Debunked: FunVax, Pentagon Briefing on Removing the God Gene [Hoax]

Mick West

Mick West

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The video proports to be a pentagon briefing from 2005 about a proposal to spread a virus in the Middle East that would prevent people from developing extreme religious views. Besides the obviously ludicrous nature of this idea, the video itself is fake, a deliberate hoax. The most telling thing is that the graphic that supposed shows "two different individuals" is actually two images of the same brain.



More telling, it's actually the brain of a 43 year old meth addict, taken from this article in the Dec 2010 issue of Neurology.

http://www.neurology.org/content/75/18_Supplement_1/S67.full.pdf html



So, a video uploaded in 2011 is supposedly a secret Pentagon video from 2005. But actually used photoshopped images from an unrelated 2010 article. Since the image did not exist until 2010, this proves the video is a fake.

So who is behind it? The most likely candidate is Ryan Harper, who ran a failed Kickstarter project to make a documentary about it:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1220299829/funvax-a-film-about-the-conspiracy
So I think it's very likely that Ryan Harper made the original FunVax hoax film himself. He's well suited to the task, working in biotech, and also making films.

Ryan Harper registered funvax.com on 2011-04-03 (April 3rd, 2011), two months before the "Joey Lambardi" video was released.

http://www.whois.net/whois/funvax.com


Note: I found the older brain scan image with Google Images:
 
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Jay Reynolds

Jay Reynolds

Senior Member
Some general questions.
Who did the debunking?
Can this hoax be tracked back to its origins?
Who promoted the hoax, when where, how, and why?
Who fell for it first and how did it spread?
 
Mick West

Mick West

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Someone on YouTube noticed the pictures were similar.

I (Mick) found the matching image using Google.

Seems like this blog is responsible for it:
http://funvax.wordpress.com/

Seems like it started early 2011, and the video was released in June 2011

It spread via youtube, Facebook and the various conspiracy sites.
 
T

TotallyWeird

Guest
Mick said:
Dragged this crop from the video:



Into google image search

http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi

Neuroimaging blog had link to article on Neurology.org
Click to expand...


Hmm, what if the brain scans were deliberately made identical / scrambled / overlapped with the scan from a third person etc., to avoid identifying the actual persons whose brains might have produced those patterns, but the rest of the brain was edited out?
 
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Mick West

Mick West

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The video is supposedly from 2005. The brain image is from 2010. Hence the video is fake.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
A couple points:

1. That the brain scan image was published in 2010 does not mean that the image was not available to the presenter before the 2010 publication. In other words, the image could have been available to the presenter out of a database, low-circulation research document, or some source other than the one found by the OP.

2. That the slide does not actually show two individuals, as the presenter in the video claims, does not prove the video a hoax, only the slide. In other words, it is possible that the presenter, or whoever prepared the slide, used "shopped" images out of laziness or an intent to deceive the Pentagon personnel.
 
Mick West

Mick West

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1. I think the timeline is pretty clear here. The Neurology article was published in 2010, and is clearly about a very recent case. Hence the images cannot have been taken before 2009.

2. Either way it's a hoax, and there's zero actual evidence of Pentagon involvement. There's just this video, and the rather suspicious singular web site. Does this story seem at all plausible:

The authors of this page is are independent group of people that were brought together after hearing Joey Lambardi’s story. Each of us knows Joey personally and we can verify that what he claims is true. The authors of this page do not have all the evidence that that Joey has access to, he sends us pieces of evidence every month or two to help spread the word about FunVax. Joey Lambardi is currently on the run, so any communication with him is sporadic at best.
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Why release the info a bit at a time? It's trivial to send all the files he has, so why not? The only reason is that the authors of the hoax want to draw it out as long as possible. Consider what they say here:

http://funvax.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/joey-lambardi-to-release-evidence-june-1st-2011/

Because of our relationship with Joey, he agreed to release everything he has on this web site as well as other major news sources like CNN, Fox and MSNBC. But there is a catch. He doesn’t want to be risking his neck for an audience of 10 or 20 people…We promised him we can get 200,000 people to visit this site on June 1st. This information can change the world. But we need your help. As of today, April 7th, 2011 we have a little over a thousand people visiting this site. Please, spread the word and help us end government mind control.
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It's just nonsense. If he has such sensitive information, and has already "risked his neck" by releasing part of it, then he's vastly increasing his personal risk by not releasing the rest.

