07.15.10
Posted in Bioterrorism, War On Terror at 2:36 pm by George Smith
One of the best examples of terror defense research as the equivalent of welfare for scientists is the ricin vaccine.
To be sure, the slow development of a vaccine for ricin is built upon the foundation of good science. However, once you get past the rigor involved, its practical value dissolves into the equivalent of science welfare.
The history of ricin and intended use in poisoning has been well-described many times by this author, here and elsewhere.
It’s a “weapon” of choice for kooks and incompetents. White neo-Nazis in the US, England and Canada are regularly banged up and sent over for a long time for the crime of turning castor seeds into a mush.
The recipe for turning castor seeds into mush containing a bit of ricin is widespread. And occasionally it is even found in the hands of Islamic terrorists, as in one very famous case here.
But there is no way to make ricin into an effective weapon of mass destruction. Despite its toxicity, it’s not quite poisonous enough and not found in quite high enough quantity in the castor seed. And turning castor seeds into powder is not an effective way of purifying it.
And there is no public record anywhere of ricin being made into a WMD, ever — despite the existence of a questionable patent on using ricin as a toxic weapon, one developed by the US government too long ago to be interesting anymore.
As with so many things imagined to be of easy use to terrorists, it is actually easier and more reliable to shoot people, or blow them up, or even strangle them — than to poison with ricin.
Before 9/11 there was no interest in a vaccine for ricin. Man has worked with castor seeds as a renewable agricultural resource for centuries and been no worse the wear for it.
After 9/11 that changed.
And a small number of people have been working on a ricin vaccine ever since. Despite the fact that the only people who might every actually need a ricin vaccine are those who do research with ricin and the occasional nuisance who sickens himself with castor powder.
So, as fruit of the war on terror, one reads — today — of a research paper on a vaccine for ricin:
“Since it is likely that a ricin vaccine would be used in an emergency setting or by the military, the ease of [intradermal] vaccination with jet injectors or similar devices with lower doses of vaccine is rather important,” stated Robert N. Brey, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer of Soligenix. “It should also be noted that ID vaccination was highly effective at protecting the lungs of the mice from ricin aerosols, a likely route of delivery in the setting of bioterrorism.”
It is not a likely setting. The people making the ricin vaccine know it. The only things killed with ricin aerosols are in the labs working toward a finished ricin vaccine.
However, Soligenix is another small biotech company with virtually no product line, one attached to the teat of funding for bioterror defense. It used to be called DOR Biopharma, changing its name a year or so ago, perhaps in a clumsy attempt to snooker potential investors. Like many of the companies mentioned on this blog it is a member of the Alliance for Biosecurity.
Concludes the article on the ricin vaccine:
“There have been many attempts to develop a prophylactic ricin vaccine, using different preparations of the ricin holotoxin with and without various adjuvants,” stated Dr. Ellen Vitetta, Director of the Cancer Immunobiology Center at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study. “But none of these have been as extensively studied as RiVax™ and none have looked at the ID vaccination route.”
Whoopie! A vaccine of benefit only to the company making it. It’s science welfare, kids!
Another small form of science welfare, one also supported since 9/11, is the attempt to make castor plants ricin free through molecular genetics. Like this charity case waste of time at Mississippi State.
The rest of the world — particularly the big producers of castor products, India and China, couldn’t care less about ricin-free castor beans.
It’s just not an issue. The world doesn’t need a ricin-free castor plant. The castor plant is not a menace.
And it wasn’t even an issue in US castor production, although a couple scientist involved in this work now will try to insinuate it was, when castor seed cultivation was stopped in this country because it simply wasn’t profitable enough.
Previously, excerpted from here:
Over the course of a decade, from 1959 until 1970, Plainview was considered the hub of domestic castor bean production with the local office of Baker Castor Oil ultimately contracting for 70,000 acres of production annually.
However, the crop’s success ultimately worked against it with practically no significant domestic production recorded after 1972. Since that time, the United States has been forced to turn to producers in India and Brazil to supply the majority of its needs.
