04.23.10
Posted in Bioterrorism at 12:15 pm by George Smith
Last month DD posted on conspiracy thinking and the anthrax case here.
That article dealt with the original thinking that the anthrax in the mail had been weaponized in some special manner. And that notion was subsequently carried over into arguments that Bruce Ivins could not have been the culprit because he did not know how to do such a thing.
No amount of FBI explication or proof from a national laboratory that a silicon signal in the spores was not weaponization could dislodge this idea. Even so,
the conspiracy argument using it has been pushed to the fringes.
And that original post pointed to a news article published in Science in March entitled: “Silicon Mystery Endures in Solved Anthrax Case.???
That article did not endeavor to further any discussion of weaponization. It did, however, point out that the question about weaponization was settled — the anthrax powder was not so. It also mulled over the unanswered question of how silicon wound up in the spore coats of the mailed anthrax, something science has yet to answer, if it ever will.
Curiously, the journalist most responsible for the conspiracy thought on anthrax weaponization was Gary Matsumoto.
And it was a news article by him, published by Science in 2003, which became the heart of it.
It was Matsumoto’s news article in Science magazine in 2003 which bundled all the rumors of weaponization in a single authoritative spot.
Entitled “Anthrax Powder: State of the Art????, it engaged in a speculation on how the mailed anthrax was weaponized.
An excerpt read thusly:
[One group of people] thinks that the powder mailed to the Senate (widely reported to be more refined than the one mailed to the TV networks in New York) was a diabolical advance in biological weapons technology. This diverse group includes scientists who specialize in biodefense for the Pentagon and other federal agencies, private-sector scientists who make small particles for use in pharmaceutical powders, and an electronics researcher [in Texas] …
The FBI science exhibit on the Ivins case in 2008 attempted to refute much of the wild thinking which grew from this, delivering a set of facts Science magazine repeated again in March of this year — conspicuously sans Matsumoto.
“Studying individual spores with a transmission electron microscope, [two scientists] found that the silicon was located within the spore coat, well inside the cell’s exosporium (outermost covering). By contrast, when they looked at surrogate spores weaponized with silica, the silicon was clearly outside the exosporium,” reported the magazine.
From a story I wrote for The Register in 2008 on the FBI Ivins exhibtion:
The posting to the net of a transcript of the FBI’s briefing to the press on the science behind the anthrax case is remarkable for two things: first, for its explanation of the development of microbial forensics and the team of scientists behind it; and second, for the determination of some members of the press to run off on a conspiracy theory hinging upon whether or not the anthrax was ever weaponized.
As to the second part, the FBI and its team of independent scientists unequivocally said it wasn’t, after repeated badgering by one journalist – unnamed in the transcript – who insisted other scientists at Ft. Detrick and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology had determined the anthrax to be weaponized because silica was allegedly seen on the surface of the spores.
Dr Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories who had, with others, analyzed the anthrax powders in depth, flatly denied this. “They are mistaken,??? the man replied to repeated questioning.
The ‘unnamed’ journalist who was still after the FBI about weaponization in 2008 was Gary Matsumoto.
Today, ProPublica published a story by Gary Matsumoto, floating the idea that Bruce Ivins could not have been the anthrax mailer because his supervisor implies he couldn’t have done it.
“A microbiologist who supervised the work of accused anthrax killer Bruce E. Ivins explained to a National Academy of Sciences panel Thursday why the arithmetic of growing anthrax didn’t add up to Ivins’ mailing deadly spores in fall 2001,” wrote Matsumoto for ProPublica here.
” ‘Impossible,” said Dr. Henry S. Heine of a scenario in which Ivins, another civilian microbiologist working for the Army, allegedly prepared the anthrax spores at an Army lab at Fort Detrick. ‘”
To reiterate: In 2008, Ivins could not have been the anthraxer because it was weaponized with silicon, even though the FBI had a materials scientist explaining the matter.
In 2010 that argument was difficult to support.
However, the belief that Ivins was not the anthrax mailer is solidly entrenched in a certain segment, not the least of whom are some Ivins colleagues at Fort Detrick. Fort Detrick is the heart of the bioterror defense effort in the US and the discovery of Ivins in its midst was a heavy blow to the professional reputation and trust that was essential to the institution.
It’s only human nature, then, that Ivins’ supervisor — someone, who if you accept the case, totally missed the doings of the bioterrorist who was his colleague — would naturally resist the idea that his trusted man was the culprit. Ivins’ status as the anthrax mailer pretty much put Heine’s career in a box. More directly, it implied the man couldn’t be trusted with overseeing people working with dangerous pathogens at THE premier world and government facility for working with extremely dangerous pathogens.
Gary Matsumoto’s ProPublica article indicates that such is the case, although it does not label it so.
In ProPublica, one reads:
“Heine left [Fort Detrick] in February and is now senior scientist at the Ordway Research Institute, Inc. Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infections in Albany, N.Y.”
That’s the graceful way of science.
You’re given time to retire after a long career, to arrange a soft landing at some greatly lesser place after your epic fail.
It’s a major setback. The end of a career. And anyone in such a position would have a perfectly understandable reason to argue against the FBI’s case.
So the argument put forward by Gary Matsumoto is that a defrocked scientist believes Ivins could not have produced the mailed anthrax because now Ivins did not have the time to do so.
ProPublica produces some quotes that, in and of themselves, require a bit more explanation than the article furnishes.
“[Ivins] logged 34 more hours in the B3 suite than his combined total for the previous seven months,” reads ProPublica. This figure is taken from the FBI.
“That’s more than 8,000 hours (close to a year) short of what he would have needed to grow the anthrax,” Ivins’ supervisor told ProPublica in interview.
On the other hand, the DoJ/FBI report on the anthrax in the mail has this to say:
“A leading anthrax researcher who assisted the investigation expressed his expert opinion that 100 ml would have been required to create sufficient material to be in one letter, for a total of 500 ml for five letters. Nevertheless, we cannot say with certainty how much material was used in the letters.”
The expert scientist cited by the DoJ/FBI is not named.
Nevertheless, the government’s argument is that the material was sufficient, unremarkable for the estimated volumes used.
The ProPublica claims — however — are confusing, even if you have scientific experience. First, there is a claim that a year of effort would have been required to produce “100 liters” of anthrax. But directly across from this claim is a picture of Ivins’ Erlenmeyer flask anthrax source, with the caption: [It] would’ve taken a flask filled to brimming to come close to producing all the spores mailed in 2001.”