All they are trying to do here is drive traffic to their web site.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Not true that it's unrelated. This is an article about a woman who was meth-addicted and her VMAT activity is low as a result.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Sorry, I get that maybe there are not purely altruistic motives at work here, but are you suggesting that because someone wants to make money from something, it's not real? So no celebrity sex tape has ever been legit? Those are always used to drive traffic to a specific site. C'mon now, I think there's plenty of other areas to criticize with this vid. I think the strangest bit is the audio...
 
Mick West

Mick West

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Unregistered said:
Not true that it's unrelated. This is an article about a woman who was meth-addicted and her VMAT activity is low as a result.
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There's no mention of VMAT. But the key point is that the image is from five years AFTER the claimed date on the video. So the video is a fake.
 
Mick West

Mick West

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Unregistered said:
Sorry, I get that maybe there are not purely altruistic motives at work here, but are you suggesting that because someone wants to make money from something, it's not real? So no celebrity sex tape has ever been legit? Those are always used to drive traffic to a specific site. C'mon now, I think there's plenty of other areas to criticize with this vid. I think the strangest bit is the audio...
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No, I'm saying that it's very suspicious that they withhold this earth-shattering information until they get more page views. There is simply no reason to do this if they are at all concerned with getting the information out there.

What are they going to do? Not release the information if only 100,000 people visit?

If you are in possession of some super secret information that makes you afraid of your life, then would you A) tell the world you have it, but you need some more site traffic, so you'll wait for a while, hopefully nobody kills you to stop the release of this top-secret info. or B) Just release it, then they won't have any reason to kill you, the world will see how amazing the info is, and you'll get all the traffic you can handle.
 
BlueCollarCritic

BlueCollarCritic

Member
Mick,

All of your points about the dates/times as well as the image matching are valid. Where your argument that this has been debunked loses credibility is the very first comment you made, “Besides the obviously ludicrous nature of this idea..”.

Ones inability to believe something is real or even just possible is not a valid argument against it. True debunking needs to be unemotional. This does not mean that one cannot be emotional or even passionate about something they are debating for or against only that the emotion should drive the pursuit and not be the basis for their case for or against something.

The idea that research into a treatment (be it a vaccine or something else) that would remove desires (the pursuit of pleasure) from a man/woman is not ludicrous or irrational. Such a treatment would do wonders for certain segments of the population, namely those persons who are a physical danger to the rest of us and who are unable to correct their actions without outside help in the form of physical restraints or even chemical treatment just to name two. The problem and fear that drives the popularity of this idea, that the government is developing a vaccine to kill the God-gene comes from existing real world actions taken against people across the globe and across time.

Do you deny that the US government has experimented on persons without their knowledge? The Tuskegee airmen experiment is no conspiracy theory and is a perfect example of how government can act with disregard for human life. It took a whistle blower to expose this dark blemish on our country’s history. Even as of today the military experiments on soldiers even though it’s not supposed to give soldiers experimental vaccines. And please don’t say that the soldiers have the ability to say no. If a soldier says no to anything they realize that they can most likely kiss good bye any chance for career advancement.

In closing let me say that while I agree with you about this video being in question that alone does not prove one way or another as to whether such research is being pursued by our military or government.
 
Mick West

Mick West

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I don't think the basic idea of a mind-altering virus is ludicrous. I do think it's pretty unlikely it could be as targeted as suggested, but not entirely impossible.

What I was suggeting was ludicrous was "a proposal to spread a virus in the Middle East that would prevent people from developing extreme religious views." I think it's ludicrous that people would even discuss doing this, due to the extraordinarily negative light it would cast on those doing it when it was eventually revealed. It's also a ludicrous idea since it would essentially by releasing a pandemic upon the world with totally unknown side-effects.
 
