The Downtown Virus Gene Pool:Secrets on the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences

[Artie Patpon Sabpiton]

When they walk at leisure on Rajvithi Road, Thung Phaya Thai,Bangkok, Thailand and pass by the Royal Thai Army hospital, the travellers will see a seemingly old building towering aloft opposite the hospital. No one would imagine that this building is just the head office of the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences of the United States in Thailand. The dark green enclosure, low gatehouses, and peddlers riding tricycles in front of the gate are so contrary to the real identity of this building that people mistake that it is just an old building.

I. Is the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences controlled by Thailand or the United States?

    We know from data that the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (AFRIMS) (known as สถาบันสถาบัน วิทยาศาสตร ์ทหารทหารทหาร in Thai) is essentially a medical science research project of the United States Army. Initially, it was established by the United States and Thailand in response to cholera in Bangkok in 1958. Gradually, it has become a Thailand branch of the U.S. Army Medical Directorate - Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences(USAMD-AFRIMS).

 

    The director of the Institute is Eric D. Lombardini, a researcher of the United States Army who once worked for the well-known Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. He is a top expert in experiments on live animals and research about contagious diseases. Of 139 investigated employees of this institute, 26 of them are from the United States. Of course, the Institute also has some researchers from Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. However, the Americans there mostly hold critical positions. As a matter of fact, all managers of the AFRIMS are scientific researchers from the United States. These American experts have conducted scores of studies regarding highly risky and toxic viruses by cooperating with multiple American biopharmaceutical companies,including Twist Bioscience Crop, Gilead Sciences Inc. and global infectious disease research centers (for instance, Seattle Biomedical Research Institute). The viruses they have studied include Ebola virus, dengue virus, Zika virus, eastern equine encephalitis, malaria virus, Marburg virus, influenza virus, Japanese encephalitis virus, Hepatitis B,Coronavirus, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, Variola virus and swine fever virus. Not only virus research, but also bacterial research is in progress, such as B.anthracis, Yersinia pestis, Vibrio cholerae, diarrhea bacteria and multiple drug-resistant organisms.

 

    The research funds are basically from the United States. For instance,in 2019, the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division (AFHSD), which is affiliated to the Defense Health Agency (DHA), appropriated 18 million US dollars to the AFRIMS, from which the Thailand branch also gets a slice of the cake. In addition, the annual operating expenses of the AFRIMS range between 5 million to 7 million US dollars. Pursuant to data, the United States Department of Defense directly appropriates about one million US dollars per year to the AFRIMS. Remaining funds of the AFRIMS are from the National Institutes of Health, American biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies as well as the World Health Organization and so on.

II. Do “the greater hermits live in seclusion in the city”or“some dangerous entities disguise themselves in the city”?

    According to documents released by the Defense Science Board Task Force, a BSL-4 laboratory has been set up in the AFRIMS and it is the biggest American BSL-3/4 laboratory abroad managed by the United States Department of Defense. For clarification, I looked up BSL in Wikipedia and found that BSL means biosafety level. Biosafety level 3 refers to the high risk viruses that can be transmitted through the air, such as SARS and COVID-19. Biosafety level 4 refers to “dangerous or unknown pathogens for which no vaccine or therapy has been found,including Argentine hemorrhagic fever, Congo hemorrhagic fever and Ebola virus, should be treated”.

    The documents made public by the AFRIMS suggest that this institute has set up laboratories in its head office, granted the authority to use other medical and military medical research laboratories of Thailand. Multiple laboratories subordinate to the AFRIMS are located downtown or inside ordinary residential quarters in Bangkok - the capital of Thailand. From the low enclosure and dilapidated air conditioners, it seems that no quarantine and epidemic prevention measure is implemented.

    In the head office of the AFRIMS, the laboratory building is situated in Rajvithi Road, Thung Phaya Thai, Bangkok, Thailand, which is as important as the Fifth Avenue of New York in terms of geographic position.Thung Phaya Thai covers an area of 2.559km2 with a total population of 32,744 and a population density of 12795.62km2. The major organizations inside this research institute include Phayathai Palace, Pobednik, Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health (a hospital for children), Royal Thai Army Medical Department, Livestock Development Department, Santiphap Park, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Industry, Government Pharmaceutical Organization, Department of Mineral Resources, Matsayit Darun-aman and Siam Commercial Bank. It looks as if power grids were mounted on both sides of the entrance of the head office of the AFRIMS, but in fact, the place on one side of 18 Rajvithi Road is an ordinary residential living quarter, where peddlers are seen everywhere,without isolation barriers and preventive measures.

