ABIOTIC OIL FORMATION THEORY

While Western scientist universally held that all oil and gas is derived from fossil fuels, Russian and Ukrainian Scientist have tenaciously propounded that oil and gas are abiotic and can be found in very large amounts deep below the surface of the earth in most part of the world. Since the mid-19th century, a small but enthusiastic minority of these scientists have argued that petroleum and other fuels are formed by purely chemical or abiogenic processes hundreds of miles inside Earth. An early champion was the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev, pioneer of the periodic table that hangs on the wall of virtually every high school chemistry classroom. Russia claims to have successfully drilled over 300 ultra-deep oil and gas wells through granitic and basalt based on abiogenic (abiotic) theory of oil and gas formation.⁽¹⁾

An abiogenic theory of petroleum formation is not new, dating from the 16^th century. In the 19^th century two very accomplished scientists, Alexander von Humboldt and Dimitri Mendeleev advanced the concept. In the 20^th century the Russian- Ukrainian School of geology emerged in the Soviet Union to vigorously formulate the modern theory of abiogenic (abiotic) oil and gas. In the West, the most eloquent and determined proponent was the famous astronomer Thomas Gold. After his death, Jack Kenney of Gas Resources Corporation has become the leading Western exponent. The prevailing abiotic theory is that the full complement of hydrocarbons found in oil and gas are generated in the mantle (40 to 90 miles below the surface of the earth) by non-biological processes. These hydrocarbons then migrate out of the mantle into the crust where they escape or are trapped by impermeable strata that lead to reservoir formation.

Evidences supporting Abiotic Theory: ⁽²⁾

• Oil being discovered at 30,000 feet, far below the 18,000 feet where organic matter is no longer found.
• Wells pumped dry later replenished.
• Volume of oil pumped thus far not accountable from organic material alone according to present models.
• In Situ production of methane under the conditions that exist in the Earth's upper mantle.

Specific examples cited for evidence of Abiotic oil are the impressive recharging from below, of the Eugene Island field (wells in deep decline exhibiting sharply increased production; recovery far in excess of  estimated remaining reserves) off new Orleans; the White Tiger oil field in Vietnam (discovered by a Russian company, Vietsovpetro) in fractured basement granite; the Panhandle-Hugoton field (high helium content) in Teaxs-Oklahoma, the Shengli Field and Songliao Basin in Northeastern China (supposedly mantle derived natural gas), and the well known Chimaera natural gas seep in Turkey. This seep has been known to be continuously active for thousands of years and represents the largest cataloged emission of abiogenic methane on land. The vast amounts of methane released by the biggest mud volcano eruptions are allegedly greater than found in the most abundant natural gas fields in commercial production. The presence of considerable amounts of hydrocarbons not associated with tectonic structures is also presented as evidence and, of course, the enormous methane hydrate deposits found all over the world are asserted to be of abiogenic origin. Finally, theory avers that the impressive record of recent ultra-deep drilling in the Gulf of Mexico supports their idea.

Between 1976 and 1996, estimated global oil reserves grew 72%, to 1.04 trillion barrels. Most of the geologists are hard-pressed to explain why the world's greatest oil pool, the Middle East, has more than doubled its reserves in the past 20 years, despite half a century of intense exploitation and relatively few new discoveries. It would take a pretty big pile of dead dinosaurs and prehistoric plants to account for the estimated 660 billion barrels of oil in the region, notes Norman Hyne, a professor at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. "Off-the-wall theories often turn out to be right," he says.

Thomas Gold, a respected astronomer and professor emeritus at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., has held for years that oil is actually renewable, primordial syrup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultra-hot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs. ⁽³⁾

Is There Any Real Shortage of Oil? ⁽⁴⁾

The Peak Oil Theory was largely the invention of geophysicist M. King Hubbert, with his prediction "that the fossil fuel era would be of very short duration." He originally published a world production curve on the theory in 1956, using the prediction that the world oil production would peak in 1970. That prediction of course proved to be quite untrue. The overwhelming preponderance of geological evidence compels the conclusion that crude oil and natural petroleum gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the Earth. They are primordial materials which have been erupted from great depths. Statistical thermodynamic analysis has established clearly that hydrocarbon molecules which comprise petroleum require very high pressures for their spontaneous formation, comparable to the pressures required for the same of diamond. In that sense, hydrocarbon molecules are the high-pressure polymorphs of the reduced carbon system as is diamond of elemental carbon. Also, by 1994, the Russian and Ukrainian scientists were responsible for the discovery and development of "eleven major and one giant oil and gas fields ... in a region which had, forty years ago, been condemned [based on the fossil fuel theory] as possessing no potential for petroleum production".

In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years … many years.” [If the spill is not properly handled] According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, “What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.” Ghawar, the world’s most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. According to the abiotic science, Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.

The following is from an article, Oil without End ⁽⁵⁾: "With the White Tiger Field in Vietnam, 90% of the production is coming from basement rock, where there were never any fossils," argues C. Warren Hunt, a geologist in Calgary. "What they've been teaching us in school about oil coming from fossils is wrong."

Until a decade or so ago virtually all oil discovered was in the range of 5-10 miles into the crust. Yet recently, the Russians have discovered major oil pockets as far down as 40 miles. That amazing depth is far deeper than any prehistoric remains of animals and plants would ever be found. Using a supercomputer, the team recreated the conditions deep under the surface of the Earth and discovered that when subjected to a pressure of 50,000 times greater than the surface atmospheric pressure and heat higher than 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit a fusion process occurs. At 70 miles down they found that methane molecules can fuse with hydrocarbons and produce petroleum.

Considerations about recent predictions of impending shortages of petroleum evaluated from the perspective of modern petroleum science ⁽⁶⁾

The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is neither the work  of any one single man nor of a few men. The modern theory was developed by hundreds of scientists in the (now former) U.S.S.R., including many of the finest geologists, geochemists, geophysicists, and thermodynamicists of that country. There have now been more than two generations of geologists, geophysicists, chemists, and other scientists in the U.S.S.R. who have worked upon and contributed to the development of the modern theory. (Kropotkin 1956; Anisimov, Vasilyev et al. 1959; Kudryavtsev 1959; Porfir'yev 1959; Kudryavtsev 1963; Raznitsyn 1963; Krayushkin 1965; Markevich 1966; Dolenko 1968; Dolenko 1971; Linetskii 1974; Letnikov, Karpov et al. 1977; Porfir'yev and Klochko 1981; Krayushkin 1984)

Academician Professor Vladimir B. Porfir’yev, senior petroleum exploration geologist for the U.S.S.R., at the All-Union Conference on Petroleum and Petroleum Geology, Moscow, 1956 has said that the overwhelming preponderance of geological evidence compels the conclusion that crude oil and natural petroleum gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the Earth. They are primordial materials which have been erupted from great depths.

