Manifesto

[Magda Hassan]

Another such operation was the training of security officers at the Washington-based International Police Academy by psychologists and sociologists.

That was Dan Mitrione's training school wasn't it?

[Ed Jewett]

Thanks, Jan.. (I think) (gulp).

I'm not new to the subject, but this new stuff has all been duly noted and added to my pile to be read, which is rapidly approaching Alpine heights.

Here are the two I found, neither of which have been read yet by me:





http://www.scribd.com/doc/12321776/Jim-K...d-Control-
Jim Keith - Mind Control, World Control

and

http://www.phoenixsourcedistributors.com...al_077.pdf
(which appears indescribable at first and second glance)



If I do not re-appear relatively quickly, send in those big dogs with the casks of Drambuie 'round ther necks.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Another such operation was the training of security officers at the Washington-based International Police Academy by psychologists and sociologists.

That was Dan Mitrione's training school wasn't it?

And Dan Mitrione leads directly - DIRECTLY - to Jim Jones and Jonestown.

From John Judge's seminal The Black Hole of Guyana:

Who Was Jim Jones?

In order to understand the strange events surrounding Jonestown, we must begin with a history of the people involved. The official story of a religious fanatic and his idealist followers doesn't make sense in light of the evidence of murders, armed killers and autopsy cover-ups. If it happened the way we were told, there should be no reason to try to hide the facts from the public, and full investigation into the deaths at Jonestown, and the murder of Leo Ryan would have been welcomed. What did happen is something else again.

Jim Jones grew up in Lynn, in southern Indiana. His father was an active member of the local Ku Klux Klan that infest that area.[77] His friends found him a little strange, and he was interested in preaching the Bible and religious rituals.[78] Perhaps more important was his boyhood friendship with Dan Mitrione, confirmed by local residents.[79] In the early 50s, Jones set out to be a religious minister, and was ordained at one point by a Christian denomination in Indianapolis.[80] It was during this period that he met and married his lifelong mate, Marceline.[81] He also had a small business selling monkeys, purchased from the research department at Indiana State University in Bloomington.[82]

A Bible-thumper and faith healer, Jones put on revivalist tent shows in the area, and worked close to Richmond, Indiana. Mitrione, his friend, worked as chief of police there, and kept him from being arrested or run out of town.[83] According to those close to him, he used wet chicken livers as evidence of "cancers" he was removing by "divine powers."[84] His landlady called him "a gangster who used a Bible instead of a gun."[85] His church followers included Charles Beikman, a Green Beret who was to stay with him to the end.[86] Beikman was later charged with the murders of several Temple members in Georgetown, following the massacre.[87]

Dan Mitrione, Jones' friend, moved on to the CIA-financed International Police Academy, where police were trained in counter-insurgency and torture techniques from around the world.[88] Jones, a poor, itinerant preacher, suddenly had money in 1961 for a trip to "minister" in Brazil, and he took his family with him.[89] By this time, he had "adopted" Beikman, and eight children, both Black and white.[90] His neighbors in Brazil distrusted him. He told them he worked with U.S. Navy Intelligence. His transportation and groceries were being provided by the U.S. Embassy as was the large house he lived in.[91] His son, Stephan, commented that he made regular trips to Belo Horizonte, site of the CIA headquarters in Brazil.[92] An American police advisor, working closely with the CIA at that point, Dan Mitrione was there as well.[93] Mitrione had risen in the ranks quickly, and was busy training foreign police in torture and assassination methods. He was later kidnapped by Tupermaro guerillas in Uruguay, interrogated and murdered.[94] Costa Gravas made a film about his death titled State of Siege.[95] Jones returned to the United States in 1963, with $10,000 in his pocket.[96] Recent articles indicate that Catholic clergy are complaining about CIA funding of other denominations for "ministry" in Brazil; perhaps Jones was an early example.[97]

With his new wealth, Jones was able to travel to California and establish the first People's Temple in Ukiah, California, in 1965. Guarded by dogs, electric fences and guard towers, he set up Happy Havens Rest Home.[98] Despite a lack of trained personnel, or proper licensing, Jones drew in many people at the camp. He had elderly, prisoners, people from psychiatric institutions, and 150 foster children, often transferred to care at Happy Havens by court orders.[99] He was contacted there by Christian missionaries from World Vision, an international evangelical order that had done espionage work for the CIA in Southeast Asia.[100] He met "influential" members of the community and was befriended by Walter Heady, the head of the local chapter of the John Birch Society.[101] He used the members of his "church" to organize local voting drives for Richard Nixon's election, and worked closely with the republican party.[102] He was even appointed chairman of the county grand jury.[103]

"The Messiah from Ukiah," as he was known then, met and recruited Timothy Stoen, a Stanford graduate and member of the city DA's office, and his wife Grace.[104] During this time, the Layton family, Terri Buford and George Phillip Blakey and other important members joined the Temple.[105] The camp "doctor," Larry Schacht, claims Jones got him off drugs and into medical school during this period.[106] These were not just street urchins. Buford's father was a Commander for the fleet at the Philadelphia Navy Base for years.[107] The Laytons were a well-heeled, aristocratic family. Dr. Layton donated at least a quarter-million dollars to Jones. His wife son and daughter were all members of the Temple.[108] George Blakey, who married Debbie Layton, was from a wealthy British family. He donated $60,000 to pay the lease on the 27,000-acre Guyana site in 1974.[109] Lisa Philips Layton had come to the U.S. from a rich Hamburg banking family in Germany.[110] Most of the top lieutenants around Jones were from wealthy, educated backgrounds, many with connections to the military or intelligence agencies. These were the people who would set up the bank accounts, complex legal actions, and financial records that put people under the Temple's control.[111]

Stoen was able to set up important contacts for Jones as Assistant DA in San Francisco.[112] Jones changed his image to that of a liberal.[113] He had spent time studying the preaching methods of Fr. Divine in Philadelphia, and attempted to use them in a manipulative way on the streets of San Francisco. Fr. Divine ran a religious and charitable operation among Philadelphia's poor Black community.[114] Jones was able to use his followers in an election once again, this time for Mayor Moscone. Moscone responded in 1976, putting Jones in charge of the city Housing Commission.[115] In addition, many of his key followers got jobs with the city Welfare Department and much of the recruitment to the Temple in San Francisco came from the ranks of these unemployed and dispossessed people.[116] Jones was introduced to many influential liberal and radical people there, and entertained or greeted people ranging from Roslyn Carter to Angela Davis.[117]

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/John...stown.html

See also here:
http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/....php?t=223

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/....php?t=220

[Ed Jewett]

Military Aims for Instant Repair of Wartime Wounds

• By Katie Drummond
  
• August 3, 2009
  

The military wants soldiers who can withstand anything - even the worst and most debilitating wartime injuries. Now Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out research team, is trying to make traumatic injuries more like minor scrapes, patched up to be good as new. Or better.


