Word: bees
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Soviet "yellow rain" was skeptical at best scoffing at worst. The U.N. has refused to openly condemn the Soviet Union and its allies for their glaring infractions against the biological weapons treaties. And here at home, a Harvard professor earlier this month dismissed "yellow rain" as nothing more than bee feces, while the Cambridge Department of Public Health has tried to stop a local company from manufacturing nerve gas for the Pentagon...
...attack on the Administration's position implicitly denies the validity of the government's evidence. Meselson contends that the toxins claimed by the Administration to be biological weapons are in fact naturally occurring microbes. Further, he claims that the "yellow rain" may actually be merely the product of mass bee defecation flights and says he was caught in just such a shower while visiting Thailand last month. Yet, while bee feces may create some toxins. Meselson's theory simply does not account for the indication of massive toxins in Southeast Asia...
...Harvard Professor Matthew S. Meselson is persisting in his claim that yellow rain is instead the feces of wild honeybees. Bee feces, Meselson and a Yale colleague have found, bear strong resemblances--in size, appearance, and characteristics--to alleged samples of yellow rain, many of which in fact contained pollen. Now back from a trip to Thailand, the scientists say they observed honey bees on defecation flights spraying the yellow spots that the government says are the residue of Soviet chemical weapons...
Meselson, a principled opponent of chemical warfare of longstanding, ought to be congratulated for his courageous pursuit of his bee hypothesis in face of ridicule and intransigency by the government. Still, his explanation for the yellow rain phenomenon answers only one part of the broad array of evidence collected by the government to back its claims...
...from alleged attack sites have been studied under laboratories and shown to contain toxins far in excels of what is normally found in Asia; these include samples of rocks, leaves, and blood and urine from alleged victims that do not contain the famous yellow spots Meselson says now are bee feces...