Professor Emmanuil B. Chekaliuk, at All-Union Conference on Petroleum and Petroleum Geology, Moscow, 1968 had stated that "Statistical thermodynamic analysis has established clearly that hydrocarbon molecules which comprise petroleum require very high pressures for their spontaneous formation, comparable to the pressures required for the same of diamond. In that sense, hydrocarbon molecules are the high-pressure polymorphs of the reduced carbon system as is diamond of elemental carbon. Any notion which might suggest that hydrocarbon molecules spontaneously evolve in the regimes of temperature and pressure characterized by the near-surface of the Earth, which are the regimes of methane creation and hydrocarbon destruction, does not even deserve consideration."

Lomonosov’s eighteenth-century hypothesis of a biogenic origin of petroleum has been replaced during the past forty years by the modern theory of abyssal, abiotic petroleum origins, an extensive and formidable body of scientific knowledge which has been developed in the former U.S.S.R., particularly in the countries Russia and Ukraine. The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of petroleum has established that petroleum is a primordial material of deep origin which has been erupted into the crust of the Earth.

The errors involved in predictions about the future availability of petroleum, inevitably occasioned by an inappropriate application of the rococo hypothesis that petroleum somehow miraculously evolved from limited volumes of biogenic matter, obtain generally from the very notion of such as a "limited, fossil" material. Correctly, one should better recognize that there exists no more reason to expect a future shortage of petroleum than of, say, mid-oceanic ridge basalt (MORB). [MORB is the rock characteristic of the loci of the deep suture, spreading zones on the mid-ocean floor where new oceanic crust is constantly being erupted from the mantle of the Earth.] Those predictive errors obtain specifically from neglect of several extremely large potential sources of petroleum, of which a few are set forth here.

(1) The potential to produce petroleum from the crystalline basement, from volcanic structures, from impact structures, and from non-sedimentary regions generally has been entirely neglected.

(2) The petroleum potential of the riftogenic suture zones, both subsea and on-shore, have been largely neglected.

(3) The petroleum which certainly exists and will surely be produced from reservoirs underneath those presently being produced has been almost entirely neglected^‡.

(4) The potential to produce petroleum gas from reservoirs beneath the methane clathrate zones has been completely neglected, as has mostly the same of the methane clathrate reserves themselves.

(5) The potential that certain of the petroleum fields presently producing may be drawing pressured hydrocarbons from an open and active fault or conduit from the mantle, and therefore, may never be depleted, has been entirely neglected, as has the potential to develop non-depleting fields by deep drilling.(Mahfoud and Beck 1995)

Measurement of elevated abundances of helium: The petroleum from all producing reservoirs manifest elevated abundance of helium. The natural gas and oil from, for example, the Yulyovskoye field contains not less than 180,000,000 m³ of helium. Helium is of deep origin and can be transported significant distances in the Earth's crust only by entrainment in another carrier fluid, typically hydrocarbons or hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide or nitrogen together, by which process it becomes concentrated in the carrier fluid.⁽⁷⁾

Simplified Plan of Ultra Deep Oil ⁽⁸⁾

What we are really observing are naturally occurring ultra-deep oil wells, leaking vast quantities of oil from the mantle of the earth upwards through fractures into what we nowadays refer to as "sedimentary oil fields", located relatively close to the surface. As the production companies draw oil out of these known reservoirs through oil wells, field pressure is slightly reduced, thereby allowing more ultra-deep oil to migrate up from the mantle and restock the reservoir from below.

Russian studies of their own ultra-deep wells and those in the White Tiger field in Vietnam, indicate in very rough terms that migration from the mantle is probably 20-30% less than production at Middle East wellheads, meaning in turn that if the flow rates of existing Iraqi and Saudi wells are reduced by about 30%, oil supply and production can and will continue forever, constantly replenished by ultra-deep oil from the mantle itself.

When oil is extracted from a producing formation underground, it flows out through pores in the reservoir rock, and then into the open borehole, from where it is transported to surface by the production tubing string. So by the very nature of the beast, the bottom section of the well is "open hole" which allows the oil to flow out in the first place, but because it is comprised of exposed and sometimes unstable rock, this open hole section is also continually subject to all manner of turbulence and various contaminates. For example, tiny quantities of super fine silt may exit through the pores but not continue to the surface with the oil, tumbling around in the turbulence instead, until the silt very slowly starts to block off the oil-producing pore throats. Yes, of course there are a variety of liners that can be used to slow down the contamination, but there is no such thing as a Henry Ford oil filter 10,000 feet underground.

The inevitable result of this is that over time, the initial production rate of the well will slowly decline, a hard fact known to every exploration oilman in the business. However, this is certainly not an indication that the oil field itself is becoming depleted, proved thousands of times by offset wells drilled later into the same reservoir. Any new well comes on stream at the original production rate of its older cousins, because it has not yet had time to build up a thin layer of contaminates across the open hole. Though as we shall see it is possible to "do an oil change" on a producing well and bring it back to full production, this is extremely expensive, and rarely used in the west.

Look at a simple example:

Say we have a small oil field in Iraq with ten wells that each started out in life producing 10,000 barrels of oil per day. Fine, for a known investment we are producing 100,000 barrels of oil per day from our small field, at least for a while. Five years later contamination may have slowed our overall production down by ten percent to 90,000 barrels per day. So we are now faced with a choice:

·    either "do an oil change" on all ten existing wells at vast expense and down time

·    Or simply drill one additional well into the same reservoir, thereby restoring our daily production to 100,000 barrels with the minimum of fuss.

