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There was a slippery interrelation between Soviet support to scientific programs to Cuba and Cuba’s ability to develop biological weapons. For many years, the Soviet Union organized courses in genetic engineering and molecular biology for Cuban scientists. Scientists from the United States also organized courses, seminars, and other similar activities in Cuba since 1981. Many prominent European scientists have also cooperated in the development of Cuba‘s biotechnological industry in the last 20 years.
There has been a constant exchange of scientific information, visiting scientists, technology transfer from the Soviet Union and the United States to Cuba. The Soviet Union sold industrial fermentation equipment vessels to Cuba. The models were the ones used to develop and manufacture bacterial biological weapons.
Cuba also acquired equipment from other European countries under the excuse that the equipment was intended to grow single-cell protein for cattle feed. However, even exhaust filtration equipment capable of achieving 99.99 percent air purity was sold to Cuba. This level is used only in weapons labs.
Cuba has also acquired the technology and the capacity to manufacture their own equipment. Some of the equipment required is very similar to equipment related to diary production, sugar cane processing, and liquor manufacturing, areas where Cuba has had great experience.
There is a definitive and important relation with Iran in the field of biotechnology. Luis Herrera, one of the founders of the CIGB and the biotechnology program in Cuba is directing the Iran/Cuba activities.
Some analysts maintain that evidence of biological warfare research is not proof that viable weapons are being produced. However, even the most primitive biological weapons lab can produce enough of an agent to cripple a major city. Certainly, Cuba‘s facilities are recognized as outstanding.
Viruses and bacteria can be obtained from more than two thousand microbe banks around the world. The international scientific community depends on this network for medical research and for exchange of information vital to the fight against disease. There are very few restrictions on the cross-border trade in pathogens.
In the past twenty five years Cuba has been working in the research and development of biotechnological products. Research has proven that viruses and toxins can be genetically altered to heighten their lethality, paving the way for the development of pathogens capable of overcoming existing vaccines.
The arsenal of Cuba could include weapons based on tularemia, anthrax, epidemic typhus, smallpox, dengue fever, Marburg, Ebola. It could also extend to neurological agents, based on chemical substances produced naturally in the human body. It is easier to make a biological weapon than to create an effective system of biological defense.
The United States plan to stockpile and develop vaccines against known agents is the most comprehensive of its kind in the world. Vaccines work by inducing the creation of antibodies that fight specific diseases. It is not medically advisable to combine too many different courses of vaccination. There are currently no known vaccines for brucellosis, glanders, and melioidosis, or for many viral diseases, such as Ebola and Marburg.
Vaccines provide excellent protection against specific diseases, but the characteristics that makes them so effective is also the source of their limitations. Smallpox antibodies offer no protection against plague. Combined vaccines are possible, but most of these go straight to the metabolism of specific organisms. An all purpose antidote simply does not exist.
Countries with the capacity and technology to produce sophisticated vaccines can certainly produce bioweapons. Cuba‘s biotechnology efforts have been very successful in the creation of vaccines.
In 1957, European scientists identified the first cytokine, named interferon, which form a bridge between specific and nonspecific immune systems. They are produced in response to viruses and bacteria, or to a general stimulus in the blood. Interferon took years to isolate, but in 1979 an American produced interferon alpha artificially, called antiviral penicillin, a sophisticated biotechnological achievement. Cuba is a large producer of interferon.
Cuba‘s biotechnological capacity places it in group four of the World Health Organization’s five national categories. To reach group five, which contains the seven top industrial economies, Cuba must produce at least 20 percent of the 260 basic materials. It regularly produces 17 percent of these and certainly has the scientific ability to produce the others with biotech methods.
Priority access to research and development funding, 160 distinct research units and over 10,000 researchers give the Cuban scientific establishment an edge over their counterparts even, in some Western countries.
Research is ongoing in medicine, genetic engineering, biotechnology, industrial applications, and bioweapons. Development of hardware and software for the research effort has been also a priority.
The range of products, and research and development areas, include: monoclonal antibodies, vaccines against hepatitis B and bacterial meningitis, a neural growth factor, a range of interferon, enzymes, streptokinase, culture media with 14 alternative protein sources, several reagents, transgenetic fish, interferon beta, proteolytic peptides, lipopolysaccharide peptides, LBP-derived synthetic peptides, human Papillomavirus 16, MT-4 cells, and many others.
Certainly, a country with such capacity can produce bioweapons. There is really no technical solution to the problem of bioweapons in Cuba. It would need an ethical, human, and moral solution, which is obviously impossible while the government is in the hands of a sociopath. Ordinary intelligence and surveillance techniques cannot prove the existence of a biological warfare program.
Even the highest resolution satellite imagery can’t distinguish between a large pharmaceutical plant or center and a weapons complex. The only conclusive evidence comes from first hand information. A site inspection of Cuba‘s facilities, by an objective international team must be requested.
Where in Cuba? See below.
CUBA: A REAL THREAT by Manuel Cereijo (Oct 15, 2013) – Kindle eBook