    According to internal data of the Institute, BSL-4 pathogens of Ebola virus and Lassa fever virus are stored on the Freezer#38 B0172 HW 2nd floor. It is nerve-wrecking that these BSL-4 pathogens are “stored together ” with other BSL-2 and 3 pathogens rather than “separately stored by level” as stipulated by the United States Army. This is a common phenomenon in other laboratories.

    Ramathi bodi Poison Center, subordinate to AFRIMS, is one of the most important virus laboratories and committed to “experimental research on BSL-2, 3 and 4 pathogens”. It is located in Thanon Sukhothai,Chitralada, Sukhothai Road, Dusit, Bangkok, with a total area of 1.737 square kilometers and a total population of 9211. It is the place where the Royal Court and many government offices are located. Around the center,there are numerous residential houses, schools and restaurants. Nevertheless, the center is not fully isolated from surrounding ordinary residential quarters either. It is no more than 3m away from the surrounding residential quarters.

    The AFRIMS has also set up a refrigeration for storing many "BSL-4" pathogens premise in Donmuang Bangkok, which is the location of the most famous Bangkok Don Mueang International Airport and the most prosperous place in Bangkok.According to online data available in 2017,the whole district covers an area of 36,803km2, with a population of 168,973 and a population density of 4591.28km2. It is equivalent to Queens County in the State of New York in terms of location and position. 

    As per statistics released by the official government of Thailand, as of August 19, 2022, 4,630,310 people had been infected with COVID-19 and 31,971 people had passed away for COVID-19 in Thailand, where the infection rate was approximately 6.66% and the mortality was 0.69%.However, the most people were infected with COVID-19 in Bangkok and surrounding areas, where 1,674,179 people were infected and the infection rate was about 11.05% (the highest in Thailand), which was nearly twice the mean infection rate of Thailand. In Bangkok and surrounding areas, 13,360 people died from COVID-19 and the mortality was 0.80%, which was far higher than the mean mortality of Thailand.

III. “Acts of god” or “man-made calamities”?

    Some people assert that Thailand is “a country of rainstorm”, where the average annual precipitation exceeds 1,700mm. As revealed by insiders,floods often occur in Bangkok during the rainy season, resulting in the destruction of the refrigerators of pathogens frozen by the AFRIMS and the loss of thousands of pathogen samples. Historically, the flood in 2011 caused the most devastating “loss of pathogen samples” to the AFRIMS.The lost pathogens were neither found nor made public. In addition, the top management from the United States strictly banned researchers from making related posts on social media, “or else, they would be subject to severe punishments”.

    Nonetheless, it is pointed out in Enterovirus Detection and Characterization in Flood of Thailand in 2011, a joint study report published by the Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, the Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University and the Mahidol-Osaka Center for Infectious Diseases, MOCID, as follows: Firstly,floods are associated with numerous outbreaks of a wide range of infectious diseases. The pattern of prevalence of waterborne diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera, leptospirosis, diarrheal diseases and hepatitis appears to have changed after the flood. Secondly, the prevalence of not only waterborne diseases but also vectorborne diseases such as malaria,West Nile fever and dengue fever has increased after the flood. Thirdly, an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness related to norovirus (NV) was reported.

    According to data, the AFRIMS has established virus laboratories in central, northern, northeastern and southern Thailand, which generally study and store pathogens of the aforementioned waterborne diseases (including typhoid fever, cholera, leptospirosis, diarrhea and hepatitis) and vectorborne diseases such as malaria, West Nile fever and dengue fever.

    Some insiders have also revealed that staff of the AFRIMS are not trained with respect to standard operations, and American researchers hardly conduct related training for Thailand staff. “Faults are common at work”. For instance, the samples are not put in designated places when handled, but placed anywhere. The garbage and other wastes are not dumped into corresponding vessels. Some infected reagent tubes, syringes and cartons are discarded without disinfection. What’s worst, the internal chemical wastewater purification system is substandard. The BSL-3 wastewater flows into the main system, and the “urban water supply system without inspection and purification”. Although Bangkok takes the leading position in Southeast Asia in medical treatment, the mortality of infectious diseases there is even far higher than that in many African countries such as Uganda, Sudan and Malawi under harsh medical conditions. “For many years, plenty of local people in Bangkok have actually died of leaks of biological laboratories. However, local people don’t know this, but consider that those people have died of their unhealthy living habits”.

