How a cow from 1937 caused the Iraq war
The US gave Saddam Hussein anthrax, writes Dominic Kennedy in London
10aug05
A BRITISH cow that died in a field in Oxfordshire, west of London, in 1937 has emerged as the source of Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" program that led to the Iraq war.
An ear from the cow was sent to an English laboratory, where scientists discovered anthrax spores that were later used in secret biological warfare tests ordered by Winston Churchill.
The culture was sent to the US, which exported samples to Iraq during Saddam's war against Iran in the 1980s.
Inspectors have found that this batch of anthrax was the dictator's choice in his attempts to create biological weapons.
The discovery has angered some British politicians.
Labour MP Austin Mitchell has renewed his call, supported by 126 MPs in the last parliament, for a UN investigation into whether Washington broke a weapons control agreement.
"It just makes them look more hypocritical than ever," he said.
The odyssey of the Iraqi anthrax was unravelled by Geoffrey Holland, a politics student and anti-war campaigner at the University of Sussex.
The exact batch chosen by Saddam was disclosed in the CIA report by former UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer last year. "Iraq declared researching different strains of B.anthracis, but settled on the American Type Culture Collection strain 14578 as the exclusive strain for use as a BW (biological weapon)," Mr Duelfer said.
A congressional investigation into gulf war syndrome by Don Riegle had already uncovered invoices showing that this batch was shipped from the US between 1986 and 1988.
The ATCC is a private non-profit-making organisation based in Virginia, where its collection of cultures of living micro-organisms, viruses, plants and human and animal cells is stored.
Its catalogue shows that batch 14578 consists of "bovine anthrax", isolated by R.L.Vollum, a professor of bacteriology at Oxford University during the 1930s. It is named after him.
Martin Hugh-Jones, who co-ordinates the World Health Organisation's working group on anthrax research and control, confirmed the British connection.
"Somewhere in south Oxfordshire a cow died of anthrax," he said. "An ear from this dead cow was referred to Compton (agricultural research field station in Berkshire). They recovered anthrax from it.
"Professor Vollum needed a culture for his classes. He asked around. We have traced it back and it would have come in on some contaminated bones from Southern Rhodesia.
"England was importing sun-dried bones from dead animals in the colonies. They would be shipped to London and used to make soap. When they got the fat out, (the bones) were meant to be sterilised and ground as bone meal and fed to cattle. The sterilisation was not always complete. It was the major cause of anthrax for almost 100 years."
The Vollum anthrax was used in biological weapons tests in 1942 on the Scottish island of Gruinard, which had to be quarantined for 48 years.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...5E2703,00.html
Login 
Civilized Debate 
Search 
Facebook
Twitter
TechGuy.tv
TSG Mobile