Plainview Mayor John C. Anderson has a unique perspective on the local castor industry, having served as general manager of Baker Castor Oil’s local operations from August 1959 until December 1970.
“During most of that time Baker was the dominant player in the United States with about 75 percent of the castor oil production,??? Anderson recalled last week, “and the Plainview facilities accounted for virtually all of that.???
The oil derived from castor beans is used in a vast array of products, ranging from paints, varnishes and lacquers to lipstick, hair tonic and shampoo. Since it does not become stiff with cold nor unduly thin with heat, castor oil is an important component in plastics, soaps, waxes, hydraulic fluids and ink. It also is used to make special lubricants for jet engines and racing cars, and during World War I, World War II and the Korean War it was stockpiled by the federal government as a strategic material.
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07.13.10
Posted in Bioterrorism at 7:54 am by George Smith
The US government is set to axe a bit of funding for biodefense, collateral damage as part of a pay-go manuever for preserving $10 billion dollars worth of teaching jobs.
The Los Angeles Times reports today:
On its face, it’s just another Washington dispute about money. But a move by House Democrats to strip $2 billion from reserve funds for bioterrorism and pandemic flu — without objection from President Obama — has infuriated some of the country’s foremost bioterrorism experts.
It’s a symbol, they say, of how the Obama White House is failing to properly address the threat posed by a potential biological attack, which they say could kill 400,000 Americans and do $2 trillion in economic damage.
The apocalyptic assessment is courtesy of the Graham-Talent comedy team, the mouthpiece group of a loud but small wing of the biodefense industry. Mainstream journalists who cover the issue infrequently still call it by its old august name — the WMD Commission — but the Obama administration cut its funding earlier this year.
Graham-Talent’s only tactic was to regularly attack the administration over its lack of preparedness in regards to bioterrorism and the national insufficiency in quick and expanded transfer of taxpayer dollars to the small industry for which it acts as a spokesmodel.
It is a parasitic organization, cynical and manipulative. This story has been covered here many times and at Armchair Generalist similarly.
The Times continues to explain Bob Graham’s view on the bad and wrong horror of choosing to pay for teaching jobs over lubricating the bioterror defense industry:
The proposed cut is “an extremely negative development in our overall efforts to prepare not only for bioterrorism but for other biological events from nature,” said former Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat.
Obama named Graham to co-chair panels on the oil spill and the financial crisis. [See “The Bad Penny” here. Graham — now an infamous hack/pass-around whore as Commission “co-chairs” of all trades and crises.]
He also co-chaired the bipartisan Commission for the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, which in January gave the federal government a grade of “F” for bioterrorism preparation. There have been few improvements since, he said.
If terrorists attacked a city today using anthrax or some other biological agent, “I think there would be tens if not hundreds of thousands of people unnecessarily killed,” Graham said. “We know what to do to reduce the impact of a biological attack, but thus far we have been unwilling to implement those steps.”
Graham said he would lobby the White House to restore the funds.
In other words, just another day’s work for Bob Graham, emitting press releases and petitioning opinion pieces, all peddling the same basic message over and over:
The US will suffer more casualties than it did in WW II from a bioterror attack if you don’t listen to me. The economic consequences will make the current troubles of our own devise look like having your lunch money stolen by the school bully.
Using the logic of Bob Graham, any money spent on boosting the middle class or saving jobs is wasted because it takes away from the more urgent need for bioterror defense.
The Times reporter even drags in Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, an ex-CIA chancer. And DD and Jason gave him some rough justice a few months ago at the Boston Globe here.
J checks in on the topic. Check that title. Oh, cheeky!
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07.09.10
Posted in Bioterrorism, Extremism, Stumble and Fail at 12:13 pm by George Smith
The government is out of control! I’m heading to the store
for envelopes and baking powder, lads. Bastards will pay!
DD runs a daily search on “anthrax” at the Google news tube. As do many.
And everyone has noticed that minus hits for the heavy metal band named Anthrax, hits on powder hoaxes have ticked up.
The Idaho Statesman, which is in a state with its own anthrax hoaxer, has noticed, too:
Mailing a white powdery substance to scare people can land you in prison – even if the enclosed substance is non-toxic.
