Examining New York's Bioresearch Laboratory 437
Evangelion quotes from a NY Press story about Plum Island: "'Located just two miles off the tip of Long Island and six miles from the Connecticut coastline, Plum Island is home to a Bio-Safety Level 4 (BSL-4) research facility... During the fifth month of [an Engineer's] strike, a three-hour power outage renewed public interest in the island... Without power, the air filtration systems are inoperable. Without power, decontamination procedures break down. Without power, the seals in the pressurized airlock doors start to deflate. According to one report, workers were desperately sealing the doors with duct tape...'"
BSL-4 labs (Score:5, Interesting)
So, one should know that these facilities are the absolute best place to do research with the kinds of pathogens and chemicals and folks should not be scared at the mere presence of these facilities because of the work they do to help understand disease and potentially, biological weapons that may be used against us. However, we should know about their presence, and we should have contingency plans in place for the surrounding population (aside from "sanitation") should we have problems at these facilities.
Re:BSL-4 labs (Score:5, Informative)
USAMRIID has over 10,000 square feet of Biosafety Level 4 (BL4) and 50,000 square feet of Biosafety Level 3 (BL3)....
Re:BSL-4 labs (Score:5, Informative)
Part of the site determination that the government is doing for this new one is the surrounding area public opinion of the lab. UC Davis and the surrounding Sacramento and bay area had a very negative reaction to a BSL-4 lab being created. Therefore the government determined that it would not be a good idea to build it here.
Re:BSL-4 labs (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the campus is still trying to put one in and get a future site here. The public is a bit upset that they're still at it (and the campus is refusing to talk to the public self-appointed liason people). The uproar here after the last proposal round was rather strong. The campus can't convience the public that there is no reason for concern, as much as they try.
Ah, Davis politics. It's a fun place to live.
Re:BSL-4 labs (Score:3, Interesting)
And they went about 2 weeks before the lost monkey made the news. I suppose they're trying to keep up the fine UC system that keeps Los Alamos in such great tradition: missing computers containing sensitive information, misused funds and lax controls.
Re:BSL-4 labs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:BSL-4 labs (Score:5, Funny)
Re:BSL-4 labs (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably the most disturbing indictment of these facilities is that the Anthrax used in the attacks in the U.S. that followed 9/11 were traced back to the Ames strain of Anthrax which is American in origin and is used extensively at
USAMRID, Dugway, and Batelle among others. A full list is here:
http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm
The Anthrax attacks which have largely faded in to obscurity, unsolved, should be a source of deep concern to American's and the world. They might have been perpetrated by a roque wacko that had access to Anthrax in one of these facilities. Its pretty unlikely they were perpetrated by an Arab terrorist. They could have just as easily been a covert operation perpetrated by a misguided government agency designed to stoke fear of WMD's in the U.S. Coincidentally the Bush administration, right after this used the threat of WMD's as the rationale to attack Iraq though no significant WMD programs have been found there. They will, no doubt, continue to use WMD's as a rationale for preemptive warfare assuming they can get away with it after the bold faced lie the war in Iraq has proven to be.
WMD's are the perfect rationale for preemptive warfare. You can accuse any country of developing them and its impossible for the target country to prove they don't. Every nation in the world has dual use industrial equipment that can be redirected to chemical and biological weapons production and the Bush administration cynically uses this fact to suggest a target country is a danger because they have tanks thats could be used to ferment biological weapons, for example.
As much as the U.S. likes to get on the high horse about WMD's its still a fact that the U.S. has more of them than anyone and has used them in the past to kill large numbers of innocent civilians by nuking two cities in Japan full of civilians in particular.
Re:BSL-4 labs (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, and they are almost certain that this Anthrax came from Ft. Detrick, since that exact strain was used there, and some was missing. Additionally, one Lt. Col. Philip Zack was spotted by security cameras entering the facility after hours, and after he had been FIRED one year earlier for racially-motivated harassment against an Egyptian researched named Dr. Assaad. One day before the Anthrax attacks, the FBI was sent an anonymous letter warning that Dr. Assaad was a nutcase, and planning some sort of biological attack on the USA. They investigated him, but determined it was an attempt to frame him. But they NEVER investigated WHO was trying to frame him. Odds are it was the same person who initiated the attacks. (How else would he know?)
