Looking for terrorists in Cuba's health care system

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(The author of the indispensible CUBA AND
THE U.S., a Chronological History adds an
entirely new dimension to the picture, pulling
many vital strands together for this new look.

(This is indispensible reference material you
need to familiarize yourself with. )
=================================

Looking For Terrorists In Cuba's Health System
by Jane Franklin

URL for this article.
http://www.zmag.org/ZMagSite/Jun2003/franklin0603.html

Sneaking into a Cuban health clinic, James Bond-Agent
007-stands before a mural of Fidel Castro. Agent 007 pushes
against a worn spot on the portrait. A hidden door slides
open to reveal what this so-called health clinic really is-a
cover for a state-of-the-art laboratory that carries out
"DNA transfer." Guess what? Cuban scientists have provided a
change of identity to the movie's main villain, a North
Korean who aims to rule the world with a weapon of mass
destruction.

MGM bet millions of dollars that Die Another Day, the latest
James Bond vehicle, would find an audience programmed to
accept the idea that a health clinic in Cuba could be a
cover for a terrorist conspiracy. They won their bet. Die
Another Day was a box office smash and will earn millions
more on video. The mainstream critics who complain about the
positive views of Fidel Castro in two recent
documentaries-Oliver Stone's Comandante and Estela Bravo's
Fidel-seem not at all concerned about the grotesque
fabrications of Die Another Day.

This present campaign is a paradigm of Washington's pattern
of accusing others of doing what Washington is planning to
do or has already done. Even three New York Times
reporters-Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William
Broad-in their 2001 book, Germs: Biological Weapons and
America's Secret War, acknowledge U.S. contingency plans for
bioterrorism against Cuba beginning soon after the
revolution in 1959. One scenario was to start with a
"biological strike against Cuba's soldiers and civilians."

Speaking in 1999 about those schemes, Bill Patrick, who
carried out biological research for two decades at Fort
Detrick, Maryland (the main base for developing germ
warfare), told an audience of military officers, "We would
incapacitate the Cuban population from three days to a
little over two weeks." He explained that only about 2
percent of Cuba's 7 million people (about 140,000) would die
and then, "We could move our forces in and take over the
country and that would be it." This seems even more
frightening when we remember that these plans coincided with
President Kennedy's massive use of chemical warfare in
Vietnam called Operation Hades, later renamed Operation
Ranch Hand, that began in 1961 and continued under
Presidents Johnson and Nixon until 1971.

Meanwhile, as the Cubans set about developing a system that
could deliver free health care to those seven million people
whose incapacitation was being plotted at Fort Detrick,
Washington responded with a total ban on trade, including
food and medicine-sanctions that have continued for more
than four decades.

Pro-embargo logic forms a vicious and bizarre circle:
Washington outlaws trade with Cuba, even in medicine,
forcing Cuba to develop its own advanced pharmaceutical and
biotechnological industry. Washington then cites that
industry as evidence of Cuba's ability to wage biological
warfare. Washington therefore labels Cuba a terrorist
nation. Thus the embargo is "not only  legitimate, but
essential."

In 1965, Cuba established the first of its centers for
biomedical and scientific research and development. About
half of Cuba's doctors had fled the island at the time of
the revolution. Those who remained were teaching and
learning the medical techniques of a new era. In a 1976
study called "Changes in Cuban Health Care: An Argument
Against Technological Pessimism," health specialists from
the United States concluded: "Judging from what has happened
in Cuba in the last seventeen years, we argue that cynicism
concerning the humane possibilities of modern technology
must give way to a chastened optimism." They added, "Our
survey," they wrote, "has shown that the dehumanizing side
effects of bureaucratic institutional care are subject to
significant correction in a social context which is free to
respond to such concern."

