Posted on 10/11/2001 6:29:20 PM PDT by sendtoscott
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:31:23 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Bio-terrorism alarmists view last week
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
You've made an interesting statement, but you've made no substantive criticism of the article. What specific errors, mistakes, mistatements of fact make this article "garbage?" If the guy is wrong, I'd like to know why. If the article is so bad, then the mistakes should be fairly obvious and easy to explain.
For instance, if the Florida anthrax came from terrorists and was made well enough to be a viable weapon, why didn't more people die? If the terrorists were capable of killing a large number of people last week, I see no reason why they would kill only a few but reveal the fact that they have this weapon. The article's answer to this question would seem to be that if this was a terrorist attack, they didn't have an anthrax source that could be deployed effectively. The article also gives several reasons why this kind of weapon might not be effective.
You think that the Iraqis may have active production of weapons-grade spores. The article says that this situation is unlikely because the technology that came from the Soviet Union would still need Soviet equipment to work. The article cites the fact that Iraqi missiles have rarely carried anthrax but would be expected to carry it if they had a viable supply of weapons-grade spores. Why do you disagree?
Again, I don't come to this argument with a strong opinion. I think that the article seems to make sense, but it could be completely wrong. I just want to explore the information.
Do please grace us with the name of the university where you got your biology degree.
And while you're at it, go slap your English teacher, she didn't do a very good job.
(Am I nitpicking? Yes, but since RLK didn't make a single substantive point himself, I'm not left with much else to work with. An empty slur like his hardly deserves better.)
That's a good question, and to me it indicates that the Anthrax in the Florida case was *not* a weaponized version (or not a competently done one).
One article I've read of an in-depth series of interviews with one of the primary American experts on biological weapons includes an account of a demonstration of a "simulant" of weaponized anthrax. That is, it had the same physical properties of weaponized anthrax (disperal, etc.), but was not actually alive. The reporter said that when the lid was unscrewed from the jar, the superfine powder actually started "crawling" up the walls of the jar and a misty haze started billowing out. When the weapons expert flung some of it in the air, it rapidly expanded into an ever-widening cloud which quickly vanished into the air entirely as the particles spontaneously spread out.
It appears from the description that properly weaponized anthrax both consists of invisibly small particles, and the particles are treated such that they electrostatically repel each other, dispersing automatically.
As such, it "releases" itself whenever it is "uncorked" and expands to fill any available space.
Thus, if a truly weaponized anthrax had been released in the Sun building, it would have been *everywhere*, not just on one guy's keyboard and up only two other people's noses.
It doesn't sound to me as if the Florida case involved Anthrax that had been truly "militarized".
Also note the lack of any "one-two punch" strike after all of bin Laden's *OTHER* terrorist strikes. The original WTC bombing was a one-off event with no planned followup. Likewise for the Cole attack, the Embassy bombings, etc. etc.
In each case, he hit us with all he could do, as soon as he could do it.
This is a guy who suffers from premature explosulation.
Even Iraq seems to know that its liquefied anthrax is virtually useless.
This statement is absolutely false. The full explanation of why should not be discussed here.
Even if the statement were true, obtaining dry powder anthrax is a simple task which would require about $10,000 worth of equipment, including safety equipment to protect against contamination during the process. I used to produce viable dry bacteria by the pound as a routine matter when I was in the business.
The author acts as if the bacterium, itself is the toxin and the effect of the bacterium is proportionante to the the number of bacteria infecting the body, or applied to the body. In reality, it only requires one bacterium to enter the bloodstream and take hold. That bug divides and becomes two bugs every 24 hours or so depending upon the bacterium and the condition of the person's body and resistance. So in ten days you have a thousand, and in 20 days you have a million, all feeding on tissue and producing toxins.
Essentially, the body should be looked upon as a petrie dish with surface barriers to prevent infection. If you put one bacterium on a petrie dish, in several days you come back to look, and the single bacterium has proliferated into a visible spot colony on the dish.
Consequently, in biological warfare there is a lag time between infection and serious disease onset. The lag time is determined by the initial number of bacteria first entering the body and the division rate of the bacterium. If you get a large number of entries into the body initially, the person becomes incapacitated sooner. If the initial number of entries is small, lag time between infection and incapacitation is longer.
One way or another, it only takes one bacterium to form a base for development of the disease.
It isn't worth my time away from other projects to discuss it further.
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