Posted on 10/25/2001 1:38:00 PM PDT by SAMWolf
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Genetic testing shows the bacteria in the anthrax-by-mail attacks have not been bioengineered and are quite similar to natural strains that sicken animals, federal health officials said Thursday.
"These strains cannot be distinguished from other anthrax isolates that are known to have caused disease in barnyard animals" in the United States and Europe, said Dr. Julie Gerberding of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While CDC says the anthrax so far is susceptible to penicillin, preliminary tests suggest it also may contain an early signal of developing penicillin resistance. Thus CDC said Thursday that patients with inhaled anthrax should not be treated with penicillin alone.
But from an investigative viewpoint, that discovery "is entirely consistent with the natural biology of the organism," Gerberding said. In nature, anthrax strains often show that chemical signal.
"We have absolutely no evidence to suggest these isolates have been genetically altered or engineered in any way," she added. "We're quite relieved that their susceptibility profile looks like what we would expect from a naturally occurring strain."
So far, the CDC hasn't finished genetic tests on anthrax spores recovered from the Washington postal facility where two workers have died and two others become infected with inhaled anthrax. Those tests are important to help determine whether the anthrax came from the same batch as the bacteria in letters mailed to Florida, New York and a Senate office.
Then there's the nation's other antibiotic resistance worry -- that some 10,000 people now are taking Cipro while CDC figures out whether they were exposed to anthrax and thus are at risk. All of that Cipro use, infectious disease specialists worry, could cause everyday bacteria to mutate so that Cipro won't be useful against other infections.
The CDC won't be able to detect if that's happening right away, Gerberding said, "but I would be surprised if it was a zero impact."
The reasons I believe this may be the case:
A Japanese photographer w/satellite gear was arrested in Afghanistan
Chechnya now wants to negotiate an agreement with Russia - the rebels are connected directly to Osama
Other terror groups are folding or negotiating
Israel is backing off from its retaliation
Saudi is pointing to Iraq regarding 9/11 and biochems
Iraq hiding its biochems recently
Iraq blaming us for anthraxing them and ourselves
Strange coffins reported in Pakistan
Reports in China and Japan - unconfirmed - of Osama's and Omar's demise
Conflicting statements yesterday ... Pentagon: that the war will be ongoing ... Powell: it'll be a few days
Change in public statements on Daschle's anthrax - from weapons grade to garden variety (back and forth)
Lack of known progress in the Trenton, NJ investigation. Promise to act quickly when the bill is signed.
Huge military buildup in the middle east - would cost a ton to move them back home, rebuild readiness and send then back again - so perhaps we are holding them there for the next engagement
Reports of shipments to Israel and Jordan (questionable source)
Panicky denial (for no reason) by Taleban ambassador to Pakistan that Osama is dead
Rumsfeld today saying that they may never get Osama (like he's already dead perhaps.)
Pretty much the way I see it too ...it could also be that they don't want public pressure to mount against Iraq too soon as they are not strategically positioned to attack Iraq at this point ...or they don't want to signal to Iraq what their intentions are (or both).
He does seem to smile a lot. I guess that is to reassure us.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47864-2001Oct24.html
"The ongoing USAMRIID studies on the spores used in the U.S. attacks involve examinations using conventional microscopes and scanning electron microscopes, along with complex chemical analyses that are difficult to conduct even when the bacteria in question are not dangerous. [sentence omitted]
Results of those tests have not been made public beyond a simple description of how small the spore particles were in the Daschle letter. That particle size, 1 1/2 to 3 microns in diameter, said Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), is extremely small -- a first requirement for making "weapons grade" anthrax spores for warfare or terrorism."
The usual way anthrax spores are created is to first create a "wet" anthrax culture and then dry it (taking the lid off the jar is one way). The dehydration will cause the anthrax to form spores. But just how the spores are dried is critical to other matters, so drying them in the proper fashion is not easy.
Among other things, anthrax spores come in a great variety of sizes, but only spores of about one to five microns in diameter can cause pulmonary anthrax. The spores must be under five microns in size to be inhaled deep enough into the lungs to be infectious, but more than a micron across so they will adhere to the lungs.