Ask Sandy Kevin Lamont Nanney.
The Boise man, who was accused of sending 32 powder-laden letters to hospitals, businesses and government offices in 2003, pleaded guilty to threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison; his next scheduled parole hearing is in 2012.
Spectacular fail, of which there has been much in the past couple years, also flushes the kook powder mailers from the woodwork, notes an FBI man:
“[After Ivins’ mailings is] when it became a cottage industry to scare people. It wasn’t really a tactic used much before that,” said Chris Allen, an FBI spokesman in Washington, D.C.
In 2002, the FBI responded to 2,500 reports of the use or threatened use of anthrax.
Reports nationwide tapered off significantly after 2002 and have been dropping every month – until the past few months, Allen said.
There were about 500 reports in 2008, Bertram said.
Allen said investigators have found there is a flurry of these cases after “key events,” such as the blackout in the Northeast, the Enron scandal and Hurricane Katrina.
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could be another key event, Allen said.
Since government officials are common targets of anthrax hoaxers, the latter which are — by definition — extremists, one wagers if they vote, and are not already in prison, they’re probably predominantly from the party of opposition to everything. Although no definitive polling survey exists.
[DD challenge to readers: Google map anthrax hoaxer points of origin, by state. Red or blue? Secondarily: Active chapter of Tea Party within 50 miles, yes or no.]
In one instance, noted recently, the anthrax hoax was used as a retirement plan. Of sorts.
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07.06.10
Posted in Bioterrorism, Imminent Catastrophe at 10:25 am by George Smith
Another big seminar at some allegedly important place, another batch of messaging on how doom is almost upon us.
This example, courtesy of the Aspen Institute, fond of importing journalists so opinion page readers of the country don’t miss the wisdom dispensed.
From the Aspen Times, a warning from some guy who sells “state of the art security systems”:
Emerging from the political dust plumes that still seem to be dissipating from the Sept. 11 attacks are a number of new, creative and, perhaps most importantly, cheap ways for terrorists to dismantle the way the United States operates, terrorism experts said Wednesday at The Aspen Institute’s Security Forum.
And many places that might be targeted in this country are not ready for them, they said.
“For the first time in history, small organizations have the power of destruction that once only lay in the hands of nations,??? said Mati Kochavi, the CEO for an international company that manufactures state-of-the-art security systems.
And from another guy — Jim Talent — long known for advocating more taxpayer money for the development of allegedly state of the art bioterror preventing security systems:
“This is not 15 years from now,??? he said, mentioning numbers in a recent study he conducted that placed a possible [bioterror] attack occurring in 2013.
A potential attack, he said, could be conducted in a large city during a parade by spreading pathogens from a float with a paint sprayer.
On another front, there was the imported journalist — David Ignatius — warning of another flavor of menace, courtesy of the same meeting:
Electronic spies have already stolen tens of billions of pages of documents and penetrated strategic nodes of the global economy, from banks to power grids. They can turn off radars (as the Israelis did when they bombed Syria’s nuclear reactor in September 2007) or shut down Internet access (as Russia did when it invaded Georgia in August 2008). The future is now.
Did terrorists cause the Deepwater Horizon disaster? Did they perhaps inflitrate Wall Street and cause the economic meltdown?
Rhetorical questions, obviously. Mostly as a thought exercise, one asking readers to note Paul Reveres — patriots all — warning of approaching disasters, and the ease in which terrorists can cause them, never really mirror any of the real life catatrophes impacting the place.
The it’s easy-for-terrorists industry, noted previously.
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06.30.10
Posted in Bioterrorism at 9:04 am by George Smith
This blog has commented previously on how biodefense industry companies in the US are good at two things: (1) Not bringing products to market; and (2) fighting with each other over government contracts.
The latter of which prop them up.
The latest small chapter is the continued battle between Emergent Biosolutions and PharmAthene (PIP), two Alliance for Biosecurity companies in an acrimonious scrap — one which virtually defines their existence — over anthrax vaccines.
Emergent makes the only anthrax vaccine now used, called BioThrax. It is the company’s only product and its single source of revenue.