Darpa’s been working on superhuman soldiers for years. They’ve toyed with cellular mitochondria and pondered putting soldiers on the Atkins diet. In 2006, Darpa launched an ambitious Restorative Injury Repair program, that aims to “fully repair” body parts damaged by traumatic injury.


Earlier this year, researchers funded by that program generated new human muscle that could replace damaged tissue. Now Darpa’s asking for a device that can use adult stem cells for a regenerative free-for-all, pumping out whatever needed to repair injured body parts, including nerves, bone and skin. Already, research has proven that adult stem cells can act the same way embryonic ones do - differentiating into the highly-specified cells that form complex body parts.


According to Darpa’s solicitation, 85 percent of recent wartime injuries involved damage to the extremities and facial regions. That often means multiple surgeries, rehab and permanent disability for vets. They’re hoping to eliminate the injuries, and their long-term consequences, with a system that can reproduce in vitro tissues with the same structural and mechanical properties of the real stuff. And maybe make better versions: Darpa wants implanted results that will “replace, restore or improve tissue/organ function.”


Phase II of the project will see animal testing of the most promising systems. And Darpa foresees eventual use by military and civilian populations. Sounds like fodder for Hollywood, but broken bones and third-degree burns might one day be treated with an easy drop-in at the body part bank.


http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/...me-wounds/

[Ed Jewett]

Excerpts from
http://z7.invisionfree.com/E_Pluribus_Un...wtopic=142 an old blog entry of mine from May 29 2007 which referenced two articles:


#1)
Bio-electromagnetic Weapons: The ultimate weapon
by Institute of Science in Society
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...a&aid=5797

A weapon system that operates at the speed of light, that can kill, torture, enslave and escape detection … Electromagnetic weapons have been tested on human beings since 1976. By widely dispersing the involuntary human test-subjects, and vehemently attacking their credibility, it has been possible for the United States to proceed with these human experiments unhindered by discussions or criticisms, let alone opposition.... In 1959, Saul B. Sells, a professor of social psychology at a minor US university submitted a proposal to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to build for them the most sophisticated electroencephalography machine that would have an integral computational capacity to analyze and, hopefully, make sense of the brain waves it recorded. In other words, the professor proposed to make a machine that could tell the CIA what a person was thinking, whether or not the person wished to disclose that information.

The CIA approved the project in 1960, adding some library research with five objectives. The fifth objective of the research was, “Techniques for Activating the Human Organism by Remote Electronic Means”. The entire assignment was thereafter known as MKULTRA subproject 119 …


snip


“Converting sound to microwaves In 1973, Joseph C. Sharp, an experimental psychologist at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research performed an experiment that was pivotal to the development of the torture equipment being shipped to Iraq today. He had James Lin set up equipment in his laboratory which converted the shape of sound waves into microwave radiation that enabled him to hear himself vocalize the names of the numbers from one to ten in his head, by-passing the mechanism of his own ears. This particular experiment was never published but is mentioned in Lin’s book, Microwave Auditory Effects and Applications, published in 1978 [5].

The experiment has been confirmed in US Patent 6 587 729, “Apparatus for Audibly Communicating Speech Using the Radio Frequency Hearing Effect” [6]. This patent is for an improved version of the apparatus used in the 1973 laboratory experiment, issued on July 1, 2003 and assigned to the Secretary of the Air Force. It provides scientific evidence that it is possible to hear threatening voices in one’s head without suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

Why has this patent been published openly at a time when the US Government is practicing a degree of secrecy that rivals Stalin’s Kremlin? I have no satisfactory answer, except to say that the apparatus in the patent has already been superseded by equipment that achieves the same effect by far more sophisticated means. It blocks the normal processes of memory and thought by remote electronic means, while at the same time supplying false, distorted and/or unpleasant memories and suggestions by means of a process called “synthetic telepathy”. The equipment that produces synthetic telepathy is sometimes referred to as “influence technology”....


and
#2) DARPA to Create Brain-Chipped Cyborg Moths
June 1st, 2007
Via: The Register UK:
http://cryptogon.com/?p=816


“The program is called Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, or HI-MEMS.”


From the comments:


“A friend of mine theorized that when we hear reports like this, about technologies they’re supposedly developing, the technologies actually already exist. The purpose of the public reporting is to make people think the thing isn’t operable yet.”


“I’m writing to point you to is a television show on Discovery called Future Weapons, which invites you to get your “firepower fix in the weapon zone.” Reality has now become a 24-hour, surround-sound, global psy-op. Neocons? More like Neo-Crowleyites, performing a world-wide ritual magik theatre-of-death mind-f***. You don’t need to sneak into Bohemian Grove to see the death cult in action.

DrFix Says:
June 1st, 2007 at 2:51 pm
“I got disgusted years ago with how weapons of destruction, and more importantly the destruction of people, were depicted in some sort of entertaining package served up with glitzy graphics and music. Death, a culture of death through ritualized entertainment, is indeed whats broadcast/programmed continuously.”


###


Another blog entry
http://z7.invisionfree.com/E_Pluribus_Un...wtopic=236

had this:


Robo-Snipers, "Auto Kill Zones" to Protect Israeli Borders
By Noah Shachtman June 04, 2007
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/06/...ars_and_y/


See also this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMkV8E2re9U
South Korean Intelligent Surveillance and Guard Robot



###


“CONVERGING TECHNOLOGIES FOR IMPROVING HUMAN PERFORMANCE”
June 2002
424 pages

National Science Foundation
Department of Commerce
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Commerce


read the Table of Contents here:


http://z7.invisionfree.com/E_Pluribus_Un...wtopic=766




From “Welcome to the Machine:
Science, Surveillance and the Culture of Control”
by Derrick Jensen and George Draffan
Chelsea Green 2004


The book has a good description of Smart Dust, “a ‘self-contained, millimeter-scale sensing and communication platform for a massively distributed sensor network’, a computerboard equipped with a sensor, a microcontroller, and a radio.”




