Posted on 09/17/2001 8:27:23 AM PDT by toenail
Anthrax is effective as a biological weapon because:
We KNOW there are potential adversaries developing it as a weapon.
There is no indication of exposure.
There is no effective treatment for unvaccinated victims of inhalational anthrax.
This is something that has bothered me ever since 9/11: How do we know that he didn't?
From the article:
Spores can be easily spread in the air by missiles, rockets, artillery, aerial bombs & sprayers. / There is no cloud or color. / By the time symptoms develop, it is highly likely death will occur despite the best efforts of modern medical science.
I remember a movie called the 'Untouchables' where Sean Connery's character was explaining the 'Chicago Way' to Eliot Ness (as bumblingly portrayed by Kevin Kostner).
My point is if these half-wit izlamiks continue to do this, Bush would have no choice but to go the Hiroshima route.
'...if the other guy brings a knife, you bring a gun...'
Or like Teddy Roosevelt said, "SPEAK SOFTLY, BUT CARRY A BIG STICK!"
"OWNER: AGARWAL SUDHIR K"
"AGRAWAL TEJ"
"GIDWANI LATA A"
"GOYAL NISHA R"
"JAIN ALEX"
"KUCHERIA CHATTAR"
"REDDY CHURUKANTI L"
"FILING-DATE: 09/23/1999"
May just be me but those last three names look ficticious.
I think it may be time to develop a crash Anthrax vaccine program.
Are you thinking of Teg?
I noticed you bolded "foreign" in those incorp. lists. I'm not sure how to define it legally, but in effect it means that the company was started somewhere else and also then incorporated in that state. It really gets tough to track them when they do that because not all secretary of state sites note where they originated. That's on purpose a lot of the time.
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BTTT
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January 18, 2001 Robert C. Myers, LANSING ECONOMIC CLUB PRESENTATION Thank you Kelly for that kind introduction. I also want to extend thanks to our hosts today, the Lansing chamber of commerce – Lansing economic club and our sponsors, Rossman Martin and associates and the Christman company. In deciding our message for today’s presentation we realized it was important to share with you the circumstances that brought us here today. BioPort corporation has a fascinating story to tell. The facility we call BioPort today has a long history of stepping to the plate when no one else would. With anthrax vaccine, the first time was in 1965 as a state of Michigan lab. That time, this lab stepped up to develop and manufacture anthrax vaccine when no one in private industry wanted to take it on. Then again 10 years ago the lab stepped up to manufacture large amounts of the anthrax vaccine when the federal government and our troops in the Persian Gulf needed us to. We stepped up then and we’ll do it again because the threat of anthrax used as a biological weapon against the men and women who put their lives on the line to protect our freedom is real. In the next twenty or so minutes I am going to tell you more about the threat and the disease that attack with anthrax causes. I will tell you about BioPort’s vaccine and about BioPort the company--its focus, its challenges and its future. Let’s start with some specifics about the threat. Anthrax — often called the poor man’s nuke — is truly a terrible weapon of mass destruction. Its power to kill is impressive. On a weight basis it is over 600 times more lethal than a tactical nuclear weapon and 400,000 times more lethal than mustard gas. At least 17 rogue nations and hard core terrorist organizations are believed to have weaponized anthrax. Among these are the usual suspects such as North Korea, China, Iran and of course Iraq, as well as Osama Bin Laden and the Japanese cult AumShinrikyo — famous for the Tokyo subway gas attack but not nearly as well known for its failed attempts to deploy anthrax in the mid 1990s. It has not been too difficult for rogue nations and terrorists to get started. In the past, the anthrax bacteria has been readily available — even from U.S. laboratories. Anthrax spores are also found in the soil and world-wide, animals and occasionally people still die of it. Its both cheap and easy to grow in liquid culture media and the harvested dormant spores are extremely stable. Anthrax is not too hard to weaponize — the trick is to get the spore particles the right size so they drift lightly in the air, so as to be widely dispersed and so the spores are breathed deeply into the lungs. Once made, deadly anthrax can be disseminated with equipment as simple as crop dusters, foggers — even aerosol cans — you don’t need missiles. That Iraq has successfully weaponized anthrax is without question. What isn’t known is how much weaponized anthrax they currently possess. There are still 17 tons of bacterial growth media that Iraq cannot account for. To