It was the vaccine formulation which had its future guaranteed by Bruce E. Ivins anthrax mailings. Ivins’ research was connected with it. And his name, as primary investigator, dominates the scientific literature on it.
The US, under the administration of the Dept. of Health & Human Services and the BARDA granting agency has — since the anthrax mailings — aimed to develop and adopt a follow-on vaccine to BioThrax.
It has issued and withdrawn funds linked to bids.
The most obvious move in this regard had been to award a large contract — $600 million — to PharmAthene for the development of its anthrax vaccine, called SparVax. SparVax was engineered by British scientists for a company called Avecia, bought by Pharmathene on the cheap.
However, the US government withdrew the contract at the end of last year in an apparent vote of no-confidence for PharmAthene’s actual ability to manufacture and deliver it on schedule — within eight years.
However, PharmAthene was awarded another smaller contract — $78 million — apparently to keep development of SparVax open at the end of 2009. Emergent Biosolutions promptly filed a protest which held up PharmAthene’s work and hiring plans for months. The smaller contract has been written of in the press and on blogs as the result of inside business dealing between PharmAthene’s lobby, dead Congressman Jack Murtha and the US government.
And now HH&S will solicit a a third round of proposals for a new anthrax vaccine.
All things considered, the history of anthrax vaccine making post-9/11, seen within the context of the large biodefense industry boom, has been a sorry one. With no sign of change any time soon.
It can be summarized thusly: No products, no vaccines, plus lots of warning of dire consequences if taxpayer funding isn’t always accelerated or expanded.
The latest round of fighting between PharmAthene and Emergent Biosolutions spilled into the open in the pages of the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
A lobbyist for Emergent called PharmAthene “a virtual company run by a bunch of political hacks” operated “out of a warehouse.”
PharmAthene also has an unsuccessful antidote to nerve gas poisoning called Protexia.
Reads a PharmAthene press release from 2005:
“The acquisition of Protexia(TM) further strengthens our biological and chemical defense product portfolio. This will allow PharmAthene to play a major role in preparing the United States for a potential biological or chemical terrorist attack,” said David P. Wright, President & CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of PharmAthene. “With the completion of preclinical development, human clinical safety trials and manufacturing scale-up of Protexia(TM), the U.S. Government will have the option to procure for the Strategic National Stockpile an effective antidote for chemical nerve agents.
Protexia is allegedly ‘made’ by isolation from milk of transgenic goats and PharmAthene had issued press releases on its efficacy in vivo — or on lab tests on animals.
Emergent’s lobbyist also took a shot — a funny one — at Protexia development, saying “Ask them about the dead goats.” For the Journal, a PharmAthene official conceded goats had bought the farm, although it was alleged to be a business decision that they should die.
Most recently, PharmAthene hired an official from Health & Human Services to be its chief scientific officer. The official had been involved in acquisition of anthrax and smallpox vaccines, a position of oversight.
The hiring immediately reinforced the perception of cozy dealing and conflicts-of-interest for the benefit of the biodefense industry.
The Washington Times reported on the matter, thusly:
When the publicly traded biodefense company PharmAthene Inc. hired Thomas R. Fuerst as its chief scientific officer in April, executives publicized his work as a senior official in the federal government leading the development and acquisition of vaccines and other products against pandemic flu, smallpox and anthrax.
Mr. Fuerst was appointed shortly after his departure from the Department of Health and Human Services at a time when the Annapolis, Md.-based company was trying hard to sell a new anthrax vaccine to the government, highlighting the so-called “revolving door” in which former senior federal officials land jobs in industries with which they interacted while serving in the government.
Though President Obama enacted new revolving-door ethics rules soon after taking office requiring a two-year “cooling off” period for appointees leaving the government, those regulations apply only to incoming appointees – not to career federal employees such as Mr. Fuerst. He holds a doctoral degree in molecular genetics.
“It looks like Dr. Fuerst walked the ethics tightrope,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the nonpartisan watchdog group Project On Government Oversight.
Previously — on the biodefense industry and anthrax vaccine making.