So what we have is somebody who was FIRED over his hatred of an Arab, who was spotted illegally entering a secure facility shortly before the Anthrax used in the attacks WENT MISSING, and they received a letter implicating this same Arab immediatly before the attacks began. Additionally, the letters sent with the anthrax were written so as to frame Arabs. However, forensic analysis revealed that the person who penned them writes in English, and was faking an Arabic "accent" on the penmanship (Or whatever it is called when your penmanship is affected by the script you first learned to write in) Also, the letters told the people to take antibiotics. Why would terrorists trying to kill somebody do all they can to help save them? A real terrorist wouldn't say it was Anthrax at all, let alone recommend a treatment. Some have said "Well penacillin wouldn't help, you need Cipero!" That is completely untrue. The people who make Cipero would like you to believe it is the only antibiotic that works, but it is not. There are many antibiotics that are effective. Penicillin is, and is FAR cheaper.
Re:Yeh, and M$ is in on the SCO deal too! (Score:5, Insightful)
What would be accomplished by these particular targets? In the case of Democractic senators its extremely useful to insure Congress will vote your way when you come in later with claims Iraq has WMD's and is an imminent danger of using them aginst the U.S. and to insure Congress will vote lots of money for WMD research and defenses. Congress living with vivid recollection of its own Anthrax attack was much more likely to vote for war to defend the U.S. from this threat. It kind of explains why the Democrats rolled over when the time came to green light the Iraq war.
The same can be said for the media. They became much more sympathetic to the danger of WMD's than they would have been if they hadn't been attacked themselves.
An arguement could be made this was all "Good For America". Perhaps those in power were legitimately concerned about the danger of biowarfare attacks against the U.S. but felt they couldn't get the funding or priority placed on defenses unless they staged a little demo. Sure a few people died but in the national security establishment calculus that is a small price to pay to help protect America from all threats, foreign and domestic.
Re:BSL-4 labs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BSL-4 labs (Score:3, Informative)
Not that you are likely to believe what they say about themselves. I suspect the father of your childhood friend just got tired of explaining what he did to freaked out people like you, and don't really consider that anecdote evidence of some big coverup of the research that goes on there.
There is also no point in arguing over whether or not the US is still involved in bioweapons research. None of us knows for
credible dope smokers? (Score:4, Insightful)
While I don't doubt for a second the "strangeness" of the entire operations there and the chance that there might be "leaks" coming from the island, how in the hell are OTHER people (I don't mind it so much) going to lend any credibility to a writer that says something as unnecessary as "I scored some weed" in what could have been a serious article?
Re:credible dope smokers? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:credible dope smokers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Credibility aside, the writer's trying hard to emulate Hunter Thompson throughout this piece, and this part in particular is a direct allusion.
Fans of Thompson, the 'gonzo journalist' known for participating as heavily as possible in the stories he covered for various newspapers, magazines, and most recently Rolling Stone, will recognize the Jersey Shore as a place Thompson knew and loathed from a stint at a shitty newspaper there, soon after he left the Air Force in Florida and before he lit out for New York. I believe Thompson's story of how he fled town after taking out a local man's daughter and destroying the man's car is in his first volume of memoirs, The Proud Highway.
Phrases like "holed up," overuse of the word "evil," malaprop similes ("fire in a cardboard factory") and consistent reflections of the writer's own opinions and impressions - how much do you see "I" in "serious articles"? many journalists call it "going first-person," and it's virtually never done - are all Thompson touches. As are gratuitous drug references. I'm tickled by the Thompson channeling, actually, because emulating other writers' style is something Thompson himself was notorious for doing early in his career.
I personally don't think the writer's predilection to score weed has much relevance to his credibility, any more than a mainstream reporter's alcoholism might (working reporters know what I'm talking about). This writing style and drug references are meant to appeal to a particular, fringe, audience, that's all, a kind of ingratiation and location with his audience's values, whatever you think of them.
Go Duct Tape (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Go Duct Tape (Score:2)
Re:Go Duct Tape (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting actually. Einstein didn't. A common misconception amongst many religious groups in some desperate hope to hang onto some credibility in this age of reason and common sense, is that Einstein was religious, and believed in god.
