Posted on 12/12/2001 4:56:49 PM PST by t-shirt
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:49:46 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
A well-known biophysicist who was one of the leading researchers on DNA sequencing analysis was found slain in his rural Loudoun County home after co-workers became concerned that he didn't come to work Monday, authorities said yesterday.
A microbiologist killed at CSIRO's animal diseases facility in Geelong had logged 15 years' experience with the unit, police said today.
Victoria Police said Set Van Nguyen, 44, appeared to have died yesterday morning after entering an airlock into a storage laboratory filled with nitrogen.
His body was found when his wife became worried after he failed to return from work.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailynews.yahoo.com ...
It would be nice to know if there were other people around when this happened and how many people were in the building. He may have been trained to avoid walking into a room with no oxygen, but he probably wasn't train to avoid being pushed. More facts about the circumstances are necessary before we can write this one off as a true accident.
Thanks. I find that two missing doctors at one clinic is unusual. One I could dismiss, but two? Did they both happen in November? See if you can find out any details on what this clinic does and what these two doctors' responsibilities were at the clinic.
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Environment News Service
January 17, 2001
AUSTRALIAN RESEARCHERS STUMBLE ON DEADLY GENE
CANBERRA, Australia, January 17, 2001 (ENS) - Australian scientists developing a biological contraceptive to halt mouse and rat plagues have unearthed a deadly new gene with profound implications for biological warfare.
Researchers made the discovery at the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) (see next-to-last paragraph below) for the Biological Control of Pest Animals Canberra.
CRC scientists are experimenting with viruses to deliver an antigen to animals such as rodents, rabbits and foxes, all considered pests by the agricultural industry. An antigen provokes the formation of an antibody when introduced into another organism. In this particular experiment, scientists modified a mousepox virus to include the gene for a substance called interleukin-4, which affects the immune system. The aim was to boost the level of the animal's immune response to block reproduction - a process known as immuno-contraception.
Ultimately, the goal was to suppress the plagues of mice and rats which spread human diseases and destroy billions of dollars worth of grain.
Mouse plagues occur in Australia's grain growing regions on average every three years, causing massive disruption to communities and losses to farmers. Mouse plagues are increasing in frequency due to changes in farming practices.
The country's Grains Research and Development Corporation estimates that between 100,000 and 500,000 hectares of grain crops are affected each year. A plague in South Australia and Victoria in 1993 is estimated to have cost at least A$ 55 million (US $ 30.5 million) in grain losses.
Scientists found that by introducing the extra gene, they suppressed part of the mouse's immune system which deals with viruses - the cell-mediated response. As a result, lab mice normally resistant to the virus died.
Furthermore, the gene diminished the efficacy of vaccines used to protect mice by about half.
Mousepox virus does not infect humans or pose any threat to them, but the scientists are concerned that in the wrong hands, the technique could be used to strengthen biological weapons based on viruses which do affect humans.
They are calling for the global Biological Weapons Convention to be strengthened as a result of the discovery.
Formally known as the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the agreement prohibits the development, production and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons. It entered into force in 1975 and has been signed by 162 countries.
"The concern is not so much about the modified mousepox virus, but about the implications of this research, said Dr. Annabelle Duncan, of the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).
Duncan is chief of CSIRO Molecular Science and former deputy head of a United Nations team that investigated the development of biowarfare agents in Iraq following the Gulf War.
"Could a similar experiment be conducted on a human disease-causing organism with similar results? If so, could this be exploited by an unscrupulous nation or a bioterrorist to develop biological weapons?
"The answer to the first question is that we simply do not know. There is no way of extrapolating from these results to another virus and another host animal. All we can say is that it is theoretically possible.
"The important thing is to ensure they are used for good - not for destructive purposes. That is why we urge awareness and vigilance."
CRC director Dr Bob Seamark stressed the experiments were undertaken with "completely humanitarian motives."
"Our aim is to counter the enormous damage and human suffering which rodents cause by devouring a major part of the global grain harvest, especially in developing countries and in Australia," said Seamark.
"In the course of science you sometimes make unexpected discoveries - penicillin is one example.
