Steve Franklin Wrote:

Jan Klimkowski Wrote:The Lovers, Lee and Judyth, get the best lines in this screenplay:

Quote:"We've created a galloping cancer," [said Judyth Baker].… We are developing this weapon to eliminate a head of state. But what if we get Castro? Will they really just throw this stuff away?"

"It could be used as a weapon of mass distraction," [said Lee Harvey Oswald] simply.

"Yes… think I'll Hitler would have loved this, to use against the Jews in those camps. They could say a plague went through."

"Or to eliminate Negroes in Africa," Lee said with a cold tone in his voice."

Page 391, "Me and Lee"

Lines that are overblown, anachronistic, and strike me as hugely unlikely.

If you're calling the term "weapon of mass destruction" anachronistic, there's a decent article at Wikipedia under that heading, which traces the first use in English to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1937. It was used in reference to nuclear weapons as early as 1945.

Jan Klimkowski Wrote:

Steve Franklin Wrote:

Jan Klimkowski Wrote:The Lovers, Lee and Judyth, get the best lines in this screenplay:

Quote:"We've created a galloping cancer," [said Judyth Baker].… We are developing this weapon to eliminate a head of state. But what if we get Castro? Will they really just throw this stuff away?"

"It could be used as a weapon of mass distraction," [said Lee Harvey Oswald] simply.

"Yes… think I'll Hitler would have loved this, to use against the Jews in those camps. They could say a plague went through."

"Or to eliminate Negroes in Africa," Lee said with a cold tone in his voice."

Page 391, "Me and Lee"

Lines that are overblown, anachronistic, and strike me as hugely unlikely.

If you're calling the term "weapon of mass destruction" anachronistic, there's a decent article at Wikipedia under that heading, which traces the first use in English to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1937. It was used in reference to nuclear weapons as early as 1945.

But the line as transcribed and given to Oswald isn't "weapon of mass destruction"...

And there are other anachronisms in that cod dialogue, such as the prefiguring of AIDS as a racist weapon.

In 1960. Or thereabouts.

Jan Klimkowski Wrote:

Ed Jewett Wrote:

Jan Klimkowski Wrote:... the contamination of polio vaccine with SV-40 has been known since 1960. Here's a mainstream scientific account. Full version in the Journal of Clinical Oncology here:

Well, my wife and I asked our primary school librarians to get us a copy of that journal when that article was published, but they couldn't find one. In the intervening years, of course, secondary school, college, family, employment and raising two kids to adulthood took precedence. My wife could now, as director of medical policy for a major health insuror, find a copy or ask her staff to hunt it down.

But I think I'll refrain from forwarding the link to her. :nurse:

Ed - for me the importance of that Journal of Clinical Oncology article does not lie so much in its conclusions about the role of SV40 in cancer, but in the mainstream scientific chronology that it establishes for awareness of the contamination of polio vaccine with SV40.

The article establishes that SV40 contamination was known by 1960. It does this by citing published clinical literature such as:

Sweet BH, Hilleman MR: The vacuolating virus, SV 40. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med 105:420-427, 1960

Thus, it is possible that Dr Sherman knew of the SV40 issue at the time of the supposed Ferrie/Sherman/Oswald/Baker exchanges.

However, since I've personally destroyed peer-reviewed articles published in major clinical journals (eg The Lancet), and since I have not been able to study in detail all the relevant scientific literature around mutagenicity, and the credibllity of the design of epidemiological studies, etc etc etc, I merely note the article's conclusion that "there is inadequate evidence at this time to suggest widespread SV40 infection in the population or increased tumor incidence among those individuals who received contaminated vaccine".

The language is most important. In particular the use of the phrase "inadequate evidence" which can be translated as noone really knows.

Steve Franklin Wrote:Yeah, but "weapon of mass distraction" is clearly a pun on "weapon of mass destruction," if it isn't just a typographical error. Note the phrase "think I'll Hitler would have loved this," by which I suppose was meant "think how Hitler...."

As for "prefiguring of AIDS," well, that would be the point here, wouldn't it? You know, that AIDS was created for just such a purpose, and to get rid of 'all them queers,' too? This idea has been bouncing around for a while now. Even if it's fictional, it wasn't invented by the author. It's out there in the aether. I'm surprised you haven't run into it.

Jan Klimkowski Wrote:Steve - we'll have to disagree.

I stand by my description of the cod dialogue as overblown, anachronistic, and hugely unlikely.