While a Jew by descent, he had no religious beliefs of his own - in fact when this nonsense was brought to his attention he was indignant at the suggestion:
"It was, of
Re:Go Duct Tape (Score:2, Funny)
Jos
Re:Go Duct Tape (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Go Duct Tape (Score:2)
Scary.. (Score:5, Informative)
We don't have level 4 labs where I work (levels 1-3 only), but we have emergency backup power that kicks in in under 10 seconds. Why on earth would this place not have that?
Re:Scary.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Scary.. (Score:2)
seriously.
It's documented in the book "Lab 257"
Re:Scary.. (Score:5, Informative)
1. Poor maintance by "scab" workers
2. Sabotage by striking maintance works.
(not good either way), but it does answer your question.
Re:Scary.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Scary.. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like outlawing the ability of government workers to strike. If you do, they're now working on their employer's terms. And their employer may not have their best interest at heart. Or even balanced interests.
I'd love to see an effective alternative, though. In my negligible experience, unions tend to get greedy. I understand a school's staff not wanting to take half
Re:Scary.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Presidential order has stopped many classes of federal workers from striking and private individuals can be forced to cease striking under the Taft-Hartley Act which Bush used to reopen west coast ports. If he can force dock workers whos actions only result in economic impact back to work then surely he has the authority to force safety critical workers as well. Of course it would never be done because that would draw way too much attention to the fact that there is a bioweapons and severly contagious di
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Scary.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the public's right to safety from level 4 biohazard's trumps the right of facilities engineers at this place to strike, any day. Whoever let such a situation occur in the first place should be held personally responsible for any injuries or deaths caused by inadequate, incompetent maintenance at this place.
Re:Scary.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I would like to point out, though, that this is yet another downside of the privatization so touted by politicians these days.
Re:Scary.. (Score:3, Informative)
The article saith, " I found the failure of all three of the island's backup generators particularly provocative". In other words, they did have emergency backup power but somehow bungled keeping it operational.
Tsk, tsk, tsk. (Score:4, Funny)
Well, looks like Dr. Lecter won't get his vacation RSN.
Here's the offer (Score:3, Funny)
Best of all, though - one week a year you'd get to leave the hospital and go here.
(points to a map)
Plum Island. Every afternoon of that week you can walk on the beach or swim in the ocean for up to one hour. Under SWAT team surveillance, of course...
DR. LECHTER
"Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center." Sounds charming.
CLARICE
That's just part of the island. It has a very nice beach. Terns nest there.
Re:Tsk, tsk, tsk. (Score:4, Funny)
It puts the fucking Ebola in the pressure-contained work area!
phhhewwww (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:phhhewwww (Score:2)
Re:phhhewwww (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm all for confronting the realities of WMD, but I don't like misleading statistics that are meant to frighten.
Statistics of this kind take the known casualties from Hiroshima and Nagasaki "per kiloton", and then multiply them by the number of kilotons in the Earth's arsenal. Thus, the only way we could kill all the humans on Earth 1000 times over is if they all agreed t
Re:phhhewwww (Score:3, Insightful)
If that's true, it's about as communicable as SARS, though more deadly. I lived in Toronto through the SARS crisis and it affected me not at all.
Multiplying a death rate by a population is misleading, because people will change their behaviour to avoid people with the disease, up to and including barricading themselves in their homes. In the case of SARS, the disease was brought under control through large-scale preventive quarantines
Re:phhhewwww (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are lucky, then you can get one warhead to kill a city. It depends a lot on how large the warhead is and how large the city is, of course. According to http://www.world-gazetteer.com/st/statd.htm [world-gazetteer.com], the number of cities in the world of all sizes is roughly (I'm too lazy to go through and add all the numbers together, so this is an estimate) 50,000. At one point there were 50,000 total warheads in inventory, but there aren't now. This also ignores the fact that a nuclear strike on a city will not automatically kill everyone who lives there; lots and lots and lots of people will survive. Also, half of the population of the planet doesn't live in a city of any kind.
The above analysis also ignores the realities of any real nuclear war scenario. No matter who the countries involved are, they are not going to carefully target cities so as to eliminate the greatest amount of population possible. The primary targets in a nuclear war are the other guy's nuclear forces. This means missile fields, strategic air bases, missile submarine docks, possibly aircraft carriers. With the possible exception of docks, none of these are known for being located in populated areas. Secondary targets are the other guy's conventional forces. These are air, army, and navy bases of all kinds, radar stations, air defense installations, etc. Some of these are located in populated areas, some are not. Tertiary targets are the other guy's infrastructure: airports, rail yards, major commercial hubs, and so on. These are generally located in populated areas but the population is not the target. last, coming in at #4, is the other guy's population. If and when you get to this point, you have already lost, but the threat of taking out a hefty chunk of the other guy's population can be a good insurance policy against war, and of course the threat has to be real for it to work.