In ninety-nine percent of cases, onshore producers will simply drill the extra well.
Naturally there are times and places where this simple process is not an option, for example on a huge and very expensive offshore platform, which may have only 24 drilling 'slots', all of which have been used up. To restore the overall production after five years one can either build another giant platform next door for two billion dollars, or "do an oil change" on each of existing 24 wells, one at a time. Clearly this time one is forced to carry out the time consuming business of restoring the open hole section at the bottom of the well to its old pristine condition, before various contaminates started to slow down your production rate.

For this task first, the production tubing is pulled out of the hole, and then run back in with a drill string, to which is attached an under-reamer as shown in the pictures above. When the reamer is directly opposite the top of the open hole producing section, the drill string is rotated to the right and the blades fly out under centrifugal force to a distance preset before lowering the tool into the hole.

The objective is to cut away the contaminated face of the well to a depth you consider will once again expose pristine producing pores. As the spinning under-reamer is slowly lowered, it enlarges the size of the hole, with the contaminated debris cut away and flushed back to surface by the drilling fluid. Hey presto, you have a new oil well, and it only cost one or two million dollars to restore.

This process is rarely used in the west, which is true, but it is not true of Russia, where the objective for many years has been to dominate global oil supply by continual investment. The Russian oil industry managed to surge ahead, under-reaming thousands of its older existing onshore wells in less than ten years.

It is worth remembering the immense contribution of Russian geologist in initiating the exploration and production of petroleum in India. India has compelling economic and national security interests in proving or disproving the theory. If the theory is false then we are no worse off than today and if it is correct then we have the most to gain reordering the prevailing oil and gas reserves in the world

References:

1.      http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2482838/posts

2.      World Net Daily; Dec. 1, 2005

3.      The Deep Hot Biosphere by Thomas Gold, Ph.D. (2001)

4.      Is There Any Real Shortage of Oil? © O. R. Adams Jr. 2011

5.      Julie Creswell, Fortune magazine, 2-4-2003

6.      Considerations about recent predictions of impending shortages of petroleum evaluated from the perspective of modern petroleum science. J. F. Kenney Joint Institute of the Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; Gas Resources Corporation, Houston.

7.      Abiotic oil theory: The drilling & development of the oil & gas fields in the Dnieper-Donetsk basin, V.A. Krayushkin, T.I. Tchebanenko, V.P. Klochko, Ye.S. Dvoryanin, and J.F. Kenney

8.      http://www.vialls.com/wecontrolamerica/peakoil.html

Early Biological War on Native Americans : Jeffrey Amherst and Smallpox Blankets

reproduced from : http://academic.udayton.edu/health/syllabi/bioterrorism/00intro02.htm

Lord Jeffrey Amherst's letters discussing germ warfare against American Indians

"... every Tree is become an Indian...." Colonel Henry Bouquet to General Amherst, dated 29 June 1763. [63k]

Lord Jeff

Lord Jeffrey Amherst was commanding general of British forces in North America during the final battles of the so-called French & Indian war (1754-1763). He won victories against the French to acquire Canada for England and helped make England the world's chief colonizer at the conclusion of the Seven Years War among the colonial powers (1756-1763).
The town of Amherst, Massachusetts, was named for Lord Jeff even before he became a Lord. Amherst Collegewas later named after the town. It is said the local inhabitants who formed the town preferred another name, Norwottuck, after the Indians whose land it had been; the colonial governor substituted his choice for theirs. Frank Prentice Rand, in his book, The Village of Amherst: A Landmark of Light [Amherst, MA: Amherst Historical Society, 1958], says that at the time of the naming, Amherst was "the most glamorous military hero in the New World. ... ...the name was so obvious in 1759 as to be almost inevitable." [p. 15]

Amherst College china plates depicting mounted Englishman with sword chasing Indians on foot were in use until the 1970's.

Click on the pictures to see full-size images.

Smallpox blankets

Despite his fame, Jeffrey Amherst's name became tarnished by stories of smallpox-infected blankets used as germ warfare against American Indians. These stories are reported, for example, in Carl Waldman's Atlas of the North American Indian [NY: Facts on File, 1985]. Waldman writes, in reference to a siege of Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) by Chief Pontiac's forces during the summer of 1763:

... Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the fort -- an early example of biological warfare -- which started an epidemic among them. Amherst himself had encouraged this tactic in a letter to Ecuyer. [p. 108]

Some people have doubted these stories; other people, believing the stories, nevertheless assert that the infected blankets were not intentionally distributed to the Indians, or that Lord Jeff himself is not to blame for the germ warfare tactic.

Lord Jeff's letters during Pontiac's Rebellion

The documents provided here are made available to set the record straight. These are images of microfilmed original letters written between General Amherst and his officers and others in his command during the summer of 1763, when the British were fighting what became known asPontiac's Rebellion.
Pontiac, an Ottawa chief who had sided with the French, led an uprising against the British after the French surrender in Canada. Indians were angered by Amherst's refusal to continue the French practice of providing supplies in exchange for Indian friendship and assistance, and by a generally imperious British attitude toward Indians and Indian land. As Waldman puts it:

... Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the British commander-in-chief for America, believed ... that the best way to control Indians was through a system of strict regulations and punishment when necessary, not "bribery," as he called the granting of provisions. [p. 106]

The British Manuscript Project

The documents provided here are among Amherst's letters and other papers microfilmed as part of the British Manuscript Project, 1941-1945, undertaken by the United States Library of Congress during World War II. The project was designed to preserve British historical documents from possible war damage. There are almost three hundred reels of microfilm on Amherst alone.
The microfilm is difficult to read, and paper copies even harder. Nonetheless, the images obtained by scanning the copies are sufficiently clear for online viewing. The images are of key excerpts from the letters. An index is provided to show by document number the location of these images in the microfilm set. Ascii text of the excerpts is also provided.

The documents

These are the pivotal letters:

	Colonel Henry Bouquet to General Amherst, dated 13 July 1763, [262k] suggests in a postscript the distribution of blankets to "inocculate the Indians";
	Amherst to Bouquet, dated 16 July 1763, [128k] approves this plan in a postscript and suggests as well as "to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race." (This postcript spans two pages.)