put that in perspective, that’s way more than 100 times the culture media we used over the last ten years for the 11 million doses of vaccine that we’ve made. Put another way, with that growth media Saddam would have enough weaponized anthrax to kill the entire population of our planet, several times over. Right now anthrax is also the hoax of choice, but someday it won’t be a hoax. While you could say this is a self-serving BioPort opinion or that the threat is overblown, it is a fact that the federal government has recognized our country is not prepared for that day when it is not a hoax and is increasing its funding to protect against terrorism. Last year the federal government spent several hundred million dollars in the bioterrorism area out of an estimated, total 8.4 billion dollar counter-terrorism spending budget. This federal focus does provide opportunities for BioPort and others, willing to continue to step up to the plate to protect our troops and our country. I will now turn to the disease anthrax. I will describe it as it might manifest itself in a terrorist scenario. A terrorist attack with anthrax will cause a disease called inhalational anthrax—the uniformly fatal form of anthrax occurring when spores in the air are inhaled deeply into the lungs. Imagine being at an MSUfootball game, along with another 80,000 or so fans. You know the planes that circle the stadium with advertising banners waving behind? Suppose one of these planes is outfitted with a simple aerosol generation device that dispersed anthrax spores in to the air. In a few minutes, with an anthrax payload the size of a small bag of flour, the entire crowd and, with the right atmospheric conditions, much of Lansing could be exposed. You would never know it because the anthrax cloud is colorless, odorless and tasteless. You and the rest of the fans would leave the game without a clue and disperse across Michigan and elsewhere. 2-7 days later people would start getting sick with flu-like symptoms. After a day or two you might begin to feel better but then its hits. You can’t breathe, your body fills with toxins, you have multiple organ failure and within hours your family is making funeral arrangements. That’s how quick you will die. At first, across the state, the flu-like symptoms are not even recognized as anthrax. That’s unfortunate, because once symptoms begin to occur, you don’t get better — you die — even with aggressive therapy. Once identified as anthrax, those sick are left to die and those not yet suffering symptoms are given both antibiotic and vaccine to the extent these are available. In the end, given our current state of preparedness, its likely that tens of thousands of the people who were in the stadium would die and thousands more from the Lansing community would be dead from this attack. While such a scenario probably won’t happen here, it is likely to happen somewhere in the not too distant future. Fortunately, there is good news about this coming from those few companies stepping up to protect against this scourge. One such company is BioPort, on North Martin Luther King Junior Blvd., where some 220 people are completely fixed on supplying a safe and effective anthrax vaccine. Before telling you more about BioPort, let me tell you a little bit about the vaccine itself. The anthrax vaccine had been licensed less than seven years when I first joined the team — back then the Biologic Products Division of the Michigan Department of Public Health. I guess time alone gives me some qualification to discuss the vaccine. The anthrax vaccine is made from a strain of anthrax that protects but does not have the ability to cause disease, so you don’t have to worry about getting anthrax from the vaccine. Additionally, the vaccine contains no living or dead bacteria so it can’t cause the vaccine associated kind of disease that occurs occasionally with live polio vaccine or has happened in the past with smallpox vaccine. While protection against airborne exposure can’t be tested directly in humans, it has been tested in animal models. The vaccine has been shown to be highly effective against inhalational anthrax in the monkey and rabbit models. In these models, the vaccine has never failed to protect, even against the tough, so-called "vaccine resistant" strains. This record leaves no doubt in my mind that the vaccine will protect against all strains of anthrax. Now licensed for thirty years, with two million doses given in the last two and a half years alone, the vaccine is proven safe. In total, there have been 13 safety studies of many different types involving 366,000 patients and there is no pattern emerging that would call the vaccine’s safety into question. Now that I’ve told you a little bit about the anthrax vaccine, I will turn to a discussion of the only company in the world that makes an