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by George Dvorsky
April 02, 2014
from io9 Website
The Pentagon’s advanced research wing has announced its latest budget – and whoa, does DARPA ever have some ambitious plans for the future.
Their new Biotech unit will be harnessing biology for national security, and dealing with everything from stopping plagues to building synthetic soldiers. DARPA’s commitment to cutting-edge innovation is unquestioned.
The very essence of the defense agency is to make sure that U.S. military technology is more sophisticated than that of the nation’s rivals.
Among its many current initiatives, DARPA is working on,
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self-teaching computers (if anyone’s going to build a recursively improving AI it’s going to be DARPA)
In addition to these projects, DARPA has been busy at work on various biotechnology-related endeavors, but these attempts to date have lacked cohesion and focus.
Looking to change this, DARPA has announced the creation of its Biological Technologies Office (BTO) – an effort to,
“explore the the increasingly dynamic intersection of biology and the physical sciences.”
The new division will expand upon its Defense Sciences (DSO) and Microsystems Technology (MTO) Offices.
Speaking to the U.S. House of Representatives last week, DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar said that,
“Biology is nature’s ultimate innovator, and any agency that hangs its hat on innovation would be foolish not to look to this master of networked complexity for inspiration and solutions.”
Indeed, the new division will look into three incredibly promising research areas.
The Transhuman Soldier
A priority for DARPA is in restoring and maintaining the abilities of its war-fighters. It wants to maintain peak soldier abilities and then restore those abilities as soon as possible after an injury.
This will include the development of advanced prosthetics (featuring mind-controlled limbs), neural interfaces, the ability to survive blood loss, and even neurotechnological solutions to treat psychological trauma such as PTSD.
DARPA has already made tremendous strides in this area.
Speaking to NPR’s Marketplace, Prabhakar noted:
We had quadriplegic volunteers who agreed to have brain surgery, essentially have a small array placed on the surface of their brains, to pick up these neural signals for motor control, and then to use those to control these new, very sophisticated, robotic, prosthetic arms.
In a sense we’ve opened a door – a connection between the human brain and the rest of the world. You can let your imagination go wild about where that’s going to take us.
No doubt – many of these therapeutic technologies will be leveraged to enhance the capacities of soldiers.
For example, work on memory impairments is leading to new insights into the brain’s functioning. This will inform the development of technologies that will help soldiers interact with complex systems; future interfaces and tools will deliver information to soldiers in a way that’s easier for them to understand (which is a growing problem – our systems are starting to operate faster than human comprehension).
As Prabhakar says, there’s,
“going to be a future where we start learning radically new ways to interact between the complexity of the human brain and the complexity of the world around us.”
And with the introduction of its biochronicity program, DARPA could get a handle on human metabolism and aging, resulting in enhanced human combat performance and freakishly resilient soldiers (both in terms of resisting and recovering from physical injury and resistance to disease).
In addition, DARPA is looking to develop technologies that will identify and protect against infectious diseases, such as tools that will neutralize biological threats.
To Seek Out – And Create – New Life
The Pentagon also wants to dabble in artificial life as a way to create completely new biological systems, products, and materials.
It’s hoping to gain a better understanding of natural process and the underlying design rules that govern the behavior of biological systems, and then apply that knowledge to forward-engineer new systems and products with completely novel functionality.
This is particularly interesting news considering that biologists have recently built an artificial chromosome from scratch.
Once refined, this biotechnology will allow for the creation of entirely new organisms, while adding new capacities (or “features”) to existing ones – including humans. Imagine a soldier who never needs to sleep, requires minimal sustenance, or who has cat-like infrared vision.
Artificial chromosomes could pave the way towards this kind of future – technologies that could eventually trickle into the civilian domain (much like the Internet and GPS has – both military innovations).
Interestingly, this meshes well with DARPA’s existing BioDesign program which is studying the potential for synthetic organisms to be engineered for immortality and programmed with a kill switch that allows it to be turned off at any time.