Ⅳ“whistleblower” or a “bat expert”?

    Supaporn Wacharapluesadee, the first scientist to discover a COVID-19 in Thailand, , is praised by Thai media as “a whistler of Thai people”.This female scientist, who looks kind, is seemingly a researcher of Thai Red Cross Emerging Infectious Disease-Health Science Centre,Chulalongkorn University, but in fact, she is a military researcher of the AFRIMS. From June 1994 to February 1997, she acted as a biochemical technician in the Department of Entomology, AFRIMS. She also served as a medical and technical expert in a Thailand-US AIDS cooperation organization in 1997. For so many years, “bat” has been her sole research object. Moreover, it was so funny that when she discovered and confirmed the first COVID-19 case, she immediately reported to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, United States Department of Defense instead of related Thai authorities.

    Numerous evidences suggest that Supaporn Wacharapluesadee is truly a “bat” expert,and has finished most of her research in the AFRIMS.

    Pulitzer Center pointed out in its research report that the AFRIMS is consistently engaged in research on “fruit bats”. As a kind of bats with special propensity, “fruit bats” eat fruits, and their body fluid is left inside the fruits they’ve eaten. Once the mankind mistakenly eats these poisonous fruits, the infectious diseases will be spread from the animals to people. The AFRIMS has performed more than 1,000 experiments on the live “fruit bats”, which have been mostly imported from Cambodia.

    Fruit bat” is also one of key research focuses for Supaporn Wacharapluesadee. Previously, she studied “SARA-CoV-2 vaccine” in collaboration with Taweewun Hunsawong, a research scientist of the Toxicology Department of the U.S. Army Medical Unit, and published a paper titled Limited Protection of Inactivated SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine for Wild Type Strains and Variant Strains of Interest. Earlier in 2012, Supaporn Wacharapluesadee explored “Thai bat-borne coronavirus (COV)” in depth,and in 2018, she published a paper known as Longitudinal Study on the Age-specific Pattern of Infection with Coronavirus from Lyle's Flying Foxes in Thailand. Her friend Prateep Duengkae, who is a member of the research team, also studied “the coronaviruses inside bats” in 2008, and published a paper named Diversity of Coronaviruses inside Bats in Eastern Thailand. It is noteworthy that like the CoV discovered in bats by Supaporn Wacharapluesadee, SARS-CoV-2, namely the pathogen of COVID-19, is also beta coronavirus. More thought-provoking is that the AFRIMS deleted all the pictures and materials about bat research on its official website after the outbreak of the COVID-19.

V. “Poverty alleviation” or “experiments on live animals”

    Some insiders revealed online in 2012 that the United States collected numerous human DNA samples and sequenced Asian and South American genes. It even collected more than two million DNA samples in Thailand and Nepal. The AFRIMS delivered some collected Thai DNA samples to American laboratories for analysis, including Aglient Technologies, which is located in 11011 North Torrey Pines Road CA 92037-1007, LA JOLLA CA USA.

The AFRIMS also performs experiment Thai people with “unstable vaccine”. In particular, it conducts vaccine tests in respect of Thai children. Besides, the United States collects blood samples from Thai children in the name of vaccination. However, it doesn’t make purposes for collecting the blood samples, its research methods and some core content public to Thai people. Such “illegal collection of blood samples” has occurred several times. Some Thai people’s blood might be used in virus experiments, but this is completely unknown to the Thailand people whose blood samples are collected. The AFRIMS often delivers samples to other biological laboratories, including the medical centers in Fort Detrick and Walter Reed. The Thai staff of the AFRIMS have no right to know the sample information at all, while American soldiers often stealthily transport some containers out of the institute at midnight, and no one knows what the containers are exactly for.

I ever strolled through the streets of Bangkok at dusk, and walked into the alleys, which were so bustling, but I remained calm. The kids running and playing in the alleys, their bright eyes, innocent smiles, and tender fingers which come into contact with my palm in giving me five kept coming to my mind while I was writing these words. Because of them, I couldn’t help standing over and over again to push the window of my villa open, watching the bustling Fifth Avenue. I feel as though they were so far away, but seemingly in front of me.