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06.21.10
Posted in Bioterrorism, Predator State at 12:13 pm by George Smith
This blog has devoted some time to the biodefense industry lobby formerly called the Graham-Talent Commission. And what a nuisance it was.
For most of its tenure Graham-Talent existed only as an appendage/p.r firm for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center/Center for Biosecurity and the bioterror defense industry group, the Alliance for Biosecurity.
The US government eventually stopped underwriting it.
And although defunded, last week DD wrote of its latest piece of mischief, political legislation as advertising for the alleged wisdom of itself here.
Although few have yet to comment much on Barack Obama’s National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, appointed on May 22, it may be time to get the ball rolling on the potential trouble the President will eventually bring upon himself because of it.
One of the commission’s co-chairmen is none other than Bob Graham, THE Bob Graham of Graham-Talent.
It’s an atrocious choice.
Either the President never actually paid attention to what Graham-Talent did under Bob Graham, quite possible, because it existed only to plant news stories and opinion pieces busting his chops on bioterror defense. Or the President took counter-intuititive advice from the usual Whitehouse staffers, advice to appoint what amounts to a very bad penny, an infamous political hack always turning up. Someone who has established a set of dubious skills as a “commission chairman” when it’s important the commission so chaired will be friendly to whatever industry is connected to the problem it is charged with investigating.
Let me paint the unpretty picture for you.
If Bob Graham runs the BP Deepwater Horizon Commission the way he ran the WMD Commission, within about a year — or less — its staffers, advisers and consultants will all be stealth choices from BP, companies that worked with BP or other oil industry firms.
And that is because Bob Graham, and his compadre Jim Talent, allowed the WMD Commission to be taken over by staffers from the biodefense industry. And when this happened, it began issuing reports and press releases with only one purpose — to disguise calls for greater funding to the biodefense industry it represented behind an argument that the Obama administration was leaving the country unprepared for catastrophic bioterrorism.
For example, just last week, Jason Sigger at Armchair Generalist on Bob Graham’s latest piece of political chicanery — The WMD Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2010: “It’s a load of shit.”
Because no one really paid any attention to Graham-Talent except newspaper op-ed assigning editors and minor Congressional politicians willing to indulge their regular bashing of the Obama administration on bioterror preparedness, few have noticed how rancid and/or impressively cynical an excercise in national leadershig choosing Bob Graham is.
If you wanted to pick one of the worst people to head an independent commission on a catastrophe and national trauma that’s front page news everyday, one who — judging by his track record — would work to stuff his commission full of staff and advice from the industry the agency is supposed to be looking into, Bob Graham is the absolute go-to guy.
It’s an astonishing, eye-rolling thing.
One asks, rhetorically: What in Sam Hill is wrong with President Obama? Does he have a subconscious desire to set himself up? Or is it just more political expedience and daily not-paying-attention except for what the usual partymen have to say?
“The bipartisan commission named by President Obama in May to study the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the future of American offshore drilling will hold its first formal meeting in mid-July at the earliest, most likely delaying the delivery of its final report into next year, a co-chairman of the panel said in an interview,” wrote the New York Times a few hours ago.
Potentially giving it and Bob Graham plenty of time how to figure out to make it surreptitiously BP and oil industry friendly.
Just how bad was the Graham-Talent Commission? From the archives.
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06.17.10
Posted in Bioterrorism at 10:21 am by George Smith
Plain and simple, the Graham-Talent bioterror defense lobbying group is a nuisance to good governance.
It began life as a commission to describe the risk of WMD’s and make policy recommendations. And it was funded by the US government.
However, it was quickly taken over by a small part of the bioterror defense industry lobby, its staffers and direction provided by people from Tara O’Toole’s Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
The Center for Biosecurity, along with its industry group, the Alliance for Biosecurity, existed to work the political levers to grease accelerated and expanded taxpayer funding of its bioterror defense initiatives and facilities.
Earlier this year, the US government stopped funding the Graham-Talent commission. While it existed as a government funded agency, it did only one thing. It bashed the Obama administration on a regular basis for unpreparedness and larded the mainstream media with opinion pieces and repetitive news stories which repeated the same script.