“I have before me a postcard inviting me to the “DARPA Bio Booth” at a big DARPA conference which is called “Harvesting Biology for Defense Technology”. The focus of the first day – and dust off your old books of feminist theory before you check out their terminology, because the feminists were right, those military wonks really do get off on this stuff – is “Enhancing Human Performance”. ( “Thrust areas include: Neurosciences; Metabolic Engineering; Nutrition; Genomics”) The focus of the second day is “Protecting Living Assets”, by which they mean ubersoldiers, not living landbases – (“Thrust areas include: Environmental Detection and Surveillance"; Biomedical Science Technologies; Biological Processing and Manufacturing). The third day they’ll study “Improving System Performance” (“Thrust areas include: Biomimetic Materials, Assembly, Manufacturing; Biomimetic Robots; Intelligent Machines; Biomimetic Signal Processing and Sensors”).

As the end of the third day, they will see everything that they have made and, behold, it will be very good. And on the fourth day they will rest.”

Before we describe in more detail some of their “thrust areas”, let’s take a look at some of their workshops. Monday morning they start off bright and early with “Metabolic Engineering and Dominance”, followed not by “Leather and Submission” but by “Persistence in Combat”, then “Continuous Assisted Performance”, “Brain Machine Interface”, “Augmented Cognition” (can we hope for a guest demonstration involving the Commander-in-Chief?), and so on. The most interesting workshop on Tuesday will be “Triangulation Identification for Genetic Evaluation of Risks (TIGER).”

Now I don’t know about you but, when I hear those in power talk about ‘Identification for Genetic Evaluation of Risks’, I immediately think of four things. The first is smallpox-laden blankets. The second is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study… The third is that the United States’ [development of new bioweapons labs] dedicated to the creation of new classes of toxins, including genetically engineered toxins. Presumably the mantra of those who work there will be ‘We are research and development people. We think about what’s possible, not what the government will do with it. That’s somebody else’s job.’ If they repeat this often enough, they may eventually believe it…. The fourth thing I think of is the line … from the document called Rebuilding America’s Defenses put out by the Project for A New American Century… “advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.”…

Other exciting workshops for the day include "Biosensor Technologies and Activity Detection Technologies". Day three starts with a rush: "Biologically Inspired Multifunctional Dynamic Robots". They move from there to "Controlled Biological Systems" (which I’m presuming is a description of their desired endpoint for the entire planet). Later in the day, they have "Spectroscopic Observation of Remote Environments", and they finish with "Exoskeletons".


Whom do these ubersoldiers and ubercops serve?

When was the last time you saw armored police officers fire tear gas at corporate CEO’s for deciding to allow cancer-causing chemicals water streams and blood streams of millions?

Do you believe that this society’s power structures have been designed in the best interests of you, your family, your community and your land base?

Who do these structures protect?

How do you want to live?”


from another blog entry at http://z7.invisionfree.com/E_Pluribus_Un...wtopic=297

[Magda Hassan]

Magda: I'd like to know more about "that breeding programme in the US with the Air Force men". And, as for the rest, I'm with you: see the Ike quote in my signature line.

Here you go Ed.

[size=12]More on The Pioneer Fund [/SIZE]
A Breed Apart: A Long-Ago Effort to Better the Species Yields Ordinary Folks

[size=12]Pioneer Fund Tried to Spread `Natural Endowments' of Top Air Force Fliers[/SIZE]

[size=12]'Sound and Desirable Stock'[/SIZE]

