4 October 2018 — RT
A US-funded biomedical laboratory in Georgia may have conducted bioweapons research under the guise of a drug test, which claimed the lives of at least 73 subjects, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research has been operating near Georgian capital Tbilisi since August 2013. A former Georgian minister not long ago claimed he obtained leaked documents detailing the work of this facility. The Russian defense ministry on Thursday said the documents indicate that a test of weapons of mass destruction may have taken place at the cite.
The documents record the deaths of 73 people over a short period of time, indicating a test of “a highly toxic chemical or biological agents with high lethality rate,” said Igor Kirillov, the commander of the Russian military branch responsible for defending troops from radiological, chemical and biological weapons.
US-funded medical facility in Georgia could be a cover for bioweapons lab used for disturbing experiments that banned in US https://t.co/9N3UnbCQ3K
— RT (@RT_com)
The documents, which were handed over to the Russian military by Igor Giorgadze, the former Georgian minister for state security, state that the tests involved a drug called Sovaldi, which is meant for treatment of Hepatitis C. The producer of the drug is Gilead Sciences, a California-based biomedical firm that recruited former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a board member in 1988, in between his two tenures as the head of the Pentagon.
“The documents showed many lethal outcomes among the patients. Despite the deaths of 24 people in December 2015 alone, the clinical trials were continued in violation of international standards and wishes of the patients,” Kirollov claimed. “This led to the deaths of 49 more people.”
The large number of deaths stands in stark contrast with the actual documented use of Sovaldi in Russia, where no deaths have been linked to the drug, the Russian official stressed. Kirillov added that the US has a long record of unethical testing on human subjects in foreign countries.
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