These letters also discuss the use of dogs to hunt the Indians, the so-called "Spaniard's Method," which Amherst approves in principle, but says he cannot implement because there are not enough dogs. In a letter dated 26 July 1763, Bouquet acknowledges Amherst's approval [125k] and writes, "all your Directions will be observed."
Historian Francis Parkman, in his book The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada [Boston: Little, Brown, 1886] refers to a postscript in an earlier letter from Amherst to Bouquet wondering whether smallpox could not be spread among the Indians:

Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them. [Vol. II, p. 39 (6th edition)]

I have not found this letter, but there is a letter from Bouquet to Amherst, dated 23 June 1763, [189k] three weeks before the discussion of blankets to the Indians, stating that Captain Ecuyer at Fort Pitt (to which Bouquet would be heading with reinforcements) has reported smallpox in the Fort. This indicates at least that the writers knew the plan could be carried out.
It is curious that the specific plans to spread smallpox were relegated to postscripts. I leave it to the reader to ponder the significance of this.
Several other letters from the summer of 1763 show the smallpox idea was not an anomaly. The letters are filled with comments that indicate a genocidal intent, with phrases such as:

	"...that Vermine ... have forfeited all claim to the rights of humanity" (Bouquet to Amherst, 25 June) [149k]
	"I would rather chuse the liberty to kill any Savage...." (Bouquet to Amherst, 25 June) [121k]
	"...Measures to be taken as would Bring about the Total Extirpation of those Indian Nations" (Amherst to Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of the Northern Indian Department, 9 July) [229k]
	"...their Total Extirpation is scarce sufficient Attonement...." (Amherst to George Croghan, Deputy Agent for Indian Affairs, 7 August) [145k]
	"...put a most Effectual Stop to their very Being" (Amherst to Johnson, 27 August [292k]; emphasis in original).

Amherst's correspondence during this time includes many letters on routine matters, such as officers who are sick or want to be relieved of duty; accounts of provisions on hand, costs for supplies, number of people garrisoned; negotiations with provincial governors (the army is upset with the Pennsylvania assembly, for example, for refusing to draft men for service); and so on. None of these other letters show a deranged mind or an obsession with cruelty. Amherst's venom was strictly reserved for Indians.

The French and the Indians

The sharpest contrast with letters about Indians is provided by letters regarding the other enemy, the French. Amherst has been at war with the French as much as with the Indians; but he showed no obsessive desire to extirpate them from the earth. They were apparently his "worthy" enemy. It was the Indians who drove him mad. It was they against whom he was looking for "an occasion, to extirpate them root and branch." [J. C. Long,Lord Jeffrey Amherst: A Soldier of the King (NY: Macmillan, 1933), p. 187]
Long describes Amherst's "kindliness to the French" and refers to Amherst's "intensity of feeling on these issues":

Amherst's kindliness to the French civilians was more than a military gesture. He had a warm sympathy for the countryside, an interest in people and the way they lived. "The Inhabitants live comfortably," he observed in his journal, "most have stone houses.... ....

This humane attitude was reflected in his rules for the governing of Canada. As its de facto military Governor-General he established a temporary code ... a program of tolerance and regard for colonial sensibilities....

***

Perhaps most statesmanlike of all was Amherst's recognition of the French law, ... a recognition which permitted change of national loyalty without social upheaval. [p. 137]

In contrast to these kindly feelings, Long says that Pontiac's attacks on British forts at Detroit and Presqu'Isle "aroused Amherst to a frenzy, a frenzy almost hysterical in its impotence." Long then quotes from Amherst's letter to Sir William Johnson:

... it would be happy for the Provinces there was not an Indian settlement within a thousand Miles of them, and when they are properly punished, I care not how soon they move their Habitations, for the Inhabitants of the Woods are the fittest Companions for them, they being more nearly allied to the Brute than to the Human Creation. [p.186]

Colonel Bouquet's poetic line, "... every Tree is become an Indian," [63k] quoted above, was his description of a contagion of fear among soldiers and settlers, for whom the Indians were a part of the wildness they perceived around themselves. These warriors would not stand in ordered ranks; they fell back into the forests only to emerge again in renewed attack; their leaders defied British logic and proved effective against a string of British forts; these were the enemy that nearly succeeded in driving the British out, and became the target for British genocide.

Conclusion

All in all, the letters provided here remove all doubt about the validity of the stories about Lord Jeff and germ warfare. The General's own letters sustain the stories.
As to whether the plans actually were carried out, Parkman has this to say:

... in the following spring, Gershom Hicks, who had been among the Indians, reported at Fort Pitt that the small-pox had been raging for some time among them....

An additional source of information on the matter is the Journal of William Trent, commander of the local militia of the townspeople of Pittsburgh during Pontiac's seige of the fort. This Journal has been described as "... the most detailed contemporary account of the anxious days and nights in the beleaguered stronghold." [Pen Pictures of Early Western Pennsylvania, John W. Harpster, ed. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1938).]
Trent's entry for May 24, 1763, includes the following statement:

... we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.

Trent's Journal confirms that smallpox had broken out in Fort Pitt prior to the correspondence between Bouquet and Amherst, thus making their plans feasible. It also indicates that intentional infection of the Indians with smallpox had been already approved by at least Captain Ecuyer at the fort, who some commentators have suggested was in direct correspondence with General Amherst on this tactic (though I have not yet found such letters).

	Go to microfilm index of documents and ascii text of excerpts
	Go to discussion of smallpox and Indians archived from the discussion list on early American history, IEAHCNET
	Go to Journal of William Trent, 1763

Additional Sources of Information

Some readers question whether smallpox can be spread by such methods as infected blankets. There is a smallpox virus Variola minor that is transmitted by inhalation, communicable for 3-7 days. There is a smallpox virus Variola major that is transmitted by inhalation and by contamination; it is communicable by the former method for 9-14 days and by the latter method for several years in a dried state.
See Ann F. Ramenofsky, Vectors of Death: The Archaeology of European Contact (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1987):

Among Class I agents, Variola major holds a unique position. Although the virus is most frequently transmitted through droplet infection, it can survive for a number of years outside human hosts in a dried state (Downie 1967; Upham 1986). As a consequence, Variola majorcan be transmitted through contaminated articles such as clothing or blankets (Dixon 1962). In the nineteenth century, the U.S. Army sent contaminated blankets to Native Americans, especially Plains groups, to control the Indian problem (Stearn and Stearn 1945). [p. 148]

See also Robert L. O'Connell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression (NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989):

Marking a milestone of sorts, certain colonists during the French and Indian Wars resorted to trading smallpox-contaminated blankets to local tribes with immediate and devastating results. While infected carcasses had long been catapulted into besieged cities, this seems to be the first time a known weakness in the immunity structure of an adversary population was deliberately exploited with a weapons response. [p. 171]

Will Humanity Survive The Depopulation Agenda Of The Global Elite?

