Europe-Wide Alarm For Heroin Cut With Anthrax

LOL...

I wonder how many would step up and sign?

what are you an instigator? Get real!

I think you are deliberately trying to mislead the readers of this thread as to the nature of the discussion in which we are currently engaged. I cannot but wonder why.

I asked you whether you were "for or against" the murder of your fellow citizens with Anthrax laced heroin. You responded that I should spend time in a hospital for two decades to see addicts and their children for myself before I dare take the "self-righteous" position that heroin users should be protected from Anthrax poisoning. Since you are a person with "three degrees", I must assume that you meant what is implicit in your screed: that heroin users deserve to be murdered.

My intended response was that alcohol and tobacco destroy hundreds of times more lives than all illegal drugs combined (you felt compelled to pretend to misunderstand me, of course, since I inadvertantly left a word out of the relevant sentence), and I asked whether, given that fact, you felt that alcohol users should be protected if their alcohol is targeted for anthrax poisoning.

Your response was that if people chose to engage in risky behaviour, knowing that it could kill them, that is their choice, you value freedom and responsibility, it's between them and their god, blah, blah, blah. What you mean is, "No. alcohol users should not be protected from anthrax attack". It's an absurd position to take (especially for someone who has repeatedly implied that he or she is an emergency room physician with 2 decades of experience), but you are forced into it in unless you retreat from your support for murdering heroin users with Anthrax.

Further, you have taken the position that there is no relevant difference between a junkie who knowingly engages in an act which might kill him and murdering that same junkie with Anthrax poisoning. I disagree with that proposition. Once again, in your zeal to justify murdering junkies, you've backed yourself into a position where logic and consistency dictate that you must also support Anthrax poisoning for anyone who knowingly engages in behaviour which could potentially though unintentionally result in death. I suppose that includes everyone in the world. Perhaps then we should simply stop trying to prevent any anthrax poisonings whatsoever.

Unfortunately, you are not content to stop there. You continue on in several more postings to suggest that persons who knowingly engage in risky behaviour are responsible for their own deaths if they happen to be poisoned by someone with access to Anthrax while engaged in such practices. In response to my suggestion that in future persons such as yourself may be viewed as pariahs and unworthy of protection from Anthrax poisoning (much like you view junkies), you accused me of being anti-capitalist, etc., and condescended to pronounce that I might be lucky one day to become like you.

In my view you have deliberately misrepresented the argument throughout this thread. Your replies have been disingenuous, intellectually dishonest and carefully calculated to deceive the reader. I do not believe that you are a doctor, or experienced in any way concerning the issues and event with which you pretend familiarity. If you are a doctor, or a medical professional of any sort, I question your emotional ability to provide proper care to any person who presents as being someone who has engaged in "risky behaviour". Given your demonstrated facility with blind hatred and tenuous logic, the temptation to finish what these "suicidal" people have (in your mind) started may be too much for you. Luckily for those in need of medical attention, you are most likely a complete fraud.

P.S. I'm sorry that no one will mourn your passing. That said, I still support taking steps to protect you and the rest of the country from Anthrax attacks. Try not to speak.

Pathologists are to medicine what mechanics are to automobile design; they are expected to explain all that was poorly designed while admitting defeat to correcting the design.

Sorry for your personal loss, I wonder if we haven't invested too much in others at the expense of being fully self-aware.

You write very well. However, you seem to have fallen into the trap of believing that death is "preventable"; at the most we may simply be able to delay it.

Based on an understanding of the above, all debate is foreclosed concerning behavioral contributions to an "early death" while they are couched in terms of inevitabiliy.

Unless we are debilitated or extremely unhappy, the majority of us would love to see another sunrise, and wouldn't mind being witness to another sunset; beyond this I don't know what else to say.

Thanks for the compliment.