"In this case, we've found that certain changes to a mouse virus can render it more lethal and harder to immunize against.
"The best protection against any misuse of this technique was to issue a worldwide warning. We also want researchers to use this new knowledge to help design better vaccines."
The CRC is a research collaboration of the Australian National University, CSIRO, the University of Adelaide, the University of Sydney, the University of Western Australia, the Western Australia Department of Conservation and Land Management and the Western Australia Agriculture Protection Board.
A report on the discovery will be published in the Journal of Virology's February issue.
We need to know the exact definition of "a research collaboration" when used in this context.
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GENERAL NEWSUnited Press International
January 11, 2001, Thursday
Mousepox variant rings biowarfare alarms
CANBERRA, Australia
Scientists working for the Australian government have created a genetically engineered mousepox virus more deadly to mice than the original virus. Even when vaccinated with a normally effective vaccine, half the mice died after infection with the new virus.
Biological warfare experts are worried that the current international Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, abbreviated BTWC, may not be strong enough to cope with the misuse of the genetic engineering techniques. Governments from all over the world have been meeting in Geneva for six years to address the BTWC shortcomings, but have failed to reach final agreement. Dr. Ian Ramshaw, a viral engineer and the immunologist on the mousepox experiment, told United Press International that inserting genetic material has hazards. His team will publish their research in the February issue of the Journal of Virology.
"It is a potentially vile weapon," Renshaw said.
The mousepox scientists, working for the Cooperative Research Center for the Biological Control of Pest Animals in Canberra, were looking for a way to control mouse populations. CRC director Dr. Bob Seamark told UPI that rodents "destroy 20 to 60 percent of grain crops" in Australia and countries in southeast Asia.
(snip)
Seamark told UPI he too is concerned about potential misuse of the technology.
Seamark's concerns were echoed by Dr. Jonathan Tucker, director of Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, Calif. The rate and direction of biotechnological advance is "very ominous. It is outstripping the ability and political will of the international community to control these technologies," Tucker told UPI.
Tucker said that many corporations are opposed to mandatory inspections, fearing that proprietary information could be stolen. This fear has delayed treaty negotiations, along with demands from many nations who wish to import dual use equipment, Tucker added.
Dr. Annabelle Duncan, one of Australia's representatives at international arms control meetings and Chief of Molecular Science at CSIRO, an Australian research group that worked on the virus project, said: "At the moment we have a biological weapons convention that has absolutely no teeth."
(snip)
Dr. Fred Murphy, professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Calif., Davis, and former director of the National Center of Infectious Diseases, told UPI, "Before the fall of the Soviet Union the Soviets were making plague organisms that were resistant to antibiotics."
There were about 40,000 people involved in production at huge facilities, Murphy said. The Soviets had signed the BTWC in 1972 but did not abide by it.
Okay, I'm done.
Furthermore, the gene diminished the efficacy of vaccines used to protect mice by about half."
These dead players we're looking at all would/could contribute Key Pieces to this technology, correct?
These items have been brought out extensively on FR. If you do a Google search engine search with your keywords like "Saudi BioTech Anthrax" and any other terms/keywords you choose in Google you'll find much reading material.
Here's another thought; I've always been confident that if "anything happened" my family would be OK because we could hunt and live off the land. Now I'm hearing that North American herds are contaminated with a BSE like disease. In Wyoming (where I hail from) the local health dept is offering free testing during the hunting season.
Cut off the food supply, then cut off viable alternatives.
Just a little tin foil for the holidays.
Pest Animal Control Cooperative Research Centre, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems,1 and Division of Immunology and Cell Biology, John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University,2 Canberra, Australia
Received 25 July 2000/Accepted 13 November 2000
Genetic resistance to clinical mousepox (ectromelia virus) varies among inbred laboratory mice and is characterized by an effective natural killer (NK) response and the early onset of a strong CD8+ cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) response in resistant mice. We have investigated the influence of virus-expressed mouse interleukin-4 (IL-4) on the cell-mediated response during infection. It was observed that expression of IL-4 by a thymidine kinase-positive ectromelia virus suppressed cytolytic responses of NK and CTL and the expression of gamma interferon by the latter. Genetically resistant mice infected with the IL-4-expressing virus developed symptoms of acute mousepox accompanied by high mortality, similar to the disease seen when genetically sensitive mice are infected with the virulent Moscow strain. Strikingly, infection of recently immunized genetically resistant mice with the virus expressing IL-4 also resulted in significant mortality due to fulminant mousepox. These data therefore suggest that virus-encoded IL-4 not only suppresses primary antiviral cell-mediated immune responses but also can inhibit the expression of immune memory responses.