Reproduced from http://www.thesleuthjournal.com/will-humanity-survive-depopulation-agenda-global-elite/#

May 4, 2014   Eugenics & Depopulation, Government Corruption, Human Rights,Sleuth Journal, United Nations, US News, World News

Do you remember when your mother asked you if you would jump off a cliff if everyone else was doing it? It turns out that all of us would have been wise to heed the advice from our mothers as the globalists aren’t just encouraging us to jump off a cliff, they are, in fact, pushing us off of the proverbial cliff in a deliberate attempt to fulfill the their mandate, which is to eliminate a substantial portion of humanity. Meanwhile, the globalists will be safely tucked away in some underground structure free from the harm that they are perpetrating upon humanity. Sadly, many of our friends and family members are willingly going to their demise without so much as a whimper.

Heretofore, the topic of intentional depopulation was the perceived product of paranoid delusional conspiracy theorists who had too much time on their hands. The most frequent refrain from the unaware is that “they” would never do that. However, the globalists have left an unmistakable paper trail in which their true agenda is exposed.

Ronald Reagan Understood

President Reagan understood a common enemy had the potential to unite humanity. He often spoke of a potential alien threat to mankind as being the unifying force which had the potential to bring all of us together.

Indeed, all of mankind does face a common foe. However, it is not aliens. Our common foe are the elite that presume that they have the God-given right to exert ownership over all of us including the right to life or death. And for 95% of us, the elite are actively engaged in systematic extermination of mankind.

If we were to borrow from Reagan’s wisdom, we have the potential to unite humanity against our common foe. For those who are awake, it is your duty to your creator and to fellow man to relentlessly educate humanity as to the true nature of the elite along with exposing their final solution.

Along these lines, I have collected a sample of well-known quotes from the global elite, both past and present. And even people who cannot find the courage to abandon their normalcy bias, will have a difficult time denying the disturbing quotes which follow. .

Officials in the United Nations Want You Dead

Surely, the peace loving United Nations, complete with its expressed desire to save the world from any and all evil would stand in line to thwart any expressed threat to inhabitants of this planet, right? Well, not exactly. The United Nations is permeated with individuals who are Satanically inspired and have repeatedly, on many fronts, expressed their intent to reduce the world’s population by dramatic means, if necessary. Please consider the following quotes:

“No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation.”

David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations

The present vast overpopulation, now far beyond the world carrying capacity, cannot be answered by future reductions in the birth rate due to contraception, sterilization and abortion, but must be met in the present by the reduction of numbers presently existing. This must be done by whatever means necessary.”

Initiative for the United Nations ECO-92 EARTH CHARTER

“One America burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes. This is a terrible thing to say in order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.”

Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier

“A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible.”

United Nations, Global Biodiversity Assessment

“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline would be ideal.”

Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major United Nations contributor

Is anyone else bothered by the fact that this pack of Eugenicists are overseeing our elections? Perhaps the officials at the United Nations stand alone among elite leaders on the planet.

What About Our Educated Elite?

Although it is painfully obvious that the United Nations elite have a high level of contempt for the average person, surely those people responsible for educating our children will teach the time honored virtues of the United States Constitution. Surely, they will teach their students to develop a healthy respect for American sovereignty so that the genocidal lunatics running the United Nations are unable to put their genocidal schemes into motion. Upon further review, this is not the case as I bring to you the words of those who educate and mold the minds of our young people.

War and famine would not do. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved. AIDS is not an efficient killer because it is too slow. My favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world’s population is airborne Ebola (Ebola Reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. “We’ve got airborne diseases with 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that. “You know, the bird flu’s good, too. For everyone who survives, he will have to bury nine”

Dr. Eric Pianka University of Texas speaking on the topic of reducing the world’s population to an audience on population control.

A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells, the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”

Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb

“We have to take away from humans in the long run their reproductive autonomy as the only way to guarantee the advancement of mankind.”

Francis Crick, The discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA

It strongly appears that the Eugenicists patrolling corridors of educational institutions possess the same disdain for mankind as do the lunatic officials from the United Nations.

What About the Environmental Elites?

It is apparent that humanity cannot look to the sociopathic leaders of the United Nations and America’s top academic leaders for salvation. But certainly the eco-friendly environmentalists, with their penchant for saving the whales and the spotted owl will ride to the rescue of mankind. Regrettably, this is also not the case. It seems that the humanitarian spirit of the environmentalists does not apply to any species which possess a collapsible thumb, the power of speech and has a well-developed cerebral cortex. Again, the words of the elite exposes their depopulation agenda.

“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Leader of the World Wildlife Fund

Malthus has been vindicated; reality is finally catching up with Malthus. The Third World is overpopulated, it’s an economic mess, and there’s no way they could get out of it with this fast-growing population. Our philosophy is: back to the village.”

Dr. Arne Schiotz, World Wildlife Fund Director of Conservation

What About Our Government Leaders?

Historically, many Americans believe that they can look to the government to protect them from the evils of the world. It is clear that our blind trust in our public officials is misplaced. Our leaders are not our friends, and have not been for a very long time as evidenced by the following quotes:

“Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind”
Theodore Roosevelt

“There is a single theme behind all our work–we must reduce population levels. Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it….” “Our program in El Salvador didn’t work. The infrastructure was not there to support it. There were just too goddamned many people…. To really reduce population, quickly, you have to pull all the males into the fighting and you have to kill significant numbers of fertile age females….” The quickest way to reduce population is through famine, like in Africa, or through disease like the Black Death….

Thomas Ferguson, State Department Office of Population Affairs

“Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.”

Dr. Henry Kissinger

“The world’s population needs to be reduced by 50%,” and “The elderly are useless eaters”

Dr. Henry Kissinger

“The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.”