[size=12]By DOUGLAS A. BLACKMON
Staff Reporter, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL [/SIZE] [size=12]WARE, Mass. – Tomorrow, Ward and Darby Warburton, twin brothers born on Aug. 18, 1940, will celebrate their 59th birthdays with cake and a crowd of grandchildren gathered at the home of their 86-year-old mother near this picturesque New England mill town. [/SIZE][size=12] The brothers' shared birthday marks something more than another milestone in the lives of two World War II-era babies. It also marks the start of their involvement in an odd experiment six decades ago of which the Warburton family was a mostly unwitting subject. [/SIZE]
[size=12] Long before cloned sheep, egg donors and sperm banks, a group of wealthy Northeastern conservatives embarked on an experiment with the help of the U.S. Army Air Corps to find a way to improve the human race. The group, formed in 1937, called itself the Pioneer Fund. As is spelled out in hundreds of pages of documents and letters by its founders and their associates, the Pioneer Fund, alarmed by the declining U.S. birth rate and rising immigration, was at the forefront of the eugenics movement. Like many other prominent leaders of the time, the fund's directors were particularly concerned that "superior" Americans were not reproducing enough to pass on their "natural endowments." [/SIZE]
[size=12] So they set out to spur procreation among a group they regarded as superior indeed -- military pilots and their crews. With the support of Franklin D. Roosevelt's secretary of war, Harry H. Woodring, the group offered $4,000, about $46,000 in today's dollars, for the education of additional children born during the year 1940 to any officer who already had at least three offspring. [/SIZE]
[size=12] The Air Corps – precursor to the U.S. Air Force – promoted the program and provided the fund's psychologists extensive records on its officers, including training, parentage, race and religion, according to various memos and letters written among Pioneer Fund leaders and records of the experiment. By the end of 1940, a dozen qualifying infants – seven boys and five girls, including two sets of twins – had been born. The Pioneer Fund had expected bigger numbers. Looming war clouds seemed to have trumped the fund's financial incentives. The Pioneer Fund quietly made arrangements for the children to receive their scholarships, and never contacted the families again. [/SIZE]
[size=12] The Pioneer Fund, which today remains a controversial funder of research into the roots of intelligence, says the 1940 effort was a legitimate experiment to gauge attitudes toward family size, and nothing more. The Air Force declines to comment. [/SIZE]
[size=12] But how did the kids turn out? [/SIZE]
[size=12] The Wall Street Journal was able to track down eight of the 12 born in 1940. One died as an infant. But the other seven grew up to be moderately successful citizens. Some didn't know the background behind the payments received long ago and were vaguely troubled to learn the details. Among the seven children who survived into adulthood, there are no ranking generals and no war heroes. No criminals, either. [/SIZE]
[size=12]"My dad told me they were trying to create more fighting men," jokes Ward Warburton. "Well, I did get into a lot of fights coming up. And I could always take care of myself pretty well." [/SIZE]
[size=12] Today, the Warburton brothers are air-conditioning repairmen, each with his own successful small business here in Ware, a town of 10,000 about 25 miles from Springfield, Mass. [/SIZE]
[size=12]"I doubt we're superior," says John F. Rawlings, an affable Seattle homebuilder, whose father became one of the first four-star generals in the Air Force and later the chairman of General Mills Inc. The younger Mr. Rawlings joined the Air Force but was too nearsighted to fly. He says he inherited the bad eyes from his mother. [/SIZE]
[size=12] The stories of the Pioneer Fund children and the largely routine lives they have led underscore the naivete of such a clumsy effort to sculpt the human race. But they also are reminders of sinister racial assumptions prevalent in mainstream America just a generation ago. [/SIZE]
[size=12] All officers in the Air Corps were white; African-Americans were barred from the Air Corps until 1941, and even then were shunted into all-black squadrons. Many early genetic researchers believed that race-mixing would damage the white race's "germ plasm" – a human component that early scientists believed carried a race's hereditary traits. Leaders in Nazi Germany fervently embraced such eugenic theories. [/SIZE]
[size=12] The pilot procreation plan was endorsed by an array of high-ranking military and political leaders, including Mr. Woodring, one of President Roosevelt's top aides. Moreover, many U.S. states had laws in that era authorizing the sterilization of mentally retarded people. Conventional wisdom held that whites almost certainly were born smarter than blacks. [/SIZE]
[size=12]"Hitler thought that, too," says Michael Skeldon, another of the Pioneer Fund children. Now a supervisor at a San Antonio air-conditioner factory, Mr. Skeldon was troubled to learn what was behind the mysterious payments his family received long ago. "I find real odd this Pioneer group trying to mold people." [/SIZE]
[size=12] As it turns out, creating a better race was more complicated than the Pioneer Fund and its allies thought back in 1938. John C. Flanagan, a young researcher who became one of the most famous behavioral psychologists in the U.S. in the ensuing 50 years, supervised the 1940 experiment. (He died in 1996.) Nonetheless, scientists today say the test was fundamentally flawed; subsequent scholarship has shown that highly successful parents don't necessarily give birth to highly successful children. And indeed, counter to the hopes of the Pioneer Fund's directors in 1940, the lives led by the children born that year bear out precisely that idea. [/SIZE]
[size=12] The project was launched in the spring of 1937. Frederick Osborn, secretary of the Pioneer Fund and a leading proponent of racial eugenics, met at least twice with Mr. Woodring; the secretary of war encouraged the project and hooked the fund up with top military leaders, including famed aviation commander Gen. H.H. "Hap" Arnold. "Secretary Woodring is really interested," Mr. Osborn wrote to other fund directors in May 1937. A few months later, Gen. Arnold gave the fund's experiment the green light. [/SIZE]
[size=12] At the time, the fund was new, created just months earlier with a promise of financial support from its principal founder, Wickliffe Preston Draper, heir to a Massachusetts manufacturing fortune. Mr. Draper, who died in 1972, and his support for southern segregationists were the subject of a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal on June 11. [/SIZE]
[size=12] The choice of pilots and their crews was logical enough. Military aviators were the astronauts of their day. Charles Lindbergh's heroic 1927 crossing of the Atlantic was a fresh memory. Moreover, Mr. Draper was a veteran of World War I and an admirer of military officers. He used the title "colonel" most of his adult life. Clearly, aviators were "of sound and desirable stock," a Pioneer Fund memo asserted at the time. [/SIZE]
[size=12] Indeed, many of the fathers of the dozen children born in 1940 were high achievers. Several were among the pioneering military pilots who in the 1920s created what would become the modern U.S. Air Force. During World War II, they rose to distinction as pilots and generals. Later, some excelled as businessmen or teachers. The six who could be identified by the Journal are now dead. None of the parents appear to have known about Mr. Draper's backing of the Pioneer Fund. Some did know vaguely that the fund sought to breed better humans; they or their children say the parents never shared the fund's racial views. Instead, most appear to have considered the scholarships to be some kind of short-lived government benefit for high-achieving fliers. [/SIZE]
[size=12] To foster replication of such men, the Pioneer Fund first financed a detailed study in 1938 of the attitudes of about 400 Air Corps officers and their wives toward family size. It concluded that financial worry was a major reason why the military men often limited themselves to three children or fewer. [/SIZE]
[size=12] Armed with the results, the Pioneer Fund's board met a few weeks before Christmas 1938 and approved a plan for the scholarship program. The following May, brochures outlining the project were distributed at air bases around the country. [/SIZE]
[size=12] After a qualifying child was born during 1940, the father would fill out a simple application form and mail it in. Once the fund had confirmed the birth of the child and size of its family, an "educational annuity" was established. The families were to begin receiving payments of $500 a year when the child turned 12 and continue for eight years, for a total of $4,000. The whole thing looked dubious to some Air Corps families even then. [/SIZE]
[size=12]"We just kind of chuckled about it," says Helen Ryan, an 87-year-old Air Force widow who remembers the program but had no children then and couldn't participate. "We all thought it was kind of a big joke." [/SIZE]
[size=12] Still, a no-strings-attached grant that was bigger than most officers' total annual pay looked good to some. And as winter lifted in 1940, word of new arrivals began trickling into the Pioneer Fund. [/SIZE]
[size=12] Mr. Skeldon was born on March 2, in a military hospital in Panama, where his father was stationed. The son would follow his father's footsteps into the Air Force in the 1960s, but worked as a mechanic, not a pilot. Born to Maj. John J. Morrow was a son named Robert. He's an electrician in Pennsylvania, according to his son. He couldn't be reached. On Aug. 18, the Warburton boys were delivered at a hospital near Dayton, Ohio. Their father, stationed at a nearby airfield, was one of the Air Corps' most dashing "scout pilots" – the term then used for the men who flew fighter planes. [/SIZE]
[size=12] Two months later, on Oct. 17, came John Rawlings, the fourth child of Edwin Rawlings, a fast-rising officer who had been quietly hoping for a daughter. (He already had three sons). Less than two weeks later came another set of twins, this time at Barksdale Air Force Base outside Shreveport, La., to John P. Ryan. Mr. Ryan, a future general, developed high-altitude bombing tactics used in the war. A 1943 Pat O'Brien movie, "Bombardier," was based partly on his life. The twins were girls; the first to arrive looked like her mother, Anna, so she was named Anne Marie. Her twin looked like her paternal grandmother, Mary. She became Maryann. Today, Maryann Russo is a former teacher who for the past 17 years has worked on the factory line in a photo-processing plant in Baltimore, cutting and inspecting thousands of glossy prints. She gave up teaching elementary school because the pupils were too unruly. "The belt doesn't talk back," she notes. [/SIZE]
[size=12] Her sister, now Anne Marie Bricker, is a nurse practitioner in Arizona. Ms. Bricker, recently divorced, moved this summer from Sedona to Phoenix, abandoning a private practice to work in a clinic. "I want to have more time for doing fun things for myself," she says. [/SIZE]
[size=12] The Warburton babies were certainly good candidates for the Pioneer Fund project. Their father, Ernest K. Warburton, was a young pilot who would soon be Brig. Gen. Warburton and the most famous test pilot of the era, flying more than 400 different allied and captured enemy aircraft. In 1945, he and the airmen under his command were the first U.S. troops to land in Japan after its surrender. Later, he commanded all air operations for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. [/SIZE]
[size=12] The Warburton family heard about the Pioneer offer after Anna Warburton realized she was carrying twins, her fourth and fifth children, Mrs. Warburton says today. "I remember him coming home all" excited about the scholarship, says Mrs. Warburton, now 86. "All we really knew was that it was . . . for the children's education, and it was intended to propagate a superior group." [/SIZE]
[size=12] Ward and Darby grew up in the classic life of military children, moving often between Air Force bases in the U.S. and Europe. Both finished high school and signed up as military reservists, though they never saw active duty. [/SIZE]
[size=12] For more than 30 years, the brothers have kept refrigerators, air conditioners and washing machines running in this bucolic corner of Massachusetts, the family's home territory. Darby works on commercial cooling units. Ward is a jack-of-all appliances repairman. Their other siblings – including two doctors – are scattered from Hawaii to North Carolina. [/SIZE]
[size=12] On a grassy hilltop just outside Ware, Ward lives in a comfortable gray frame house overlooking the small tree-lined lake on which his future wife was skating the first time he saw her. His mother-in-law's home sits across the water from theirs. A collection of used washers and other appliances scavenged for spare parts protrudes from the woods behind the house. [/SIZE]
[size=12] Before venturing out a decade ago to start repairing appliances in his garage, Mr. Warburton was a fix-it man for Sears, Roebuck & Co. for 28 years. "I loved the job," he says. [/SIZE]
[size=12] Just down the highway lives Ward's fast-graying twin, Darby, in a rambling white farmhouse. Out of a barn behind the home, Darby runs a two-man commercial air-conditioning service business, which he bought in 1962. He wants to retire next year. So in June, his 26-year-old son, Ernest, started working in the family business with plans to take over. [/SIZE]
[size=12] Ward is a member of Ware Lions Club. Darby is a Rotarian. Darby, who attended the University of Michigan but didn't graduate, is financially the more successful brother. He keeps two vintage Corvettes as hobby cars, driving them to Rotary meetings every week and on other special occasions. Over a recent dinner at the Salem Cross Inn -- where Darby maintains the walk-in cooler -- the brothers banter about their decades of mostly friendly competition. [/SIZE]
[size=12]"I try to steal as many of Darby's customers as I can," Ward says. "Darby gets mad when I do." [/SIZE]
[size=12]"I do not get mad," huffs Darby, partly serious. [/SIZE]
[size=12] Darby says he doesn't recall ever knowing anything about the Pioneer Fund program before a reporter contacted the family recently, though his brother and mother insist that he was told. For his part, Ward clearly recalls the day more than 40 years ago that his father told him about the Pioneer Fund plan. [/SIZE]
[size=12]"I was the slow one in the family," says Mr. Warburton, recalling his days as an academically frustrated teenager. "Just kidding around one day . . . to cheer me up, he said, `Ward, come out of it, you're the master race.'