Side note: anthrax spores of sizes under one micron and over five microns can cause cutaneous and intestinal anthrax. They just won't cause pulmonary anthrax.
What type of drying method is used to create anthrax spores from wet cultures can determine the "yield" of spores of the desired diameters, and how easy it is to treat them so the spores won't clump together in groups in excess of five microns in diameter.
These drying methods are one means of determining the country which created the spores, though that means is not exclusive. It is possible to create small amounts of spores with, for a given country, non-standard (relative to the most common method aka "production standard) drying methods, at greater expense, for experimentation and deception purposes.
And post-spore production techniques are commonly used to increase the number of spores of the desired diameters. Milling is a common method, but the milling methods are reputedly not something which can be done effectively without use of rare and expensive machines operated by skilled personnel. Improper milling can reputedly make the spores some to almost totally harmless, and certainly make them impossible to keep them from clumping together.
Getting back to the Post article:
"In the United States, that problem was solved by Bill Patrick, who developed the process at Fort Detrick as part of the U.S. biological weapons program that ended in 1969. The process is protected by at least five secret patents held by Patrick. It involved freeze drying and chemical processing and was achieved without having to grow vast quantities of spores or mill them to terribly small dimensions, Patrick and other experts said.
... [paragraph omitted]
The Russian program, which has been described in detail by Ken Alibek, who ran it for many years before moving to the United States to do biological research, required the production of much larger quantities of spores that were more heavily milled than the U.S. spores and used a different kind of freezing and coating process.
The Iraqi technique, uncovered by U.N. inspectors, was a novel one-step process that involved drying spores in the presence of aluminum-based clays or silica powders, said Richard Spertzel, who was part of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) team that was to uncover and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program after the Gulf War. [sentence omitted]
"If [U.S. investigators] can get a clue as to how the material in the Daschle letter was prepared, that might narrow the field," Spertzel said. "It may not pinpoint it, but it may narrow it."
I recall an earlier news story, whose URL someone posted a while ago on the Freep, where Spertzel said the Iraqi method of preparing the spores created a characteristic crystallization pattern which could be identified under a microscope.
Summary: creation of anthrax powders which can cause pulmonary anthrax entails roughly the following steps (note that these are broken into arbitrary steps - as a practical matter they overlap some to a lot depending on the methods used):
1) Create "wet" anthrax cultures;
2) Make dry spores of the culture;
3) Treat the spores so as many as possible will be of the right size;
4) Turn the spores into powder;
5) Treat the spores so they won't clump together.
Weaponized means the spores were modified by chemical process to disperse in the air and not clump together like they do in nature
bioengineered means the strain of anthrax has been engineered to be resistant to antibiotics.
Clear?
TIME F*C*ING OUT!!!!
The only facts we know are:
1. A lot of people are getting it.
2. Nobody got it before 9-11.
3. The first place that got it was 1/2 mile from the Oasis at Delray Beach.
4. 2nd place that it eminated from was Trenton NJ.
OK...these 4 clues definitely should stem off some avenues of investigation and lead one to focus on the more promising ones. Why doesn't this appear to be happening, and if it is, WHY NOT TELL US EVERYTHING NOW!!!!
If this is what we are going to get from our Bureau of Homeland defense, let's nip it in the bud before we pour more money down that drain.
So unless the right-wingers the comPost's unnamed source mentioned have sat on this stuff for twenty years, I don't think that you're garden-variety right wing-nut is going to be cooking it up in his basement.
BINGO!!!!!!
Bioengineering means such things as genetic modification for resistance to antibiotics (military-grade), or use in research. The Ames strain is an example of a research strain.
Militarization and bioengineering determine what type of wet anthrax culture is used as the feed stock for spores. Weaponization refers to what is done with the spores after they are produced (milling, processing, keeping them from clumping, etc.)
So wet anthrax cultures, and even spores, can be produced in one country and then shipped to another country for processing into weaponized anthrax powder.
My feeling too. The war in Afghanistan is not "ready" to be over yet. There is so much going on that we're not hearing about. That's fine with me, I trust this group.
Got to bookmark this thread!
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