Biotechnology took off in Cuba in 1981 when Cuban scientists
produced Interferon in just six weeks during an epidemic of
dengue fever that was killing dozens of people, many of them
children. Here was an historic moment when biotechnology was
able to respond to what many believe was U.S. bio-terror-
ism. Suspicion that dengue was introduced into Cuba by the
CIA was given added credence three years later by the
testimony of the leader of one of the most murderous
Cuban-American terrorist groups, Eduardo Arocena of Omega 7,
during his trial on charges that included the murder of a
Cuban diplomat in New York. As the New York Times reported
at the time, "Mr. Arocena testified that he had visited Cuba
in 1980 in connection with a mission to introduce 'some
germs' into the country." The New York Times did not report
what Arocena said next: that whatever was carried to Cuba in
that mission "produced results that were not what we had
expected because we thought that it was going to be used
against the Soviet forces and it was used against our own
people and with that we did not agree."

This testimony is only one example of a body of considerable
evidence that the United States government has carried out
multiple chemical and biological attacks on Cuban people,
animals, and plants over four decades. In 1982, two years
after Arocena's mission, the U.S. State Department put Cuba
on a list of terrorist nations, where it still
remains.Successes like the production of Interferon during
an epidemic led to the opening in 1986 of the Center for
Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, which, by the way,
has a portrait of Fidel Castro on its walls. The United
Nations World Health Organization obviously thought that
portrait was there for good reason. In 1988 President Castro
became the only head of government in the world to receive
the Health for All medal awarded by the World Health
Organization in recognition of what he had done not just in
Cuba, but around the world. Cuba was the only country that
had attained the goals established in 1988 that the World
Health Organization hoped Third World countries could
achieve by the year 2000. Cuba had reached those goals by
1983. The award was given again in 1998 to President Castro.
Among the multiple reasons for these awards, two (one
international and one domestic) must be mentioned: by 1991,
Cuba had more doctors serving abroad than the World Health
Organization; and Cuba's infant mortality rate-that is, the
number of babies who die before the age of one year for
every 1,000 live births-decreased from 60 in 1959 to 6.5 in
2002.

Cuban biotechnological accomplishments have received
worldwide recognition. For example, in June 2002, the London
Financial Times reported that half of a Canadian
biotechnology company's most promising cancer treatments
come from Cuba and pointed out that while North American and
European medical labs are producing meager results, "Cuba is
winning a reputation for its talent in drug discovery."

Once the so-called Cold War ended, Washington could have
ended sanctions if for no other reason than to help preserve
Cuba's medical and educational systems. Quite to the
contrary, when Cuba's economy plunged after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, Washington tightened sanctions with the
Cuban Democracy Act (the Torricelli law) devised by the
Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), the wealthiest
and most influential Cuban American group. The goal of the
Democracy Act, as explained by Rep. Robert Torricelli, is to
"wreak havoc on that island."

The Democracy Act singles out biotechnology, banning all
exports "in which the item to be exported could be used in
production of any biotechnological product." In addition, it
blocks foreign subsidiaries of U.S. businesses from trading
with Cuba. More than 75 percent of such trade was in food
and medicine. The outright cruelty of this law motivated
many scientists to try to come to the aid of Cuba's clinics
and hospitals. The Journal of the Florida Medical
Association in 1994 published an article by Dr. Anthony
Kirkpatrick that was a call to the conscience of U.S.
medical personnel, painstakingly explaining how the
sanctions contribute to death and disease. The March 1995
Scientific American reported that the American Academy of
Neurology had sent a letter to President Clinton and to
every member of Congress urging an end to sanctions against
trade in food and medicine.

In contrast, check out the view of Cuba's biotechnology that
reaches our living rooms and offices. In 1997, an article in
U.S. News and World Report did list some of Cuba's
biotechnological accomplishments: the meningitis-B and
hepatitis-B vaccines, streptokinase for dissolving blood
clots, a skin growth factor for treating burns; diagnostic
equipment to screen infants for various conditions, and so
on. But all these accomplishments are reduced to
manifestations of "Castro's ego." The overall vision is
summed up in the article's title, "The Island of Dr.
Castro." In case any readers miss the allusion, we are told
that Cuba's position "at the frontiers of biotechnology
comes as a surprise to many scientists and to some it
conjures up images of The Island of Dr. Moreau-H.G. Wells's
macabre tale of a mad scientist who creates animal-human
hybrids on a remote tropical isle."

