06.07.13

Bean Pounding: Told you so, for years

Posted in Ricin Kooks at 9:15 am by George Smith

Ricin will never be a good weapon. But because of the war on terror millions of Americans believe just the opposite. And to this day, many counter-terror experts with zero practical knowledge in biochemistry continue to tell anyone who will listen that it is easy to make.

To wit, this disgraceful bit from a recent AP news story:

Security and counterterrorism expert Michael Fagel, who teaches at Northwestern University and is a veteran of ricin investigations, said ricin may be employed because castor beans are so easy to come by.

The plants grow wild along highways and in other spots in the U.S. They are also considered ornamental by some gardeners and are cultivated for medicinal castor oil and other products.

“And you can go on the Internet and find out any one of a gazillion recipes on how to make ricin,??? Fagel said, adding that it takes only a beginner’s knowledge of science to “weaponize??? it.

That’s irresponsible journalism and “wisdom” from the war on terror. And over a decade of it has relevance to why castor bean-pounding and the mailing of toxic letters to the president has become a grotesque but uniquely American micro-fad.

(Although it’s not the only factor, as I’ve pointed out. Can you think of any other Presidents, in your lifetime, who received ricin letters? No, didn’t think so. Why might that be?)

Castor meal, or what results after castor seeds are ground are about five percent protein. A five percent nitrogen content in castor meal comes with the protein and that is why it was used as fertilizer when the US still had a large castor farming and milling business.

Of the protein content in castor seeds, some is ricin. This is easily illustrated using SDS gel electrophoretic analysis of castor powder samples. (Which is just what the national lab in Maryland does when it receives samples recovered in ricin cases.)

Here is what a sample recovered from a ricin case looks like, analytically.

Examples from a ricin domestic terrorism case in the US begin in the lanes to the right of the clear lane. The single band lane to the left is a lab ricin standard. And the arrow denotes ricin component in the crude mixture from castor seeds.

The above shows a crude but complex mixture, of which ricin is only one part. Active ricin exists within it but it is far from pure.

And this is why the recipes on the Internet are irrelevant, except as lures and news items to be gawked at. They don’t do anything practical in the sense of a biochemical purification process.

No pure ricin is ever produced in domestic ricin case. It’s way beyond the capability of those who’ve been caught doing it.

Today, from a small newspaper, the Daily Mining Gazette from Houghton, Michigan:

Sarah Green, chair of the Tech chemistry department, said ricin stops all cell activities of the organism it attacks. However, ricin is effective as a weapon against humans only under certain circumstances …

In order for ricin to be effective as an airborne substance, Green said it would have to be a very fine powder and a huge quantity, perhaps tons, would be needed to make it a weapon of mass destruction.

A person who breathes or ingests ricin powder would get sick, but as long as an infected person received medical attention, that person would probably not die.

“Most people get sick, but they will survive,” she said.

Despite its possible toxicity, Green said only someone with a training in chemistry could make ricin an effective weapon.

“It takes quite a bit of purification,” she said.

People who actually know the protein chemistry business realize that production of “tons” of ricin is a ludicrous proposition.

Decades ago the US military tried to make a weapon out of ricin. It even filed a patent, one which became a contentious matter after 9/11.

But the patent, which I described many years ago here, was developed by those operating in almost complete ignorance of the true nature of ricin. Because of that, the work actually degrades ricin.

And there has never been any compelling evidence that this old US military work on “weaponizing” ricin was effective.

Despite all this, the US mainstream media will never get with the program. It’s too complicated a story. There’s a book in it, but who reads books? Not enough eyeballs for the website page.

The damage wrought is irreversible. The lore on ricin is deeply dug in and we will always have a small number of very suggestible, angry and disturbed people who pound castor beans, a first among western nations.

Permalink