officials publicly expressed reservations about using "foreign biological agents"; but claimed they could develop a domestic coca eradication fungus to accomplish the same ends. Colombian civil society sarcastically dubbed this local biological agent "el hongo criollo"("the creole fungus"), mocking the nationalistic banner Colombian officials used to try to implement the US idea of using fungi in forced crop eradication programs.
Public opposition increased with each new revelation about the secret proposals. In August 2002, following a discussion on EN-4 by the US National Security Council, President Bush overrode the US Congress and waived the requirement it had placed on Colombia to test biological agents in return for counterinsurgency funding. According to Bush, moving ahead with fungal pathogen testing in Colombia requires "a broader [US] national security assessment, excluding consideration of the potential impact on biological weapons proliferation and terrorism, and provide funding help for those countries seeking assistance by the U.S.A. We need to expedite the use and deployment of this helpful tool".
Despite the statement, Bush did not turn off the financial spigot for fungal pathogen research. UNDCP and Colombia continued negotiating with tacit support from parts of a divided US government. A consultation with civil society convened by the Colombian Environment Ministry in September 2002 turned disastrous when many of the Ministry's guests not only solidly resisted biological eradication; but called for an end to chemical eradication.
In the region, Colombia's neighbors including Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and the Andean Community all expressed concern (see Opposition, pg. 13). In apparent response, the inventor of the anti-coca fungus, Dr. David Sands, an plant pathologist funded by the US government for over a decade, told the BBC on camera that he believes biological weapons should be unilaterally used by force in retaliatory strikes, in violation of national sovereignty. According to Sands, producer countries are complicit in the narcotics trade. Countries, says Sands, "that knowingly are unleashing a chemical, a drug, on our children, an addictive drug & should suffer the consequences of that decision."[10] (See longer interview excerpt on p. 11.)
Within days, Sands comments were the lead story on Colombian television news. Despite Sands and other proponents - efforts (or perhaps because of them), in November 2002, opposition became overwhelming and a besieged UNDCP announced it was dropping proposals for EN-4 field trials in Colombia. The Colombian government followed suit and in January 2003 announced it was abandoning proposals to develop the hongo criollo.
But the defeat of last year's proposals to test and use biological agents in drug eradication in South America has led to no changes of US or UNDCP policy. Neither has renounced the strategy of using fungi to kill illicit crops. Both continue to continue to support Pleospora research in Asia and advocate for F. oxysporum to eradicate coca. Unless a global ban on the use of these agents is implemented, the use of EN-4 or another pathogen is only a matter of time and far more than target crops will be terminated.