Obama’s science czar John P. Holdren: From Ecoscience

“It is easier to kill a million people rather than trying to control a million people… people are fighting back…our capacity to impose control over humanity is at an historical low…”

Zbignew Brzezinsk

One percent of the population is sociopathic. Here are two clear markers for Sociopaths, discoverable in their behavior patterns: 1) Sociopaths have no conscience. Hence, 2) Sociopaths cannot feel guilt nor remorse, like ordinary people can.

These are evil people, very evil people. Superficially charming, they are selfish, greedy, unemphathetic, manipulative, and prone to violence and abuse. They steal, cheat, vandalize others property, swindle, and they are pathological liars. They are unconcerned with the feelings of other humans, who are mere objects to be used, and have little or no conscience

A recent book, authored by Martha Stout, in which the material came from released government documents CEO’s are three times more likely to be a sociopath than the general population. Politicians are four times more likely to be sociopathic than you and I. These are the people who seek power and once they obtain that power, the seek absolute power, much to detriment of the soon-to-be extinct members of human race.

What Is Humanity To Do?

If humanity is to preserve itself in its present form, it will be necessary to educate the masses as to the planned perils which lie ahead. The pro-human preservation movement needs bodies, billions and billions of bodies. Yet, the very victims of the coming planned genocide are dumbed down by various federal education programs and propagandized into a false sense of security by the mainstream media which is owned by six global elite corporations who also want you gone.

Judge a Man by What He Does, Not What He Says

As you attempt to educate your fellow man, you will, no doubt, be asked the question as to how the elite are attempting to accomplish their depopulation agenda. The true weapons of mass destruction include some of the following:

1. Aluminum and chemical based vaccines.

2. Chemtrails laced with barium, strontium and aluminum.

3. Fifty percent of “rushed to market” pharmaceuticals.

4. Hospitals are replete with virulent and deadly staff infections.

5. Cancer-causing GMO’s.

6. The hording of food.

7. The hording of water.

8. Unabated and deliberate exposure to Fukushima radiation.

9. The specter of World War III, complete with nuclear weapons, breaking out in Ukraine.

10. Democide (death by government) killed 260 million people in the 20th century and many feel that the globalists are just getting armed up.

11. The anesthetization of America through deliberately dumbing down of the citizens.

12. The United States, alone, has enough chemical, biological and nuclear weapons to destroy the world 100 times over.

Don’t write to me and ask me what I am going to do. It is time for the “awake” to get to work. What are you going to do?

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Dave Hodges is the host of the popular weekly talk show, The Common Sense Show, which airs on Sunday nights from 9pm – Midnight (central) on the Republic Broadcasting Network and its 29 affiliate stations. Dave also hosts a website (www.thecommonsenseshow.com) in which he writes daily articles on the geopolitical state of affairs both nationally and internationally. The theme of Dave’s show and website centers around exposing the corruption and treason which has invaded the presidency and Congress as well as their corporate and banking benefactors. Dave is an award winning psychology, sociology, statistics and research professor. He is also a former college basketball coach who retired as the winningest coach in his college’s history. A mental health therapist by training, Dave brings a broad based perspective in his fight against the corrupt central banking cartels which have hijacked the US government. Dave and his wife, Nora have one son and they presently reside in rural Arizona approximately 25 miles north of the greater Phoenix area. Dave was drawn to the fight for freedom when the globalist central banking forces, led by Senator John McCain, attempted to seize his home and property and that of 300 of his neighbors, without one dime being offered in compensation. This attempted public theft of private property was conducted for the purpose of securing cheap land in which the globalists intended on putting in an international highway through their area known as the Canamex Corridor. Dave’s community appointed him the spokesperson and eventually his community won their fight against the bankers and their front man, Senator McCain. This event launched Dave’s career as a broadcaster and an investigative journalist. Dave’s website presently enjoys over a half a million visitors every month.

HYGIENE AND HOSPITALS:FAR FAR APART

India baby deaths spark Calcutta hospital negligence row

A government-run hospital in Calcutta has been accused of negligence after the deaths of 30 babies admitted to its care in the last four days. In 2011 it was cleared of negligence after the death of 18 babies in two days.

As a result of that inquiry, a new neo-natal unit was installed to provide better treatment. But critics say the state government needs to invest more money to ensure all sick children receive the best care.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-24000951]

'Poor hygiene' led to baby death at University Hospital of North Staffordshire

Jessica was moved to the UHNS after being born 14 weeks premature at a hospital in Nuneaton.

"Poor hand hygiene" by hospital staff may have been to blame for the death of a baby who contracted a fatal infection, an inquest has heard. Jessica Strong, who was born 14 weeks premature, got the Serratia marcescens bug at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire (UHNS) in July. She was one of two babies who died from the bug which led to a two week closure of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

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The North Staffordshire coroner Ian Smith recorded a narrative verdict. Jessica was born 14 weeks early at George Eliot hospital in Nuneaton but because of her prematurity she was moved to the UHNS. The inquest heard that after she became ill, doctors took several blood samples but only identified a possible cause for her symptoms the day before her death.

The lead infection control nurse at the hospital, Emyr Phillips, told the inquest that the infection could only have been spread by direct contact. Six children in the unit were found to have traces of the bug but only two had become infected, he said.

Exact cause unclear

The court heard Mr Phillips believed general standards of cleanliness on the ward were high but the bug had been spread by "poor hand hygiene." He said: "Clearly there has been a breakdown in hand hygiene practice but we will never know exactly how the spread of infection occurred." Recording a narrative verdict, the North Staffordshire coroner, Ian Smith, said Jessica's death had been caused by "extreme prematurity and an infection spread by human contact."

The University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust said since the incident, it had started a new cleaning regime and employed three nurses to ensure standards of hygiene were maintained. The hospital trust has admitted clinical negligence over Jessica's death. Her parents, Craig and Annette Strong, said that they had appointed solicitors to take legal action against the trust.

'Disgraceful and upsetting'

Mrs Strong said: "I believe that the infection has been spread by a member of staff, there's no way one parent could've contracted it and passed it on to six other babies." "It shouldn't have taken two deaths to have the new hygiene steps put in place, it's disgraceful and upsetting." Mrs Strong said they were expecting another baby girl in June this year.