By the time you've had a good-sized nuclear exchange, you've destroyed a bunch of warheads before they were exploded (warheads in missiles, aircraft, and ships that were destroyed in the fighting before they could fire), and, from the point of view of wiping out humanity, wasted a lot more warheads on relatively unpopulated areas. A bunch of cities have died, either because they contained critical infrastructure or just because they were important collections of people, but large portions of the population of both sides remains alive. More of them will die from radiation poisoning (although many fewer than most people think), starvation due to destruction of transport or 'nuclear winter', or just plain civil disorder, but you'll still have a lot left. And this is just in the two countries who went at it and their assorted allies; in any conceivable war scenario, the majority of the world will simply sit it out and hope none of the shit falls on them.
Chemical weapons aren't much of a threat to the survival of the race. Chemical and nuclear weapons are essentially the same as far as killing people goes; they can both do a good job at it, but only if everybody is in the same place, and it's just not something that the militaries of the world are going to bother with. Not to mention that nobody is wasteful enough to load chemical weapons onto strategic delivery systems, so in any armageddon scenario, the chemical weapons simply don't come into play.
Now we come to biological weapons. This is the only wildcard, because they are self-replicating. However, germs that make good war weapons don't make good extermination weapons, In fact, germs don't really make good extermination weapons at all. Either they kill so fast that they burn out (black plague, ebola) or they kill so slowly that the victim still has time to live a fairly normal life and have kids before they die (AIDS). Biological weapons are useless for war unless they can kill quickly. This means that they simply cannot wipe out an entire population, because they will burn out. Especially in
Re:phhhewwww (Score:3, Insightful)
*That's* why weapons like this are needed. Because others hav
Re:phhhewwww (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, since you want to play the tinfoil hat game -- you're dead.
For a bioweapon to be truely effective it has to have a reasonable infection and transmission period -- followed by rapid death. If the transmission period is too short then it won't spread because carriers will die before they can infect others. (Which is why a lot of really nasty viruses, like Ebola, are rare and have small kill clusters). If a military grade bioweap
Re:phhhewwww (Score:3, Informative)
"In 1954, the research took a more aggressive turn, with scientists looking to cook up ways to inflict damage on Soviet livestock"
"President Clinton to include Plum Island in his expanded bioterrorism program based on the possibility of a biological attack on the nation's agricultural base. Last year the administration of the island's research facilities was transferred from USDA to the Department of Homeland Security
Not so bad? (Score:2, Informative)
Just sayin...
Re:Not so bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I remember correctly, to be a BSL4 pathogen a bug must have a high lethality in humans, unresponsive to treatment and vaccine, and a high infection rate.
Aids, for example, is BSL3 (or is it 2?). Now, HIV if frightening stuff, and while treatment has come a long way recently, its still the stuff of nightmares.
BSL4 is the stuff of the kind of nightmares you get after watching a Hannibal Lecter marathon while dropping acid.
Personaly I'd be much happier of BSL4 labs had some sort of fail safe, such that if all proverbial hell broke loose the doors would just shut and seal, and if everyone inside died horribly, well... so be it.
Re:Not so bad? (Score:3)
At least that is what i was told when i worked with human blood. It is balisically a logistic thing, owing to the fact that AIDS is fairly prevelent.
Re:Not so bad? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not so bad? (Score:3)
So I have the feeling the common cold doesn't live up to the life-threatening disease requirement. BSL4 is for things like Ebola and other hemorrhagic fevers with no vaccine. I think smallpox is also studied under these conditions due to the fact that the general population has never been vaccinated.
Re:Not so bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds Familiar (Score:5, Funny)
Plum Island, Raccoon City [sonypictures.com]... either way, I'm duct taping my windows and kneeling under my desk as per the Umbrella Group's safety instructions.
The Umbrella Group, and it's parent company, ... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, and even one scratch from the zombies and you'll become one too, so watch out.
Backup Power (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Backup Power (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Backup Power (Score:2)
--
Evan
Re:Backup Power (Score:2)
Or it could be a new stupidity virus that escaped from that lab...
