The Drug War's Fungal
"Solution" in Latin America
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"Andean Seminar" Lecture Series
sponsored by GWU and WOLA
Friday, December 8
Jeremy Bigwood
Then something truly tragic happened. During the last years of the Second World War until 1949 - a Fusarium sporotrichiodes infestation of overwintered grain caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people in the USSR after they ate contaminated bread. This focused research on the mycotoxicology of Fusarium species. Much later, it was determined that a series of chemicals, quinones, the trichothecene mycotoxins were mainly responsible; these are a series of highly-stable compounds that, unlike many others, are not degraded by heat, such as the heat used in baking bread.
Vomitoxin, a trichothecene mycotoxin from Fusarium species
The trichothecenes were so-named because they had been first isolated from the morphologically-similar genus Trichothecium. Trichothecene mycotoxins and their analogs have been detected in all members of the Fusarium genus, including Fusarium oxysporum, as well as other related genera.
During the 1950s, Soviet scientists studied the causes of the epidemic that had killed off so many of their compatriots. The results of some of this work were published in 1958 in Soil Microorganisms and Higher Plants by N. A. Krasil'nikov, of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. This was translated into English by the Israel Program for Scientific Translations in 1961. In this work, Krasil’nikov showed that the Fusarium mycotoxins were not only the agents responsible for the Russian epidemic, but that wherever large amounts of Fusarium and hence its mycotoxins had been found in the soil, subsequent plantings would yield poor or no results. In other words, besides poisoning humans who ate the infected grain, the mycotoxins also contaminated the soil. And since many of these toxins are not very water-soluble, and are not substantially washed away by rain water, they can keep the ground poisoned for years.
By the early1960's, due to the interest in the chemical warfare potential of trichothecenes, the US military and others started to investigate the toxins of Fusarium. They published the results of their investigations into the trichothecene mycotoxins, often outside normal channels of the scientific literature.
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We can see that US government-contracted scientists first repeated the Soviet work (Army Biological Labs-Tupenevich); did detection, analysis, and decontamination work (Army Armament Research and Development Command); applied trichothecenes to various mammals' skins (Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases); researched protection against them in biological or chemical warfare (National Research Council); measured trichothecene induced "deep necrotic ulcers" on rat skin (Materials Research Lab - Australia); determined the LC50's (the Lethal Concentration in the atmosphere at which 50% of the tested animals die) of trichothecenes in aerosols in mice (Ft. Detrick); noted trichothecene liver toxicity (Ft. Detrick); determined how to apply it in drinking water (Lawrence Livermore National Lab); determined general animal toxicity (USAMRDC); trichothecene antibody protection (Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research); trichothecenes applied as aerosols (Ft. Detrick); dosed monkeys (Ft. Detrick); determined trichothecene antibodies (Vestar Research); and, an enzyme immunoassay for trichothecenes (Biometric systems). I am detailing this, because I want to show beyond any reasonable doubt that Fusarium and its mycotoxins have been long known for their toxicity and there is a known relationship between Fusarium and biological or chemical warfare - the latter using compounds extracted from it.
