US INVESTS IN GUARDING 'DANGEROUS' RUSSIAN VIRUS STOCKS

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06628899
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 28, 2022
• Document Release Date: October 4, 2017
• Case Number: F-2017-00026
• Publication Date: May 30, 2000

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WARNING: UNIQUE_ID: CEP20000530000152
WARNING: TOPIC: INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC, ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH,
TECHNOLOGY, TERRORISM
SERIAL: CE0005300152
BODY
SUBJ:
TEXT:
COUNTRY: RUSSIA, UNITED STATES
US Invests in Guarding 'Dangerous' Russian Virus Stocks
SOURCE: Moscow Izvestiya in Russian 27 May 00 P 2
Report by Sergey Leskov: "Vivarium Is Lure for
Terrorist. United States Allocates Money To Guard Strains of
Dangerous Infections Kept in Russian Laboratories"
FBIS Translated Text The State Scientific Center for Applied
Microbiology in Obolensk has signed a contract with U.S. partners
worth a total of $1.2 million, the lion's share of which will be
spent on creating a security system for the Russian collection of
strains of particularly dangerous viruses. "The Americans fear
terrorists," Vladimir Volkov, the center's deputy director, told
Izvestiya.
Bacteriological weapons are the most mysterious of all the
types of weapons of mass destruction. International agreements,
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starting with the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of
Bacteriological Weapons, prohibit their development. But research
of a defensive nature is permitted. This is an axiom of
medicine: In order to test a vaccine, first it is necessary to
produce harmful agents. Unlike the agreements on nuclear weapons,
none of the documents relating to bacteriological weapons mentions
the exact criteria for the quantitaties that may be produced in
laboratories and not violate the convention....
The State Scientific Center for Applied Microbiology was
founded in 1975, at the time of so-called "detente." The center
is situated next to the ancestral estate of the Princes Obolenskiy,
hence the name of the new city. The secret installation was part
of the Biopreparat Association, which had plants and proving
grounds all over the country. The center at Obolensk was
entrusted with producing the strains of plague and anthrax needed
for experiments. The most scandalous officially registered
incident in the history of bacteriological weapons was associated
precisely with anthrax. In 1979 a virus of this disease was
released from a military laboratory in Sverdlovsk, with the result
that 69 people died within a matter of hours. Incidentally,
Obolensk is on the territory of the Oka National Park, in one of
the most densely populated rayons of Moscow Oblast.
Some 40 tonnes of dry biological preparations a year are now
produced in Obolensk, and they meet 50 percent of the requirements
of the Russian State Committee for Sanitary and Epidemiological
Supervision. Research is conducted into pathogens of anthrax,
plague, glanders, Legionnaires' disease, and, particularly
actively, tuberculosis.
Like all our centers, the formerly supersecret Obolensk has
acquired partners in the West in recent years. Its scientific
potential is such that clients were not slow to make themselves
known. A recent example is provided by its $350,000 April
contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create a
vaccine against the mysterious "campybacteriosis" disease, which
cuts down broiler chicks.
But Obolensk had not had million-dollar contracts before. The
underlying reason for the agreement is instructive. Some $310,000
has been allocated to the creation of a vaccine against "hog black
ear" disease, which U.S. virologists are unable to decipher. The
darkening of the ears is an outward sign: The disease strikes the
animal's internal organs, and the meat ends up being poisonous.
But far more -- $950,000 -- has been allocated to creating a
physical and biological security system, which will guarantee
against the penetration of collections of strains of infectious
diseases by undesirable elements.
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Vladimir Volkov, deputy director of the State Scientific Center
for Applied Microbiology, told Izvestiya that the system will be
built according to the banking principle with safe locks, video
recording, and magnetic access to the vivarium. The question of
why such a need has arisen and whether there are grounds to fear a
biological Chernobyl went unanswered.
Apart from the tragedy at Sverdlovsk, several other instances
of bacteriological accidents are known. In 1982, following a
release of brucellosis bacteria from a Moscow Veterinary Institute
laboratory, 15 people were admitted to intensive care. In 1968
6,400 sheep died as the result of a leak of toxins at Dugway
Proving Ground (United States). In the fifties instances of
lethal infection of personnel with anthrax were recorded at the
U.S. Fort Detrick base. Tests of biological weapons on Gruinard
Island Scotland rendered it uninhabitable for 45 years. In
areas adjacent to the Soviet proving ground on Vozrozhdeniya Island
in the Aral Sea mass pestilence among fish and murrain among saiga
antelopes were noted for decades. Ecologists still regard those
places as unsuitable for grazing sheep.
Description of Source: One of Russia's most prominent dailies, now
controlled by Vladimir Potanin's Oneksimbank.
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