[/SIZE]
Blackmon, Douglas A. "A breed apart: A long ago effort to better the species yields ordinary folks." Wall Street Journal. 17 Aug 1999.
http://www.ferris.edu/ISAR/Institut/pion...eeding.htm

[Ed Jewett]

Thanks, Magda. All of this fascination with breeding and eugenics...we'd better buy the cattle a barn with marble stalls and gold-plated water fixtures.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Magda - great find.

The start of the article, which I quote below, is great.

Pioneer Fund Tried to Spread `Natural Endowments' of Top Air Force Fliers

'Sound and Desirable Stock'

By DOUGLAS A. BLACKMON
Staff Reporter, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WARE, Mass. – Tomorrow, Ward and Darby Warburton, twin brothers born on Aug. 18, 1940, will celebrate their 59th birthdays with cake and a crowd of grandchildren gathered at the home of their 86-year-old mother near this picturesque New England mill town. The brothers' shared birthday marks something more than another milestone in the lives of two World War II-era babies. It also marks the start of their involvement in an odd experiment six decades ago of which the Warburton family was a mostly unwitting subject.
Long before cloned sheep, egg donors and sperm banks, a group of wealthy Northeastern conservatives embarked on an experiment with the help of the U.S. Army Air Corps to find a way to improve the human race. The group, formed in 1937, called itself the Pioneer Fund. As is spelled out in hundreds of pages of documents and letters by its founders and their associates, the Pioneer Fund, alarmed by the declining U.S. birth rate and rising immigration, was at the forefront of the eugenics movement. Like many other prominent leaders of the time, the fund's directors were particularly concerned that "superior" Americans were not reproducing enough to pass on their "natural endowments."
So they set out to spur procreation among a group they regarded as superior indeed -- military pilots and their crews. With the support of Franklin D. Roosevelt's secretary of war, Harry H. Woodring, the group offered $4,000, about $46,000 in today's dollars, for the education of additional children born during the year 1940 to any officer who already had at least three offspring.
The Air Corps – precursor to the U.S. Air Force – promoted the program and provided the fund's psychologists extensive records on its officers, including training, parentage, race and religion, according to various memos and letters written among Pioneer Fund leaders and records of the experiment. By the end of 1940, a dozen qualifying infants – seven boys and five girls, including two sets of twins – had been born. The Pioneer Fund had expected bigger numbers. Looming war clouds seemed to have trumped the fund's financial incentives. The Pioneer Fund quietly made arrangements for the children to receive their scholarships, and never contacted the families again.
The Pioneer Fund, which today remains a controversial funder of research into the roots of intelligence, says the 1940 effort was a legitimate experiment to gauge attitudes toward family size, and nothing more. The Air Force declines to comment.

The essential question is then asked.

But how did the kids turn out?

And not answered.

Because we are in Wall Street Journal land.

The heart of the beast.

And the limited hangout.

Relax. Everything is fine. Let me sing you a lullaby.

