USA-Cuba Infomed Project: Response to Bolton

Many media outlets covered an address on May 6 by US Undersecretary of
State John Bolton to the right-wing Heritage foundation. The highlight for
the media was Bolton professing a belief that Cuba possesses offensive
biological weapons capacity and that an intelligence compromise within the
US defense community contributed to an underappreciation of the situtation
in Cuba. His remarks are posted at the US state department website.
http://www.state.gov/t/us/rm/9962.htm (1.)

Bolton's charge is an extremely grave one, and the evidence for it must be
considered.

Issues of biological weapons and Cuba are reviewed at considerable length
in the scientific literature by Raymond Zilinskas, in a monograph
published in Critical Reviews in Microbiology in 1999 (2.)

Since the Cuban government is so obviously suspicious of the US, Zilinskas
also considered whether he had seen evidence in the material he reviewed
that Cuba is interested in developing biological weapons.

His answer is an unambiguous "no."

In an interview with the Miami Herald, Zilinskas observes that one can
never prove a negative -- the task the US would set for Cuba: ``You can
never know for sure, but as far as I can see there's been no evidence
they're doing anything," said Raymond Zilinskas, a senior scientist at the
Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the California-based Monterey
Institute of International Studies. [...] Castro's 12 accusations [of US
biological attacks] raise the possibility that Havana scientists may be
researching methods to counter biological warfare, Zilinskas added,
``although that, too, would stir up a terrible pot, and I don't believe
it." (3)

A highly-placed emigre's experience confirms Zilinskas' analysis:  "I
heard no account of any effort for developing biological weapons in Cuba,"
said Jose de la Fuente, now at Oklahoma State University.  De la Fuente
oversaw some 350 scientists at the Center for Genetic Engineering and
Biotechnology in Havana until leaving Cuba for the US in 1999 (4.)

Bolton's claim that defense analysts have not been attending to Cuba is
false. W. Seth Carus reports that the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
(later subsumed into U.S. Dept of State) and the Federation of Independent
States were skeptical of claims that Cuba was developing biological
weapons, while Department of Defense groups traditionally accepted the
claims, as does some of the "open source" literature (5.) Carus explains
that the latter is so full of unreliable accusations that "reviewing these
reports, it appears that there are at least 110 countries with offensive
biological warfare programs."

Next, listen closely to Bolton refine his accusation against Cuba:

"Here is what we now know: The United States believes..."
 
 

In other words, the US does not have the ability to make accusations of
even minimal verifiability. No specific Cuban facilities or organisms are
named in Bolton's statement.

Bolton continues: "Cuba has maintained a well-developed and sophisticated
biomedical industry, supported until 1990 by the Soviet Union. This
industry is one of the most advanced in Latin America, and leads in the
production of pharmaceuticals and vaccines that are sold worldwide."

If this were any other nation in the world, this would of course be a good
thing, not a bad thing. A baby born in Washington DC is twice as likely to
die in infancy than one born in Cuba's capitol; nearly three times as
likely if the DC baby has the misfortune to be African-American. (6,7)
Cuba delivers far better medical care to its citizens than the US does,
despite forty years of the US economic blockade.

The essence of the charge, then, is that Cuba has a healthy, successful
biomedical program in spite of the blockade, and that is all we know. The
rest Bolton pretends to "believe" on behalf of his fellow US citizens as
their representative.

Despite their obvious weakness, the accusations against Cuba are played in
the press far more heavily than those against Libya and Syria. Bolton's
speech was more than 3700 words long. 614 words address Cuba - less than
one-sixth of the speech - yet it was that part of the speech which was so
frighteningly reported.

The real dangers the US presents to Cuba are to its health care system and
related industries. Bolton says in his speech: "States that renounce
terror and abandon WMD [weapons of mass destruction] can become part of
our effort. But those that do not can expect to become our targets."

The primary evidence Bolton presents with respect to biological weapons in
Cuba is the Cuban health research system, an integral part of its
fantastic public health system. The implication is that Cuba must
dismantle that research or be a "target." Cuba is being told to gut the
sort of program which we know in the US attracts energetic, interested
people to medical work, because its success in Cuba arouse our ire.

Why is the U.S. government so angry about a successful system?

