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

MR VALLY: Well sorry, I should turn over - there isn't much there - we go on to 13 - I assume it's 1358, the 8 is missing.  This is where your name appears, Dr Odendal.  Is that your name up there?

MIKE ODENDAL: That's correct, yes.

MR VALLY: Well, let's talk about some of the items referred to herein.

MIKE ODENDAL: If we start at the first one, NO34, Warmaconers(?) stands for the organism or the name of Hormonous Resina.  It is a fungus type of organism which grows in aeroplane fuel and it causes a great deal of problems in the spraying aeroplanes of the Air Force, because polluted fuel can cause the aeroplane to crash, and we looked at methods of decreasing these organisms.  The following one, or the next one is a project Septic Shock.  In conjunction with an overseas researcher who came to do research at RRL quite often, I think he still comes on an annual basis to sister companies or another company, he developed a shock lung model in baboons which he used to develop certain therapeutic to test these measures, that is why he came to our country so often to do testing on baboons, and he developed this model.  All that we did is that we took E-coli organisms and we grew this and gave it to him which he injected into the baboons, and they then developed this shock model ...(intervention)

WENDY ORR: Sorry, may I interrupt before we carry on.  We had some confusion when we were speaking to Dr van Rensburg about the "begrooting" column, whether it was rands and cents, or rands.  Could you perhaps clarify that for us?

MIKE ODENDAL: Yes, I think that would be R22 500,00.

WENDY ORR: Thank you very much.

CHAIRPERSON: And at the end there it would been "totale inkomste vir RNL" that would be R10 million.

MIKE ODENDAL: I think that would be for RNL as a company.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, but then is would be R10 million.  Mr Vally?

MIKE ODENDAL: Shall I go on to the following project?

MR VALLY: Just before you go on to the next one, a septic shock lung I think you called it, these experiments were done on the premises?

MIKE ODENDAL: Yes.

MR VALLY: With baboons?

MIKE ODENDAL: Yes.

MR VALLY: And they would be injected with the live culture?

MIKE ODENDAL: Yes.

MR VALLY: And the results would be examined?

MIKE ODENDAL: Yes.

MR VALLY: For what purposes?

MIKE ODENDAL: Well, this very prominent overseas research worker or scientist was developing a model for specifically for application in humans for the treatment of lung shock, because after an accident normal, let's say a car accident, the first thing that happens is the patient goes into shock situation and this model was used to simulate the condition in humans.

MR VALLY: Let's go on to the next one.

MR DU PLESSIS: SKB Tande, that was just the company, Roodeplaat Breeding Enterprises, they had over a thousand Alsatian dogs and during one of their vaccination trials, the dogs developed an enamel hypoplasia and to prove this we had to repeat the trial to demonstrate to the commercial company which supplied the vaccine that enamel hypoplasia took place, and this was the project.

MR VALLY: Let's go on, while I'm there, you know, you have project numbers there, some with "N's" before them, some with "R's" before them, some with "L's" before them, do those have any significance?

MIKE ODENDAL: Yes, the "N" project would be the projects, the commercial projects.  The "R" project would be the hard project.

MR VALLY: I see, and the "R"?  The "N" is commercial, the "R" is hard, ...(intervention)

MIKE ODENDAL: And the "L" would be an in-house development project.

MR VALLY: I see, sorry, please go on.

MIKE ODENDAL: Okay, the translocation 181, that was a similar project to the septic shock, the one was the production of the E-coli Endotoxin.  With translocation the scientist tried to re-isolate the organisms from the different organs to sort of, to check the distribution of the gram negative organism, so we gave it another number, and we did it apart from the other one.  Translocation means the movement from the organism from the bloodstream into the different organs.  So after the experiment, this animal was euthenased and we did the isolations.

MR VALLY: Let's go on.

MIKE ODENDAL: R0012 was our culture collection in which the Defence Force had an interest.  They requested us to develop and to establish a well rung culture collection.

MR VALLY: Let's just go back to the one before ...(intervention)

MIKE ODENDAL: Oh yes, 186, sorry, Pasteurella.

MR VALLY: Yes.

MIKE ODENDAL: This was Pasteurella Humalitica is an organism that causes pneumonia in cattle.  It's one of the most devastating diseases, especially in fetlock cattle, and we developed a vaccine which was completely new to this country, the first type of vaccine of that nature in this country were developed, and it was done for a private veterinarian which contracted us to do this research work for him, and at this stage it is a registered vaccine in South Africa.

MR VALLY: Fine, we will come back to R0012 in more detail, that's a "versameling", a collection of various cultures as you put it.  Let's go on to R0091.

MIKE ODENDAL: Okay, that's Bacillus Anthraces, which is Anthrax.  Anthrax is one of the most common organisms used in biological warfare.  I think the Americans, the British, Sadam Hussein, all the people have Anthrax in their collection, and the purpose of this project was to establish whether one could produce a strain of Anthrax that would be resistant to penicillin.

MR VALLY: We're going to come back to that as well in a short while.  The next one, that's "L" with question marks.

MIKE ODENDAL: Okay, that aims - that stands for the aims test.  The aims test is a test to test certain substances for carcinogenicity.  This project didn't really get off the ground and we didn't give it any attention, but it was in our plan.

MR VALLY: Let's go on.

MIKE ODENDAL: L183, Gamoglobulin P and SKP is for horses, perde, en skape.  We also had a project to isolate and purify the gamoglobulins from hyper immunised horse and sheep serum.  This we did for a specific disease referring back to one of the sheep diseases or the Epsilon toxin in sheep, because we wanted to test one of our new theories, and that is of passive immunisation in sheep as a means of protection.  This is one of our commercial projects which, it worked quite well, and we produced quite a lot of this gamoglobulin in sheep.

MR VALLY: Let's go on.  You have a N204.

MIKE ODENDAL: RTO, Roodeplaat Teel Ondernemings, that's the synonym for Roodeplaat Breeding Enterprises.  Rooiderm in English we would say red gut in dogs, because they had 1000 dogs in one place, there was - they had a very unique syndrome called Haemorrhagic Necrotic Enteritis in the dogs, and my being a veterinary bacteriologist it stimulated my interest because my - the Clostridia group of organisms was my field of interest because I did my masters thesis on Clostridium profingens, and we tackled this problem of looking into the causes this disease in these dogs.  Quite a number of these dogs died as a result of this disease.

MR VALLY: Let's go on, R47.

MIKE ODENDAL: Okay, this is the freeze-dry process of certain pathogens.  Certain of these, I think it's fair to say that not all the organisms in the culture collection was pathogenic.  Some were more pathogenic than others, and we got the order from the Defence Force to select certain pathogens and freeze-dry them in larger quantities that what we normally would have done.

MR VALLY: And which would these be?

MIKE ODENDAL: These would be Salmonella, it would be Anthrax, it would be Cholera, and also ...(indistinct)

MR VALLY: Tell me, when you say you got the order from the Defence Force, who specifically gave you the order?