J

Jimmy G

Guest
Mick said:
I don't think the basic idea of a mind-altering virus is ludicrous. I do think it's pretty unlikely it could be as targeted as suggested, but not entirely impossible.

What I was suggeting was ludicrous was "a proposal to spread a virus in the Middle East that would prevent people from developing extreme religious views." I think it's ludicrous that people would even discuss doing this, due to the extraordinarily negative light it would cast on those doing it when it was eventually revealed. It's also a ludicrous idea since it would essentially by releasing a pandemic upon the world with totally unknown side-effects.
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Mick I think the last part of this Statement is even more ludicrous. That nobody would talk about it and that there aren't people out there who would even care about the after effects. For example, Hitler wasn't the only bad person in history, and it's INSANE to think that no one else could ever be as bad as him today. Listen to some of these collage professors and some of the Government officials talk about Population control and Eugenics.
 
Mick West

Mick West

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Yes there are crazy people all around who talk about all kinds of crazy things. Sometimes they get into worryingly high positions of power.

It's conceivably that a "mad scientist" type might talk about this. Regular scientists might talk about it as a "thought experiment", with no likelihood of it happening. When I said "people" though, I was more thinking about the people who work at the pentagon talking about it as a practical and desirable idea. The idea is ludicrous in the context it is presented in.

And this is not an argument from incredulity on my part. It's reductio ad absurdum, reduction to the absurd. It does not logically follow that this is a likely true event. The enormous risks of unknown global pandemic side effects, the effects on US culture of a mysterious reduction in fundamentalism, and the high probability of undying hatred against the US if the plot is revealed, simply vastly outweigh the relatively minor benefits of a possible reduction in suicide bombings, and a slight re-alignment of the underlying causes of global conflict.
 
F

faro0485

Guest
I agree with BlueCollarCritic's debunking of Mick. But I believe BlueCollarCritic debunks himself when he comes out with the idea of "it's good to vaccinate crazies". Atheists do tend to label religious people as crazy...
 
Mick West

Mick West

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Calling VMAT2 a "god gene" is highly speculative, with no real science to back it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_gene

Although it is always difficult to determine the many interacting functions of a gene, VMAT2 appears to be involved in the transport of monoamine neurotransmitters across the synapses of the brain. PZ Myers argues: "It's a pump. A teeny-tiny pump responsible for packaging a neurotransmitter for export during brain activity. Yes, it's important, and it may even be active and necessary during higher order processing, like religious thought. But one thing it isn't is a 'god gene.'"[4]​
Carl Zimmer claimed that, given the low explanatory power of VMAT2, it can be characterized as a gene that accounts for less than one percent of the variance of self-transcendence scores. These, Zimmer says, can signify anything from belonging to the green party to believing in ESP. Zimmer also points out that the God Gene theory is based on only one unpublished, unreplicated study.[5]​ However Hamer notes that the importance of the VMAT2 finding is not that it explains all spiritual or religious feelings, but rather that it points the way toward one neurobiological pathway that may be important.
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U

Unregistered

Guest
Assuming, as some do, the possibility that this claim is true, if the government were intending to release a harmful virus in the Mid East to destroy a perceived enemy, why fool around with something so uncertain? There are many biological and chemical agents that can be used to decimate populations.
A Typhus or Bubonic plague would be so much more effective in that it would get everyone, whereas harming only the religious does nothing to stop those who fight for political reasons
 
Charlie Primero

Charlie Primero

Active Member
Cool! I did not know one could do a Google image search with an actual image.

Last year I posted comments to that Funvax blog highlighting the problems with the audio and brain scans. Oddly they posted my comments with a rebuttal, but then later deleted them.
 
S

st-m4il

New Member
Mick said:
I don't think the basic idea of a mind-altering virus is ludicrous. I do think it's pretty unlikely it could be as targeted as suggested, but not entirely impossible.