Which appears not to be an unreasonable amount at all, given Ivins’ access to the flask and his considerable experience.
From a practical standpoint, concentrations of microbial fermentations do not necessarily have to take “8,000 hours” of work and a hundred liters. With the respect to the FBI claim that Ivins used 34 hours to do such things, the latter is a reasonable claim. While the former is not easy to resolve using common sense from the point of view of the article without further information.
“When you dry spores, they fly everywhere and you can’t see ’em,” Heine told ProPublica. “Had Bruce made it during all those late nights in the hot suite, we would’ve been his first victims.”
This is also a bit of a disingenuous quote.
The DoJ/FBI report devotes quite a bit of space to anthrax contaminations in Ivins’ laboratory, his clean-up efforts, and — according to the FBI — his cover-ups of them.
In March, DD wrote this at the Register:
Unsurprisingly, with any case as famous, drawn out, terrifying and fraught with initial blind alleys as Amerithrax, there are a large number of people – in separate groups – who will never be able to accept that Ivins was the anthraxer. There are those with a professional interest in exonerating him in argument – colleagues at Ft. Detrick.
Ivins’s anthrax mailings from the heart of the country’s biodefense research establishment impeaches it on many levels, and it is human nature that such a verdict is unacceptable. Ivins throws into question the very need for its work, exploding the trust, reliability and impeccable reputation that such an institution must have.
=====
The FBI’s argument is technical but not unreasonable at all. It is consistent, for example, with this author’s scientific experience with bacterial preparations. Arguments to the contrary rely on equally technical details.
The press, of course, cannot evaluate independently, being only able to deliver arguments from authority – all depending on who it believes to be authority.
Seems reasonable.
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04.22.10
Posted in Bioterrorism at 9:59 am by George Smith
The Graham-Talent Commission on WMD’s (that isn’t the commission anymore) had its usual pitch to submit to a Congressional hearing yesterday:
Al-Qaeda was well down the road to producing [bioweapons] prior to 9/11. Due to the ease in creating a clandestine production capability, our intelligence community had no knowledge of two such facilities in Afghanistan prior to their capture by U.S. troops and a separate, but parallel bioweapons development program al-Qaeda ran in Malaysia.
(There was a one-man company in Malaysia but never any suggestion that anything was going on with it. See here. And because the story of al Qaeda’s total non-achievement of biological weapon capability in Afghanistan is complicated and historically contaminated with misstatement and exaggeration by US officials, it has always lent itself to simple inversions, as demonstrated by Graham and Talent. — DD)
Facilities with more sophisticated equipment than those found could be in operation today without our knowledge.
When would we find out about such a facility? It is possible, even likely, that we would not know until after an attack took place. Consider this scenario: a team of engineers sympathetic to al-Qaeda bring a seed culture of anthrax spores to the U.S. from an overseas laboratory. They purchase and modify a truck so that it sprays anthrax spores into the air. They load up the truck with its deadly cargo, and slowly drive it through the downtown traffic of a mid-sized city during rush hour, at the end of the day. No one notices the truck, or finds it at all unusual that the truck is emitting fumes. No BioWatch sensors go off. Days later, however, desperately ill people start flooding emergency rooms. In the following weeks, 13,000 people die. The city may need to be cleaned up so that people can safely enter the downtown area, at a cost of billions of dollars. And as tragic as this event could be, the terrorists remain at large, free to commit the same murder twice.
It’s always worth noting the Graham/Talent claim that al Qaeda was “well down the road” to producing bioweapons has always been bullshit.
And they have told the same Biblical-catastrophe story about foreign terrorists attacking US cities with anthrax so many times that such pieces are almost no longer worth counting, they’ve become so devalued through numbing repetition.
The dirty laundry list is here. The two work under 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 it in newspapers.
And they continually distort and exaggerate what was found with regards to ‘al Qaeda’ capabilities for the purpose of advancing their recommendations. It’s a manipulative and deceptive tactic.
The two men and their agency are lobbyists, sock puppets or astro-turfers — if you prefer, for the bioterror defense industry, more specifically the Center for Biosecurity/University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Their two chief staffers are indistinguishable from the latter, having effectively taken over the emissions of the Graham-Talent commission last year.
The real purpose of Graham and Talent is to help promote the bioterror defense business goals of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Reporting from a homeland security trade publication here, we read:
Graham and Talent particularly emphasized the need for more spending on medical countermeasures in both their oral and written testimony. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA) would receive $476 million in the fiscal 2011 budget proposal for HHS, but a study by the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center determined BARDA should receive about $3.4 billion annually for five years to produce enough medical countermeasures for the top eight pathogens.
“It now falls to the US government to fund the development of medical countermeasures based upon the level of risk that is deemed tolerable,” the commissioners wrote “An amount of $1.7 billion per year would meet roughly half the estimated need to provide a significant and necessary down-payment on the nation’s preparedness. Given the threat, $1.7 billion per year for prevention and consequence management is a reasonable and comparatively sound investment.”
This is Graham-Talent’s tricky way of disguising that the figure they ‘independently’ furnish on what constitutes appropriate bioterror defense spending was actually given to them by Tara O’Toole and the Center for Biosecurity/University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
(‘One point seven billion’ is half of what should be spent, they say. Get it? Two times 1.7 billion = $3.4 billion, the UPMC number.)
Of course, the UPMC wants a huge slice of taxpayer funding for a bioterror defense nostrum/vaccine production center.
Just last week — the Buttinski Bioterror Defense Lobby.
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04.15.10
Posted in Bioterrorism, War On Terror at 8:16 am by George Smith
ProPublica won a Pulitzer very recently for good reporting.
This next example, however, isn’t the same. It’s just a nuisance piece describing a book on fear furnsihed by another retiree from the CIA.
Writes Sebastian Rotella here:
During the years he dueled terrorists overseas as a top operative for the CIA, Charles S. Faddis came to see the world through the eyes of the enemy …
What he saw — despite a vast campaign to fortify the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks — scared him. In fact, he says it scared him so much that he has written a new book, Willful Neglect: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security [1].
