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To: TrebleRebel
Ah yes, the grand conspiracy theory. All these government sources lied and misled the media on seeing coatings.

Actually, it's the other way around. It's you with "the grand conspiracy theory." It's the media which misled the government agencies. You always get things backwards.

Let's summarize:

Here's what coated spores look like:

You believe that because anthrax experts such as Meselson and Alibek have stated that they saw no coatings on the spores they must either be lying or incompetent. Is that correct?

On the other hand, you cannot name a single person who has stated for the record that they saw coatings on the spores. But you believe such people exist because you believe that van der Waals forces require that the spores be coated to keep them from binding together. Is that correct?

You believe that spores will bind together the same way as particles of lactose will bind together, and it doesn't make any difference to you that lactose is comprised totally of polar molecules which would naturally bind together. Is that correct?

It doesn't matter to you that the anthrax disease was discovered because spores were floating freely around and killing people in wool sorting factories during the Industrial Revolution. Is this also part of some "big lie" to you? How long has this "big lie" been going on?

And the fact that anthrax bacteria create spores in a process called "sporulation" which ends with a process called "lysing" where the spores are released from the dead mother germ to float away in any breeze means nothing to you. It doesn't matter to you that, if your beliefs about van der Waals forces were true, spores could not exist. In fact, if your beliefs about van der Waals forces were true, the universe as we know it could not exist because everything in the universe would have to be bound together in one big ball. Is that correct?

You cannot provide any science to show that spores require a coating, but instead you rely on media articles and other articles based upon second-hand and third-hand knowledge and/or mistaken beliefs about the attack spores. Is that correct?

Douglas Beecher of the FBI's labs at Quantico wrote in his article in Applied and Environmental Microbiology on page 5309:

Purification of spores may exacerbate their dissemination to some extent by removing adhesive contaminants and maximizing spore concentration. However, even in a crude state, dried microbial agents have been long considered especially hazardous. Experiments mimicking laboratory accidents have demonstrated that simply breaking vials of lyophilized bacterial cultures creates concentrated and persistent aerosols.

Do you consider this a lie?

Doug Beecher also wrote this:

...even if most of a spore powder is bound in relatively few large particles, some fraction is composed of particles that are precisely in the size range that is most hazardous for transmission of disease by inhalation.

Do you consider this a lie? Or do you believe Doug Beecher is incompetent?

Doug Beecher also wrote this on page 5309:

Individuals familiar with the compositions of the powders in the letters have indicated that they were comprised simply of spores purified to different extents. However, a widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production. This idea is usually the basis for implying that the powders were inordinately dangerous compared to spores alone. The persistent credence given to this impression fosters erroneous preconceptions, which may misguide research and preparedness efforts and generally detract from the magnitude of hazards posed by simple spore preparations.

If I understand you correctly, you believe this is all lies and says just the opposite of what it says. Is that correct?

Are you sure you don't believe in some "grand conspiracy" where the FBI is out to disprove your ridiculous beliefs?

Ed at www.anthraxinvestigation.com

72 posted on 07/11/2007 2:15:25 PM PDT by EdLake
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To: EdLake

Er, Beecher, supposedly at the “center of the investigation”, uses the Science article as his ONLY source there were no additives. The Science article says there WERE additives. Beecher, I believe, was duped into adding this sentence by his reviewer, Meselson, who we all know has an agenda.

This fact has been noticed by many others.

http://www.bepast.org/docs/washington%20newsletter/17%20October%202006%5B1%5D.htm
The August 2006 by Beecher provides great detail on the forensic examination of the letter to Senator Leahy, including the effect of personal protective equipment (PPE) contamination while personnel were investigating the Leahy letter (Table 1, page 5307), and the anthrax contamination studies of 20 letters also postmarked October 9, 2001 in Trenton, New Jersey close in time to the “Daschle and Leahy letters” (Table 2). Of note, however, no new data is provided in the “Results” section of the paper regarding the presence or absence of any additives to the anthrax spores in the letter.
In the “Discussion” section of the paper (page 5309) however, Mr. Beecher states that ”Individuals familiar with the composition of the powders in the letters have indicated that they were comprised simply of spores purified to different extents (6)”. This single reference # 6 is from an article titled “Anthrax powder: State of the Art?” published 28 November 2003 in Science (volume 302, pages 1492-1497) by Gary Matsumoto, described at the end of the five-page article as an investigative journalist.

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/09/abc_anthrax/view/index8.html
Beecher’s article is very oddly sourced, his reference to the scientists familiar with the sample who say it was just spores is to Gary Matsumoto’s article in Science, which discusses the controversy, and pretty much sides with the pro-silica people.
It does so because government scientists from the Army who know how to weaponize anthrax to the state of the art were asked by the FBI to do so attempting to replicate a guy with lots of knowledge working in the basement, and failed — because of clumping characteristics unlike the samples from the letters. Gary Matsumoto is double cited by Beecher in the part you quote, he is reference (6).

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/government/84/8449gov1.html

This is the FBI’s first public statement on the investigation since it began analyzing the material in the Leahy letter and the first time the bureau has described the anthrax powder. Beecher, however, provides no citation for the statement or any information in the article to back it up, and FBI spokeswomen have declined requests to interview him.
“The statement should have had a reference,” says L. Nicholas Ornston, editor-in-chief of the microbiology journal. “An unsupported sentence being cited as fact is uncomfortable to me. Any statement in a scientific article should be supported by a reference or by documentation,” he says.



75 posted on 07/11/2007 2:44:58 PM PDT by TrebleRebel
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