What I was suggeting was ludicrous was "a proposal to spread a virus in the Middle East that would prevent people from developing extreme religious views." I think it's ludicrous that people would even discuss doing this, due to the extraordinarily negative light it would cast on those doing it when it was eventually revealed. It's also a ludicrous idea since it would essentially by releasing a pandemic upon the world with totally unknown side-effects.
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Mick, really like your analysis here but you should as described keep opinion out of it :) If you do not know about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods you should read about it was real and signed by by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense. Those are some really important smart people there. Getting the JCS to agree on anything is huge and must seen by a lot of eyes before it gets any traction. To have so many people in government think it was a good idea and only the President and his advisers thinking "what the heck are you thinking in the Pentagon." is really scary. If they can plan to hijack US planes and crash them killing American lives to start a war to invade a tiny island, imagine what the would do if they even thought for a minute they could control your mind.
 
Mick West

Mick West

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There's a lot of speculation in Northwoods, so I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that the JCoS though it ALL was a "good idea". I think they thought at "something along those lines might work, maybe, what do you think JFK", and JFK goes "uh, no".

But this is a whole different kettle of fish. There's a world of difference between proposing faking a hijacking, and biologically altering the brains of billions of people.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Mick said:
Yes there are crazy people all around who talk about all kinds of crazy things. Sometimes they get into worryingly high positions of power.

It's conceivably that a "mad scientist" type might talk about this. Regular scientists might talk about it as a "thought experiment", with no likelihood of it happening. When I said "people" though, I was more thinking about the people who work at the pentagon talking about it as a practical and desirable idea. The idea is ludicrous in the context it is presented in.

And this is not an argument from incredulity on my part. It's reductio ad absurdum, reduction to the absurd. It does not logically follow that this is a likely true event. The enormous risks of unknown global pandemic side effects, the effects on US culture of a mysterious reduction in fundamentalism, and the high probability of undying hatred against the US if the plot is revealed, simply vastly outweigh the relatively minor benefits of a possible reduction in suicide bombings, and a slight re-alignment of the underlying causes of global conflict.
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The video is obviously a fake... However, it appears that the pictures of the brain in question are in fact being projected onto the screen behind the presenter. Don't want to get into why I think that this has not been photoshopped, you can perform your own analysis of that. So the question becomes, what the fuck is going on? The people in the room are pentagon types, not neurosurgeons discussing the neurological effects of meth addiction. It was reported that this video was faked by students. The men in this video are grown men... I understand the audio could have been dubbed, but... why are meth addiction slides being presentation to military types? Unless they are actors. If the voices are dubbed they are adult voices, men in their 40s, not students. So this seems like a group of grownups, extremely talented and smart ones, who almost pulled off a masterful scam. The acting is so good that I would have never guessed that this was a fake. Even in studio movies with really good acting, the acting is not this believable. The innuendos, the timing, the human banter and scorn. It's an awfully good reproduction of an alleged historical event.

This video seems more like an expert attempt to disinform the public and cause acute resentment towards the United States government, and as such, I suspect that it was done by a group that had more interest than web hits. There aren't even any ads on the site. I suspect that what happened is someone created this hoax to cause public unrest, the hoax was uncovered much faster than they imagined, and so now the project has been shut down. What group would want to do this?
 
Mick West

Mick West

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What group indeed? Obviously there are people who want to stir up discontent in the Middle East. Could this be a plot by some of them? Christians? Haliburton?

I don't really share your assessment of the acting though. It all seems a bit unrealistic to me.

It would be very interesting to track down where this came from.
 
Charlie Primero

Charlie Primero

Active Member
Mick said:
It would be very interesting to track down where this came from.
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My guess is Christian fundie nutters.

Guys like Chris White of http://conspiracyclothes.com/nowheretorun/ are technically sophisticated and highly motivated.

After I began posting debunking comments on http://funvax.wordpress.com , most of the hate I received was from fundie Christians.

My guess is the producers of FunVax hoax video wanted to frighten Christians into believing that ha-Satan who controls the U.S. federal government has developed a fiendish new way to separate souls from Christ.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
I see the opinions changed from "this is BS" to "well, maybe this is BS"
Remember the LSD experiments, Bank bailouts, controlled corporate media and "they have weapons of mass destruction," and on and on.....
The problem with people in general in today's society is that they are so disengaged from reality that they can't see the writing on the wall. Funny how human behavior has this way of going into denial when the truth is just to much to legitimize. As a mass, we will never be able to stand up for morality until the ones in control are exposed for what they really are. Sociopaths. Glad to see that there are some people still out there willing to post things that brings to light the true evil the governments/corporate entities are capable of. It's not going to get better unless we the people rise up and regain control.