She said: "It's absolutely fantastic but Jessica will never ever in our hearts be replaced." An inquest into the death of the second baby who also died from the infection will be held later this year.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-22206246]

Newborn Deaths in Brazil Tied to Bacteria, Hygiene in Question at Hospitals

Health authorities in the Brazilian capital reported Tuesday the death of a baby in hospital, apparently from a bacteria suspected of causing the deaths of another five newborns in the past 12 days. The deaths have taken place since March 28 at the Regional Hospital in the Brasilia suburb of Ceilandia, and doctors suspect that all were caused by the Serratia bacteria. In every case the fatality was an infant just hours or days old, as occurred Tuesday with a child born last Sunday and who died in circumstances similar to the previous ones.

Another two babies are under observation out of concern that they might also have been infected from causes still not established. Serratia is a bacillus that grows in liquids and on damp surfaces and that can cause illnesses ranging from conjunctivitis to serious liver and urinary-tract infections. The Brasilia Health Secretariat said Tuesday that health experts have begun investigating Ceilandia Regional Hospital to check on its hygienic conditions and determine how the bacteria developed in those facilities.

[http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/04/newborn-deaths-in-brazil-tied-to-bacteria-hygiene-in-question-at-hospitals-2616284.html]

Babies' deaths put spotlight on hospital hygiene

The deaths of three premature babies in a Bremen neonatal clinic has prompted renewed calls for more hygienic expertise in German hospitals.

Premature babies have been at risk from infection:

The health ministry of the German city-state of Bremen says that the three neonatal deaths since August in the city-state's Central Hospital have been traced to drug-resistant bacteria. Ministry spokeswoman Karla Götz said four surviving premature newborns remain sick.

Specialists from Germany's Robert Koch Institute (RKI) had been sent to the Bremen hospital to identify the source of the infection, she added. She rejected speculation that contaminated liquid nutrition might have led to the fatalities. "We still do not know the [exact] cause." The ward had, however, as a precaution ceased taking in further newborns.

Bremen's Central Hospital has ceased to admit premature babies:

The clinic's management, meanwhile, is facing criticism from opposition parties in the Bremen parliament for its delay in notifying the public about the outbreak. The first death occurred on August 8; the latest last Thursday, October 27. Clinic managers said they had notified authorities.

Bremen prosecutors say they have begun an investigation.

Renewed calls for better hygiene in clinics

The outbreak, reminiscent of three neonatal deaths in Mainz in central Germany in August last year, has prompted the German Association for Hospital Hygiene to demand more personnel in clinics nationwide. Association spokesman Klaus-Dieter Zastrow told German ZDF public television on Thursday that nursing staff were often overworked. Studies had shown, Zastrow said, that premature babies required especially "delicate" one-on-one supervision. "One cannot jump to-and-fro between six newborns. If there is a shortage of personnel, then the risk of infection climbs rapidly," he said.

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In July the German parliament passed new hygiene legislation requiring standardized hygiene practices nationwide to overcome a patchwork of regulations across 16 federal states. 

Deaths through preventable infections At the time, the federal health ministry confirmed estimates that each year between 10,000 and 15,000 patients of all ages die from hospital infections.

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The Robert Koch Institute was asked to draw up recommendations for doctors in dealing with multiply resistant pathogens and how to efficiently use antibiotics long known to mutate.

Experts at a surgeons' conference in Munich in May said the key remedy was prevention through more stringent hygiene in clinics. As a result, clinic infection could be lowered by up to 30 percent, they said. The babies who died in Bremen were infected with stomach bacteria which emit an enzyme that deactivates common antibiotics. The bacterial behavior - not a form of mutation - is known as Extended-Spectrum-Beta Laktamasen (ESBL).

Author: Ian Johnson (dpa, AFP, Reuters, dapd)Editor: Michael Lawton

http://www.dw.de/babies-deaths-put-spotlight-on-hospital-hygiene/a-15508209

Hygiene standards in German hospitals are questioned after babies’ deaths

BMJ 2010; 341 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c4731 (Published 27 August 2010)

Ned Stafford, Hamburg

The deaths of three babies after apparently being infected from intravenous drip infusions at the University of Mainz Medical Centre in Germany has sparked a debate among politicians and doctors over hygiene standards at German hospitals.

On 20 August 11 premature or seriously ill babies being treated in the hospital’s intensive care unit received the contaminated infusions, the university said. Two babies with congenital heart defects died the next day, and a third baby, born prematurely, died on 23 August. Four other babies also became seriously ill from the infusions, but their conditions had improved significantly by 27 August. It is not yet clear how the drips became contaminated.

http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4731

New way to steer clear of the most infection prone public hospitals

• by: Sue Dunlevy National Health Reporter 
• From: News Limited Network  July 06, 2013 6:33PM

Hospitals are full of sick people, so they are also full of germs and bacteria, but some are cleaner than others.  AUSTRALIANS can now avoid the nation's dirtiest or infection prone public hospitals and find the best performers using a new internet tool.

Health fund HCF has developed a web based search engine - www.hcf.com.au/hospitalsafetyandquality - that allows patients to compare the superbug infection rate and handwashing records of up to ten hospitals at a time.

A search through hospitals in Sydney reveals that Westmead and Blacktown hospitals have rates of superbug and golden staph infections that exceed national benchmarks of two cases per 10,000 patients treated. Meanwhile, the Royal Prince Alfred, the Royal Hospital for women and St Vincent's Hospital have lower infection rates.

In Melbourne, the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre has rates of superbug and golden staph infections that exceed national benchmarks or two cases per 10,000 patients treated, but the Royal Women's Hospital and St Vincent's Hospital have much lower infection rates. A Brisbane search shows none have golden staph infection rates that exceed the national benchmark. In fact, The Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane has the lowest rate of such infections in the country at 0.47 cases per 10,000 patients treated, well below the national benchmark of two cases per 10,000 patients.

A search through hospitals in Adelaide shows the Royal Adelaide Hospital has rates of superbug infections that exceed the national benchmark. The search engine shows all the major hospitals in Perth performed well, with low rates of superbug infections. King Edward Hospital had the lowest golden staph infection rates and Armadale public hospital also rated well. In Tasmania, the Royal Hobart Hospital is a good performer with superbug infection rates below the benchmark.