Graham-Talent has always worked the directive that the truth and certainty of a thing is determined by how many times you get to plant a frightening scenario pertaining to bioterrorism, one boosting your interests, in newspapers. The list of citations on it is here.
Now officially defunded, the Graham-Talent lobbying group has enlisted two minor congressmen in the House to put together what amounts to nuisance legislation, a bill that serves mostly as advertising for the alleged wisdom of Graham-Talent.
You really have to see it to believe it.
The summary is here and every graf in it directly references Graham-Talent’s World at Risk report. It’s an odious piece of work and again serves only a narrow purpose — to advance the agenda of the small Graham-Talent special interest group and afford an opportunity for its two congressional “authors,” one of whom is GOP extremist Peter King of New York, to put a blunt stick in the eye of the administration with what is the legislative process equivalent of vexatious litigation.
At Armchair Generalist, Jason Sigger succinctly calls it “a load of shit.”
There’s no better way to say it.
He writes:
Most of the direction in the legislation are aimed at things already being done within DHS and DHHS, for example, implementing the BioWatch program, conducting a biennial bioterrorism risk assessment, assessing commercial emergency responder equipment, using hazard plume models for CBRN terrorism response, developing cleanliness standards, and so on …
I’m not against congressional interest in this area, but I am against Congress directing specific policy actions with inaccurate and limited policy analysis. And no, I don’t count the “World at Risk” report as adequate policy analysis.
A few other observations are worth making.
We must now change the definition of WMD to mean only biological weapons, since that what this legislation deals with specifically, to the exclusion of all else. That’s the clear mark of Graham-Talent lobby dictation lessons and journalists should recognize it as such.
The legislation also purports to compel the government to share informationwith biosecurity and biopreparedness ‘stakeholders.’ “Stakeholder’ is undefined. Presumbably, it can mean Graham-Talent cronies in the biodefense industry.
There is a call for creation of a ‘national forensic repository of biological organisms.” There are already plenty of places with sufficient repositories and the scientists who must know where they are, do.
It would be pointless to create yet another place for potential diversion, just because another agency — like the Department of Homeland Security, must have its own pile of pathogens. Indeed, there’s no compelling scientific argument to be made for it.
There is also a vague call to loosen up BARDA some more — which is a UPMC/Alliance for Biosecurity industry party favor.
The only other question that comes to mind is who took the dictation from Graham-Talent and whether they did it by phone, e-mail or in meeting. It’s such a piece of toady work, someone ought to fess up on the details, if only for the sake of taking proper credit for the political manipulation.
Again, it’s an example of really bad government — legislation solely for the agenda of a special interest, a special interest which has no measurable public support.
On the Graham-Talent bioteror defense industry lobbying group — from the archives.
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05.27.10
Posted in Bioterrorism, War On Terror at 6:42 am by George Smith
Beggaring common sense, one reads of a high school teacher in New Mexico going over the top in his zeal to be involved in war on terror readiness:
It was supposed to be a lesson on how to respond to a bioterrorism attack but it quickly turned into a lesson on what happens when not everyone is informed about what’s going on.
During a passing period on April 26 in the courtyard of Rio Rancho High School, as students of teacher Justin Baiardo’s epidemiology class thought they were leaving for a field trip, seven students seemingly started to hemorrhage, convulse and dropped to the ground with what looked like blood spewing from their mouths. A young girl screamed. Emergency and first responders came to the scene. At least one coach tried to perform CPR on one of the non-responsive students. Calls to 911 were made and students sent panicked text messages.
Unknowingly to many students and some teachers, the entire scene was an “exercise.???
The students who collapsed to the ground — and one who “fell’ down some stairs — were actors coached by Baiardo to simulate a bioterrorism attack.
Baiardo said he wanted his students to experience an attack and use the lessons learned in his class. In order to achieve some realism, Baiardo kept not only his students in the dark but also the vast majority of the student body.
“I tried to cause a little panic,??? Baiardo said. “It had to be spontaneous. The reaction from my kids would not have been there if we told the parents beforehand. I wanted them to respond to a situation like we have been talking about it. [Being] spontaneous was necessary.???
