Supressors and receptors

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Brian Brewer of the world's largest biochemical research complex, the National Institutes of Health outside Washington D.C., states: "We live in exciting times. We are beginning to understand disease at the molecular level." Jergen Drews, head of Hoffman La Roche's research departments, says: "In order to understand what kind of a revolution is underway, you must visit the labs of the drug companies or universities." Herwig Brunner, who heads biotechnology at Boehringer Mannheim, another pharma ceutical giant in the mold of Hoffman La Roche, says "What they are doing is gigantic." Just what is it that "they" are doing?

According to Frank Morich of Bayer research in Wuppertal, Germany, "growth factors can now be introduced or removed as desired." When arterial walls thicken, itis due to "growth factors" which are natural substances that order cells to divide andmultiply. These are brought to the site of arterial damage by blood cells that release them into the blood stream. According to intelligence reports, there are at least ten major laboratories in the U.S. alone working on a method to deliver growth factors in the human body, using microviruses introduced with them into the blood stream which will cause even more out-of-control cellular replication than the HIV virus. AIDS, as we know it, is rapidly on its way to becoming obsolete.20 Modern genetic technology has given researchers of the 1990s an easier and less costly way to find deoxyribonucliec acid, DNA, the genetic material found in most cells. DNA is the databank containing the genes, the blueprints for construction and maintenance of the human body.

These tiny building blocks of life are known as molecules, and they store energy, destroy toxins and convert food into new materials of construction. If just one is missing from the link, its absence will cause many diseases to arise. Conversely, if too many are present, that will cause sickness. (You don't have to be a genetic scientist to imagine the immense possibilities opened up by the knowledge of how to artificially introduce a "block" or an "overproduction" in the molecular chain of command.) Once biologists know a gene, they know the composition of the protein it creates. According to intelligence reports, the gene is first transferred into bacteria and the genetically altered microbes are then cultured in very large numbers. (The materials used are astonishingly simple: Four glass containers filled with glucose solution for the bacteria, an agitator to prevent the bacteria from forming into clumps at the bottom, and an incubator to keep the mix at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.) After as little as twenty-four hours, the desired protein, which could otherwise be made naturally only inside the liver, kidney or brain, can be filtered from the solution. This method is being used to create the AIDS virus and other plague viruses more rapidly, and to refine the virus so that it will spread more quickly. They are still working to shorten the "symptom-time," the time between the arrival of the virus in the body and the onset of fatal symptoms. One experiment of this new fast-acting AIDS has already been conducted in a remote area of Liberia, bordering on Sierra Leone. The results, I'm told by someone who knows, were "disastrous." Other laboratories, according to intelligence reports, are working on a group of proteins called receptors.

Receptors protrude from the walls of cells like tentacles and act like a boat dock or landing strip, attracting chemical substances. For instance, it is believed that the AIDS virus will not begin to reproduce until it has attached itself to corresponding receptors on artery walls. Only then does the message go out for cells to begin the reproduction process for AIDS. Stanford Research and Cold Spring Harbor and other labs around the country, as well as in Europe particularly in Germany are working hard to find a chemical which will occupy the receptor sites and do one of two things: Where a cure is sought, one chemical will "blind" the receptor so that viruses cannot "dock" or "land" on them. Where the spread of disease is sought, a chemical which has the ability to trick the receptor into accelerating the "landing" or "docking" process is introduced at receptor sites.

Test results carried out at Knoll A.G., a pharmaceutical laboratory owned by BASF, show that tumors grow out-of-control when the chemical it has produced is introduced to receptor sites. "Most drugs either suppress or activate receptors or enzymes," says Hans Uwe-Schenck, head of Knoll AG, "and we have known about receptors for a long time, but now that we know what the molecules look like, we have a new era in drug research." A new era in drug research. Now, say researchers, with a chemical that could blind tumor and AIDS cells, these diseases could be controlled and probably eliminated. But the other, darker side of this research is the equal ease of creating a chemical that will speed up and enhance the growth of the AIDS virus.  (60 of ) Today is it no longer a case of searching through 20,000 substances to find a key that would fit the lock; genetic molecular engineering has reduced the odds to one in ten. With scientists manufacturing receptors in laboratories, and able to see what they look like, the search for a key that will lock or unlock their growth as desired becomes that much easier. In this manner will a more virulent, swifter-acting AIDS virus be introduced, when it's ready, into the mainstream of any population targeted for annihilation. In the CAB laboratories of the West and Russia, work is proceeding on DNA regulators. Scientists know that every third gene in our bodies controls the design and function of the brain. If they locate the right gene, they can create all kinds of conditions.

One lab in Germany is well along in its search for chemicals to suppress or reverse the function of genes that control blood pressure. Millions of people may someday die from chemically induced blood pressure disorders. One Danish lab has come up with a drug that, when ingested or injected, causes terrible and uncontrollable fear. Researchers have isolated only about ten percent of the genes and proteins that control brain functions, according to Hans Gunter Gassen of the Technical Academy in Darmstadt, Germany, but it is also known that a dramatic breakthrough is near. Russian scientists are doing similar research, and they are as secretive as ever about their own "mind control" projects. The next revolutionary step in genetic tampering which the public should demand to know more about is the Genome Project. In 1990, the U.S. government provided $1.8 billion in secret funding for the largest project in the history of the world into this type of research. The goal of the project is to totally unlock the entire human genome, deciphering complete hereditary characteristics dating back hundreds of years. Axel Ulrich of the molecular biology division of the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich calls this massive undertaking "just the first step." The goal is to understand every gene within the human organism and how it works.

Studies have already uncovered thousands of hitherto unknown genes, each with its own DNA molecules. The Genome Project will determine how these DNA regions interact in the human body. For beneficial ends? Or destructive ends? "We will be working on all of them," says Ulrich. "By the year 2000, there will scarcely be a new drug on the market for which genetic technology did not play a decisive role." The Genome Project, which is scheduled for completion in 2005, is perhaps the most revolutionary human endeavor of all time. Once the more than six-million characters of both sets of DNA instructions are deciphered, the human of the future will be either a victim of induced diseases or extraordinarily healthy.