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, GPO Box 284, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia. Phone: 61 (02) 6242 1717. Fax: 61 (02) 6242 1511. E-mail: R.Jackson@cse.csiro.au.
Present address: Centre for Biomolecular Vaccine Technology, Discipline of Immunology and Microbiology, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.
Well certainly Wiley, the one specializing in immune function and protection. And possibly the other one... Good point.
Set Van Nguyen, microbiologist killed at CSIRO's animal diseases facility in Geelong, had logged 15 years' experience with the unit, walked into a storage area filled with nitrogen.
Harvard molecular biologist Don Wiley, expert on how the human immune system fights off infections who had recently investigated such dangerous viruses as AIDS, Ebola, herpes and influenza, disappears from a Memphis bridge.
Now a researcher gives two more names: Two Israelis on that Flight 3597 that crashed in Zurich...Dr. Yaakov Matzner and Amiram Eldor.
Hematology The science encompassing the generation, anatomy, physiology, pathology, and therapeutics of blood.
I think this one can be written off as unrelated to anything other than being a horrible tragedy. What a waste of talent.
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Va. Biophysicist Killed; 3 Charged
By Associated Press
December 14, 2001, 1:35 PM EST
LEESBURG, Va. -- Three friends are accused of fatally stabbing a prominent biophysicist with a 2-foot sword in a "planned assassination" that investigators said had ritualistic overtones.
The suspects knew the teen-age daughter of the victim, Robert M. Schwartz. Schwartz, 57, was found dead at his isolated farmhouse Monday after co-workers became concerned that he did not show up for work.
The Washington Post, citing unidentified law enforcement sources, reported that Schwartz was stabbed repeatedly with the sword and an "X" was carved in the back of his neck.
Police in Maryland arrested Kyle Hulbert, 18, of Woodbridge, on Tuesday. Michael Pfohl, 21, and Katherine Inglis, 19, both of Haymarket, were arrested Wednesday during a traffic stop in Manassas. All three were charged with murder.
All were acquaintances of Clara Schwartz, 19, a James Madison University student, said Loudoun County Sheriff Stephen O. Simpson.
"We don't know how familiar they were with the father, but we know they knew him," Simpson said.
Clara Schwartz has not been implicated in the slaying, authorities said.
At a bond hearing Thursday, prosecutor Robert Anderson said Inglis and Pfohl admitted their involvement.
"There were statements made that these individuals were involved in the planning, execution and cover-up of this planned assassination," Anderson said.
Hulbert was interested in witchcraft, reading books on the subject, dressing in black and forming a "coven" with friends who also were interested in the occult, said Fran Broomall, who let Hulbert stay in his Woodbridge home this fall.
Hulbert's father told the newspaper his son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and had been off his medication for months.
"Kyle's had a rough life," Broomall said. "He was kicked around from foster home to foster home."
Pfohl had lived with Inglis and her family in Loudoun County after his parents kicked him out, said Perry Nicholson, who owns a general store across the road from the Inglis home.
"I got the impression that he was emotionally disturbed," Nicholson said.
As for Inglis, "she was kind of a retro-hippie with the tie-dyed shirts," he said. "She was a real moody kind of kid."
Pfohl and Inglis were ordered held without bond and a preliminary hearing was set for March 7. Hulbert has agreed to waive extradition proceedings and return to Virginia.
Schwartz worked at the state's Center for Innovative Technology in Herndon and was nationally known as a leading researcher on DNA sequencing analysis and biometrics.
Common is an understatement. I think about 30% of the Vietnamese population last name is Nguyen.