This recently prompted Motherboard‘s Meghan Neal to ask,
“Why bother with mechanical robots when you can engineer fake human replicants to fight your battles?
We haven’t heard much about the Pentagon’s would-be synthetic soldiers since then, but the BioDesign program got a bump from $11.4 to $19.3 million in next year’s budget.”
As part of the BTO initiative, DARPA’s Living Foundries program will focus on:
…creating a biologically based manufacturing platform to provide rapid, scalable access to new materials with novel properties that can enable a new generation of mechanical, electrical, and optical products.
While its Chronicle of Lineage Indicative of Origins (CLIO) program aims to:
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make biological engineering safer by establishing enduring control elements that protect against intentionally harmful genetic engineering
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prevent illegal acquisition or misuse of proprietary strains,
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provide novel forensic tools to assist in the investigation of biological incidents
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allow responsible investigators to document compliance with safe biological manipulation practices
Preventing Plagues
Smartly, DARPA is also looking into ways of preventing and mitigating the effects of a global pandemic.
The complexity and unpredictability of outbreaks, it says, is a reflection of our poor understanding of the dynamics involved. In addition, the research agency wants to study larger biological and ecological phenomena, including population-level effects of relevance to agriculture and food security.
With its launch of BTO, DARPA says it also wants to consider the implications of what it’s doing.
To that end, DARPA will periodically converse with experts in these issues to discuss relevant ethical, legal, and social issues
by Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton
July 29, 2013
from TruthstreamMedia Website
We’re no molecular biologists over here,
but have you ever seen the sci-fi flick Gattaca?
In that 1997 film, society is structured around eugenics as people are bioengineered to be ‘perfect specimens’, and one’s entire life and position in the world is based on their genetics.
Those conceived naturally without genetic screening are proclaimed “invalid” and only allowed menial jobs, despite the innate talents and skills they may possess.
Alternately, the 2011 movie In Time portrays a dystopic future where humans are genetically programmed to stop aging at 25 and could live forever – so long as they earn enough “time credits” to afford to stay alive; the poor perish swiftly under an artificially skyrocketing cost of living that times out their clocks, while the rich who steer the technocracy are gaming the system and living indefinitely.
Such nightmare scenarios place obvious restrictions on the natural right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Back in reality, alarmingly similar ends are being pursued.
DARPA, the Department of Defense’s research arm, has just put out a new solicitation for a project called, “Advanced Tools for Mammalian Genome Engineering” on the government’s Federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) site.
This project isn’t just for engineering any mammal’s genome, however; it’s specifically for the bioengineering of humans.
The proposal explains the project’s details:
“The ability to deliver exogenous DNA to mammalian cell lines is a fundamental tool in the development of advanced therapeutics, vaccines, and cellular diagnostics, as well as for basic biological and biomedical research…
The successful development of technologies for rapid introduction of large DNA vectors into human cell lines will enable the ability to engineer much more complex functionalities into human cell lines than are currently possible.”
The project’s stated objective is to,
“improve the utility of Human Artificial Chromosomes (HACs).”
(Gallows humor jokes about how DARPA wants to literally HAC(k) you can be made at any time.)
A Wikipedia entry explains in relatively plain language what a HAC is and what it does:
“A human artificial chromosome (HAC) is a microchromosome that can act as a new chromosome in a population of human cells.
That is, instead of 46 chromosomes, the cell could have 47 with the 47th being very small, roughly 6-10 megabases in size, and able to carry new genes introduced by human researchers.”
So DARPA and its team of associated scientists want to introduce an entirely new 47th chromosome into human genetics as a vector platform for inserting bio-alterations and wholesale genetic “improvements” into our DNA.
The agency hopes that development of a new chromosome will allow a solution to the limitations of current “state-of-the-art” gene transfer technologies (including plasmids, adenovirus-, lentivirus-, and retrovirus-vectors, cDNA, and minigene constructs).