I can assure you that I do not see death as preventable. It is inevitable as far as we can presently tell. However, the fact that a person's death is inevitable is not a rational basis upon which to conclude that deliberately causing his death is a morally acceptable act. Unfortunately, it seems there are more than a few posters here who would conclude just the opposite. I cannot for the life of me understand it

You state your case rather clearly; there is truly a "cognitive dissonance" associated with the notion that life is something to be preserved and extended at whatever expense and the contrary conclusion that there is no true benefit to the prolongation of suffering; what then to do unless we appoint a body to decide who should remain and who should depart?

I am 61 years old and have been ill only a few times in my life. I currently am dealing with a whole-body rash that doesn't lend itself to an etiological cause - tomorrow, I visit my wife's dermatologist, I hope I don't embarrass myself or him.

Although I am gregarious by nature, I don't suffer fools at all, and I find myself becoming more cynical with each passing day - yet, I still want to be like Annie and sing the praises of "Tomorrow."

I just came across two articles from last year that say that the cause of the spate of deaths among heroin addicts at the time turned out not to be due to anthrax.

Infection kills 18th heroin user

Drugs in Britain: special report

Guardian

Wednesday May 31, 2000

An unidentified infection that has been killing heroin addicts in Scotland and Ireland has claimed another victim, health officials in Glasgow said yesterday. Twenty-six drug users in Glasgow and 14 in Dublin have contracted the illness; 18 of them have died.

In Glasgow the illness emerged early this month, with 17 of the 26 cases affecting women and eight women being among the 12 dead.

All are believed to have injected heroin direct into muscle tissue and have suffered severe inflammation around the site of the injection.

The Dublin cases have followed a similar pattern as far as the illness is concerned, but most of the victims have been men.

Health officials in Glasgow said they had spoken to their Irish counterparts and concluded that the two outbreaks were likely to have the same cause.

Last week tests at the chemical warfare research centre in Porton Down, Wiltshire, ruled out anthrax, which scientists had suggested as the cause of the Glasgow outbreak.

American specialists have been called in to help the investigations in both cities. Tissue samples from those affected have been sent to the centre for disease control and prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

Kirsty Scott

Heroin addicts' killer bug identified as untreatable

Drugs in Britain: special report

Gerard Seenan
Guardian

Friday June 16, 2000

Health officials yesterday confirmed they had isolated the bacterium they believe to be responsible for the deaths of 35 heroin addicts across Britain and Ireland - but cannot treat the virulent toxin it produces.

After exhaustive worldwide research, scientists are now certain the clostridium bacteria is responsible for the death of 17 heroin addicts in Glasgow. They have also linked it to the deaths of the other addicts, but must await lab results for confirmation.

The bacterium is well known to scientists, but it generally affects animals rather than humans. Large scale human infection has not been recorded since outbreaks in the trenches of the first world war.

Officials first became aware of the illness in May when drug addicts began appearing at Glasgow hospitals with abscesses up to 12 inches in diameter. Many died within hours.

Investigators believe soil infected with the bug must have found its way into the heroin when it was being prepared for sale.

That makes sense, otherwise the media would have mentioned it when the whole Anthrax frenzy started.

Thanks, I remember reading about the infections but I never saw what they found out caused them.

There are still two loose ends regarding these deaths among heroin addicts in 2000 and possible connections to bioterrorism, including a possible Iraq connection.

First of all, there were said to be anthrax bacilli found in the Norwegian addict who died of a sudden infection at the time. Was this real, or did the lab technicians make a mistake? If it was real but a single isolated case, it could conceivably have been one of the rare naturally occurring cases of anthrax (but heroin addicts usually live in the city, not in a rural area).

Secondly, the deaths in the UK were ultimately attributed to Clostridium rather than anthrax. But Clostridium is also a spore-forming bacterium that can be used as a biological weapon, and it, like anthrax and some other biological agents, was exported to Iraq in the period from 1985-1990 (this is from a 1994 Senate report, as described in this article from the Progressive). UN inspectors in Iraq are said to have found "19,400 liters of [Clostridium] botulinum toxin and 340 liters of Clostridium perfringens spores" (widely reported; see, for example, this MSNBC article).

Thanks for the heads up!