[singing] Somewhere, over the rainbow, bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow,
Why then— oh, why can't I?

This Pioneer Fund programme is a part of the deep black, suppressed, context for many testimonies that I have heard, sometimes personally, over the years.

But, shurely, this kind of eugenic experiment, run by Harry Harlow and Ewen Cameron types, on human infants, isn't possible in a democracy....

Sleep tight, little one....

[Ed Jewett]

DARPA: Transforming Soldiers One Cell at a Time

Katie Drummond
27 October 2009
World Politics Review

If you ask Spc. Daniel McBroom of the Army National Guard, the hardest part of war was the wind. "Physically and mentally, the wind was the worst," he recalls. "This endless hot wind, like 100-degree fans turned toward your body." But McBroom, 23, who returned in June after serving a year in Iraq, says that the toll of war will be different for everyone. "There's no doubt it will mark you, change your body. But I don't think anyone can predict what that change will be."

McBroom is one of nearly 1.5 million Americans enlisted in the U.S. armed forces, all of whom see different sides of war. For those involved in combat -- some 200,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan right now -- the same three phases will shape their experience: training, deployment and reintegration.

After having arrived at pre-deployment mobilization camp, where enlistees spend several months before overseas departure, every man and woman of the American military will be transformed. Physically, their bodies will be examined and immunized -- this year, against H1N1 and anthrax -- and then molded into a robust battlefield warrior. Mentally, they will undergo interactive video training and group counseling, meant to bolster them against the inevitable trauma they'll experience on the ground.

Then the war-zone transformation begins. In Iraq and Afghanistan, troops endure 110-degree heat, wind storms and torrential rain, along with ongoing threats of roadside bombings or engagement with hidden pockets of insurgency. The military's technological prowess has evolved remarkably from earlier wars, and the improvements go beyond just deadlier, more efficient weaponry. They also have implications for our own soldiers' survival. Only 10 percent of wounded troops now die from their injuries, compared to 25 percent during the Korean War.

Today, the United States is fighting a new kind of war, on a battlefield populated by unmanned drones, biological threats and an enemy in civilian dress. Yet an impersonal war is still a deadly one, and with more troops living to recover from injury and relive the battle, their bodies and minds will inevitably bear trauma.

Inevitably, that is, for now.

Enter DARPA

That's the popular acronym for the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, responsible for the most "out there" Pentagon programs, from turning trash into electricity to turning primates into telepathic seers. Since 1958, DARPA has been the outlet for the military's wildest innovation dreams, but the agency didn't take a dedicated interest in human health until the 21st century. In 2001, when Tony Tether took DARPA's reins, his open-mindedness about ethically murky human studies, along with the burgeoning threat of biological weapons, led to a focus on troops: how to make them fitter, stronger and more resilient.

In 2002, DARPA was granted a $75 million annual bonus from Congress to boost human research projects, on the grounds that troops had become "the weakest link" in the military armor. Since then, DARPA has continued to churn out unconventional ideas by harnessing recent developments in biotechnology, neuroscience and genetics. Of course, they don't always succeed: Since the 1970s, DARPA has thrown millions of dollars into dozens of failed efforts, including telepathic troop communication. More recently, the agency has shifted away from prioritizing human advancement. More of their mega-million dollar budget is now going to eco-innovations, like turning carbon and hydrogen from water into electricity, and robotics, which might one day replace the imperfect human warrior altogether.

But DARPA still has several ongoing soldier-enhancement programs, and another handful of proposals for future ones, which offer funding to keen researchers with atypical ideas for fortifying the human mind and body. And despite the often-outlandish ideas, DARPA-funded research sometimes gets it right: Some of the agency's theoretical oddities are becoming legitimate scientific possibilities. From training to combat to recovery, today's inevitable health implications of war could one day be solved by a handful of pills and a quick trip to the body-parts bank.

Better, Stronger, Sooner

Before deployment, troops prepare with months of training, from kicking down doors to counseling a traumatized colleague. And though nothing can adequately prepare a body for the rigors of war, tomorrow's troops will leave home stronger and sturdier, in part because of the power lurking in their own cells.

At least, that's the hope of Dr. Asish Chaudhuri, a biochemist at the University of Texas Health Science Center, who's been working on enhancing soldiers at the cellular level for eight years, with $1.6 million in funding from DARPA and Veterans Affairs. He was the first to demonstrate how oxidative stress, which causes cell degeneration, aging and neurological diseases, can be mitigated by a process already at work in the body. It takes place in the mitochondria, proteins in our cells that convert energy to glucose, and, as a byproduct, also produce oxidative reactions that degenerate cells. The more energy a body requires, the more oxidative stress it incurs, and the more a cell degenerates.

Last year, the Defense Department launched Mitochondrial Energetics, requesting proposals that would tinker with troop's energy-production abilities. That same year, Dr. Chaudhuri concluded that mole rats, who can live up to 28 years, have a particularly efficient mitochondrial cleanup system. Even when exposed to high levels of stress, the mole rats sustained their impressive lifespan. Now he's trying to boost the mitochondrial efficiency of primates, with a process that's part pharmaceutical and part diet. Anti-oxidants, often touted as a benefit of nutritious food, are the enzymes that eliminate byproducts of mitochondrial processes. DARPA wants those anti-oxidants condensed into a tablet, which Dr. Chaudhuri anticipates would be dozens of times more concentrated than a serving of greens. But caloric intake matters too: The byproducts of digestion cause cellular stress. So Dr. Chaudhuri expects that tomorrow's troops will also survive on a calorie-restricted diet, which, combined with anti-oxidant supplementation, will actually boost their bodies' efficiency.

"The armed forces are exposed to more stress, and more environmental toxins, than most," he says. "If we boost their mitochondrial efficiency, and curb the oxidative reaction of digestion, we're mitigating that stress before it happens."

Not only might troops increase their physical resistance to stress and toxins, they'd also minimize their risk of neurological diseases like MS and ALS, which have stricken vast numbers of Gulf War vets exposed to nerve gas and other chemical agents. "Within 10 years, I'd predict we have a supplement available," Dr. Chaudhuri says. "And neurological diseases? All but eradicated."

Mitigating existing stress is one thing, but DARPA also wants to eliminate cognitive awareness of stress altogether. This year, they launched another program, this one geared towards mental, rather than physical, stamina. The program, Enabling Stress Resistance, hopes to use advances in molecular biology and neuroscience to short-circuit how we interpret and internalize stressful situations -- long before oxidative stress enters the fray.