“Amazingly…as you tour this nation and examine the prime targets that beg to be defended from terrorist attack, what you find, eight years later, is that virtually nothing meaningful has been done,” Faddis writes. “True, large new bureaucracies have been created and shiny, new office buildings constructed, but in terms of concrete measures which will stand in the way of determined, evil men, there is very, very little.”
Rotella, incidentally, is a former LA Times reporter — one who left the ship, probably because of obvious Sam Zell/Tribune mismanagement. But that’s another story.
Back to Faddis.
Books like his have been a dime-a-dozen since 9/11. Everyone who comes out of the national security structure, or who works as a natsec consultant, seems to get charity-case book contracts for deadeningly repetitive tomes on how we’re still unprepared and everything is at risk.
And for years after 9/11 newspapers were filled with articles featuring literally hundreds of people proclaiming how easy it was for terrorists to infiltrate and attack — just about anything. There has never been a shortage of national security men working out in their heads what manner of badness terrorists can do, or walking and probing the countryside for vulnerabilities.
I’ve seen it firsthand.
I did a literature search on this a few years ago for purposes of outlining the nature of it. I’ll get to that in a minute.
Faddis’s book is probably not going to sell.
This is a good thing.
Americans have been burned out on fear. They’ve been abused by people who make simplistic arguments, who believe they should get some kind of award for making statements similar to this one, from Faddis:
[He] asserts, “long lines of railcars packed with the most dangerous substances on earth sit unattended all over our nation.”
What’s the answer then? Spend more money for armed guards on trains? Harden tank cars even more than they already are?
(Believe me, rail accidents are more likely to happen — and do happen — than terrorist attack. Chemical containers tend to be hardened so that they don’t all rupture catastrophically when a collision or derailment occurs. But sometimes they do and bad things happen. But it’s not often and there has never been a deadly Bhopal-scale disaster — not a rail car but a factory-size — release of toxic chemicals in this country.)
“When Faddis’ book was released in February, the reaction included accolades from nuclear safety watchdogs and from a security executive who met with Faddis to tell him the critique had been helpful,” writes Rotella.
Damned by faint praise, another harsh fact is that everyone has seen this stuff before, many times. At one point stories about attacking nuclear reactors, or being able to steal spent fuel rods which would cinder anyone getting near them trying to carry them away, were almost routine.
In real life, there isn’t anyone, who when presented with such a book as Faddis’, who won’t say ‘that’s helpful’ publicly.
What you don’t hear them say, sub-vocally, is: “Go away now. We’ve had enough.”
The method of writing a book on raging insecurity is lazy, even though Faddis did this:
For his new book, Faddis spent months on reconnaissance missions to likely terror targets in U.S infrastructure: dams, rail transportation, military bases, biological research labs and nuclear, chemical and liquid natural gas plants. He roamed along fences, visited authorized areas and otherwise tested security measures. Although his covert experience helped, he obeyed self-imposed ground rules and tried to maintain the perspective of an ordinary visitor.
The ProPublica article, for example, takes no account that there simply aren’t enough terrorists to take advantage of all the opportunities present in the book. Or that life, in general, is fraught with vulnerability. And that blowing up an office building won’t bring down the republic. Or that Biblical-scale disasters are, with the exception of Chernobyl, an exchange of nuclear weapons or WWII-style strategic incendiary bombing campaigns, almost purely only within the power of nature. You know — earthquakes, volcanoes, Katrinas — these sorts of things.
But hey, someone could walk into an office or federal building and just open fire! Or someone could crash a vehicle or airplane into the same! Or someone could take anthrax from a gold standard flask of anthrax spores at a top lab!
Oh, wait…
It also pays no mind to the idea that people and agencies are frequently resilient and valiant in the face of disasters. The only thing you have to know from guys like Faddis is that it’s a dangerous world and the government (and an entire laundry list of others) haven’t protected us well from the boogeymen who can do anything.
Remember, I said I’d get back to the vulnerability-everywhere meme, which was written about extensively years ago.
In August 2006, I reprinted this thing, a piece already a year old from Globalsecurity.Org:
The newsmedia, when dealing with potential problems, like the threats posed by terrorists . . . has an extremely poor track record. It does not ask hard questions of anyone. It simply acts as a conduit for the delivery of nightmare claims. Employing a Nexis search, [I] was able to quickly find around one hundred stories devoted to spreading permutations from the last two years containing some fashion of the assumption or assertion that “it’s easy for terrorists” to bring on calamity using a multitude of plans and practices.
Rail road yard security is a joke, it’s easy for terrorists to walk right in. .50 caliber sniper rifles, powerful enough to shoot down airplanes…are easy for terrorists to acquire [but even easier for Americans to get]. It’s [still] too easy for terrorists to get across the border. A new driver’s license bill is bad because it makes it easy for terrorists to have them. A blackout reveals how easy it might be for terrorists to knock down the electrical grid. Colorado is vulnerable to terror because federal focus on big cities has made it easy for terrorists to strike in landlocked states. It is easy for terrorists to contaminate water so [a scientist’s] new sensor system is a necessity. Be alert for farm terror because it is easy for the enemy to strike there. [A state] [leads or lags] in bioterror readiness and it’s a matter for concern because it is easy for terrorists … Assume a bioterror attack is coming because it is easy for terrorists…
By themselves, they occasionally appear lucid and reasonable. Pile them together and the aggregate is astonishing. The message is everything is vulnerable and terrorists are capable of anything. Because of one terrible day and the cliche “9/11 changed everything,” devastating terrorist strikes have been theorized as transferable to almost any imaginable attack scenario.
After I read a stack of these articles, I thought for a moment I was in the wrong business and should devote a couple months and publications to predicting the ways in which terrorists could attack. Terrorists could imitate the methodology of the Washington sniper and his accomplice. Why haven’t they? Terrorists could go into the forests and high chaparrals of southern California during fire season and ignite calamitous blazes, making national news and sewing panic. Local arsonists do it. It would be easy for terrorists. Gang members from central Los Angeles shoot into cars on the freeways. Surely that would be easy for terrorists… [Anti-terror celebrity Richard Clarke did do this in a long piece for the Atlantic Monthly. Clarke is actually now in the business of writing books about what terrorists can do, like clockwork, every two years. He alternates between fiction and non-fiction, the only difference between the two being there is more dialog in the former.]