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NEWS, Pg. A36Newsday (New York, NY)
November 26, 2001 Monday NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION
Jet Crash Near Zurich Kills 24
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Zurich, Switzerland - Switzerland mourned again yesterday after a fiery plane crash near Zurich's airport killed 24 people, most of them foreigners - the latest in a string of deadly incidents that has shaken the Alpine nation.
(snip)DRS [German-language Swiss television station] also said three prominent Israelis reported on the plane were killed. They were identified by Israeli officials as Yaakov Matzner, 54, dean of the Hebrew University school of medicine; another leading doctor, Amiram Eldor, 59; and Avishai Berkman, 50, a Tel Aviv city official.
Authorities said there was no reason to suspect terrorism in the crash.
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FRONT; Pg. A04The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo)
November 27, 2001 Tuesday Final Edition
Officials probe Swiss plane crash; Plane may have been flying too low on its approach to runway, reports indicate
ASSOCIATED PRESS; CANADIAN PRESS
ZURICH -- Swiss officials sent the flight recorders from a shattered plane to Paris yesterday for inspection, hoping for clues about the crash that killed 24 people, including a Canadian man and an American singer.
Seven passengers and two crew members survived the crash, climbing out of the tail section after the Crossair Jumbolino Avro RJ-100 went down in the woods near the Zurich airport Saturday night after a flight from Berlin.
The voice and flight-data recorders were being sent to Paris for examination in the presence of a neutral investigator, officials said. One member of the investigative team must be from a country that had no involvement in the crash. "I hope we will have the results by tomorrow or the day after," said Jean Overney, chief of the Swiss Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.(snip)
Rain mixed with snow was falling and visibility was poor when the plane crashed just after 10 p.m.
Airport officials said communication was normal until it suddenly disappeared from radar. Some reports have indicated the plane was flying too low on its approach.
The plane was trying to land on a runway used for night flights under a new agreement to limit flight noise over nearby Germany. Swiss officials have since suspended nighttime use of the runway, which was said to be more difficult than others to approach.(snip)
Officials in Israel said three prominent Israelis were killed: Yaakov Matzner, 54, dean of the Hebrew University school of medicine; Amiram Eldor, 59, a leading doctor; and Avishai Berkman, 50, a Tel Aviv city official.
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FEATURES; Pg. 7The Jerusalem Post
December 7, 2001
A prince of hematology
Wendy Elliman
IN MEMORIAM
When Amiram Eldor's name was posted among the missing in the Crossair plane that crashed into a forest near Kloten, November 24, his friends had little hope he was alive.
"Had Amiram survived the crash, even if he were hurt, he would have risked his life to go back in and help others," says his friend of 40 years, Yacov Berlatzky, professor of vascular surgery at the Hadassah-Hebrew University School of Medicine in Jerusalem. "He wouldn't have thought to save himself and run. That's the kind of person he was, always there for others." Within hours, his friends' fears were confirmed. Prof. Amiram Eldor, prominent hematologist, head of Ichilov Hospital's Hematology Institute in Tel Aviv, was dead at 59, along with his colleague Prof. Yaacov Matzner. Both were killed in the jetliner crash as the plane was approaching Zurich's Kloten Airport. Eldor was buried at the Yarkon Cemetery near Petah Tikva last Friday.
"It's so hard to believe," says Esti Katz. Her late husband, Shmuel (Shmulik) roomed with Eldor for six years when they were medical students. He always referred to him as his "first wife."
"He was a man who loved being alive, who loved life. He had endless energy, and enjoyed both the big things and the small - good food and nice clothes, swimming and reading, movies and theater. He loved the practice of medicine. Most of all, he loved people, be they friends, colleagues or patients. In the three years since Shmulik died, Amiram would call me almost daily to check I was OK."
Born in Tel Aviv in 1942, Eldor studied medicine at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical Faculty in Jerusalem. He stayed at Hadassah until 1993, first in internal medicine and then specializing in hematology. The friends he made there as a student and young physician remain a tight-knit group to this day. Along with Katz and Berlatzky, they include Prof. Daniel Shouval, head of Hadassah's Liver Institute, and Prof. Moshe Garti, head of the Internal Medicine Center at the The Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus, Petah Tikva. Many of them, like Eldor, have become internationally known in their fields.