Cuba's success is fiscal as well as intellectual: in cooperation with
SmithKline Beecham, Cuba is marketing an encephalitis vaccine, the best in
the world of its type. Cuban biotechnology exports were valued at $125
million a year as long ago as 1995 (8.) This economic angle is vital:
Cuban biotechnology energizes not only public health but the Cuban economy
in spite of our embargo.

In Bolton's view, Cuba must agree to abide by the US' decisions on which
countries are and are not permitted to have pharmaceuticals industries as
well as shuttering its domestic research and development. This is the
thrust of his "dual use" argument: that Cuba has exported drugs, reagents
and research equipment without asking for permission.

The New York Times reported last fall that the Army wanted to find out how
to make anthrax the way a terrorist might, and so built a facility for
culturing microbes in Nevada. They used fermenters and hardware store
tubing for their reaction vessels, and could have traveled to any of the
80+ countries in the world where virulent anthrax is a native pathogen to
get their stocks of anthrax spores. (Mexico alone averages 10 anthrax
fatalities per year) (9,10.)

Is the US proposing to halt the sale of microbrewery supplies worldwide?
Of course not.

Bolton's accusation that Cuba is developing biological weapons is
politically motivated and punitive. Its basis is Cuba's successful and
thus highly frustrating public health system. The accusation is refuted by
researchers in the field and by the total lack of evidence provided by
Bolton. If we accept the charge and permit the Bush administration to
apply its remedy, we will enervate Cuban biological research and remove an
economically and intellectually useful sector of the Cuban economy - which
benefits everyone in the world through its advances - at gunpoint.

We must not let our government bluff us into attacking Cuba in this way.

Notes

1. U.S. Department of State. May 6, 2002. "Beyond the Axis of Evil:
Additional Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction." John R. Bolton,
Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Available
online at http://www.state.gov/t/us/rm/9962.htm.

2: Critical Reviews in Microbiology, 25(3)173227 (1999.) "Cuban
Allegations of Biological Warfare by the United States Assessing the
Evidence." Raymond A. Zilinskas. This monograph focusses primarily on
Cuban allegations of US biological warfare, and rationalizes all of them
as being reports of Cuban epidemics which are explainable by regional
patterns of disease -- while admitting that there is good evidence that
weaponized toxins were introduced into Cuba by the US. The logic he
applies in each case he chooses for formal analysis is essentially
identical.

3: Miami Herald: June 23, 1999. "U.S. skeptical of report on Cuban
biological weapons." Juan O. Tamayo. Available online at
http://www.fas.org/news/cuba/990623-bio.htm.

4:  Miami Herald:  May 7, 2002.  "Talk of germ weapons in Cuba jolts
Congress."  Tim Johnson.  Available online at
http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/news/world/americas/3218048.htm

5: Critical Reviews in Microbiology, 24(3):149-155 (1998.) "Biological
Warfare Threats in Perspective." W. Seth Carus.

6: Kaiser Family Foundation. Available online at
http://www.statehealthfacts.kff.org/cgi-bin/healthfacts.cgi?action=profile
&area=District+of+Columbia&category=Health+Status&subcategory=Infants&topi
c=Infant+Deaths+by+Race%2fEthnicity

Also of considerable interest is that nationwide in the US, the infant
mortality rate for African Americans is approximately twice that for Cuban
babies and approximately three times that for white US babies.

7: Cuban Ministry of Public Health (Cuba) and Central Intelligence Agency
(US.) http://www.aboutcuba.com/regions/havanacity/,
http://www.medicc.org/Medicc%20Review/1999/autum/html/health_news_from_cub
a.html,

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cu.html#People

8: New York Times: May 7, 2002. "Washington Accuses Cuba of Germ-Warfare
Research." Judith Miller. Available online (6.8.02) with registration at
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/07/international/americas/07WEAP.html

9: New York Times: September 4, 2001. "Next to Old Rec Hall, a
'Germ-Making Plant.'" Judith Miller. Available online (6.8.02) with
registration at
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/international/04BIOW.html

10: Associated Press: October 20, 2001. "Germ banks around the world sell,
trade or even give away anthrax." Will Weissert. Available online at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2001/10/20/in
ternational1341EDT0588.DTL