Manifesto

[Jan Klimkowski]

Last year, the Defense Department launched Mitochondrial Energetics, requesting proposals that would tinker with troop's energy-production abilities. That same year, Dr. Chaudhuri concluded that mole rats, who can live up to 28 years, have a particularly efficient mitochondrial cleanup system. Even when exposed to high levels of stress, the mole rats sustained their impressive lifespan. Now he's trying to boost the mitochondrial efficiency of primates, with a process that's part pharmaceutical and part diet. Anti-oxidants, often touted as a benefit of nutritious food, are the enzymes that eliminate byproducts of mitochondrial processes. DARPA wants those anti-oxidants condensed into a tablet, which Dr. Chaudhuri anticipates would be dozens of times more concentrated than a serving of greens. But caloric intake matters too: The byproducts of digestion cause cellular stress. So Dr. Chaudhuri expects that tomorrow's troops will also survive on a calorie-restricted diet, which, combined with anti-oxidant supplementation, will actually boost their bodies' efficiency.

"The armed forces are exposed to more stress, and more environmental toxins, than most," he says. "If we boost their mitochondrial efficiency, and curb the oxidative reaction of digestion, we're mitigating that stress before it happens."

Not only might troops increase their physical resistance to stress and toxins, they'd also minimize their risk of neurological diseases like MS and ALS, which have stricken vast numbers of Gulf War vets exposed to nerve gas and other chemical agents. "Within 10 years, I'd predict we have a supplement available," Dr. Chaudhuri says. "And neurological diseases? All but eradicated."

Mitigating existing stress is one thing, but DARPA also wants to eliminate cognitive awareness of stress altogether. This year, they launched another program, this one geared towards mental, rather than physical, stamina. The program, Enabling Stress Resistance, hopes to use advances in molecular biology and neuroscience to short-circuit how we interpret and internalize stressful situations -- long before oxidative stress enters the fray.

This kind of tactical pharmacology isn't new to the military, which started doling out amphetamines to troops in World War II, and have been criticized for continuing to do so as recently as 2003, when Air Force pilots accidentally bombed a Canadian training force while charged up on Dexedrine.

But DARPA isn't looking for a quick fix. They're asking for a team of academics, including molecular biologists and neuroscientists, to first identify how stress targets the brain, and then demonstrate a pharmaceutical intervention that can reduce stress reactions by at least 75 percent in test animals. From there, DARPA wants to "inoculate warfighters" against the cognitive and emotional impact of the high-stress inevitabilties in war zones, including limited sleep, emotional disturbance and physical exertion.

Of course, an appropriate dose of stress can also be a powerful catalyst. That's why Dr. Amy Krause, the Defense Department program manager in charge of the initiative, writes that she wants a method to "identify the breaking point" at which stress turns from motivational to harmful. By mapping cognitive stress response, and then meting out a pharmaceutical intervention that can short-circuit the feedback loop before stress even happens, DARPA hopes to boost troop bravado and performance, while limiting the long-term impact of wartime trauma, which is being linked to the unprecedented number of vets struggling with symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

This is massively ignorant, dangerous and reckless pseudo-science on a captive audience, drilled and trained to obey orders - namely, soldiers.

Big Pharma suddenly has hundreds of thousands of free human guinea pigs.

The cop-out line from the hackette who wrote the piece, "But DARPA isn't looking for a quick fix", reveals that the piece is pure propaganda.