Eldor not only gained wide recognition for his own work, he also nurtured Israel's coming generation of hematologists.
"He was my role model," says Prof. Dina Ben-Yehuda, today head of the Hematology Department at Hadassah. "He was a prince of hematology - a gifted physician, an internationally acclaimed researcher, and the finest of teachers. With it all, he was a wonderful human being. His jokes are classics that we still tell in the department. And he really cared about people, whoever they were.
"When Dr. Shmuel Gilles of our department was murdered by terrorists on his way home to Efrat last year, [Who is this?] Amiram's grief was total. It was the first time I ever saw him completely silent, unable to find words. At a memorial ceremony we're holding for Shmuel this February 7, Amiram was to present the first Gilles Prize in Hematology," says Ben-Yehuda.
"He was my colleague and my very good friend," says Prof. Ella Neparstek, head of the Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation at Ichilov and, since Eldor's death, acting head of Ichilov's Hematology Institute. "We worked together for many years, first at Hadassah where he was a senior hematologist when I began my fellowship in hematology, and later, after we'd both moved to Ichilov. He was an excellent teacher and from him I learned more than I can say. He was helpful and creative, both in his work and in his life, and never short of suggestions for solving problems."
The decade that Eldor spent in Tel Aviv after leaving Hadassah in 1993 to head Ichilov's Hematology Institute was his most prolific in both basic and clinical research, says Neparstek. Every week, he went up to Hadassah, whose academic atmosphere he loved, to continue his research, managing to combine his work there and at Ichilov very successfully and peaceably.
His most recent focus was on thrombosis and coagulation systems. One study on which he was engaged when he died involved women at high risk for spontaneous abortion. He suspected that repeated miscarriages may be caused by a blockage in the arteries of the placenta; he was hopeful that a low-molecular weight form of heparin, an anti-clotting drug with fewer side effects that the usual heparin drug, could prevent spontaneous abortion.
Fifteen years earlier, he was part of a team that identified eight new anti-clotting agents, for five of which he filed patents. These rare agents were found in the saliva of the leech. Eldor and his colleagues maintained a "farm" of 200 French and Welsh leeches at Hadassah, which they "milked" to constitute a continuous production line of pure leech saliva. Their work attracted considerable interest, and two foreign pharmaceutical houses worked with Eldor's team to unravel and synthesize the chemical structure of the new compounds.
The discovery that leech saliva contains not a single anti-clotting agent, but a cocktail of anti-coagulants taught Eldor an important lesson. "We must ask ourselves why this is so," he said in a 1988 interview with Hadassah Magazine. "The answer would seem to be that one drug in isolation is not enough. To be effective - and in the leech's case, this means being able to get sufficient food, which means life itself - perhaps a cocktail of different compounds works better than one in isolation. Doctors have already arrived at this truth in chemotherapy. Perhaps the chemotherapy experience together with the leech's technique teaches us we can best combat thromboses by mixing aggregation inhibitors."
This was a lesson which he taught to others and applied to his future research. Hematology in Israel will take five to 10 years to recover from the loss of Eldor and his colleague Yaacov Matzner, believes Prof. Shlomo Mor- Yosef, director-general of the Hadassah Medical Organization.
For his family and his large communities of friends in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv it will take far longer, "perhaps a lifetime," says Berlatsky. His elder son, Roy, like his father a graduate of Hadassah's Medical School, has followed his father into internal medicine at Hadassah. His second son, Eran, is studying civil engineering at the Technion in Haifa. And Eldor's widow, Sofia, a well-known town planner with Modi'in in her portfolio, remains in Tel Aviv.
They, like his friends, colleagues and patients, treasure the memory a man who was "always upbeat, and had a keen sense of humor," according to Neparstek. "A very generous man, with many friends," says Ben-Yehuda,
"A kind person, who was always totally there for you," says Edith Shneidman, Hematology Institute secretary at Ichilov. "He was warm and strong, yet always kind and gentle."
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