It’s a good game. It needs to take no account of what terrorists are actually doing, no knowledge of what tough to get human intelligence sources and materials may show, or historically — what preferences, capabilities, experiences and limitations terrorists carry with them. It can assume that there are more terrorists expertly trained in many degrees and methods of mayhem and working themselves into place than there are actual terrorists. For the anti-terrorism effort, it is only necessary to assign a simple universality to fragility and vulnerability and degrees of omniscience and unlimited resources to the adversary. It is easy, so to speak, to think of things that are easy for terrorists to do.
. . . If one looks at an article published for the August/September 2005 edition of the American Journalism Review, one found a lamenting over the lack of good reporting on homeland security. But in the first few paragraphs, the article promptly fell into the same type of reporting it purported to criticize. The review delivered a titillating and speculative disaster porn scenario, trotting out a reporter to furnish claims about how easy it would be for a terrorist to kill — again thousands — by sabotaging a tank of anhydrous ammonia at a chemical plant.
“This particular killer goes for the eyeballs and turns skin into a gooey mass. Respiratory systems are paralyzed by excruciating pain,” wrote the publication. “…thousands of people would have died. I have no doubt of that,” said a journalist who was a source.
And “To attack [America’s electrical] grid, a terrorist need only study publicly available trade journals, which explain where new facilities are constructed,” again cried an op-ed piece in the New York Times on August 13, 2005. “A terrorist could then disable a particular system by destroying the computers and relays housed in the poorly protected building.”
Article after article can be found warning of dire consequences. No publication is too small, no facet of life too obscure.
The publication Arkansas Business, for example, furnished warning about attacks on rice.
“It would be very easy for terrorists to introduce anthrax or even something as simple as rat poison into rice being exported to the United States,” said a rice businessman for the paper.
“A shipload of contaminated rice, distributed throughout the nation, would be a security nightmare, creating not only a panic but possibly an economic meltdown.” (The subtext: Buy American grown rice, as only it can be guaranteed to be inspected, pure and clean.)
In any case, the hot button issue is again anthrax, the ultimate weapon, as has already been read, possibly to be blown through cities, worked into beef, poured into fruit juice, or also distributed in bags of rice.
And if not anthrax-tainted rice, how about lunches for school children?
At the end of July 2005, USA Today ran with the brief “School lunches a terrorist target? USDA calls meals ‘particularly vulnerable.'” “Currently, authorities are looking at how a popular lunchroom staple, chicken nuggets, may be susceptible to tampering,” wrote the newspaper. “Federal officials have distributed a food safety checklist to school lunch providers, who must show evidence of a food safety plan…”
Catastrophe-causing poisoning materials for terrorists are apparently available off the shelf everywhere, too, their capability facile.
“Robert Buchanan, a senior science adviser with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said mounting an attack on the food system would not require a great deal of knowledge or sophistication, and the result could be catastrophic,” wrote the Birmingham Post-Herald in July 2005 in the article, “Experts say food supply could be hit.”
“The number of biological or chemical agents that could be used in an attack [is huge],” said the government advisor to the reporter. “I’m amazed how many agents are available over the Internet.”
[W]hile such news often departs from reality, it generates its own truth and consequences by filtering into reports delivered by expert government, corporate and academic agencies. The action of this process as well as the close uncritical embracing of it dissipates organization into thousands of efforts going in different directions, reducing security to a chaotic scramble for money by crowds of experts and officials, all trying to paint scary scenarios because the more forbidding the manner of doom the easier it is to command attention.
Such collections of news stories and claims frequently lead to hearings, policy, entrenched beliefs, and funding of no immediately visible benefit to average Americans. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to put forward the distinctly not radical idea that given the recent national and local failures in the face of catastrophe, the needy would still take it in the shorts if all that was claimed to be very insecure to terrorists was made secure.
I concluded that the packaging and delivery of doom and terror stories comprised rigidly casted scripts which destroyed careful deliberation. They inspire a belief that everything must be secured and that nothing is secure. They lead to the perception or even conviction that the work of battening down the nation will never be over.
They fostered belief that it is rational and healthy to be in fear because everyone is threatened, “the world is not a safe place,” and maniacs can and will attack fruit juice, school lunches in Iowa, chicken nuggets or tubs of cafeteria spaghetti.
“[Faddis’s] book reviews a litany of security flaws in the bio-weapons research world revealed by the 2001 anthrax attacks, which were allegedly the work of a disgruntled scientist, and criticizes the dramatic increase in the number of labs handling lethal substances,” writes Rotella.
No, actually, the DoJ/FBI Amerithrax investigation and report did that. And we’ve all seen this but despite the fact that the worst bioterrorist in history was an American insider, the bioterror defense industry — of which he was a key part — continues to expand.
Geezus.
Here you have another perfect example of misguided book publishing, one which asks the gullible to believe we need another where so many have already been.
I’m betting life’s going to punt on Charles S. Faddis’s Willful Neglect: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security.
It will, suitably, subject it to an earned ‘willful neglect.’
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04.14.10
Posted in Bioterrorism at 1:23 pm by George Smith
It’s the Bob Graham/Jim Talent biodefense industry lobby, two guys who won’t gracefully leave the stage even when the US government has ended their lease.
Back in March DD wrote:
The most in-the-news duo of fuglemen for the US bioterror defense industry, the small operation known as the Graham-Talent WMD commission, will no longer be the Graham-Talent commission when its federal lease on life is not renewed this year. In short order.
It couldn’t come soon enough.
During 2008-09 the Graham-Talent Commission acted as an instrument of Tara O’Toole’s biodefense shop, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Biosecurity.
After dismissal, they could no longer call themselves the WMD Commission. If the Obama administration rightly became tired of these guys, it was a very good thing.
Because a long time ago Graham-Talent ceased to actually be a commission for studying the threat of WMDs. Instead, it became merely a special interest lobby for biodefense, its staffers sock puppets of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Biosecurity.
While this is obviously not well known by the general public, it’s well understood within the specialist corps of experts on bioterrorism.
So — this week — while everyone else in the news is talking about the nuclear security summit with Russia, Graham-Talent can’t resist being Buttinskis.
And they trade on their old name — the WMD Commission — in order to gull some editor who should know better into giving them space. In order to flog more bioterror defense.
Again.
At the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Graham and Talent write:
President Obama is right to seek significant reductions in the U.S. and the world’s nuclear weapons, but other proliferation trends are equally unsettling.
