Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-06-08

DR VAN RENSBURG: I participated in Fertility Project. And I'd like to put the record straight here, the original assignment to do this project came from Doctor Basson.  He came to see a group of us and said they had a problem with, Savimbi had a problem in UNITA.  His best troops were actually the females but the trouble is they were pregnant most of the time.  And then he indicated that there was a bit of a problem in the refugee camps where they are breeding too fast.   These were the reasons he gave and he had already done his homework, he came with a little book written by an Indian expert on immunological control of fertility.  And in there these chaps, the Indians are very imaginative sort of group, they had all sorts of theories of how to do this.
 With my background, purely because of my background in reproductive research for 11 years, I actually had a project which was registered as Immunological Infertility, the State of the Art.  In other words, I did literature reviews and I could give guidance to the research team.
 In these reviews there was a lot of literature that we obtained from World Health Organisations.  The population council of the World Health Organisation had pinpointed immunological techniques as the future effective way to control populations and particularly in third world countries where you don't have to take a pill every day and so forth for obvious reasons.
 The United Nations World Health Organisation strongly urged and there were official resolutions, all member governments who were in a position to do so, to so research on developing immunological techniques to fertility for fertility control.  In other words, a vaccine.
 Basically of course we didn't really believe the motivation that Doctor Basson gave, maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong but I was suspicious.  We didn't worry too much, I didn't worry too much.  Having looked at it I thought it's a good project.  We appointed Doctor Riana Borman to actually lead the project.  I was an advisor, technical advisor.  
 There was no question at any stage whatsoever of developing a vaccine that only works in blacks or that's colour or ethnic based.  Biochemically, blacks, white, Chinese, whatever, are identical.  There is nothing, no academic reason or a difference that you can look on to make racially based vaccines.  There is no such thing that I know of.  
 So we told him at an early stage, after doing the  literature reviews: "Do you understand Doctor Basson, the thing is very easily detectable".  It was Doctor Basson and Wynand Swanepoel who pushed this constantly. I told them: "It's very easily detectable, you cannot use it covertly".  They said that didn't worry them, we were to carry on.  
 So having discussed it with the research team we decided we would work flat out on this project.  It was a good project commercially.  If the company was ever privatised we could make a killing from it even if we didn't develop the product, just from selling the technology we had performed.

MR CHASKALSON: Doctor van Rensburg, sorry, can I just take you back a little bit.  The first approach by Doctor Basson, when would that have been about, time period?

DR VAN RENSBURG: 1985, later in 1985.

MR CHASKALSON: You said that you didn't believe his motivation, can you elaborate on that?

DR VAN RENSBURG: By this time I'd learnt that the Special Force people were very cavalier and they would spread lots of covert stories and that you didn't necessarily, there was no such thing as ever questioning, it was a need to know thing and you did what you were told and you just volunteered these reasons.
 I could not think that an intelligent man could think we could spend a couple of million on a project like this to control pregnancy in a few of Savimbi's female soldiers, it was just silly ...[indistinct] reason.

MR CHASKALSON: Did you have any speculation in your own mind as to why you had been requested to try and develop this?

DR VAN RENSBURG: Well one speculates that they might want to use it covertly on a huge scale, which I warned them they can never do.  Any junior technical in immunology can devise a test to pick up the antibodies because if you make a person immune, there's only a few antigens hormone type things that you can use.  You can pick up antibodies by very simple laboratory tests and show that population has got antibodies, you know immediately something has happened.

MR CHASKALSON: Can I ask the question, why would you want it not to be detectable?

DR VAN RENSBURG: If you want to use it covertly then you would not want it to be detectable.

MR CHASKALSON: Were you requested ...[intervention]

DR VAN RENSBURG: We were not requested, we were not told.  As I say, the only reasons we were given was the refugee camps and Savimbi's female soldiers.  But as I say, logistically they're rather silly reasons for such a major project.
 One assumed they wanted to use it on a larger scale.  I can't say they wanted to use it covertly, it might be a genuine attempt to make a product available to a population that wants it.   These immunisations as I say, are firstly easy to detect and secondly in most cases very reversible.  
 So it would be a very desirable project and there's a huge amounts, and there are a lot of groups working on this field that were working even then.  There are huge amounts being spent to try and get an effective immunological approach to control fertility.  It's theoretically a very good approach.  
 I even went to Canada to attend an international congress on specifically immunological fertility control on this subject and nothing else.  I met all the people who had written initial works, especially the Indian group and I assessed exactly what the position was and that, came back and that saved us a lot of repetitive futile work in this field.
 We had a team led by Doctor Borman and the other active scientist who was a Biochemist, a young lady, who was obsessive about not being involved in covert work.  She would have nothing to do with it whatsoever but having discussed it we had decided we will never release a product which is not fully tested, approved by a Medical Research Council, preferably through the Medicines Control Council sorry.   We knew that we had no hope of bringing such a project to finality within 10 to 20 years.
 At the later stages the best aspect of this project was that it occupied at least 30% of our research capability at the institute.  That was 30% less time and effort and money to spend on developing covert ways to kill people.
 There was pressure to release the product.  Doctor Wynand Swanepoel harassed me about I must make it available, I said it's not tested for safety, it's not tested for efficacy, effectiveness.  He said it doesn't matter, I must give him some of the product.  We did not give him any and if we were pressed further I would happily have given him a dilute solution of some of the hormone antigens we were using that would definitely not work and be quite harmless.  There was no question that Doctor Borman or Doctor Karen Nel or my ethics would be raped in this particular way.

MR CHASKALSON: You've raised a number of issues now which I'd like to just touch on some of them.  The first one is that you had said that Doctor Swanepoel had requested you to give him some of the product.  Can you clarify for us who Doctor Swanepoel is?

DR VAN RENSBURG: Doctor Wynand Petrus Swanepoel was the second Managing Director or Roodeplaat.  There was a stage when there was talk of privatisation.  The moment the first whispers came out, the first thing they did was to put all front companies under the control of ex-Special Forces officers and it so came that he replaced Doctor Daan Goosen.

MR CHASKALSON: Was he a scientist?