This kind of tactical pharmacology isn't new to the military, which started doling out amphetamines to troops in World War II, and have been criticized for continuing to do so as recently as 2003, when Air Force pilots accidentally bombed a Canadian training force while charged up on Dexedrine.

But DARPA isn't looking for a quick fix. They're asking for a team of academics, including molecular biologists and neuroscientists, to first identify how stress targets the brain, and then demonstrate a pharmaceutical intervention that can reduce stress reactions by at least 75 percent in test animals. From there, DARPA wants to "inoculate warfighters" against the cognitive and emotional impact of the high-stress inevitabilties in war zones, including limited sleep, emotional disturbance and physical exertion.

Of course, an appropriate dose of stress can also be a powerful catalyst. That's why Dr. Amy Krause, the Defense Department program manager in charge of the initiative, writes that she wants a method to "identify the breaking point" at which stress turns from motivational to harmful. By mapping cognitive stress response, and then meting out a pharmaceutical intervention that can short-circuit the feedback loop before stress even happens, DARPA hopes to boost troop bravado and performance, while limiting the long-term impact of wartime trauma, which is being linked to the unprecedented number of vets struggling with symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

Infallible on the Field

Making stress a thing of the past is one part of DARPA's ongoing soldier enhancement initiative. Undoing wounds incurred on the battlefield is another. In 2006, DARPA launched the Restorative Injury Repair Program, with the lofty goal of reinventing wound-healing. Rather than leaving soldiers bearing scar tissue or chronic pain, DARPA hopes to completely restore bone, nerve, tissue and skin. The program is one of their most ambitious, but it's already reached a significant milestone. In March, researchers at Tulane University used adult skin cells to develop the equivalent of blastema -- undifferentiated cells, found in amphibians, that can be used to regenerate lost body parts.

According to Dr. Jon Mogford, the program's director, Restorative Injury Repair is targeted at the multi-tissue injuries that are often sustained in combat. "A troop with a torso trauma might have layers of skin, muscle, nerve, bone, even fat, to restore, " he says. "We want to heal any injury, anywhere."

Estimates suggest that 85 percent of wartime injuries involve multi-tissue trauma to the extremities and face, which usually means multiple surgeries, rehabilitation and permanent disability. Skin grafts and muscle scaffolding yield acceptable results, but Mogford has higher hopes. "I'm after an approach that simulates natural healing -- as if every injury were just scraped skin."

Phase two, turning the blastema cells into actual muscle, and then other tissues, is already well underway. Biologists led by the Tulane University team are using a $570,000 grant from DARPA to regrow muscle tissue, and hope to do so within a year. Of course, muscles are naturally capable of withstanding and repairing damage. After all, that's how we strengthen them. But too much trauma, like an injury sustained in a war-zone, leads to permanent scarring instead of growth and improvement. A fresh muscle transplant, however, would offer an injured soldier a fresh start.

Muscle is the first target, but functional organs, nerves and bone aren't far behind. Mogford anticipates human trials within five to 10 years, assuming that the regenerative mechanism of amphibians can effectively be scaled to human size.

Of course, tissue and organ transplants are a ways off. Even once researchers yield the specific tissue cells, they'll need to learn how to use them within the body, and how to prevent rejection. Already, though, DARPA is on the verge of unveiling another battlefield health tactic that will be available in war zones within three years: lab-cultivated red blood cells generated using stem cells.

Last year, DARPA spent $1.95 billion on their blood pharming project, which uses adult stem cells to create vast quantities of red blood cells, the most transfused blood product on the battlefield. Because naturally derived red blood cells last for less than five days, the military doesn't store them in combat zones. Instead, traumatic injuries require transportation to triage or a medical center for treatment. To manage time-sensitive blood loss, DARPA wants a portable red blood cell bioreactor -- a machine, operating on electricity and water, that quickly produces vast quantities of red blood cells for immediate tranfusion.

DARPA only started funding blood pharming in 2007, but progress has been quick. Last year, scientists at bio-firm Advanced Cell Technology produced 100 billion red blood cells from a single sample of human embryonic stem cells. The achievement was remarkable, but not quite good enough. One unit of blood contains over 1.2 trillion red blood cells, and a standard combat-related trauma requires six units of blood within the first few days of injury. According to Mogford, the bioreactor and the technology are there. The challenge is to find the right balance of inputs to yield efficient, untainted cells in vast supply. "This is a question of recipe," says Mogford. "But on paper, we're slated for clinical trials within three years. So we'll get the recipe right."

Reintegration

Wartime injuries can't be undone yet, but war-zones have become less fatal, and that means more troops returning home to face another, longer battle: reintegrating into day-to-day life. For those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, the process hasn't been easy. In July, the New York Times reported that veteran suicides were at an all-time high, and the Department of Veteran's Affairs estimates that 40 percent of today's troops will suffer from post-traumatic stress symptoms.

In 2008, the military started screening all returning troops for mental health symptoms. But a psych evaluation can't spot symptons if they don't show up until months or years later, and a 2007 report (.pdf) by an Army task force estimates that thousands of affected troops are going undetected. Until DARPA's pharmaceutical stress-resistance solution becomes a reality, the agency is also trying to make diagnosing post-traumatic stress and other post-war injuries easier, cheaper and more convenient.

Among the programs DARPA is backing are an at-home neuro-imaging device to diagnose changes in brain waves, and software that can detect changes in speech patterns associated with burgeoning mental health problems. But the thrust of their funding is going towards PREVENT: Preventing Violent Explosive Neurological Trauma. Launched in 2006, the program aims to detect brain trauma resulting from exposure to explosive devices. The phenomenon, called TBI (traumatic brain injury), often leads to symptoms that are similar to those associated with post-traumatic stress -- including confusion, anxiety, and depression, among others. So far, research hasn't determined why a soldier exposed to a blast can seem injury-free, but still suffer from long-term brain trauma. "We needed to go back to square one," says Mogford, "and determine the actual mechanism causing the damage."

Dr. Ibolja Cernak, an applied physicist at Johns Hopkins, was the first to study the injuries, which are undetectable even on sensitive MRI screenings. She theorizes that a blast can send a spike of energy through blood vessels, squeezing brain cells and changing how they transmit information. It's a domino effect that snowballs slowly, showing up over months or years.

DARPA is also evaluating the role of electromagnetic pulse, light and noise, and physical jolting, in causing TBI. Already, PREVENT has funded human studies on marines-in-training, who were exposed to small blasts and then examined for gradual neurological impairment. Unlike a concussion, which can heal, Cernak hypothesizes that TBI occurs at a molecular level. By determining the tipping point -- how many blast exposures are too many -- the military could rotate out troops who've been overexposed, until the ill effects can be prevented.

Prevention of post-traumatic stress, and a solution for traumatic brain injury, are likely decades away, but better diagnosis and improved prevention is around the corner. The same goes for prosthetic devices. Thanks to DARPA-funded research, they'll be more intuitive and life-like by next year, and indistinguishable from human limbs within a decade.

Ironically, the research might never have happened were it not for the better medical care available on the ground, says Fred Downs, the head of prosthetic devices at the VA's Veteran's Health Administration. Downs, who lost his arm in the Vietnam War, says that before the Gulf War, upper limbs accounted for fewer than 3 percent of amputations. In 2008, they accounted for nearly a quarter, because troops who would have died from their injuries 30 years ago are coming home alive. Unfortunately, most are receiving prosthetic devices that are the same now as they were after World War II.

That's where DARPA comes in. They've launched a $100 million program, Revolutionizing Prosthetic Devices, to finally bring artificial limbs into the 21st century. The thrust of the program is the DEKA arm, which took three years and a team of 30 researchers to develop, and shrinks 25 circuit boards and 10 motors into a device no bigger than the average human arm. Downs, who is one of 10 at-home testers of the limb, says it offers so much control that he's able to pick up small objects, like bottle caps, for the first time in 40 years. "I've got buttons inserted into my cowboy boots, and I push on those to move the arm," he explains. Different button combinations, triggered by Downs' feet, send wireless signals to the arm, causing unique movement patterns.

Downs anticipates that the arm will be available within a year for veterans and civilians, but DARPA already has plans for the next phase of prosthetic devices, which will harness neuroscience to create prosthetic arms that are indistinguishable from real limbs. The first step, being tinkered with by biochemists at the University of Michigan, is to attach severed nerves to a bioengineered scaffold, which then grafts onto the arm's muscle. As with a real human limb, thought would yield movement, and the neuromuscular connection could also relay sensory perceptions. "It's sci-fi stuff, Star Wars stuff, but it's going to work," predicts Downs. "We'll keep making improvements until it's like these traumas never happened."

Troops with endless energy, resistance to bio-threats and protection from injuries that once meant a lifetime of rehabilitation and suffering: What sounds like science fiction is exactly where DARPA is headed.

But not everyone wants to join them there. Spc. McBroom, who plans to redeploy next year despite a knee injury and recurring flashbacks, likely won't benefit from any of the new possibilities. And that's fine by him. "A world where you throw a pill at anything is not where I want to be," he says. "We train, we go, and we hope to come back. That's what I signed on for, and that's just how it's always been."

Katie Drummond is a journalist and editor in New York who specializes in unconventional and alternative approaches to health and medicine. She contributes military medical coverage to Danger Room at Wired.com and writes a column, The Extreme Self, at True/Slant Online.

Photo: DARPA'S non-invasively controlled advanced prosthetic developed under the Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2007 program.(DARPA/DEKA Photo).

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=4497

[Jan Klimkowski]

Last year, the Defense Department launched Mitochondrial Energetics, requesting proposals that would tinker with troop's energy-production abilities. That same year, Dr. Chaudhuri concluded that mole rats, who can live up to 28 years, have a particularly efficient mitochondrial cleanup system. Even when exposed to high levels of stress, the mole rats sustained their impressive lifespan. Now he's trying to boost the mitochondrial efficiency of primates, with a process that's part pharmaceutical and part diet. Anti-oxidants, often touted as a benefit of nutritious food, are the enzymes that eliminate byproducts of mitochondrial processes. DARPA wants those anti-oxidants condensed into a tablet, which Dr. Chaudhuri anticipates would be dozens of times more concentrated than a serving of greens. But caloric intake matters too: The byproducts of digestion cause cellular stress. So Dr. Chaudhuri expects that tomorrow's troops will also survive on a calorie-restricted diet, which, combined with anti-oxidant supplementation, will actually boost their bodies' efficiency.

"The armed forces are exposed to more stress, and more environmental toxins, than most," he says. "If we boost their mitochondrial efficiency, and curb the oxidative reaction of digestion, we're mitigating that stress before it happens."

Not only might troops increase their physical resistance to stress and toxins, they'd also minimize their risk of neurological diseases like MS and ALS, which have stricken vast numbers of Gulf War vets exposed to nerve gas and other chemical agents. "Within 10 years, I'd predict we have a supplement available," Dr. Chaudhuri says. "And neurological diseases? All but eradicated."

Mitigating existing stress is one thing, but DARPA also wants to eliminate cognitive awareness of stress altogether. This year, they launched another program, this one geared towards mental, rather than physical, stamina. The program, Enabling Stress Resistance, hopes to use advances in molecular biology and neuroscience to short-circuit how we interpret and internalize stressful situations -- long before oxidative stress enters the fray.

This kind of tactical pharmacology isn't new to the military, which started doling out amphetamines to troops in World War II, and have been criticized for continuing to do so as recently as 2003, when Air Force pilots accidentally bombed a Canadian training force while charged up on Dexedrine.

But DARPA isn't looking for a quick fix. They're asking for a team of academics, including molecular biologists and neuroscientists, to first identify how stress targets the brain, and then demonstrate a pharmaceutical intervention that can reduce stress reactions by at least 75 percent in test animals. From there, DARPA wants to "inoculate warfighters" against the cognitive and emotional impact of the high-stress inevitabilties in war zones, including limited sleep, emotional disturbance and physical exertion.

Of course, an appropriate dose of stress can also be a powerful catalyst. That's why Dr. Amy Krause, the Defense Department program manager in charge of the initiative, writes that she wants a method to "identify the breaking point" at which stress turns from motivational to harmful. By mapping cognitive stress response, and then meting out a pharmaceutical intervention that can short-circuit the feedback loop before stress even happens, DARPA hopes to boost troop bravado and performance, while limiting the long-term impact of wartime trauma, which is being linked to the unprecedented number of vets struggling with symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

This is massively ignorant, dangerous and reckless pseudo-science on a captive audience, drilled and trained to obey orders - namely, soldiers.

Big Pharma suddenly has hundreds of thousands of free human guinea pigs.

The cop-out line from the hackette who wrote the piece, "But DARPA isn't looking for a quick fix", reveals that the piece is pure propaganda.