Baiardo described the exercise as a way for his students to study how disease can be transferred through populations. He said the school’s principal was informed of the exercise and it had been in the works for weeks.
Predictably, there was some disagreement on its value, the teacher arguing that a bit of panic now and then is good as a learning exercise, others in emergency services arguing — not so much.
“[The chaos] that morning was intentional so as to mimic a true panic situation, a concept foreign to most individuals in this day and age,” wrote the teacher in a letter to the newspaper. “Controlled panic (fire drills, etc.) fails to instill the reality that a true panic situation might hold and judging by the apathetic reactions of many students during the simulation, I am concerned by the desensitization that I witnessed first-hand within the student population. Such is the pampered environment that we create for our youth in which they are never really exposed to true tests of resolve.???
Added the newspaper:
But Rio Rancho Battalion Chief Paul Bearce said he voiced reservations about the exercise. A week prior, a student approached Bearce about participating in the mock event.
“I knew it was going to be a situation where people were going to panic … When we found out the scenario, I voiced concerns. Students didn’t realize it was a scenario. My concerns of what I anticipated would happen — happened.???
Fire Rescue sent a rescue company to the school for an hour.
Anticipating people panicking and calling 911, Bearce contacted the dispatch center and told them to route reports of an attack at Rio Rancho High to him.
“We had concerns — we wanted to make sure no one got hurt and there was no mass panic,??? he said.
“A little panic can be healthy,” countered the teacher.
And, by the way, what disease actually causes people to fall down simultaneously with blood spurting from their noses and mouths? Something from a made-for-TV movie about Ebola virus horror? The Masque of the Red Death?
[N.B., folks: This is different from when you were a kid in grade school and someone vomited in the back of the classroom. And then one or two others followed suit from the stench and hysteria.]
Next week: Rigging a simultaneous white powder hoax and fake gunfire breaking out in the school commons as terrorists attack.
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05.21.10
Posted in Bioterrorism at 10:23 am by George Smith
From the Associated Press, earlier this week:
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher anctioned for unauthorized experiments was a member of the school’s biosafety committee.
Minutes of Institutional Biosafety Committee meetings show Professor Gary Splitter played a key role reviewing safety protocols for research involving the 1918 flu strain, chronic wasting disease, other viruses. He served on the panel between 2003 and 2006.
UW-Madison has revoked Splitter’s laboratory privileges for allowing experiments in which antibiotic-resistant genes of brucella were studied in his lab by graduate students.
One research watchdog, Edward Hammond, says the university should suspend projects in which Splitter was a key reviewer.
But university research official Bill Mellon says other committee members wouldn’t have approved projects if safety measures were inadequate.
Edward Hammond ran the Sunshine-Project, a noble effort to shine a light into the nooks and crannies of the academic biodefense research industry which burgeoned in the wake of 9/11.
The Sunshine Project ceased operation in 2008. And it was Hammond who first discovered unreported accidental acquisition of brucellosis disease in a university bioterrorism defense researcher. In the first case, at Texas A&M in 2007.
This week’s news concerns the disgracing of a University of Wisconsin at Madison researcher due to malfeasance and brucellosis disease in a graduate researcher.
Reported DVM Magazine:
A 32-year veteran of high-risk research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine has been suspended from working on any projects above Level 1 biosecurity clearance after unauthorized experiments on an antibiotic-resistant strain of brucellosis were discovered.
The suspension of laboratory privileges for Dr. Gary Splitter, DVM, PhD, followed a $40,000 fine against the university for not properly training faculty, staff and students on new federal regulations governing research.
Dr. Bill Mellon, PhD, UW-Madison’s associate dean for research policy and the school’s responsible officer for its select agent program, says Splitter claimed to not know the research in question was being conducted in his lab — despite evidence of the contrary contained in e-mails to a graduate student conducting the experiments. But not knowing about the experiments also would have been unacceptable, Mellon says — especially at that level of biosecurity clearance.
“Even if he didn’t know what a graduate student was doing, that was his responsibility to make sure … they knew what their responsibilities were,” Mellon says.