As the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism noted in our World at Risk report, without urgent and decisive actions, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction (nuclear or biological) will be used somewhere in the world before the end of 2013, but a biological attack is more likely than nuclear. Biological attacks could come from nation-states (the State Department lists at least six countries with suspected programs), terrorist groups (al-Qaida first built labs to produce anthrax weapons in 1999) (Purposely deceptive and wrong. — DD), or lone-wolf terrorists (according to the FBI, the perpetrator of the October 2001 anthrax attacks was a U.S. government scientist) …
(Actually, the lone-wolf bioterrorist, Bruce Ivins — our man on the inside at the heart of bioterror defense research makes for a cogent argument that maybe we need less expansion of the biodefense industry, if only to minimize the number of people with dangerous reliability problems and access to potential weapons. — DD.)
Today, we have the option of building a viable biodefense system that could allow a future Nuclear Posture Review to declare that the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear force is to deter nuclear attack.
Just as President Kennedy gave us the challenge of going to the moon, President Obama can give us the challenge of removing bioterrorism from the category of WMD.
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03.24.10
Posted in Bioterrorism at 9:24 am by George Smith
Updated
Bioterror defense in the US is a good way to make big money.
As such, it’s done the American way, creating the impression of cozy dealing and business doublecross.
There is continual growth opportunity in vaccine and nostrum-making. Bruce Ivins saw to it.
But the anthrax vaccine biz is also very tangled. Its history shows bitter struggle between a small club of rivals, routine retaliatory and delaying government contract protests and regular efforts to drive each other to financial ruin.
The latest news is on PharmAthene, one of the major players in the Alliance for Biosecurity and what has become known more vulgarly as the “Murtha/O’Toole favor factory.”
Michael Goldfarb coined the name at the Weekly Standard and described it thusly back in January:
Several months ago we warned that Tara O’Toole who recently became Under Secretary for the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security would reward her friends resulting in millions of dollars in gifts to John Murtha cronies who supported her nomination.
And it now appears the Murtha/O’Toole favor factory has begun production. In February 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a request for proposal (RFP) for a second-generation anthrax vaccine. This RFP was issued to be a re-procurement for a contract that had been canceled in 2006 for the same vaccine. And on December 7, HHS canceled the RFP.
After further review, it is becoming all too clear why this happened. Just as the year was closing and no one was paying attention, O’Toole’s friends at PharmAthene were awarded a sole-source contract, which has resulted in their stock nearly doubling
However, just this week a potential monkeywrench was thrown into the works.
From a Pharmathene press release on the 19th, one which caused its stock to sag:
PharmAthene, Inc. (NYSE Amex: PIP), a biodefense company specializing in the development and commercialization of medical countermeasures against chemical and biological threats, announced today that pursuant to the Federal Acquisition Regulations and pending a ruling in a protest recently filed by a competitor the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), has suspended work under the modification the Company announced on February 23, 2010 to its existing contract with BARDA for the research and development of SparVax(TM). June 11, 2010 is the deadline to rule on the protest.
David P. Wright, President & Chief Executive Officer, commented “We are confident that BARDA has complied with all applicable legal and contractual requirements in entering into the modifications with PharmaAthene and that the contract modification for SparVax(TM) will be upheld once a ruling on the protest is issued. In the meantime, funding under the original NIH contract transferred to BARDA in April 2009 will continue to support ongoing advanced development activities for SparVax(TM) until a decision is reached. We are disappointed that a competitor – whose primary motivation should be protecting our citizens from bioterrorist threats – has chosen to pursue a path intended to delay development of a key medical countermeasure for our nation’s biodefense arsenal.”
“PharmAthene Loses More Than 7.5%, Halts Work on Contract With BARDA Due to Protest,” reads one headline from a newswire broadcast.
But who is this competitor? PharmAthene’s press releases on the matter decline to say.
DD is betting it is Panacea Biotec, a Mumbai-based company and big vaccine maker which used to be a generous investor in PharmAthene.
WRONG!
Much crap deleted in update.
All credit to commenter for correction. My bad.
See here:
“Dick – you are way off on this story. Emergent Biosolutions filed the protest. You can check your facts by calling either Emergent or Pharmathene investor relations. the protest documents are public record. They filed on an obscure technicality.
“You might also ask why Emergent filed? They had nothing to gain as it was a contract renewal – not a competitive award. Did anyone file protests on Emergent’s contract extensions for their drug Vaxgen?
“If you are patriot Dick, you’ll understand that our country needs more companies in bioterror defense space. Emergent ran one company out of town – thus Vaxgen. Tried with others… and is now messing with Pharmathene. Open your eyes and check your facts.”
From a story in The Annapolis Capital:
PharmAthene, a biodefense firm whose headquarters are located downtown at One Park Place, is one of possibly just three companies in the world working on a more advanced vaccine, said David P. Wright, the company’s president and chief executive officer.
Two of those companies are based in Maryland. Emergent Biosolutions, a biodefense company based in Rockville, is in early development stages of a second-generation vaccine.
Emergent’s history with anthrax vaccine making was written up by David Willman at the Los Angeles Times in 2007.
Emergent, another Alliance for Biosecurity firm, engaged in battle with VaxGen, still another rival — based in San Francisco, which threatened its business as supplier of the anthrax vaccine now used by the US government.
“America’s sole supplier faced oblivion if its rival’s product was adopted,” reads the subhed at the Los Angeles Times. “It was time to call on its connections.”
The vaccine — BioThrax, and Emergent’s prime money-maker, has a long history of being criticized for the length of the innoculation regime and adverse effects, a potency requiring booster shots, and shelf-life limitations which it has fought to extend.
“The manufacturer, Emergent BioSolutions Inc. of Rockville, Md., prevailed in a bitter struggle with a rival company [Vaxgen] that was preparing what federal health officials expected to be a superior vaccine,” wrote Willman in 2007. “The episode illustrates the clout wielded by well-connected lobbyists over billions in spending for the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism program.”
A whispering campaign, fueled by lobbyists for Emergent, explained the Times, resulted in the competence of Vaxgen’s efforts being undermined. And a subsequent government revision in standards for its vaccine development delivery run and scientific problems within it crippled the firm’s ability to deliver on time.
This eventually resulted in the cancellation of Vaxgen’s second generation anthrax vaccine contract.
By 2008, Emergent had acquired that VaxGen anthrax vaccine in a fire sale brought about by the latter company’s financial collapse.
According to the San Francisco Business news:
VaxGen Inc. finished selling the assets of its anthrax vaccine program for $2 million.
The buyer was Emergent BioSolutions Inc., based in Rockville, Md … Emergent sells the only FDA-approved anthrax vaccine … Emergent aims to develop the vaccine to meet a request for proposals from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which seeks to stockpile 25 million doses of anthrax vaccine for bioterrorism defense.
Paradoxically, in early 2009 a biodefense industry competitor protest was filed against Emergent’s second generation anthrax vaccine bid to the US government, stalling the business.
“Emergent is awaiting an HHS decision on its bid last year to sell 25 million doses of a separate anthrax vaccine to the agency — a negotiation process that has been delayed by a protest … ” reported the Washington Business Journal from that time here. This contributed to a significant earnings drop report for Emergent during a quarter.
US government requests for proposals on a second generation anthrax vaccine have, up until now at least, been an on-and-off again process, confusing to follow.
In late 2009, the US government cancelled its original second RFP for such a vaccine, after issuing a re-procurement RFP in 2008 for a bid cancelled in 2006.
PharmAthene was then awarded the sole-source contract for the 25 million dose second gen anthrax vaccine contract at the end of last year. Which brings the story full circle, it seems.
For now.
Protest filings in the conducting of business re vaccine development against bioterrorism
2006: Emergent/DOR (both Alliance for Biosecurity firms) denied protest against DynPort Vaccine here. Complaint: Improper sole source contracting award.
2009: Panacea Biotech — see crossed-out cite above — protest that its second generation anthrax vaccine proposal was unreasonably excluded from US competitive range here. Judgment: Denied.
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03.23.10
Posted in Bioterrorism, Crazy Weapons at 12:20 pm by George Smith
Maryland GOP Congressman Roscoe Bartlett has the great distinction of not only being one of the chieftains of the Cult of EMP Crazy but, now, also a member of the anthrax conspiracy club.
Aiding Rush Holt, Bartlett is a co-sponsor of a rider attached to the recent intelligence funding bill. The rider asks the administration to authorize an ‘independent investigation’ of the anthrax mailings. And the President has promised to veto the Congressional funding authorization if that rider — as well as others — are not removed.
The Frederick, MD, newspaper recently put it this way:
The administration is citing U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett’s amendment to investigate the FBI’s handling of the 2001 anthrax case as one of many concerns with the bills. Bartlett is a Republican from Frederick who represents Western Maryland.
The House of Representatives adopted the anthrax amendment last month, which was proposed by Bartlett and Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who represents the district from which the anthrax letters were mailed.
The amendment asks the intelligence community’s inspector general to look into whether intelligence suggesting foreign influence in the anthrax attacks was overlooked.
The Senate never adopted the amendment, and the investigation would not take place unless the Senate agrees to it during a conference committee to sort out the differences in the two bills.
Therefore, the possibility exists for it just to go away or be ignored, in the same way as everyone has dealt with Bartlett’s idiosyncratic — or nuts, if you like — obsession with electromagnetic pulse doom.
Nevertheless, the Frederick newspaper goes on to mention the conspiracy thought on the subject (although it does not label it as such):
FBI records, released through the Freedom of Information Act, show that employees at Fort Detrick’s U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases mention Iraq as possibly having access to the strain of anthrax used in the attacks. They also discuss foreign scientists visiting the labs, and Ivins said a number of times he thought the strain could have ended up in Britain and other countries.
Iraq. Really, now.
Science employed in the FBI anthrax investigation traced the anthrax used in the mailings to a master flask — a gold standard reservoir of spores — under the control of Bruce Ivins.
Bartlett is up for re-election in November. Removing him from Congress would be salutary, comparable to the passing of a minor kidney stone. However, despite being known for very little except a gratifyingly unsuccessful decade-long effort to protect the country from electromagnetic pulse attack, Bartlett has proven surprisingly durable.
Nevertheless, the Democratic Party will try to have him replaced this year after a number of candidates are sorted.
From a Cumberland, MD, newspaper:
A Democratic candidate for the 6th Congressional District said nine-term incumbent Roscoe Bartlett should retire.
Casey Clark, 40, of Hampstead, said someone in office as long as Bartlett “should have a stellar record.???
“I don’t know that there’s anything you can point to that Roscoe Bartlett’s done,??? Casey said. “Frankly, after 18 years, you should have a stellar record.???
The Heritage Foundation is keen on him, though.
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03.22.10
Posted in Bioterrorism at 10:05 am by George Smith
Edward Jenner was a benefactor to mankind.
As a country doctor in the west of England, Jenner discovered vaccination. Indeed, the word vaccination — was taken by Jenner from the Latin word for cow, “vacca,” stemming for his discovery that women infected with cowpox — a lesser disease than the killer smallpox — acquired immunity to the latter.
So by scraping pus from cowpox sores on cows and administering it to people, Jenner invented the first vaccination by live virus.
More recently, there was news from the US-funded war on terror on the planned acquisition of 20 million doses of a new smallpox vaccine for the national stockpile.
The FDA has granted approval to Bavarian Nordic’s new and modern smallpox vaccine. BN, a Danish company, is one of the firms from the Alliance for Biosecurity, a small bioterror defense consortium put together after 9/11 to facilitate the transfer of BARDA-funding to private industry.
The CDC page on smallpox vaccination notes there is already enough smallpox vaccine “in the stockpile to vaccinate every person in the United States in the event of a smallpox emergency.”
That vaccine is a live virus preparation, its nature well-explained at the CDC.
The last vaccination against smallpox in the US occured in 1972. DD can even recall his smallpox vaccination as a child. It resulted in a big itchy scab and left a small scar. Kids were keen to look at each other’s scabs, as I recall.
This was back in those quaint days when people didn’t become apoplectic at the tyrannical idea of the government doing something good for their general well being. Fox News, if it had existed in the Sixties and Seventies, would have doubtless condemned smallpox vaccination as an attack on personal liberties and unconstitutional, much like the locals used to get inflamed over fluoridation.
“Shares in Bavarian jumped as much as 22 percent to their highest level since January 2008 and traded 13 percent up at 247 Danish crowns at 0923 GMT,” reported Reuters.
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03.19.10
Posted in Bioterrorism at 9:54 am by George Smith
Yesterday, Science magazine published a news article entitled: “Silicon Mystery Endures in Solved Anthrax Case.”
Here.
“What about the silicon?” asks the piece.
That question has confounded investigators throughout the probe into the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, which the U.S. government formally concluded in February. Scientists inside and outside the government say there is clear evidence that the high levels of silicon found in the anthrax came not from anything added to “weaponize” the anthrax spores—as researchers had suggested early in the probe—but from the culture in which the spores were grown. That evidence may have settled the issue of whether the anthrax was weaponized, at least for scientists familiar with the case. But it raises a different question: Why did the mailed anthrax have such a high proportion of spores with a silicon signature in comparison to most other anthrax samples?
Whatever the answer turns out to be, it won’t change the FBI’s “conclusion that the attacks were the sole handiwork of now-deceased U.S. Army researcher Bruce Ivins.”
The magazine might also have added it won’t change the minds of those who simply don’t believe Ivins did it, or that he did not work alone, or that because the mailed anthrax was ‘weaponized’ Ivins could not have done it because he did not have the know-how, three beliefs, among others, which make up the hard kernel of anthrax case conspiracy theory.
Paradoxically, it was a news article in Science magazine in 2003 which bundled all the rumors of weaponization in one authoritative spot, laying the foundation for much of this.
Written by Gary Matsumoto and entitled “Anthrax Powder: State of the Art?”, it engaged in a speculation on how the mailed anthrax was weaponized.
It is here.
Near the top of the old article, one reads:
[One group of people] thinks that the powder mailed to the Senate (widely reported to be more refined than the one mailed to the TV networks in New York) was a diabolical advance in biological weapons technology. This diverse group includes scientists who specialize in biodefense for the Pentagon and other federal agencies, private-sector scientists who make small particles for use in pharmaceutical powders, and an electronics researcher [in Texas] …
The piece continued with an almost maniacal rumination on how things like “polymerized glass” or “Aerosil” had possibly been mixed with the anthrax in the crafting of a diabolical weapon.
Who could have done it? Battelle (or as it has been puckishly expressed, the Umbrella Corporation) or perhaps Dugway, the article implied, hastily adding “None of this argues that Battelle or any of its employees made the Senate anthrax powder.”
The FBI science exhibit on the Ivins case in 2008 attempted to put this to rest, delivering a set of facts Science magazine repeated again yesterday.
“We found no additives; no exogenous material on the outside of the spores,” said Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratory in 2008. “We did have the opportunity to look at weaponized material to compare it to the letter material and they were very different. And [in] the weaponized material the additives appear on the outside of the spore. Again, in the letter materials the silicon and oxygen were co-located on the spore coat [which is] within the spore. In fact, we found some vegetative cells that were going through the sporulation process and the spore within the mother cell had this same signature.”
From Science, yesterday:
Examining the spores under a scanning electron microscope, [an Army group of] scientists detected silicon and oxygen and concluded that the spores had been coated with silica to make them float easily, enhancing their power to kill.
A more detailed analysis by Joseph Michael and Paul Kotula of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contradicted that conclusion. Studying individual spores with a transmission electron microscope, they found that the silicon was located within the spore coat, well inside the cell’s exosporium (outermost covering). By contrast, when they looked at surrogate spores weaponized with silica, the silicon was clearly outside the exosporium.
In 2008 it wasn’t enough to dampen the conspiracy theories. And one does not really expect anything to change now.
From the beginning of a Register story on the FBI exhibition in 2008:
The posting to the net of a transcript of the FBI’s briefing to the press on the science behind the anthrax case is remarkable for two things: first, for its explanation of the development of microbial forensics and the team of scientists behind it; and second, for the determination of some members of the press to run off on a conspiracy theory hinging upon whether or not the anthrax was ever weaponized.
As to the second part, the FBI and its team of independent scientists unequivocally said it wasn’t, after repeated badgering by one journalist – unnamed in the transcript – who insisted other scientists at Ft. Detrick and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology had determined the anthrax to be weaponized because silica was allegedly seen on the surface of the spores.
Dr Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories who had, with others, analyzed the anthrax powders in depth, flatly denied this. “They are mistaken,” the man replied to repeated questioning.
That journalist in question was the one who had written the news piece for Science in 2003.
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03.18.10
Posted in Bioterrorism at 7:51 am by George Smith
The most in-the-news duo of fuglemen for the US bioterror defense industry, the small operation known as the Graham-Talent WMD commission, will no longer be the Graham-Talent commission when its federal lease on life is not renewed this year. In short order.
It couldn’t come soon enough.
During 2008-09 the Graham-Talent Commission acted as an instrument of Tara O’Toole’s biodefense shop, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Biosecurity.
Writing here in December, we summarize:
More accurately, [the commission’s public faces] — Bob Graham and Jim Talent — are little more than fuglemen for the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a small consortium of biodefense firms called the Alliance for Biosecurity. And the ‘commission’s’ top two staffers are indistinguishable from the Center for Biosecurity.
The special interest group known as the Graham-Talent commission, though, does have a script it efficiently delivers.
It’s an apocalyptic one, a dire and extreme claim delivered free of correspondingly extreme or convincing evidence in support of it. It lives on the idea that if enough people can be rounded up to repeat it in press, it will be taken as fact by others who should perhaps know better.
And that script, delivered through the end of 2009 for the purposes of bonking the Obama administration over the head on the nation’s unpreparedness for bioterrorism was this, as taken from an example in USA Today:
“[Anthrax spores] released by a crop-duster could ‘kill more Americans than died in World War II’ and the economic impact could exceed $1.8 trillion in cleanup and other costs.”
An anthrax attack, in other words, would make World War II and the economic collapse seem like walks on a sunny day.
The Graham-Talent bioterror defense industry lobby regularly astro-turfed this substance-free meme into the mainstream press.
For the Miami Herald, Bob Graham, in an opinion piece:
“Is the biothreat overblown?” Graham asked. (The correct answer is “Yes.” And he has been one of the parties overblowing it.)
“No,” continued Graham’s opinion piece. “Just two or three pounds of anthrax scattered over a major city could kill more Americans than the number who died in World War II, according to the National Counter Terrorism Center. Cleanup and other economic costs could exceed $1.8 trillion.”
