In November 1997 US Secretary of Defense William Cohen held up a 5 lb bag of Domino sugar in front of an army of cameras and told the world that if the bag contained anthrax it could wipe out NYC or Washington, DC.
That was not true, but it provided a fitting justification for the start of the DOD’s “biodefense” vaccine program, beginning with mandatory anthrax vaccinations for soldiers in March 1998.
According to an NBC cover story,
In April 1998, President Bill Clinton read a Richard Preston novel, “The Cobra Event,” about a biological attack on the U.S. using a lethal virus that spreads like the common cold.
“It scared the bejesus out of him,” recalls Kenneth Bernard, a now retired U.S. Public Health Service official who was then representing the U.S. in Geneva at the World Health Organization.
The USG invested in a new smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, based on the older Dryvax vaccine. The fact that it caused high rates of myocarditis (1 case in 175 doses administered according to CDC) has been ignored.
And the biodefense era began, supplying handsome contracts to those who promised remedies in the new Wild West of biowarfare and infectious disease. Many of those who got the contracts had friends in high places, like FOB Ronald Perelman, who made a killing on a smallpox remedy (Tpoxx) that was eventually used as a monkeypox drug. Did it work? Who knows?
Hellbound and Down 