The proposal explains that existing approaches must be improved due to known drawbacks in the scientists’ failure to control their results, causing a few minor major problems:
“These include random DNA insertion into the host genome, variation in stable integration sites between cell lines, variation in the copy number and expression level of DNA that is delivered, limitations on the number and size of DNA constructs that can be delivered, and immunological responses to foreign DNA. “
Yet these techniques are already in use? How reassuring.
Ever hear the term ‘playing God’? Scientists who work in these fields not only refer to themselves as “genome engineers,” but “biological designers” in their journal articles.
This January 2013 piece in the journal Molecular Systems Biology introduces the topic with a chilling description:
“The phrase ‘genome-scale engineering’ invokes a future in which organisms are custom designed to serve humanity. Yet humans have sculpted the genomes of domesticated plants and animals for generations.
Darwin’s contemporary William Youatt described selective breeding as ‘that which enables the agriculturalist, not only to modify the character of his flock, but to change it altogether. It is the magician’s wand, by means of which he may summon into life whatever form and mold he pleases’ (Youatt, 1837).”
It’s impossible to even compile an accurate listing of all the potential slippery slopes at play here, yet it is clear that this entails a momentous grasp at controlling life, which not only empowers an already dictatorial technocratic elite, but emboldens a delusional and destructive cadre intent on overwriting the existing species now on Earth.
Watch the 30 second promo video below where an investment firm (with their creepy all seeing eye logo) nonchalantly projects that within 50 years, science will displace natural life by a factor of 50-to-1 with artificial lab-created species, including plants, animals, humans, bacteria and viruses.
Fidelity Investments Forecasts the Creation
…of 50x More Synthetic Biological Species than Known Natural Species
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Through DARPA, our government funds a laundry list of projects to gain technocratic control of the future that reads more like a summary of the latest sci-fi horror film plots.
Case in point: just today it was reported “Secret DARPA Mind Control Project Revealed – Leaked Document“.
When looking at one DARPA project to perfect mind control techniques – or a second DARPA project to study the human hormone oxytocin to ‘improve’ our response to government propaganda – or a third DARPA brain interface project that would literally turn soldiers into cyborgs, it’s creepy enough.
However, when looking at all of these projects together as a combined effort… it raises chilling questions as to what kind of dystopic, technocratic future they are forcing us into.
These developments only include a small sampling of what we know is admittedly going on. Who knows what is actually taking place behind the scenes.
Exactly how many far-reaching and potentially disastrous implications of our government literally playing God are there?
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After more than four years of research, DARPA has created a system that successfully combines,
Called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS), it will be used in a combat setting to significantly improve the US Army’s threat detection capabilities.
There are two discrete parts to the system:
Images from the camera are fed into the computer system, which runs cognitive visual processing algorithms to detect possible threats (enemy combatants, sniper nests, IEDs).
These possible threats are then shown to a soldier whose brain then works out if they’re real threats – or a false alarm (a tree branch, a shadow thrown by an overheard bird).
The soldier is linked into the computer system via an EEG (electroencephalogram) brain-computer interface that continually scans his brains for P300 responses.
As we’ve discussed previously (see Hackers backdoor the human brain), a P300 response is triggered when your brain recognizes something important. This might be a face of someone you know or the glint of a sniper scope – it doesn’t matter.
P300 responses are very reliable and can even be triggered subconsciously.
In short, CT2WS taps the human brain’s unsurpassed ability to recognize objects. In testing, the 120-megapixel camera, combined with the computer vision algorithms, generated 810 false alarms per hour; with a human operator strapped into the EEG, that drops down to just five false alarms per hour.
The human brain is surprisingly fast, too:
Moving forward, once our computers are suitably power efficient (or there’s a breakthrough in battery efficiency), the ultimate goal is to create binoculars or head-up displays (HUD) with threat detection technology built in.
It’s very tiring for a soldier to be constantly on the lookout for threats – but such a system could monitor the surroundings, and then flash up images of potential threats for the soldier to act upon, significantly lowering his workload.