Re:Backup Power (Score:2)
Re:And Another Thing.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And Another Thing.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and you do test run your diesels once a week don't you?
If not, you deserve everything you get.
Is this a new game? (Score:2)
Redundant power supply (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Redundant power supply (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Redundant power supply (Score:5, Insightful)
Only slightly unexplained, I'd say. Maintenance engineers go on strike and suddenly all three generators don't work? The striking engineers blame it on "bad maintenance" by scab workers, but it's quite difficult to accidentally disable a generator, much less three of them. They don't really require any maintenance, other than checking fuel levels and starting them up once a month. Anything beyond that is handled by contracted outside maintenance companies that specialize in generators and backup power systems. I smell sabotage by a filthy union bastard.
Re:Redundant power supply (Score:3, Insightful)
You made a good point. Too bad you made yourself sound like a total ass at the end with that comment. Then again I guess your not old enough to understand why all Unions aren't evil.
Didn't say all unions are evil. I've been a dues paying member of the IBEW (electrician) and the CWA (telecom tech). I know what aspects of unionization are good and which are bad. In this case, I'm referring to a specific type of union person. Anyone who's ever worked in a union building trade knows
REsident Evil (Score:2, Funny)
What are you worried about? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What are you worried about? (Score:5, Funny)
Is this the Spinal Tap approach to biohazard classification?
The Cobra Event (Score:4, Interesting)
No this is not off-topic. The last few chapters of the book, all take place on Plum Island, and they talk in detail about the facilities on this island. Great reading, and it made it better after I read this article.
Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/03454099
Re:The Cobra Event (Score:2)
Re:The Cobra Event (Score:3, Interesting)
"
b) Detection of botulism:
We have been developing a generalized optical testing system for
adenosine triphosphate using the luciferase enzyme encapsulated in a sol
gel glass matrix. This makes a solid state sensor rather than a wet
chemical sensor. These techniques could be applied to other agents to
make faster more automated sensing.
"
Hmmmm? Gel Glass matrix? Sounds odd, I wonder who's doing research with GLASS and VIRAL
Duct tape (Score:2, Funny)
I'm looking through the The Jumbo Duct Tape Book [tinyurl.com] on Amazon right now, and don't see any section on using duct tape to seal off biohazard doors... maybe they are saving that for the second edition. Duct Tape: 101 Nuclear and Biochemical Warfare Uses!
Josh
Labor issues have plagued the facility... (Score:5, Interesting)
Time for a Reagan-like solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? In the interest of public safety. If this situation isn't in the interest of public safety I don't know what is.
I suggest they go the 'binding arbitration' route. If this is refused by the union, then it's time to start writing pink slips. This is too important.
Hannibal Lector? (Score:2)
How... delicious! *makes Lector Fava Beans sound*
Makes you wonder.. (Score:2, Insightful)
A>S
Emergency systems (Score:5, Insightful)
The emergency brake (i.e. the handbrake) in trucks is usually kept open by compressed air. The compressed air is responsible for holding a spring back, so if the air is suddenly lost, for some reason, the spring will extend and brake the truck. (This is because the conventional brakes are powered by compressed air)
Maybe a similar system could be used to automaticly seal off contaminated areas, in case power is lost?
Re:Emergency systems (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe a similar system could be used to automaticly seal off contaminated areas, in case power is lost?
We do that when designing safety systems in chemical plants and refineries . . . critical systems are designed to "fail open" or "fail closed" depending on the situation. By "fail", I mean if the system loses power (whether it be electric, pneumatic, etc.) For example, one would not want a fuel gas valve on a boiler to "fail open" and one would not want a chilled water quench system on that same boiler to "fail closed." Also, there are almost always manual block valves in the event of a more catastrophic failure.If the doors cited in the article fail open, it would imply that it is impossible/impractical to design a fail closed system for sealing the doors, triple redundant backup generators were considered sufficient to address the failure mode, or the engineer that designed the system should be sent to remedial engineering school.
What the hell is WRONG with you people? (Score:4, Insightful)
Signal noise, people... Signal noise.
--
Evan
Did YOU read the article? (Score:3, Insightful)
Simply saying "Well we had back up generators, but they didn't work. Sorry." Does not cut it.