And in various other newspapers, various third and fourth tier right-wing pundits like Cliff May and Deroy Murdock delivered the same item.
“In an October 21 progress report, [Graham-Talent] cautioned that ‘a one-to two-kilogram release of anthrax spores from a crop duster plane could kill more Americans than died in World War II,’ specifically, 380,000.” — Murdock
“A scenario perhaps even more frightening: terrorists using biological weapons, setting off epidemics of smallpox, Ebola virus or other hemorrhagic fevers; a crop duster spreading 10 pounds of anthrax causing more deaths than in World War II.” — May
But despite the pliant and suggestible nature of various newspaper editors, the general public would seem to have virtually no interest in this much foretold catastrophe.
Which is sort of good news, considering the amount of effort Graham-Talent brought to the table in trying to manipulate opinion.
Another matter worth noting is the gracelessness with which parties in the bioterror defense industry deal with each other. Having done so much for the cause of the O’Toole shop, the UPMC Center for Biosecurity, you’d think those folks — with their plan for a big bioterror defense installation — might have thrown some money at Graham-Talent.
Where’s the love?
But perhaps they’ll still come through.
“One wonders which pharmaceutical firms will fund this ‘non-profit’ organization,” writes Jason Sigger today at Armchair Generalist. “Interestingly, the commission is not going to address the nuclear weapons or proliferation prevention aspects of its report, but only the issue of biopreparedness.”
“We’re not a lame duck. We’re not going away,??? was one promise, delivered by the commission’s executive director before a women’s group in Washington, DC.
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03.16.10
Posted in Bioterrorism at 8:52 am by George Smith
The Univerity of Pittsburgh Medical Center has announced a new alliance for biosecurity, but without that old name.
This is after it was compelled to separate from the old ‘Alliance for Biosecurity’ last year because of the taint of cronyism which news articles attached to it, the Department of Homeland Security’s then incoming undersecretary for Science & Technology, Tara O’Toole and deceased congressman Jack Murtha.
Collectively, a reporter at the Weekly Standard dubbed this aggregation of bioterror defense enterprise and politics “the Murtha/O’Toole favor factory.”
Articles discussing it are at the Washington Times, the Standard and one on this blog are consecutively — here, here and here.
Separated from the Alliance for Biosecurity, the UPMC has continued to be be busy with other partners in order to secure more bioterror defense loot from the US government/taxpayer as a consequence of Bruce Ivins of Fort Detrick’s little stunt with anthrax.
At Armchair Generalist, Jason Sigger writes of the p.r. announcement as it was channeled through the Pittsburgh Business Journal:
Now that the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine dropped out of the “Alliance for Biosecurity,” its leadership must have been desperate to find another way to get to the cash cow of bioterrorism industry. And find one it did …
And from the PBJ:
Battelle, IBM and Merck & Co. Inc. are partnering with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in the development of a first of its kind vaccine factory, the hospital network announced.
The new partners join GE Healthcare in pursuing construction of the facility, which UPMC wants to operate in partnership with the federal government as a way to respond quickly to chemical, biological or radiological threats such as a bioterrorist attack.
The plant would be funded by the federal government and operate as a nonprofit UPMC subsidiary
In the United States post-9/11, most people instinctively realize that when one declares that your goal is to build a ‘non-profit institution’, what you are actually doing is building a very much ‘for-profit institution.’
And profit there is to be made as one can tell from an eyeball of Tara O’Toole’s ethics and financial disclosure statements, on-line last year at Pro Publica and the Washington Post.
Readers will also notice that IBM, GE and Battelle are not names any reasonably informed people normally associate with improving general health, welfare and the practice of curing the sick in this country.
They are, however, big names with a lot of clout and significant lobbying power.
“[It’s] a funny thing, how non-profits like Battelle can be so aggressively driven by profit-chasing,” writes Sigger puckishly. “‘Battelle is investing today in key initiatives that will deliver a safer, healthier, and more productive tomorrow’. So was the Umbrella Corporation.”
Tsk-tsk, Mr. Sigger.
With the impression of cozy dealing attached to the UPMC Center for Biosecurity’s work with Jack Murtha (and, well, his subsequent untimely demise), another politician of influence had been sought and found in 2009.
D nee R Senator Arlen Specter was recruited into the role of UPMC bioterror defense/vaccine manufacturing facility enabler. As can be seen by his use of the thing as a job-builder in his campaign for re-election here.
The operation, it was said, would create “70,000 jobs.” Which is overselling it by quite a bit.
The UPMC Center would allegedly revolutionize vaccine manufacture by magic use of something called GE “disposable plastic technology”. This explains GE Healthcare’s involvement, “disposable plastic technology” being apparently its proprietary contribution to a promised great leap forward in vaccine production.
“UPMC worked on its proposal for a public-private partnership for several years, according to Rep. John Murtha’s office. Murtha, D-Johnstown, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, held hearings and consulted with UPMC on the need to increase [bioterrorism] vaccine capacity in the United States,” reported the Pittsburgh Tribune last year in an article telling about a Congressional hearing called by Specter to further push it down the rails.
“At a hearing Murtha called in Washington last year, officials testified a public-private partnership, possibly with an academic institution, could be a viable option that likely would cost several billion dollars.”
Alarmed by the potential reaction that an estimate of “several billion dollars” might cause in government, since it is the taxpayer’s money, the UPMC has subsequently revised its “estimate” downward to only one billion.
“Improving vaccine capacity probably will involve several public-private facilities in case contamination or a terrorist attack disables one …” one booster of the UPMC effort told the Pittsburgh newspaper.
This was a rather strange statement, as the one bioterrorist that the US has seen in recent years did not disable any bioterror defense installations.
Bruce Ivins, the most famous bioterrorist in the world, did not attack Fort Detrick with anthrax in the mail, a public private military taxpayer-funded facility which is central to biodefense research and preparedness. Ivins was a senior researcher at Fort Detrick, one who worked on the anthrax vaccine.
Anyway, in short: This announcement is just the latest news in the effort to more efficiently transfer taxpayer treasure to the biodefense research infrastructure.
Some very informed sources consider it a done deal.
However, it’s possible Arlen Specter could lose in his bid for re-election this November. With regards to this case, the election of Republican Pat Toomey could be a good thing as it would at least cause the UPMC to go to the trouble of enlisting a new government fixer.
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