Rasulullah
(saws) said, “The best object of charity is a she-camel which has given
birth and gives plenty of milk, or a she-goat which gives plenty of milk,
and is given to somebody to utilize its milk by milking one bowl in the
morning and one in the evening (Bukhari 7:513).”
The
Journal of General Virology has a different opinion of camels, however.
They recently published an online article entitled, “The Fear over
Camelpox as a Bioweapon.” Published this April, Geoffrey Smith from the
Imperial College in London had just sequenced the genome of a strain,
isolated in 1970 in Iran. He immediately concluded that most likely the
strain was not an accident or a natural occurrence. Furthermore, he named
Iraq and Middle Eastern countries as possible candidates for blame,
completely ignoring the fact that camels are also found in Asia, Africa and
even in North America. This new issue in the scientific community
illustrates that suspicion surrounding Arabs and Muslims has reached an
extreme degree.
So,
are these suspicions valid or are they merely more negative propaganda? What
are the possibilities of the camelpox virus becoming a bioweapon?
Geoffrey
Smith considers, “It could be that only a small set of changes would be
necessary for camelpox virus to infect people.” Other scientists say that
this occurrence is a possibility (Coghlan, p.1). Furthermore, the
Iraqi government did admit to U.N. inspectors back in 1995 that they were
working on camelpox as a weapon against foreign troops. However, the
seriousness of this claim was strongly questioned and never proven.
However,
even if the claim of research was valid, it was most probably stopped very
soon after it was undertaken because camelpox is impossible to transfer to
humans with any known methods. Lev Sandakhchiev head of Vector, the Russian
repository of smallpox virus comments that through selective pressure and
engineering modifications it is possible that accidentally it could lead to
a human pathogen (Coghlan, p.1, 2). However, this tentative link could be
applied to any genetically engineered crop.
On
the website poxvirus.org camelpox is listed as a virus that was isolated or
simply taken from sick camels from Kazakhstan in 1996 by the Animal Disease
Center of the U.S Department of Agriculture. They found the proteins and
enzymes similar to cowpox (used in smallpox vaccine) and the variola major
virus (smallpox) strain taken from Bangladesh (Afonso et al, p.1, 2). There
are nine different poxiviruses that can cause disease in humans but camelpox
is not one of them. According to the paper published in The Journal of
General Virology stated that it is possible to genetically modify camelpox
by deleting the genes that are absent in smallpox, which would be highly
dangerous. Scientists theorize that if they were to insert Th² cytokines
into the virus it would cause it to change into a bioweapon form (Gubser,
p.1, 5, 8).
This is highly unlikely, however, as cytokines are naturally occurring
proteins within the human immune system. Incidences of septic shock coincide
with an increased concentration of cytokines, which are produced by various
parts of the immune system including lymphocytes, and endothelial cells that
line the blood vessels. Cytokines have multiple functions but their main
function is to facilitate inter-communication between cells and to host the
defense, maintenance and repair various components of the blood. Even though
much remains unknown, research is looking into using the cytokine interferon
alpha in the treatment of a variety of malignant and immune disorders,
interferon beta in the treatment of multiple sclerosis and interferon gamma
for allergy diseases. The cytokine labeled the ‘tumor necrosis factor’
when injected into animals’ causes a hemorrhage necrosis of their tumors.
Cytokines could, perhaps even be useful in curing a camelpox
infection.
TH²
cells responsible for leukocytes, white blood cell activity, produce
cytokine 1L-10 that can inhibit the production of cytokines (UTH, p.1-5).
This would be necessary in the case of over-production of cytokines, which
as stated before contributes to septic shock, but this doesn’t involve
1L-10 it involves 1L-6, 1L-8 and 1L1B plus others.
It
is therefore quite unlikely that complete prevention of cytokines by design
is possible by causing a complete breakdown in cell-to-cell interaction. In
fact, D.A. Henderson, who led the global campaign against smallpox and his
team of inspectors, said there was no evidence that camelpox could effect
humans in this way or any other way.
In
fact, camelpox has a history of being a very mild virus as well as being
endemic only to camels, and not transferring to humans as the BSE virus can.
In Dubai for instance there was an outbreak of camelpox in 1994. Some 20
camels were examined and seven had previously been vaccinated with a
modified camelpox virus vaccine. The camelpox vaccine didn’t prevent
re-infection, however, the camels did not die the first or even the second
time from camelpox (Elzein, p.1).
The
prophet Muhammad (saws), in fact, considered camel’s milk medicinal (7:71
#589 & 590). Modern scientists theorize that this is because the
camel’s immune system is stronger than ours and that antibodies from their
systems are found in the milk. It was last year that scientists Sabah Jassim
and Mazen Naji of the Zayed Complex for Herbal Research and Traditional
Medicine at Abu Dhabi discovered how resilient camel antibodies are. They
found camel antibodies to be extremely resistant against many viral and
microbial pathogens like tetanus, foot and mouth and BSE. In the British
Institute of Biology journal The Biologist, it was noted that camel
antibodies are two-thirds to one-tenth the size of human antibodies. Hence
they are able to penetrate any enzyme active site including viral enzymes.
Furthermore, they found large quantities of camel antibodies present in
camel milk.
Hoping
to make the most of this researchers at the Free University of Brussels want
to apply this knowledge to cancer therapy (Choi, p.5). So it is much more
likely we will see the introduction of camel’s milk into the International
health food market rather than the introduction of the camelpox virus into
the International community.
Sources:
