If you’ve read DD stuff for the last few years you have maybe formed the conclusion that bioterror defense funding has been niche science welfare spending. And of virtually no benefit to the middle class or social good in the US.
“The Pentagon is scaling back one of its largest efforts to develop treatments for troops and civilians infected in a germ warfare attack after a $1 billion, five-year program fell short of its primary goal,” it reads.
“Even the heavy infusion of research cash and a unified effort by university labs and biotech companies from Boston to California were insufficient to break through limitations of genetic science, according to government officials and specialists in biological terrorism.”
Back in the old days of the war on terror — old days, I like that — great promises were made. Genetic technology would allow everything. The sky was the limit.
It was a hype job, a rush at the trough. Virtually nothing has come from bioterror research.
Anthrax vaccine work and a business war among the small company players in it for the entire piece of any pie involved in future formulations. A couple anti-botulism nostrums to stockpile. A ricin vaccine that has been in development for over a decade with taxpayer money propping up a company, Soligenix, that’s produced nothing.
What the Globe story shows is that the companies involved in bioterror defense are now rapidly scrambling to change the wording of their research descriptions. Soon they will all be rationalizing the need for continued funding by emphasizing their alleged capability to identify emerging disease and potential cocktails of deadly microorganisms — as if the latter actually exists somewhere out there.
It’s kind of like passing themselves off as souped-up high tech private sector mini-National Institutes of Health.
“Scientists initially set out to develop new medicines capable of attacking viruses that might be altered by terrorists to make them more deadly,” reports the Globe.
This was alway bullshit. In the last decade not a single terrorist has shown facility with germs in any kind of lab setting. Genetically altered viruses were and are fantasy for the purpose of this discussion.
“But after more than 50 research projects by more than 100 contractors — including biotech firms, pharmaceutical companies, and universities, including several in the Boston area — only two experimental medicines have shown promise,” reports the Globe. “And even those are far from being ready for limited clinical tests, according to project officials.”
The retooled Pentagon bioterror defense strategy still shows a great deal of delusional thinking. One cannot blame the institution too much.
The bioterror defense lobby is strong, always there with scare stories about how the pace of biotechnology is putting Pandora’s Boxes full of horrors within range of anyone puttering away in the garage or a cave.
The Globe:
The new focus of the program will be making a “cadre of investments that are able to take an unknown sample that may contain different agents, and be able to determine very quickly what is in there,’’ Rudolph said. “It is our intent to continue to grow this capability.’’
He added the ultimate goal will still be to someday develop therapeutic remedies that could treat someone infected with any number of deadly viruses — what the Pentagon called “one size fits all’’ or “one drug, many bugs.’’
Here’s a prediction you can take to the bank. No revolutionary advances in public health or the treatment of disease will come from any of this. That’s zero.
It’s still science welfare. And there will be no benefit to the middle class except for the relatively small number of jobs it sustains for the scientists and support staff involved in it.
“These are not going to be blockbuster drugs,’’ said one Pentagon official with candor.
It accurately limns the threat — or lack of one — posed by malevolent use of ricin.
A quick read shows the perceptive that there’s zero need for a ricin vaccine as the only at-risk people likely to benefit from it are those who are doing research on the ricin vaccine. And maybe the run-o-the-mill neo-Nazi survivalist kooks from the American fringe who are arrested every year for pounding castor seeds into a powder.
It announces a Ph.D dissertation from Kansas State grad student Dave Olds, entitled … wait for it … “Food Defense Management Practices in Private Country Clubs.” All 200 pages of it — here — published for the K-State Dept. of Hospitality Management and Dietetics.
The abstract, in part, reads:
“The purpose of this study was to survey country club professionals’ importance perceptions of food defense and the frequency with which preventive practices were implemented in their clubs to prevent bioterrorism.”
“Most club managers stated that they did not think their clubs were at risk of a bioterror attack,” it continues, an assertion which would seem beyond dispute.
The dissertation informs that as of 2008, “there were 6,000 private country clubs in North America.”
“These clubs represented extensive financial assets … Country clubs are exclusive and cater to the affluent, with initiation fees charged to new members as high as $250,000.”
Presumably, this means they ought to be able to afford bioterror defense.
Since turnover is obviously high in the servant class to the rich, country club owners find employee background checks cost prohibitive.
But “[because] country clubs are often exclusive and cater to the wealthy and influential members of society, they could be selected as potential targets for would-be terrorists,” it asserts.
Therefore, servant food service employee infiltration could be one gateway for an attack, it is reasoned.
But back to the press release which has this gem of a recommendation:
Move ice-makers to more secure locations where they can be monitored. “So many times these machines are kept out of the way, but ice is a heavily used product,” Olds said. One of the country clubs he visited kept the ice-maker on a dock outside the building.
The dissertation describes various documented terror attacks — none seemingly specifically aimed at the affluent, the influential, or ice-machines on country club boat docks.
Kansas State, it should also be noted, recently lost to Syracuse in the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium, 36-34.
The only case of country club terrorism DD could find.
As the year ends, I’d summarize the greatest threats to the nation as those of our own making.
al Qaeda hasn’t the manpower or resources to destroy the security of average Americans.
However, traditional American institutions have proven more than up to the task.
A striking illustration of fail over the last ten years is illustrated by my first choice — the now irrational size of the investment in homeland security, shown in the graphic.
Post 9/11 and upon the creation of the Dept. of Homeland Security the sudden reallocation of resources and growth in jobs and investment made sense.
As 2011 begins, however, the current state is shocking. The graph represents a now atrocious diversion of resources away from the middle class and into security aimed at protecting the country from external threats.
At the expense of everything else the government does domestically.
This expenditure does not aid innovation. It does not provide any path forward the country will need to combat its current problems. It does not fix infrastructure. It does not guarantee decent education. It does not make the national food supply safe from bad business and keep people from getting sick. It does not repair the middle class.
It just stands as a continuous investment in protection, walls, devices and restriction. Now entirely out of proportion to threats.
And the more that is invested in security the less there is to protect as the rest of the country withers.
In the last year we have also seen the emergence of the argument that more security, particularly cybersecurity, is needed to defend — most gallingly — Wall Street, bankers and big business.
But in news story after news story, everyone has seen that Wall Street is not good for main street.
The admonishments to defend it, by sending more money into the security apparatus at the expense of the middle class, is still more political dynamite.
The question that has to be asked is easy: Why do institutions now seen to be attacking the American way of life need more defending? And why should we pay for it?
The second threat, in no way lesser and to which the first is linked, is the fast growth of economic inequality.
Economic inequality and mass unemployment have given us very bad government, desperation and fear. These are, in turn, now proven fertilizer for even more destabilizing right wing extremism.
And it has left the country without the leadership needed to prevent slippage into permanent status of banana republic with the world’s most powerful military and security infrastructure.
Now there are regular cries for austerity, for even more cannibalization of government functions which protect the middle class. Famously, such calls seem to take no account of the actual conditions of austerity placed upon everything but homeland security in the last ten years.
Although most Americans still do not know his name, DeCoster is a living model of the Dickensian character now common in American business. In 2010, DeCoster was more threatening to Americans shopping in supermarkets nationwide than any jihadi terrorist a decade after 9/11.
DeCoster is a current standard-setter: A corporate boss successful at bringing about the biggest mass food poisoning incident in US history.
And this did not happen by accident.
Looking again at the above graph, one immediately notices the virtual total destruction of any government role in “consumer safety and health” and “industry specific regulation” relative to homeland security.
It is no coincidence that the Austin “Jack” DeCosters of the country have flourished. By conducting business the way they do, they exhibit a tacit understanding that the public can be menaced by unsanitary and disease-causing practices in pursuit of the bottom line because what exists of the regulatory process is ignorable.
It is a direct consequence of malfeasance in corporate agribusiness.
It is the consequence of decisions to run a business as cheaply as possible, to take steps knowing full well that such practice exposes one to substantial risk — in this instance the causation and distribution of disease — but that an adverse outcome can just be written off as overhead under the current state of regulation.
In 2007, it was Stewart Parnell of the Peanut Corporation of America.
While the Republican Party was unable to prevent passage of the Food Modernization Act during the lame duck session of Congress, the existence of the new legislation does not, in and of itself, guarantee change.
We will have to wait and see what becomes of the Jack DeCosters. What other corporate American time-bombs and landmines are waiting to explode?
And the last internal threat is again tied to the others.
The Republican Party is a threat to security. And not solely because of its descent into right-wing extremism or its desire to torpedo a nuclear arms reduction treaty because it despises the president.
As the party that denies science, one that will put people in committee chairmanships overseeing science and technology issues in the House who are basically opposed to science whenever it contradicts their political views, the GOP poses a threat to America’s future.
You can’t have a forward-looking and capable nation with people in power who truly believe global warming and evolution are hoaxes.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has requested a last-minute delay in the release of a report on the bureau’s anthrax investigation by the National Academy of Sciences, prompting a congressman to say that the bureau “may be seeking to try to steer or otherwise pressure??? the academy’s scientific panel “to reach a conclusion desired by the bureau.???
That Congressman would be Rush Holt of New Jersey, who along with Roscoe Bartlett, is a core anthrax-denier in Congress.
The uptick here is that NAS will be critical of the FBI’s science. And the bureau must obviously know it. But the NAS will also not exonerate Bruce Ivins.
Since the FBI’s conclusions were built on circumstantial evidence, not all of which involved the hard science used in analysis of the mailed anthrax it … will probably leave things as they are now.
Although the analysis of the FBI’s scientific rigor won’t be pretty, knowing the way science operates, the NAS report will most probably conservatively stop short of condemning it.
Suspicion of the bureau will remain strong. A good deal of news will be generated. All the critics of the anthrax investigation will get their say once again. There will be more talk about silicon. And there will be more cries to clear Ivins. The FBI will hold its position and the investigation will remain closed. The cycle will continue.
These things were all already baked into the cake when the NAS was commissioned to do its report.
More from the NY Times:
Dr. Ivins killed himself in 2008 and was never criminally charged. Some of his colleagues at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases say they do not believe he was guilty. The F.B.I. had already paid another former Army scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, a settlement worth $4.6 million to drop a lawsuit saying the bureau had falsely accused him of being the anthrax mailer.
E. William Colglazier, the academy’s executive officer, said the F.B.I.’s request was a surprise and came after the bureau saw the panel’s peer-reviewed final report, which was scheduled for release in November. He said that the committee’s 15 members, top scientists who serve as volunteers, were “exhausted,??? but that the panel had agreed to extend the study and consider revising the report in return for an additional fee, probably about $50,000, beyond the $879,550 the F.B.I. has already paid for the study.
Dr. Colglazier declined to say if the report was critical of the F.B.I.’s work but said it was “very direct.??? The report sticks to science and does not offer an opinion on whether Dr. Ivins carried out the anthrax attacks, he said.
In September, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, agreed to conduct its own review of the F.B.I.’s anthrax investigation, with a broader approach that also covers security measures at biolabs.
For the past couple weeks, DD and a couple colleagues who’ve been known to cover the subject of bioterrorism have been mailed notices of a recent meeting in Washington, DC, on the matter of Bruce Ivins.
And because of the way the anthrax investigation was handled, it generated a body of lore perfectly suited as fertilizer for conspiracy thinking and accusations of government cover-up.
A group of about 25 scientists, professors, writers, terrorism experts and more convened Monday afternoon to discuss the particulars of the investigation and to debate who the real perpetrator may have been.
“James Van de Velde, a consultant on terrorism issues, added that Ivins, as a prominent anthrax researcher, would not have been dumb enough to use anthrax from his own beaker in an attack,” adds the newspaper at one point.
Everyone’s a consultant on terrorism issues.
In any case, the new reporter mentions an appearance by John Ezzell, a retired colleague of Ivins’ at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases( USAMRIID/Ft. Detrick).
The newspaper concludes:
Because of his involvement in the investigation, Ezzell had been under a gag order until he recently retired from USAMRIID. In what he said was his first time speaking out about the issue, Ezzell stood up toward the end of the panel’s presentation to address a question. When those in the room realized a true expert was among them, audience members and panelists tossed question after question his way …
When Van de Velde asked Ezzell if he thought Ivins could have done it, Ezzell responded with a hesitant “possibly yes.”
The austerity police like to talk about going after social entitlement programs. And President Obama today made a toady of himself by announcing a pay freeze for federal workers — middle class earners across the board and throughout the country.
However, no one ever speaks about the other big slice of entitlements coming out of the American pie.
That’d be defense contractor spending, which now expands into everything under the rubric of the global war on terror.
One would not expect the arms manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, to be involved in anything connected with bioterrorism.
But it is.
Northrop Grumman, like Lockheed Martin, tries to expand into every corner where there is access to taxpayer money. And it does it all under the sales pitch afforded by the war on terror.
It is good to think of it as corporate welfare for the haves, something that gives virtually nothing back to the middle class.
In this case, it’s the market for bioterror detection. Testing of subsidiary-made sensor networks and devices for detection of bioterrorism has a fine record of failure. The things just don’t work reliably — and there’s no realistic expectation that they should given the complexity of the task.
There is, however, a lot of room for fudging and advertising claims that will never be met.
And the Dept. of Homeland Security is dedicated to pursuing them.
LINTHICUM, Md. | The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) a contract to begin field testing a new generation of autonomous biodetection instruments as part of the BioWatch Gen-3 program.
Northrop Grumman was awarded the $8.4 million task order under the BioWatch Gen-3 System Performance Demonstration Contract. The total potential value of the contract is $37 million over three years.
Northrop Grumman will test 12 of the Next Gen Automated Detection System (NG-ADS) units in outdoor and indoor locations in a major U.S. city for several months to determine the readiness of the systems for future deployment. The company will provide autonomous biodetection equipment and technical support, including the operation and maintenance of the units during the course of the field test.
“The NG-ADS technology has the potential to significantly improve the nation’s ability to quickly detect and respond to a bioterrorism event,” said Dave Tilles, director of Homeland Security and CBRNE defense programs for the Advanced Concepts & Technologies Division at Northrop Grumman’s Electronic Systems sector. “This effort builds on the company’s work to support our customers as they enhance the country’s defenses against potentially catastrophic threats such as bioterrorism.”
Eight and a half million dollars doesn’t sound like much here. But once you start adding up all the outlays for projects like this, spread around the corporate national security infrastructure, you start seeing big money. And almost none of it is innovative. And almost a decade in on the war on terror, not particularly good for the well-being of a country that desires a strong middle class.
It’s money that could be more easily and productively spent on things like teacher salaries doled out to the states, educational opportunities, or public health initiatives.
It is a form of parasitic entitlement spending for a part of corporate America that doesn’t give much back.
The next post is only made as another illustration on how almost no thought goes into the media’s coverage of bioterror research in this country.
In fact, one might say that only anti-thought is allowed, a desire to see only people who are groupies to the scientists at work in the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center lab.
Today’s episode of The Dr. Oz Show will give the national audience a look at something most local residents have not even seen: the Department of Homeland Security’s containment lab at Fort Detrick.
Two weeks ago, Mehmet Oz and his production team got a sneak peek at the yet-to-open National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center lab. Today’s episode features a walk-through of the $147-million facility and its two core missions: threat characterization to determine how the U.S. is susceptible to bioterrorism and biocrime, as well as bioforensics to track down the culprit in the aftermath of an attack.
Oz wrote that he was shocked to hear there are people who would want to harm the country in such a terrible way, but he said his show serves as a tribute to the Homeland Security employees working to prevent that.
In the television broadcast, taped at the NBACC in Ft. Detrick, there is not a single mention of Bruce Ivins. Not one!
And it’s the central question hovering over the laboratory — one that tells us the world’s most successful bioterrorist came from Ft. Detrick. And everyone at the NBACC surely knows it, in spades.
Business motto: More good shit from Eat Shit Farms!
Reinforcing the reality that the US government will do virtually nothing to get corporate predators off the streets, today the news on Eat Shit Farms is that the FDA sent it a warning letter Friday. For Austin “Jack” DeCoster’s provoking of the biggest salmonella-tainted egg recall in history earlier this year. While news was just breaking that one of his shell companies was involved in a hot and fresh case of salmonella distribution calling for a recall of a quarter million eggs.
Remember Galt, IA-based Wright County Egg—the key factory farm involved in August’s recall of 500,000 eggs after a multistate salmonella outbreak? The company whose owner, Austin “Jack??? DeCoster, was called a corporate criminal by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich?
[FDA] Kansas City District Director John W. Thorsky has sent DeCoster a warning letter that requires “prompt and aggressive actions??? to correct a host of unresolved problems. If DeCoster fails to comply, the FDA can enjoin his company from selling eggs or seize the foul farm.
There’s an obvious reason for bundling the two together.
This country’s national security apparatus gets its panties in a twist over failed air freight bombs from a marginal country where the spigot could have been turned off a long time ago.
And Predator missions are surely slated.
But do anything about the guy who does business in such a way that he knows his eggs stand to be tainted and that it’s just part of the overhead? And who gives salmonellosis to thousands?
The fellow is an agribusiness terrorist. So we’ll sic mighty Bart Stupak on him and then send a slightly threatening letter.
And that’s the latest news from the great failed society with huge numbers of sitting around people.
Predatory behavior in US agribusiness now seems so commonplace one can but laugh when the latest notice of recall comes through the pipe.
The US government, for all the president’s talk of reform, cannot and will not get the most Dickensian characters off the street. Or shutter their businesses.
Past coverage of Eat Shit Incorporated, Austin “Jack” DeCoster’s salmonella-contaminated wholesale nationwide egg business is here and here.
The Dickensian character, the menace to society, knows that when he’s called before congress the worst that will happen is that he’ll have to face the scripted displeasure of the equivalent of an animated plush toy. In this case, retiring fake Republican, Bart Stupak (D) of Michigan. Who will send out a staffer prior to hearings to cadge up the recent history of food poisonings as listed on this blog over the past two years, as part of his tough “investigation.”
Then everyone will forget the nasty pictures and it will be back to business as usual.
And now, sane people can only throw up their hands at the disgrace of what constitutes “oversight” and “consumer protection.” There is simply nothing that can or will be done.
The only thing left is to quote from the current news. And reflect on how easy it is to get Predator missions launched against human targets in Yemen or Pakistan. And toss billions of dollars into defense against theoretical bioterrorism threats.
But that it is beyond the realm of the possible to do anything about people who sell food poisoned with pathogens, on a monthly basis, in this country.
Evidence of salmonella has been found at an Ohio egg farm that’s received financing from the owner of an Iowa egg farm that was behind a massive recall earlier this year.
Cal-Maine Foods Inc., the nation’s biggest egg seller and distributor, said it is recalling 288,000 eggs the company had purchased from supplier Ohio Fresh Eggs after a test showed salmonella at the Ohio farm.
Austin “Jack” DeCoster owns Wright County Egg and has lent money to Ohio Fresh Eggs.
Ohio officials said DeCoster hid behind other farmers to get permits for the company in 2004. The permits listed two men who had put up just $10,000 apiece while DeCoster had pumped $126 million into the four farms, according to testimony in an administrative proceeding there. At the time, DeCoster had already been labeled a “habitual violator” of environmental laws in Iowa.
Ohio officials yanked the permits after learning about that, but an environmental appeals panel overturned that decision.
DeCoster has often tangled with the government. He has paid millions of dollars in state and federal fines over at least two decades for health, safety, immigration and environmental violations at his farms.
Its best bits look to be material only good for black comedy. Like the feature article on using a US-made pickup truck, preferably equipped with a snow plow blade, to run people over.
Astonishingly, it seems to have taken al Qaeda more than ten years to get this strategy into potential development.
Why stop with a Ford F-150? If the jihadi is a bit short on cash, a smaller pickup or even sedans might do. Or you could go Japanese and buy a Toyota Tundra. Now that’s a mighty truck, too.
Just think if those guys bought some guns!
All readers know there have been a bunch of horror movies centered around maniacs terrorizing people with tractor-trailers, starting with the granddad of them all, Duel.
Perhaps tips on jihadi plots could be gained by observing the rental traffic of such movies.
Also contained in Inspire is more wishful thinking about making WMDs at home. It’s been ten years, at least, and no progress on that front. Try as it may, al Qaeda has had great difficulty cultivating and deploying serious scientific talent in the life sciences.
But there are seemingly many among aspiring jihadis who still think they can do something with botulism or castor seeds.
It reads:
“These are some of our suggestions … The best operation however is the one where you come up with an innovative idea that the authorities have not yet turned their attention to, and that leads to maximum casualties or – equally important – maximum economic losses. Also those brothers of ours who have specialized expertise, and those who work in sensitive locations that would offer them unique opportunities to wreak havoc on the enemies of Allah, should take advantage of their skills. For those mujahid brothers with degrees in microbiology or chemistry lays the greatest opportunity and responsibility. For such brothers, we encourage them to develop a weapon of mass destruction, i.e. an effective poison with the proper method of delivery. Poisonous gases such as nerve gas are not out of reach for the chemist and require simple equipment. A microbiologist would be capable of developing the most effective strains of Clostridium botulinum and thus develop the most lethal toxin of all: botulin. An effective botulin attack administered properly could lead to hundreds if not thousands of casualties. For such brothers we would ask them to take the utmost security precautions and take their time even if that means years … Such an operation is worth the wait. Brothers with less experience in the fields of microbiology or chemistry, as long as they possess basic scientific knowledge, would be able to develop other poisons such as Ricin or Cyanide. Due to the extreme importance of moving the war with America over to the next stage, the stage of weapons of mass destruction, we will, insha’llah, cover such topics in more detail in our upcoming issues.
Promises, promises, fellows. Always with the promises.
DD’s various analyses of al Qaeda’s feeble playing about with poisons and biology:
Some translations.