"The Island of Dr. Castro," like many other articles,
reports quite accurately that Cubans are trying to make
biotechnology a major source of income. Biotechnology
exports increased in 2001 by 42 percent over the previous
year. Those products were sold to more than 35 nations. U.S.
policy has consistently aimed at destroying any industry
that makes money for Cuba. In 1960 President Eisenhower
terminated the sugar quota. When Cuba turned to tourism
after the fall of the Soviet Union, terrorists based in the
United States declared war on tourism, bombing and shooting
up hotels. When foreign companies formed joint ventures with
Cuba, CANF engineered the 1996 Helms-Burton law aimed at
penalizing those involved in trade with the island.

An unending stream of propaganda portrays Cuba's
biotechnological industry as a cover for terrorism. In a
flurry of such accusations, the Associated Press reported in
December 1998 that "Cuba is suspected" of developing
biological weapons: "Programs are easily hidden from spying
satellites, cloaked by medical research."

Two weeks later,the New York Times reported that at least 17 nations
"are
suspected of having or trying to acquire germ weapons." The
Times said the "wild card" is that some, including Cuba, are
also "considered architects of terrorism"--that is, they are
on the State Department's list of terrorist nations.

Two months later came a New York Times Book Review article
praising Vincent Patrick's novel Smoke Screen, which,
according to reviewer James Polk, "satisfies on all sorts of
levels." The reader can figure out who exactly and, at what
level, is satisfied by this plot: "A deadly virus smuggled
into the United States will be released by a Cuban scientist
unless the American government gives in to demands of Fidel
Castro."

Last May, just six days before former President
Jimmy Carter was scheduled to fly to Havana, John Bolton,
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International
Security, delivered a speech to the Heritage Foundation
called "Beyond the Axis of Evil," adding Cuba, Libya, and
Syria to President Bush's "Axis of Evil"-Iraq, North Korea,
and Iran.

He announced, "The United States believes that
Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare
research and development effort. Cuba has provided dual-use
biotechnology to other rogue states. We are concerned that
such technology could support BW [biological warfare]
programs in those states." On that day and the next Bolton's
remarks were broadcast worldwide.

But this time something unusual happened. Although some
media reported the story, ready to demonize Cuba once again,
others asked, "Where's the evidence?" The Florida
Sun-Sentinel brought up the question of timing, following up
with an editorial that asked, "Where's the beef?" New York's
Newsday called the charge of terrorism a "preposterous
suggestion," noting that the upshot is that Cuba has "the
most sophisticated biomedical resources in Latin American,"
and adding, "So what?"

The Guardian of England, stating that
Bolton "presented no evidence for his claims," warned that
"the U.S. threatened to extend its war on terror to Cuba."
The Baltimore Sun editorialized, "It's a tired, old
political line that more and more Americans are rejecting."
A Chicago Tribune editorial declared that such charges,
"offered without a shred of proof," begin "to look like a
political stunt."

When Jimmy Carter toured the Center for Genetic Engineering
and Biotechnology in Havana with President Castro, he made
his own announcement: that during briefings before his
visit, he asked the White House, State Department, and CIA
if there were any "possible terrorist activities that were
supported by Cuba," and the answer was 'No'."

But the White House doesn't need evidence. If President Bush
and his coterie disapprove of a government, they can simply
state that the regime has the potential for bioterrorism,
since any laboratory has that potential. Last September,
Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady asked,
"Is Fidel Castro busy cooking up viruses in Cuban labs to
share with Islamic fundamentalists?" On Halloween night,
Otto Reich, a Cuban-American who was then Assistant
Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, was still
embellishing the same charges to the Heritage Foundation
that his Undersecretary Bolton delivered five months
earlier.

On June 1, 2002, at West Point, George Bush delivered a
message to the new officers of his imperial army,
graduating, he said, "in a time of war." He warned them
that, with technology, "even weak states and small groups
could attain a catastrophic power to strike great nations."
He told them, "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt
his plans, and confront the worst threats before they
emerge." He stated, "Our security will require transforming
the military you will lead-a military that must be ready to
strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the
world." Will Cuba's medical achievements make it one of
those targets?


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Historian Jane Franklin has been a contributing editor to
Cuba Update, the journal of the Center for Cuban Studies in
New York City, since 1979. Her books on Cuba are: Cuban
Foreign Relations 1959-1982 and Cuba and the United States:
A Chronological History.