Re:troll (Score:3, Insightful)
=Smidge=
New Book about this "Lab 257" (Score:5, Informative)
He has done an audio interview [soundwaves2000.com] on rense.com and onNPR (can't find the link)
What he describes sounds similar to the problems laid out by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.
Plum Island is Biosafety Level FIVE. (Score:5, Informative)
From a United Stataes Animal Health Association's 1998 Report:
Beyond the traditional four biosafety levels, U.S. Agriculture has an additional level, biosafety level 5 (BL5), designed for agents that by law are not allowed on the U.S. mainland. Both foot-and-mouth disease virus and rinderpest virus require that BL3-Ag facilities in which they are studied be separated from the mainland. There is only one facility in the U.S. that meets BL5 criteria -- the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
Original Report Here [usaha.org].
Level 3 is closer than you think (Score:5, Interesting)
--Mike--
just a thought on generators (Score:4, Insightful)
while our function is important, it isn't "critical", in that, should we completely shut down, no one would actually die.
having said that, i should now like to point out that we have two procedures in place to ensure that we do not experience a power outage:
one is an enormous CAT generator that is tested every tuesday and thursday. the lights blink for a moment, that's all. regular tests of any back-up power system are certainly advisable.
the second is an enormous bank of batteries. the main function of this is as sort of a universal UPS, keeping the computers from going down while the generator gets up. granted, it won't last long, but it is SOMETHING.
they can blame anyone they want for the failure of the generators, but, barring outright sabotage immediately before the power outage, i'd say this entire fiasco is the result of piss poor testing procedures. one could have any number of back-up generators in reserve . . . but if they aren't tested ROUTINELY, this is the sort of crap that can and does happen.
Union Busters (Score:5, Informative)
Ken Alibek(ov) (Score:5, Interesting)
Biohazard was written by the head of the Russian bioweaponeering program in the 80s-90s. There are literally pictures of him standing with a bunch of scientists in places like Plum Island (i thiknk its actually in Arkansas at the Pine Bluff facility) during one of the many "goodwill" tours the USSR and the US had during treaty negotiations after the cold war.
This book is SCARY. Apparently, the chimera virus so easily discounted earlier in this post is very real, and was an attempt to mix ebola and smallpox and seal it in gelatinized capsules to make it airborne and able to survive the explosion of delivery by bombs. Why bother? Because their research was based on whatever was considered INCURABLE in the west. Several accidents in russian experiments are well documented, and show up in old news reports as "food poisoning" or other polically correct reasons for mass deaths in suburban areas. Apparently in one case, someone got drunk and forgot to put the air filters back on at an Anthrax plant and killed a bunch of folx.
2 points: someone noted that this is small scale research. This is incorrect, as Ken Alibek notes that weaponized germs have to be produced by the TON in order to keep the stockpile of arms fresh enough for maximum impact. Think about what a TON of ebola would do to anywhere. Second, where did all this shit go? He documents how at least one of the starving workers at a smallpox plant slipped out with a live vial (from a lvl4 facility) to try to sell it as a supplemental income. In lots of cases, noone knows where it all went.
The upside is that it mostly doesn't work as effectively as it's billed. Spraying an agent would probably only infect a small number of people, since delivery of a live virus is apparently a very hard thing to accomplish effectively.
-chitlenz
Cost-Effective Homeland Insecurity (Score:3, Interesting)
Lyme, Gulf War Syndrome, and HIV... (Score:3, Interesting)
Mycoplasma Fermentans [angelfire.com] has been detected in patients of Gulf War Syndrome, Lyme Disease, and HIV in almost all cases. It is often also detected in Multiple Sclerosis patients, and the US Army released instructions to the Veterans Administration shortly after the Korean War that all MS cases developing within two years of a serviceman returning from Korea should be considered to be service related.
There is a connection [whale.to] that has been noticed by doctors in that area, as well as by doctors treating patients who have lived in that area in other locations.
There is also at least one patent [uspto.gov]held by the US Army for this organism.
It's good that there's covertage of some of the mishaps that occur at these facilities, but it seems that a "mishap" might not be enough to account for the problems that have been connected to the communitioes surrounding Plum Island and are spreading through the population. (Yes, Gulf War Syndrome is contagious, and did "originate" in many veterans who never left the states.)
