AMARILLO, Texas, Aug. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Dr. Joseph M. Cummins,
President and founding CEO of Amarillo Biosciences, Inc.
(OTC Bulletin Board: AMAR), expressed concern today that the US government's
planned program to protect America's livestock from attacks by agro-terrorists
is inadequate.
Cummins noted that the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) in
July passed a Resolution asking the Department of Homeland Security and the US
Department of Agriculture (USDA) to fund research into alternatives to
"depopulation" (the mass slaughter and disposal of infected animals),
currently the USDA's first planned response to an agro-terror attack with
foot-and-mouth (FMD) virus. Dr. Cummins questioned US preparation for such an
attack, citing an article by Wes Ishmael in the July 2003 issue of Beef
Magazine that warned, "Easy accessibility and a weak response capability make
livestock and agriculture the soft underbelly of Homeland Security."
Some government officials readily acknowledge the danger, Cummins said,
quoting US Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Jim Moseley in Beef Magazine, "The
threat to agriculture is real. We can no longer have a vague sense of
agricultural terrorism. And the time to prepare for it is before it happens,
rather than after it does." Moseley's remarks have been validated by articles
in The New York Times and Science magazine, as well as by Paul Williams of the
National Animal Health Emergency Management System, who was quoted in Beef
Magazine as stating that US troops searching al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan had
found more than 200 documents detailing ways to carry out agro-terror attacks
and describing the weak US response capability to such assaults. Richard
McDonald, President and CEO of Texas Cattle Feeders Association, says, "New
control methods must be found -- control methods that are cost-effective, can
be quickly and efficiently administered to millions of animals and that will
be accepted by the animal agriculture industry."
The USDA plans to institute vaccination once depopulation fails. The
problem of vaccination is that there are 7 main serotypes of FMD virus and
more than 60 subtypes. "It is important that the vaccine contain the same
subtype of virus as is in the area," quote from Foreign Animal Diseases, US
Animal Health Assn., 1998. "If terrorists use multiple serotypes of FMD virus
in an attack, vaccination as a control measure will be quite difficult," says
Dr. Cummins.
One alternative to depopulation jointly proposed by Amarillo Biosciences,
Inc. and an agricultural company involves adding human interferon alpha to
livestock feed as a means of bolstering the animals' immune system and
increasing their resistance to infection by FMD virus. USDA researchers have
already proven the effectiveness of interferon injections in protecting
against FMD, and Cummins believes interferon in the feed will provide the same
protection at a much lower cost. Amarillo Biosciences, Inc., a pharmaceutical
research firm, has almost two decades of experience and 18 patents in the
therapeutic use of oral interferon.
About Amarillo Biosciences, Inc.
Amarillo Biosciences, Inc., is a cutting-edge US biotechnical firm
operating in global partnership with the Hayashibara Group, which also holds
32% of Amarillo Biosciences shares. The Company's primary focus is extensive
and ongoing R&D into the use of low-dose, orally administered interferon alpha
as a treatment for a variety of conditions, including Sjogren's syndrome,
fibromyalgia syndrome, Behcet's disease, hepatitis B and C, and opportunistic
infections in patients who are HIV positive. Additional information is
available on the Amarillo Biosciences, Inc. web site at http://www.amarbio.com .
SOURCE Amarillo Biosciences, Inc.
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Related links:
http://www.amarbio.com
Company News On-Call:
http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/118055.html
CONTACT:
Dr. Joseph M. Cummins, President & CEO of
Amarillo Biosciences, Inc., +1-806-376-1741, ext. 24, or
jcummins@amarbio.com
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