The threat of biological warfare is real, and genetic engineering and genomics have the potential to greatly increase its scope. Contrary to general belief, there is little or no effective defence against biological weapons....
Most AIDS vaccines are based on the HIV glycoprotein gp120, that a number of virologists have warned, not only undermines the immune system of individuals but is also likely to create deadly viruses and bacteria that can spread through entire populations.
It turns out that the envelop glycoprotein, gp120, of HIV-1 is similar to the region of human immunoglobulins involved in antigen-binding, a crucial step in the immune response. Thus any AIDS vaccine containing the glycoprotein or the gene could strongly interfere with the immune system and make it more vulnerable to the virus. And in the long term it could accelerate disease progression in HIV patients that do not yet have symptoms. Recombinant viruses expressing gp120 could also be a source of potential new pathogens.
But a company in Texas, ProdiGene, is now putting gp120 into GM maize as a ‘cheap, edible oral vaccine’ against HIV. This will surely lead to widespread contamination of our food crops with disastrous consequences, as Vejkovic and I have written in a correspondence now published in the journal. Not only is this extremely hazardous for human beings. It will affect all organisms in the food chain and multiply the opportunities for this gene to recombine with bacteria and viruses in the environment, of which 99% cannot be cultured and are hence completely unknown....
A tobacco genetically modified with the gene for the human cytokine, interleukin-10, is being field tested near London, Ontario. Interleukin-10 is known to be a powerful immune-suppressive, it is similar to the Interleukin-4 incorporated into the mousepox virus that turned the virus into a killer. In other words, a virus with interleukin-10 could also be deadly, as it disarms our immune system during an infection....
Under normal circumstances, circulating DNA from dead cells may be taken in by living cells in order to replace mutated genes with good copies of the same genes. However this process may also lead to the substitution of ‘bad’ genes for ‘good’. So what happens when our bodies are flooded with transgenes in food and nucleic acid vaccines for example?
It is clear that the agricultural and biomedical applications cannot be neatly separated, and neither can the hazards involved. The same kinds of tools are used, the same materials and constructs. The cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) promoter, widely assumed to be specific to plants, is active in species across the entire living world, including human beings, as we discovered in literature dating back to 1989.
Increasingly, genetic materials from animal and plant pathogens are recombined, and evidence is growing that ‘plant’ viruses can cross into animals and vice versa, and plant bacteria can infect human cells. Two years ago the most common gene-transfer vector used in plants, Agrobacterium, was found to transfer genes into the human genome....
The greatest danger, by far, is when scientists fail to take responsibility for the biosafety of their own research.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/gmbiopost.php
408. Worst of all is stagnant water because it fosters decomposition and hinders the manifestation of energy. -Leaves of Morya's Garden 1924
15, 31, 111, 415. Imperil, which attracts danger, is the poison resulting from irritability. This poison, a quite substantial one, is deposited against the walls of the nerve channels and then spreads through the entire organism.... It is necessary to distinguish between indignation of spirit and irritation. The fire of irritation must be divided into two kinds. When irritation has an impersonal cosmic character its poison may be washed away by a current of prana. But if harmful feelings, such as conceit or self-pity, intensify the irritation, the sediment of poison will be precipitated upon the centers. Then there is no means to remove it; one can only wear it away by developing cosmic perception....In flaccid, outworn judgments is hidden a deadly poison....Stagnation is the greatest danger for productive human work. A broad consciousness is needed to maintain the rhythm of action. -M: Agni Yoga 1929
8. Materialistic consciousness, pushing toward immobility, breeds the mosquitoes subsisting in stagnant waters. -M: Infinity 1, 1930
95, 241, 338, 456. Let the seed be good, or else poison will generate poison....Thinking is infected so extensively by the poison of conceit that the entire cosmic balance is disturbed....Atma must be understood as the energy of space purified by unceasing rotation, like a great churning. One must understand how the spirit and Atma cooperate like electron and proton. It is not our custom to deliver a course on the chemistry and biochemistry, but our task is to provide the impetus and to direct attention to the greatest need and danger....Much unworthy blasphemy is uttered and thought amidst the usual work of day and night. The most dangerous poison is produced by these imperceptible treasons. Often their consequences are more dreadful than one misdeed through crass ignorance. It is not easy to break the habit of the abomination of blasphemy, for the boundary between the white and black is complicated. We call this contamination a black ulcer similar to cancer. Besides, the meaning of cancer in general is not far distant from the consequences of a spiritual abomination. -M: Hierarchy 1931
93, 277, 375, 431. But one circumstance can be dangerous and harmful--irritation full of imperil opens the entrance for the dark ones. Where there is irritation various newcomers set themselves to profit by it and increase the action of the poison.... only greatness of heart will preserve one from the poison of irritation.... One must not delay even for a moment to transfer the consciousness to the heart.... The great labor of the spirit is so remote from the lower, poisoned spheres! -M: Heart 1932
71, 407. From unbelief comes stagnation of consciousness. People poison themselves by unbelief. The wisdom of ages has recorded many examples of great trust and also of destruction through mistrust. When we speak about cooperation and even about brotherhood we must repeat about trust--without it no rhythm is created, without it success is not invoked, without it there can be no advance....Sometimes it is useful to come in touch with stagnation in order to perceive the entire extent of the obstacles to freedom of evolution. -M: Brotherhood 1937
361, 413. The difficulty is that people see only from their own point of view and are therefore unable to progress. They imagine that everything ends with their demise, and cannot understand that life has its own continually changing, vivid waves.... Often the most beneficial chemical compounds can be made into virulent poisons by the addition of a single ingredient....It is the king of the planet, man, who produces the poisons. -Morya: Supermundane 2, 1938
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