Terraserver view of the island (Score:3, Informative)
FUD about origins of virii? (Score:3, Insightful)
# begin rant # Seems to me like this guy likes to take the sensationalist approach more than the straight facts approach, and shock us out of our right minds. But that's to be expected from a human author. # end rant #
Did anyone else read this and get the impression that he wanted us to think that these horrible, awful scourge-of-mankind diseases ORIGINATED from this facility? I'll post about the origins of two big names he drops here.
Lyme Disease is actually named after a town in Connecticut where it was first documented in the 1970s. That town's name? Old Lyme [oldlymect.com]. I go there every year for a vacation, so I know about it very well. It spreads to humans by ticks - exactly the kind of thing you'd expect Plum to have inside. However, it is easily treated, has a decent grace period before complications occur, and is not debilitating until it gets really bad. You can read more about it here [ufl.edu]. If this easily curable disease was indeed the result of an experiment at Plum Island, then it was probably the crappiest and least effective bioweapon ever invented.
Now, about West Nile Virus. According to this document [ebicom.net]: Unless new information comes to light, the first case of West Nile virus to be subjected to scientific study was brought to medical attention in December 1937 at Omogo, West Nile district, Northern Province of Uganda. That case (and the subsequent viral characterization process) was documented by members of the Yellow Fever Research Institute, Entebbe, Uganda in 1940. I seriously doubt they created West Nile in a laboratory that long ago.
The Plum Island laboratory (Link 1 [usda.gov] Link 2 [dhs.gov] got any more links?) has been around plenty longer than Lyme Disease has been known according to this document [powertolearn.com], but it is newer than West Nile. Directly copied from that site: In 1946, a disease laboratory was built at Fort Terry by the government. Fort Terry was closed in 1948 because we were no longer at war, and it was no longer needed. Fort Terry was reopened to research new ways to go to war, and for the development of chemicals to kill animals.
Draw your own conclusion, here's your sketch pencil.
Re:backup gens? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:backup gens? (Score:3, Interesting)
They have 3 separate generators. Somehow, all three were happened to fail simultaneously during an engineer's strike. Looks like sabotage by disgruntled workers to me.
Re:backup gens? (Score:4, Insightful)
While sabotage is indeed a possibility, I find it far more likely that the scabs hired to replace the striking engineers never bothered to RTFM, never ran an equipment test, and never had a drill or simulated outage.
In that kind of facility, they should have been running a monthly, if not weekly, test of the backup systems. The most likely explanation to me is that there was a breakdown in operational procedure, possibly because the procedures weren't documented. If the policy is that you run a periodic systems test, then you need to document the fact that you need to run a test along with the instructions needed to carry out the test.
"Fred runs the test every Tuesday; get him to show you how to do it" doesn't cut it, particuarly if Fred goes on strike or gets run over by a bus. It's management's responsibility to make sure that all the critical operational procedures are documented and that they are being followed on an ongoing basis. This obviously did not happen in this case -- even if the generators were sabotaged, the damage should have been detected at the next test.
Re:backup gens? (Score:3, Interesting)
Good point. The fact that they had three backup power units go bad in a not-immediately-repairable way in the same time frame looks like sabotage, but the fact that such non-functionality was overlooked indicates ineptitude as well. Personally, having seen a LOT of backup generator systems working as an electrician in Las Vegas hotels, I suspect the one-two combo of sabotage-stupidity. There's not much of those ge
Re:lets hope that (Score:3, Insightful)
We didn't just invade Iraq because of that. (Look--we didn't invade Pakistan or India, nor have we invaded North Korea, or the UK, or France.)
Re:Yet another example ... (Score:5, Insightful)
A statement like that kind of destroys all credibility of the author.
Re:Yet another example ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah? Why is that? Because its possible that some of the objections that the Arab community have about America may in fact be true? That they may be applicable? That they may have a point?
The fact that America's enemies may actually have a point may have escaped some of you, I know
"Protection of the American Homeland".
Great. Thanks.
Yet another example... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yet another example... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yet another example ... (Score:3, Insightful)
weapons-grade anthrax...
You aren't suggesting that this lab has this are you? Cause this is Plum Island Animal Disease Center [usda.gov]
But I mean yeah! diseases are dangerous they could kill us. We should totally stop reasearching them, cause while research might provide us with treatments, vacinations, and all that, there is a small chance that the disease could escape. Better to get rid our research...
Sorry for the Trolling, but it's almost like watching Wargames and Terminator and saying lets get
Re:Is this the same lab (Score:3, Informative)