With a large enough sensor and the right lenses, such a system could allow the soldier to see for miles in every direction.
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by Rady Ananda
January 30, 2012
from ActivistPost Website
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Rady Ananda is an investigative reporter and researcher in the areas of health, environment, politics, and civil liberties. Her two websites, Food Freedom and COTO Report are essential reading. |
Imagine having the mental prowess to be able to create living filaments heretofore unknown, that can reproduce themselves, some of which come with identifying letters embossed on them, and then to make them extrude from beneath your skin, all against your conscious will.
Sound like science fiction? It’s not, says the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Despite having spent four years and $600,000, and using the world’s largest forensic database, the premier health agency reports it is unable to identify the source of the fibers emanating from those suffering with Morgellons. [1]
The CDC suggests that four out of a hundred thousand people – the rate of infection in Northern California – are imagining these filaments into existence.
Comprising an array of physical and mental symptoms [2], Morgellons is distinguished by novel fibers that protrude from the skin, causing lesions and sores that do not heal, or that heal very slowly.
“We conducted an investigation of this unexplained dermopathy to characterize the clinical and epidemiologic features and explore potential etiologies,” the paper explains.
The only potential etiology suggested was that the patients were delusional:
No common underlying medical condition or infectious source was identified, similar to more commonly recognized conditions such as delusional infestation.
The CDC provided more information in its press releases [3] hyping the study than it did in the 300-word study published last week.
Its Unexplained Dermopathy webpage goes beyond what was reported in the actual study, saying there is “no evidence of an environmental link,” and promised to do no further studies. [4]
“People who suffer from Morgellons disease are NOT delusional no matter what the CDC or the mainstream press would have you believe,” says Jan Smith of MorgellonsExposed.com.
She’s suffered with Morgellons for over 13 years.
The image above is on her home page.
“Ponder why a person with Morgellons disease would have tissue coming out of their body with embossed letters on it. This photo (above) is real and the sample has not been altered in any way. It is available for research and DNA testing.” [5]
The CDC study reported,
“Most materials collected from participants’ skin were composed of cellulose, likely of cotton origin.”
One of the specimens extruded from Smith’s body was found to be composed of cellulose and GNA, the synthetic form of DNA. [6] Glycol nucleic acid does not occur naturally; it is used to create synthetic life forms. [7]
But why would the CDC not know exactly the origin of the cellulose, instead saying it’s likely from cotton? And what about the rest that was not cellulose? The study provided no details.
The CDC sent the cellulose and unnatural fibers to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), reports the Associated Press. [8] AFIP has been collecting fiber samples and other forensic material for 150 years. [9] Its 2011 budget was $65 million. [10]
Surely, if these novel fibers are natural or lab-created, the AFIP would know. Apparently not.
AFIP is the same group that collected all the forensic evidence of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and at the Pennsylvania crash site, under code name Operation Noble Eagle. [11]
The Center for the Investigation of Morgellons Disease, headed by Dr. Randy Wymore, was also unable to identify the fibers.
The Oklahoma State University research center had the forensics team of the Tulsa Police Dept. compare samples to its database of 800 fibers and 90,000 organic compounds, without success, reports Natural News writer Barbara Minton. [12]
Though Wymore did not respond to my request for comment in reaction to the new CDC study, the Center’s home page still maintains that Morgellons,
“is frequently misdiagnosed as Delusional Parasitosis or an Obsessive Picking Disorder.” [2]
What is the CDC hiding about Morgellons?
What the CDC didn’t say in the public report is that those fibers are alive and motile.
They grow and reproduce, and have been shown to do so in a petri dish using certain visible light frequencies. If delusions are creating them, that would be a first in human evolution.
