What Is Remarkable About SARS?

Since November 2002 and until April 30, 2003, no one in the U.S. media except myself on Barry Farber’s radio program on April 30, 2003, has conjectured, however hypothetically, that the SARS virus is a leak of the Chinese genetic engineering.

Also on April 30, I received an e-mail from Lenny Cavallaro, who asked whether there is "any possible connection between SARS and Superweapon No. 3.”

I call firearms (owing to which, for example, England increased its territory 100 times to become the British Empire) Superweapon No. 1, nuclear weapons Superweapon No. 2, and post-nuclear weapons to ensure world domination today Superweapon No. 3. Lenny ends thus his e-mail: "Please share your thoughts on the subject. Thanks.”

Lenny is the author of several interesting and important books, a musician, a professor and, more relevant, a voracious explorer of the media, scholarship and the Internet in search of off-the-beaten-track truths, some of which he e-mails to me.

Yet this tireless truth-seeker has never found any conjecture in the media, scholarship or the Internet as to the origin of SARS, and therefore he applied to me!

On May 3, I received an e-mail from Ragnar Liljuist. Attached to it was John LeBoutillier’s excellent NewsMax.com column of May 2, "SARS: Chinese Biowar Accident?” I was not surprised, since I knew John as a fiercely independent thinker long ago – I still have our photograph of the times of our struggle against the Soviet threat.

Now, the SARS case has been so obvious right from the beginning, about half a year ago. Indeed, SARS infects Canadians as it does Chinese. Then why did it originate in China? No physician on earth knew its name or had observed it before.

So a new virus has originated in China! Surely it is manmade! If it had been produced by natural Chinese conditions, it would have originated long ago, for China has existed for at least four millennia.

Here in front of me is a report in the New York Times of Oct. 7, 2000, by its correspondent Craig Smith in China. As we have all been expected to believe since the mid-1990s, there are world dangers like Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is no country more peaceful and more preoccupied with the growth of prosperity of its people than China.

In this respect it is the "diametrical opposite” of countries like Yugoslavia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, or Iraq in March 2003. Hence the content of the New York Times report from China in front of me.

It is entitled "China Rushes to Adopt Genetically Modified Crops.” You see? Some countries, less concerned with the people’s prosperity, use natural crops. Not China! Its genetically modified or engineered crops yield better harvests. A large photograph depicts a Chinese farmer expressing his satisfaction. Craig Smith wrote (in 2000!):

Beijing called in its top scientists from around the world and set them working in seven broad areas. Genetic engineering was at the top of the list. Since then, the double helix has replaced the atom as the symbol of the modernization drive.

It is curious that those microscopic amounts of pathetic and outdated "weapons of mass destruction” that Iraq had received from the United States and allegedly had not destroyed as of March 2003 were represented as a threat to the globe and hence the non-nuclear Iraq was pre-emptively invaded, but Hussein used no such weapons, no matter how hopeless his situation was.

On the other hand, the world’s largest center for the development of post-nuclear superweapons "in seven areas” was described in the New York Times in 2000 as a defense against America’s world domination, which "startled” China.

Smith did not use the word "Communist” describing his Chinese idyll of peace, defense and progress. It was already unfashionable to apply the word to China. Yet in the Communist ideology, the phrase "American imperialism” has been used since the time after the fall of Nazi Germany.

The answer to the "American imperialism” is not defense, but offense, which the Chinese descriptions of Project 863 have been stressing. The world must be Communist, as Marx, Lenin and Mao proclaimed.

As soon as I read Smith’s report, I phoned him in China and told him that in his report, Project 863 is described, however briefly, for the first time in the U.S. media. As of today, this is also the last time.

What I asked him was whether those in charge of the New York Times had called him and requested his report on Project 863 for the front page. He said that I alone had called and was interested.

Important for the New York Times was the growth of prosperity in China, resulting from genetic engineering, not the development of post-nuclear superweapons by genetic engineering and six other fields.

Nothing is more usual than SARS as a leak from one of the laboratories of Project 863, just like the Soviet anthrax leak of 1979 in Sverdlovsk. Both Chinese and Soviet authorities tried to conceal the leak, but the Soviet anthrax infection did not spread outside Sverdlovsk since the anthrax infection does not spread by human contact, while SARS has spread all over the world.

Such leaks do happen. What is remarkable? That in the mainstream media in the past six months, no connection between SARS and Project 863 has been even conjectured. Besides, how many Americans have heard of Project 863?

Some Americans have even asked me whether China has nuclear weapons. From Craig Smith’s report in the New York Times it is not clear that China does.

By way of answer, I recall that China used gas for lighting and cooking over 2,000 years before the West did. So the nuclear arsenal of China may become, ere long, more powerful and sophisticated than that of the United States or Russia.

I am happy to announce that the link to the Web site that is to serialize my book in weekly installments is www.levnavrozov.com. My personal e-mail is