The media spores contained significantly more silica than the senate spores. Naturally you interpret this finding of a silica additive to mean “contamination” by silicon and oxygen. This is almost akin to saying that a harmless powder was sent that was accidently contaminated with anthrax spores.
It’s called spin.
The facts, however, say otherwise.
It’s always a sure sign that a spinmeister is at work when he is forced to flat out lie about the facts. Such as Meselson does when he claims to C&E News that AFIP released a spectrum showing “only a silicon peak” - when the FACTS show that the spectrum they released was a reference sample of silica.
That's the way it should be with lab contamination.
1. The particles of glass (or silica or polymerized glass) are too small to be seen with a TEM. That means the particles could be anywhere from a single molecule on up to hundreds of molecules.
2. The particles are floating around in the nutrients. They either came off the glass walls of the fermenter or they came in the nutrients.
3. A bacterium has no mouth. It absorbs food through its skin (outer membrane).
4. Just like you and I, a bacterium has some ability to know what food it can digest and what it cannot.
5. Glass is not food for a Bacillus anthracis bacterium.
6. The larger particles of glass will not pass through the membrane. But smaller ones can -- if they are small enough.
7. Therefore, there would be a LOT MORE glass particles on the outside of a bacterium than gets inside the bacterium.
8. When a bacterium is about to die and begins to form a spore, just some of the tiny particles that managed to get INSIDE the bacterium will become part of the spore.
9. The "crude powder" in the media letters would have MUCH more glass on the surface of the dead bacteria because of all the glass particles that were too big to be absorbed and got stuck to the outer surfaces.
10. The spore that forms inside the bacterium will have only the smaller particles of glass that got through the mother germ's membrane.
Purification gets rid of all those dead mother germs, dead bactria and all the silica stuck to them. Therefore, it seems perfectly logical that the media powder would show many times as much glass as the purified spores.
I don't know what kind of fantasy you have dreamed up to explain things. Why don't you enlighten us by telling us how many people were involved in the massive conspiracy required to make your fantasy a reality?