Research conducted by Cliff Carnicom indicates that the still-unidentified fibers seen in Morgellons patients are the same as those collected after an aerial spray of chemtrails. [13]
After being cultured for five days, the fibers produced a sheen across the wine medium, right before explosively reproducing hundreds of new fibers in a 24-hour period. [14]
He later explored how these nano-worms feed on the iron in human blood, explaining that,
“changes in iron and the utilization of iron in a pathogenic sense are at the heart of the Morgellons issue.” [15]
An arduous course of research led Carnicom to conclude that the nanoworms present in Morgellons patients represent an entirely new life form, and one that was engineered using features from each of the three Domains of life:
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Bacteria
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Archaea
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Eukarya [16]
To bolster his argument, he refers to a Feb. 2010 disclosure by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),
“to develop immortal ‘synthetic organisms’, as outlined in the unclassified version of the 2011 budget,” citing Wired.com:
As part of its budget for the next year, DARPA is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating ‘the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.’
“… The project comes as DARPA also plans to throw $20 million into a new synthetic biology program, and $7.5 million into ‘increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes.” [17]
If these unidentified fibers are some sort of top-secret nanotech military weapon, that would explain why no answer and no help will come from the CDC or the military.
Using Carnicom’s research, and others, documentarian Sofia Smallstorm (9/11 Mysteries) raised a singularly spectacular question at a speech last year:
Is it possible that Morgellons sufferers are those whose bodies are genetically rejecting these nano-engineered life forms, while our bodies are integrating them? [6]
That question must be noodling the brains over at the CDC and DARPA.
They must be wondering what is different about those 4 in 100,000 people whose bodies reject these synthetic life forms. The report they didn’t reveal to the public is the one I want to read.
We do know that back in 2006, the National Institutes of Health listed Morgellons as a genetically caused disease, due to the presence of three copies of a chromosome rather than the normal two (known as trisomy).
This was found at the 5S rRNA genes located on chromosome 1, in the q42.11 to q42.12 region, according to the following screen capture by Jan Smith, who explains that a year later NIH deleted the webpage (click below image): [18]
Trisomy can result in mental retardation and physical deformities. [19]
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Are these bioengineered life forms causing rRNA to produce a third copy of chromosome 1 at q42.11 to q42.12?
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Or, do Morgellons sufferers already have a third copy, and its presence is somehow forcing the nano-worms to leave the body?
Several people agree with Carnicom that these living fibers are being sprayed on us via the vociferously denied chemtrail program.
Morgellons patient Kandy Griffin, president of Morgellons Research Group, puts it right out there:
Morgellons is not a disease. It is a process. It is a form of forced/directed evolution of the human genome. It is the fetal stage of transhumanism, and it is upon us.
This stealth project is being carried out with the use of the daily chemtrail operations, which are happening globally. There is no escape. The chemtrail operations are terraforming the earth and everything on it, including you. [20]
There is hope.
In the last section of Carnicom’s Thesis, he suggests several mitigation strategies that would apply equally to those who develop Morgellons and those who don’t, but who are likely assimilating rather than rejecting these bioengineered life forms. [15]
Notes
[1] Pearson ML, Selby JV, Katz KA, Cantrell V, Braden CR, et al. (2012) “Clinical, Epidemiologic, Histopathologic and Molecular Features of an Unexplained Dermopathy.” PLoS ONE 7(1): e29908. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029908. Available at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029908
[2] Oklahoma State University Center for the Investigation of Morgellons Disease homepage http://www.healthsciences.okstate.edu/morgellons/index.cfm
See also: Randy S. Wymore and Rhonda Casey, “Morgellons Disease” (Joint Statement to the medical community), Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, Tulsa, 15 May 2006. http://www.healthsciences.okstate.edu/morgellons/Joint%20Statement_4.pdf
Wymore, “A position statement from Randy S. Wymore on the topic of Morgellons Disease and other Morgellons-related issues,” 19 June 2007. http://www.healthsciences.okstate.edu/morgellons/docs/Wymore-position-statement-2-19-07.pdf
[3] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “CDC to launch study on unexplained illness,” 16 Jan. 2008. http://www.cdc.gov/media/pressrel/2008/r080116.htm
See also: Managing Infection Control, “Infection Focus: Morgellons; CDC to launch study on unexplained illness,” March 2008. Reproduced at http://healthvie.com/wp-admin/Articles/mic0308w52.pdf
[4] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “CDC Study of an Unexplained Dermopathy,” 25 Jan. 2012. http://www.cdc.gov/unexplaineddermopathy/
[5] Jan Smith, Morgellons Exposed, n.d. http://www.morgellonsexposed.com/
[6] Sofia Smallstorm, “From Chemtrails to Pseudo-Life: The Dark Agenda of Synthetic Biology,” speech at Conspiracy Con 2011, 4 June 2011, Santa Clara, California.