FDA licensed anthrax vaccine — BioPort Corporation based right here in Lansing. BioPort’s facilities are the old laboratory complex at the north end of Lansing — some 15 or so aged buildings on the east side of North Martin Luther King Junior Blvd across from the Department of Community Health. As you know, the anthrax manufacturing facilities have recently been upgraded and BioPort is now seeking FDA approval to use these facilities to manufacture licensed lots of the anthrax vaccine. This Lab was previously owned and operated by the State of Michigan and had a 70 year history of providing vaccines for Michigan and elsewhere. In 1995, the State decided that it no longer needed the means of vaccine production as a tool to provide vaccines for Michigan’s citizens. After enabling legislation was passed, the Labs were put up for sale. Employees were expressly permitted by the legislation to participate in the purchase — if they notified the State of their intent to do so. I and several other managers formed a Company to purchase the Labs and in 1998 we joined forces with an outside partner, beat the competition and bought the labs for a purchase price nominally valued at 25 million dollars. Except for some residual royalty payments, we have completely paid off the State, several years ahead of schedule. Our partner, Intervacc, is the majority shareholder in BioPort. It’s a small investment and operating group and includes former Joint Chief of Staff retired Admiral William Crowe. The driving force behind this investment group is Mr. Fuad El-Hibri, an American citizen of Lebanese decent. Mr. El-Hibri possesses excellent knowledge and experience in defense vaccines and other pharmaceutical products and we are very fortunate to have him leading the Board of Directors of BioPort. The workforce now numbers about 220 employees. Its been a formidable, sometimes painful challenge to achieve the culture change from the public sector focus to a spirited, entrepreneurial private sector focus. Less than a quarter of the long time state civil servants are still with us and only two of the seven original manager/investors are still with the company. We have recruited heavily from the pharmaceutical sector with some real success and have assembled a highly experienced group of managers and workers. Payroll is one million dollars a month and overall we are pumping over 30 million dollars annually into the economy, most of it locally. As we reflect on the 10th anniversary of the Persian Gulf War, BioPort is intently focused on obtaining FDA approval for its renovated anthrax vaccine manufacturing facility. This high risk process normally takes two or more years and we expect to get FDA approval sometime toward the end of this year. In order to optimize our progress toward this goal we have stopped the manufacture of all other products at the site. Our funding for this effort comes almost completely from the DoD and we are grateful for their support. Our number one objective now and into the future will be to provide all the anthrax vaccine necessary to protect our service men and women against the anthrax biowarfare threat. Once that is accomplished we expect to have private and international sales of anthrax vaccine but those more profitable propositions are still some time off in the future. Let me tell you about some of the other challenges we have faced and continue to face now. First, the aging facilities — with some of the infrastructure dating back to the 1920s — requires constant attention and frequent renovation. Paying adequate attention and capital to this need is both time consuming and costly. Next, the ever-increasing compliance demands of the FDA commands our full attention. FDA scrutiny of BioPort has been widely reported. I want to tell you that this is an industry-wide FDA initiative and has affected all vaccine manufacturers. I support it completely, but it too has been painful. Vaccine manufacturing is a tough business right now. Not too long ago Abbott Labs was given a 100 million dollar fine for compliance violations. Wyeth-Lederle, a subsidiary of American Home Products and a leading manufacturer of childhood and other vaccines, was fined 30 million dollars last fall as part of a consent decree with the FDA over compliance violations. Parkedale Pharmaceuticals in Rochester, Michigan decided to quit manufacturing flu vaccine rather than meet the costly requirements of the FDA, mandated as a result of inspection of the flu vaccine manufacturing operation. While they made what I believe to be a sound business decision, their quitting contributed to the shortage of flu vaccine available to kick off this year’s vaccination program. At BioPort, we strive for continuous compliance improvement and believe we are going beyond making the necessary changes in this regard. Another ongoing challenge