The $40,000 fine levied against the university was a result of the school’s failure to host training programs, not the experiments being conducted in the lab.
The decision to suspend Splitter’s laboratory privileges was an agreement reached by the doctor and the university. Splitter remains on staff at the school as a professor.
From a Madison newspaper:
[Splitter] lost his lab privileges for five years because two of his graduate students and a post-doctoral researcher inserted drug-resistant brucella germs into mice without permission from local or federal authorities. Someone in the lab later contracted brucellosis, which is an infectious disease that can cause fevers, joint pain and fatigue. He or she recovered.
The State Journal obtained documents this week related to UW-Madison’s investigation after filing a request under the state’s open records law.
However, the unauthorized experimentation with drug resistant Brucella was not, according to the CDC, the source of an infection in the lab. The latter was the result of some sort of other unspecified poor business.
The unauthorized antibiotic resistant strains of Brucella were destroyed in 2008, according to the university. It is potentially vary bad news because it implicates US academic researchers in conduct that would seem to be expressly forbidden by biological arms control convention.
That is, we’re not supposed to be engaged in research which creates new drug resistant diseases or even dances around the periphery of such conduct.
“There was no connection between this infection that occurred in the lab and the other issue with Splitter,” a science dean at UW-Madison told the newspaper.
Since the beginning of the war on terror, the only incidents of bioterrorism, or related to bioterrorism, have all been the product of American science. And they have all come from the bioterrorism defense research industry.
The most obvious case is Amerithrax and Bruce Ivins.
Another case involved the manfacture of botulism toxin by a research lab in the US select agent program and its misuse by peddlers of anti-wrinkle treatments and cosmetic surgery.
This was only discovered when four adults treated with the toxin contracted botulism and had to be put on ventilators. If they had not been sustained in this manner the incident would have certainly resulted in four deaths, only one less than the number killed by the anthrax made at Fort Detrick.
In a subsequent investigation, the FBI raided List Biological Labs in Campbell, CA, the company which had made the botox and sold it to unscrupulous parties. By definition, List Biological Laboratories was part of the US government’s select agent control program.
And oversight failed, big time.
List’s business has been ruined, its people — although still anonymous — disgraced. The company was irresponsible and dangerous. The FBI investigation was tough on it although little news was generated. Now List Biological Laboratories is in bankruptcy. It would probably be a very good thing if it were put out of business permanently, not sold or revived under another name because there is great profit in botox production.
And then we have this week’s UW-Wisconsin thing.
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05.07.10
Posted in Bioterrorism, Stumble and Fail, Why the World Doesn't Need US at 6:38 am by George Smith
Good news, lads! Good news! My retirement is now guaranteed and proceeding nicely.
Plain as the nose on your face, life for many in the formerly great US of A is relentlessly bleak.
Chalk the next piece up to that, along with innovative use of punishments for carrying out powder hoaxes after 9/11. While an interesting read, it impeaches our ‘way of life’ on many levels.
Reading the Modesto Bee today, we see here:
So far, Timothy Cloud’s retirement plan seems to be working out for him.
In a statement written by Cloud last month for two federal agents, he admitted mailing menacing messages scrawled on 3-by-5 cards, along with talcum powder, from Roseville to President Barack Obama at the White House and to Social Security Administration offices in New York City, Kansas City, Mo., and Baltimore.
“I mailed the envelopes … to those addresses because I hoped people would think it was anthrax,” he wrote. “I mailed the letters because I was mad. I knew I would be caught.
“I do not regret sending the envelopes because that was my retirement plan. Either I was going to get Social Security or I was going to jail.”
He went to jail in Sacramento, where he remains held without bail as a flight risk.
“All he wanted was three hots and a cot,” said his attorney, Assistant Federal Defender Matthew Bockmon. “He was frustrated with Social Security over denial of benefits to which he feels entitled.
“This is a pathetic case of a homeless person making a desperate cry for help. He’s been on the streets a long time; long enough that he was sick of it.”
You think Ted Nugent might offer him some stale balogna sandwiches, too?
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