[7] Science 2.0, “GNA: DNA’s Chemical Cousin Is a Nanotechnology Building Block,” 28 April 2008. http://www.science20.com/news_releases/gna_dnas_chemical_cousin_is_a_nanotechnology_building_block
[8] Mike Stobbe, “Study of freakish mystery illness finds no cause,” Associated Press, 26 Jan. 2012. http://news.yahoo.com/study-freakish-mystery-illness-finds-no-cause-220159892.html
[9] U.S. National Library of Medicine, “Historic Medical Sites: Armed Forces Institute of Pathology,” 2 March 2004 (rev. 3 Aug. 2011), National Institutes of Health. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/medtour/afip.html
[10] Comptroller, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, “Defense Health Program Operation and Maintenance Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 Budget Estimated Consolidated Health Support.” Vol I, Sec 5-C, OP-5, CHS, 11PB, DHP, Exhibit OP-5. p.3. Available at http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2011/budget_justification/pdfs/09_Defense_Health_Program/VOL_1/Vol_I_Sec_5-C_OP-5_CHS_11PB_DHP.pdf
[11] Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, The AFIP Letter, Vol. 159, No. 5, Oct. 2001. Reproduced at http://www.american-buddha.com/operationnobleeagleAFIP.pdf
[12] Barbara L. Minton, “Morgellons: Terrifying New Disease Reaching Pandemic Status,” Natural News, 3 Mar 2009. http://www.naturalnews.com/025757.html#ixzz1NacD5b3d
[13] Clifford E Carnicom, “The Biggest Crime of All Time, Confirmed: Environmental Filament Matched to Morgellons Condition,” 1 March 2011. http://www.carnicom.com/bio2011-2.htm
[14] Carnicom, “A New Form: Frequency Induced Disease?” 8 March 2011. http://www.carnicom.com/bio2011-3.htm
[15] Carnicom, “Morgellons – A Thesis,” 15 Oct. 2011 (rev. 1 Dec. 2011)
[16] Carnicom, “Morgellons: A New Classification,” 3 Feb. 2010 (rev. 11 Feb. 2010) http://www.carnicominstitute.org/articles/morgobs8.htm
[17] Katie Drummond, “Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included,” 5 Feb. 2010.
[18] Jan Smith, “The Hidden NIH Webpage: NIH Website Lists Chromosome 1q42 Responsible for Morgellons Disease,” 18 Jan. 2008. See also: Sorensen PD, Lomholt B, Frederiksen S, Tommerup N, “Fine mapping of human 5S rRNA genes to chromosome 1q42.11–q42.13,” (1991). Cytogenet. Cell Genet. (1991); 1(57): 26-9. Abstract available at http://www.gene-profiles.org/pub/fine-mapping-of-human-5s-rrna-genes-to-chromosome-1q4211—-q4213
[19] March of Dimes, Chromosomal abnormalities, Dec. 2009. http://www.marchofdimes.com/baby/birthdefects_chromosomal.html
[20] Kandy Griffin, “Morgellons is not a disease,” 7 Aug. 2011. Many videos and other sources at: Amir Alwani, “If Chemtrails And HAARP Didn’t Disturb You Enough, Wait Until You Hear About Morgellons,” 21 Nov. 2011.
Read more of Carnicom’s papers.