Wake up for #### Sakes.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Only in a perfect world would this be true. But alas, this is not a perfect world.
 
Mick West

Mick West

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Interestingly there's now a documentary film being made about this by Ryan Harper, asking for $10,000 on Kickstarter, but it does not look like they will meet their goal.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1220299829/funvax-a-film-about-the-conspiracy

So I think it's very likely that Ryan Harper made the original FunVax hoax film himself. He's well suited to the task, working in biotech, and also making films.

The link to the kickstarter project was on:
http://funvax.wordpress.com/ (http://archive.is/sosBk)
 
Mick West

Mick West

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Evidence: Ryan Harper registered funvax.com on 2011-04-03 (April 3rd, 2011)

http://www.whois.net/whois/funvax.com

Domain Name.......... funvax.com
Creation Date........ 2011-04-03
Registration Date.... 2011-04-03
Expiry Date.......... 2013-04-03
Organisation Name.... Ryan Harper
Organisation Address. 6100 Center Drive
Organisation Address. Suite 1190
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. Los Angeles
Organisation Address. 90045
Organisation Address. CA
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES



The first posts about the funvax hoax were made In Feb 2011 on the anonymous site: http://funvax.wordpress.com/ which JUST TODAY (Dec 10 2012) was updated with the following post:

And the Pentagon video itself was not released until June 1, 2011

So Ryan Harper has clearly been involved with the FunVax hoax since very near the start, and most likely it's his own creation. Why else would he have registered funvax.com two months before the "Pentagon video" was released?
 
D

Dan Cameron

New Member
Mick West said:
Evidence: Ryan Harper registered funvax.com on 2011-04-03 (April 3rd, 2011)

http://www.whois.net/whois/funvax.com

Domain Name.......... funvax.com
Creation Date........ 2011-04-03
Registration Date.... 2011-04-03
Expiry Date.......... 2013-04-03
Organisation Name.... Ryan Harper
Organisation Address. 6100 Center Drive
Organisation Address. Suite 1190
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. Los Angeles
Organisation Address. 90045
Organisation Address. CA
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES


The first posts about the funvax hoax were made In Feb 2011 on the anonymous site: http://funvax.wordpress.com/ which JUST TODAY (Dec 10 2012) was updated with the following post:

And the Pentagon video itself was not released until June 1, 2011

So Ryan Harper has clearly been involved with the FunVax hoax since very near the start, and most likely it's his own creation. Why else would he have registered funvax.com two months before the "Pentagon video" was released?
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__________________________________________________________________________________


How are the Funvax Documents a hoax? Who's heard of a redacted hoax?

http://www.wanttoknow.info/health/funvax070601.pdf

Here's part of what the documents say:

It seems pretty complicated. Here's more from the documents:

The name of the virus is vesicular stomatitis virus 287 or VSV287. How can all this be a hoax?
 

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Mick West

Mick West

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Dan Cameron said:
It seems pretty complicated. Here's more from the documents:
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Being complicated does not mean something is not a hoax. Ryan Harper, the most likely person behind the hoax, has a degree in molecular biology, so has the knowledge of the terminology to make it sound good. So he's created a fake document, with fake retractions to back it up.
 
Bill

Bill

Senior Member
Dan Cameron said:
__________________________________________________________________________________


How are the Funvax Documents a hoax? Who's heard of a redacted hoax?

http://www.wanttoknow.info/health/funvax070601.pdf

Here's part of what the documents say:

It seems pretty complicated. Here's more from the documents:

The name of the virus is vesicular stomatitis virus 287 or VSV287. How can all this be a hoax?
Click to expand...
This is the first redacted document I've seen where the "damning" evidence is left intact and the benign information was removed.
 
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