Golden staph is a bloodstream infection that proves fatal in 20-35 percent of cases and it is used as a key measure of hospital quality and safety. Each year, around 35,000 Australians treated in public and private hospitals develop an infection following a procedure.

In 2011-12, 1725 of these infections in public hospitals were golden staph infections.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health-fitness/new-way-to-steer-clear-of-the-most-infection-prone-public-hospitals/story-fneuzlbd-1226675300575#ixzz2eWcHSJL0

CONCLUSION:

In the invisible, parallel world of Earth's they kill half the bacteria in the ocean every day, and invade a microbe host 10 trillion times a second around the world.  There are 10 billion trillion, trillion viruses inhabiting Planet Earth, which is more stars than are in the Universe -- stacked end to end, they would reach out 100 million light years.

Over tens, hundreds and millions years, our ancestors have been picking up retroviruses (HIV is a retrovirus) that reproduce by taking their genetic material and inserting it into our own chromosomes. There are probably about 100,000 elements in the human genome that you can trace to a virus ancestor. They make up about 8 percent of our genome, and genes that encode proteins only make up 1.2 percent of our genome making us more virus than human.

Occasionally, a retrovirus will end up in a sperm cell or an egg and insert its genes there, which then may give rise to a new organism, a new animal, a new person where every cell in that body has got that virus.

In 2009, MIT researchers have explained why two mutations in the H1N1 avian flu virus were critical for viral transmission in humans during the 1918 pandemic outbreak that killed at least 50 million people -- believed more than that taken by the Black Death, and higher than the number killed in World War I.

The 1918 flu pandemic -- commonly known as the Spanish flu -- was an influenza pandemic that started in the United States, appeared in West Africa and France and then spread to nearly every part of the globe in three waves lasting from March 1918 to June 1920, spreading to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. It was caused by an unusually severe and deadly Influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1.

Scientists have found a half dozen other strains that cause similar illnesses, but E. coli O157:H7 has been responsible for the lion’s share of E. coli food poisoning, striking again in 1993 in contaminated hamburgers in Washington state, for example, sickening 732 people and killing four of them. But it has not used just hamburger to infect its victims. Along with the spinach outbreak of 2006, E. coli O157:H7 has turned up in lettuce, bean sprouts, and even cookie dough.

A deadly new strain of E. coli has spread fear across Europe about meat and vegatables.The sudden debut of E. coli O157:H7 in the 1980s made many people wonder how it had come to be. Was it the monstrous product of the modern food industry? Tarr and his colleagues analyzed the genome of the bacteria to estimate its time of origin.

“These organisms have been around for 7,000 years,” says Tarr. It’s possible that E. coli O157:H7 and other pathogenic strains caused outbreaks for centuries before microbiologists could identify them as the cause.

A look at the genetic makeup of E. coli O157:H7 is cause for even more concern. It evolved into a deadly pathogen by picking up genes from other bacteria through a process called recombination. Viruses, for example, can move from one E. coli to another and insert genes from their old host into a new one. “E. coli are a cauldron of recombination,” says Tarr.

Microbes have evolved with us over the millennia, shaping human civilization through infection, disease, and deadly pandemic. Beginning with a dramatic account of the SARS pandemic at the start of the 21st century, As our move from hunter-gatherer to farmer to city-dweller accelerated, we became ever more vulnerable to microbe attack. With increased crowding and air travel putting us at risk, Crawford wonders whether we might ever conquer microbes completely, and whether we need a more microbe-centric view of the world.

The Daily Galaxy via Newsweek.com, npr.org and carlzimmer.com

Image credit Spanish Flu Virus: Courtesy,  Yoshihiro Kawaoka, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Meet Your New Symbionts: Trillions of Viruses

by Carl Zimmer

With deadly new viruses emerging these days in Saudi Arabia and China, it can be hard to imagine that viruses can be good for anything. It’s easy to forget that we are home to trillions–perhaps quadrillions–of viruses on our healthiest days. And, according to a team of California scientists, those viruses are our symbiotic partners, creating a second immune system. These viruses serve as a defensive front-line, keeping bacteria from invading our gut lining and causing deadly infections.

The viruses in question are far less familiar than, say, influenza viruses or Ebola viruses. They are known as bacteriophages, which means “eater of bacteria.” And yet bacteriophages (or phages for short) are vastly more common than viruses that infect humans. They’re more common than all the viruses that infect every animal on Earth. The reason is simple arithmetic: there are far more hosts for phages to multiply in than there are for viruses that infect our own cells. They’re in the ground, in the oceans, under ice, and in the air. By some estimates, there are 1031 phages on Earth. That makes phages the most abundant life form, period.

Consider the bacteria that line the delicate walls of our large intestines. If they multiplied with abandon, they would end up pushing down into the intestinal wall, pressing against our cells and wedging between them. If they broke through, they’d get swept away into the bloodstream where they could cause dangerous infections.

Our intestinal walls are also loaded with immune cells, and they can make this kind of a breach even more damaging. They may overreact, causing dangerous levels of inflammation in the intestines–creating a new environment that can foster the growth of disease-causing bacteria.

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To avoid this disaster, our bodies hold back the microbiome. One strategy that intestinal cells use for their defense is secreting a dense layer of mucus.  While the surface of the mucus provides lots of tasty food for bacteria, the lower levels are so dense they’re hard for the microbes to invade. Our intestines also defense themselves from the microbiome by secreting microbe-killing molecules to knock off any bacteria that get too close to breaching the wall. And when pathogens invade, our intestines can ramp up these defenses–making more antimicrobials and even thicker layers of mucus.

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Scientists have found viruses in other species, such as fungi, plants, and insects, that help out their hosts. It’s possible that we can add ourselves to the list of hosts that depend on their own virome. If this new research holds up, it will be fascinating to see how far evolution has taken this partnership. Many species that host symbiotic microbes go to great lengths to care for their residents. Some insects even grow special organs to house them. Do we tailor our intestines to grow as many phages as possible?

Answers to these questions might eventually provide us with a new way to approach the enduring dream of phage therapy. Rather than unleashing an invasion of shock troops on infections, maybe we should learn how to help our phages keep up their quiet defenses.

(For more on bacteriophages, see my book A Planet of Viruses.)