US plans for
'super-soldiers' using biotech
Email from: sgrforum: 26
March 2003, Added 29-06-03
The
following horror story comes from the March issue of The Ecologist, p.
17. Mercifully, these plans are not yet advanced enough to be of
much use
in the current war.
In the US, the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) is directing research, carried out in federal
laboratories and private universities, aimed a producing
super-soldiers. This 'will invove injecting young men and women
with hormonal, neurological and genetic concoctions; implanting
microchips and electrodes in their bodies to control their internal
organs
and brain functions; and plying them with drugs that deaden some of
their
normal human tendencies -- the need for sleep, the fear of death, the
reluctance
to kill their fellow human beings.'
'Some of the research now underway involves actually
altering the genetic code of soldiers; modifying bits of DNA to fashion
a new type of human specimen -- one that funcions like a machine,
killing tirelessly for days and nights on end. These mutations
will ...guarantee "operational dominance across the whole range of
potential US military employments", the DARPA wizards enthuse.'
'[U]se of amphetamines for pilots has been widespread for
decades ....[In} Afghanistan last spring, ... two US pilots ... killed
four of their Canadian allies in a "friendly fire" bombing raid. ...
[They] say US Air Force
brass pressured them into taking the mind-altering drug before the
fatal
flight.'
What will happen to retired super-soldiers is not
known. 'Even now, the White House is cutting back on health
benefits to military veterans ...'
[The article does not say anything about the prospects for
recruitment of such soldiers. Will these measures be applied only
with
the full knowledge and consent of the soldiers, and how many are likely
to
submit to them? And what about the children of genetically
altered
men and women -- will they, too, be ruthless killing machines?
This
is a frightful prospect for the whole population.]