is the high visibility of DoD’s anthrax vaccination program and the consequent continual focus on BioPort. From a personal perspective, it started way before BioPort purchased the Labs. Shortly after the Labs were put up for sale, I became the sweeps-week number one news story for a local television station. Their story went this way — "Bob Myers, using insider information and backdoor financing from a major pharmaceutical company, will buy the labs for pennies on the dollar, thereby becoming an instant millionaire at the expense of the taxpayers of the State of Michigan. How about that for a story?" I want to tell you that the sale of the labs to BioPort was one of the most scrutinized transactions ever. In addition to State and Federal government scrutiny, I was accused of unethical conduct and a then racketeering suit was filed against me and others. While all of these charges were quickly dropped, they set the stage for continued media interest and BioPort, warts and all, is frequently covered by the major broadcast and cable networks, National Public Radio, major newspapers and the wire services. AJ Evenson and Tim Martin of the Lansing State Journal deserve a lot of the credit for keeping a media focus on BioPort locally. I want you to know that I believe their reporting has been pretty factual — there has been a lot of not so good news about BioPort. I do, however, also look forward to their covering BioPort’s successes in the coming months and years. I gotta tell you, this intense visibility is very time consuming and often risks distracting the entire workforce from achieving its goals. There has also been considerable scrutiny at the federal legislative level. There have been at least ten hearings of various committees and subcommittees and we have testified at several of them. The Congressional interest has also spawned investigations by the General Accounting Office, the Auditor General and of course increased interest by the Defense Contract Audit Agency. Some days it seems that making any vaccine at all at BioPort takes a back seat to responding to all of the attention about BioPort. Despite these challenges, I am fully confident of BioPort’s future success and I think in the end instead of being portrayed as "The gang who couldn’t shoot straight," we will be seen as "the little engine that could." A couple of other points about our future — Of course, All of us at BioPort look forward to getting FDA approval to make the anthrax vaccine in our renovated facilities so that we can deliver the needed quantities of vaccine to the DoD to protect of our troops. We have and will continue to attract top talent from the pharmaceutical and biotech industry and I believe this will be an asset, not only to BioPort, but also to the Lansing and surrounding communities as our own Biotech corridor is established. We will be a strong and positive presence in the Lansing community. I also look forward to adding to our line of products, building our customer base and to otherwise growing our business. Today I have told you about the threat of anthrax as a weapon of mass destruction and I have told you about BioPort and how our company plays into addressing that threat. Allow me to close with these points: BIOPORT EXISTS TODAY TO MEET THE DEMAND FOR THE ANTHRAX VACCINE BECAUSE THE THREAT OF BIOWARFARE IS REAL AND BECAUSE THERE ARE MEN AND WOMEN PROTECTING OUR COUNTRY WHO ARE DEPENDING ON US. WHILE THERE HAS BEEN A LOT SAID ABOUT OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE FDA, FAILURE TO ACHIEVE FDA APPROVAL IS NOT AN OPTION. SOON WE WILL ONCE AGAIN MANUFACTURE A SAFE, PURE AND EFFECTIVE ANTHRAX VACCINE — AND WE WILL DO IT ON TIME AND AT A FAIR PRICE. WE ARE A COMPANY COMMITTED TO EXCELLENCE AND WE WILL NOT STOP UNTIL WE ACHIEVE IT. Thank you for hosting me today. I’d be happy to answer any questions. # # # |
| All rights reserved © 1999 BioPort Corporation | Last Updated 04.26.2001 |
Ann, can you get to his links from your WEB TV?
Backhoe, I'll post you the url for the SEC 10 k that shows Osamas funders,relatives and cohorts!
Also the insurance companies that own stock in it!
Plus, a great big surprise, that will show that some of you, have your companies $$$$ into "HYBRIDON"
You know, I am hoping that one of you will say and prove that I am full of **it on this!
If this is the walking, talking duck, we wont be doing either pretty soon!
This is the Securities Exchange required annual report.
So does crashing a plane through a building..apparently that isn´t enough of a deterent.
Straight from the SEC 10 K
Camille Chebeir,member of the Board.
Chebeir is President of Sedco Services,Inc.,which manages the investments of the Bin Mahfouz family of Saudi.
Remember,Mahfouz in the Cole articles?Remember YEMINVEST?
Be right back!
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