Posted on 05/04/2002 10:35:59 PM PDT by Nachum
It's a tale only the best conspiracy theorist could dream up.
Eleven microbiologists mysteriously dead over the span of just five months. Some of them world leaders in developing weapons-grade biological plagues. Others the best in figuring out how to stop millions from dying because of biological weapons. Still others, experts in the theory of bioterrorism.
Throw in a few Russian defectors, a few nervy U.S. biotech companies, a deranged assassin or two, a bit of Elvis, a couple of Satanists, a subtle hint of espionage, a big whack of imagination, and the plot is complete, if a bit reminiscent of James Bond.
The first three died in the space of just over a week in November. Benito Que, 52, was an expert in infectious diseases and cellular biology at the Miami Medical School. Police originally suspected that he had been beaten on Nov. 12 in a carjacking in the medical school's parking lot. Strangely enough, though, his body showed no signs of a beating. Doctors then began to suspect a stroke.
Just four days after Dr. Que fell unconscious came the mysterious disappearance of Don Wiley, 57, one of the foremost microbiologists in the United States. Dr. Wiley, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard University, was an expert on how the immune system responds to viral attacks such as the classic doomsday plagues of HIV, ebola and influenza.
He had just bought tickets to take his son to Graceland the following day. Police found his rental car on a bridge outside Memphis, Tenn. His body was later found in the Mississippi River. Forensic experts said he may have had a dizzy spell and have fallen off the bridge.
Just five days after that, the world-class microbiologist and high-profile Russian defector Valdimir Pasechnik, 64, fell dead. The pathologist who did the autopsy, and who also happened to be associated with Britain's spy agency, concluded he died of a stroke.
Dr. Pasechnik, who defected to the United Kingdom in 1989, played a huge role in Russian biowarfare and helped to figure out how to modify cruise missiles to deliver the agents of mass biological destruction.
The next two deaths came four days apart in December. Robert Schwartz, 57, was stabbed and slashed with what police believe was a sword in his farmhouse in Leesberg, Va. His daughter, who identifies herself as a pagan high priestess, and several of her fellow pagans have been charged.
Dr. Schwartz was an expert in DNA sequencing and pathogenic micro-organisms, who worked at the Center for Innovative Technology in Herndon, Va.
Four days later, Nguyen Van Set, 44, died at work in Geelong, Australia, in a laboratory accident. He entered an airlocked storage lab and died from exposure to nitrogen. Other scientists at the animal diseases facility of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization had just come to fame for discovering a virulent strain of mousepox, which could be modified to affect smallpox.
Then in February, the Russian microbiologist Victor Korshunov, 56, an expert in intestinal bacteria of children around the world, was bashed over the head near his home in Moscow. Five days later the British microbiologist Ian Langford, 40, was found dead in his home near Norwich, England, naked from the waist down and wedged under a chair. He was an expert in environmental risks and disease.
Two weeks later, two prominent microbiologists died in San Francisco. Tanya Holzmayer, 46, a Russian who moved to the U.S. in 1989, focused on the part of the human molecular structure that could be affected best by medicine.
She was killed by fellow microbiologist Guyang (Matthew) Huang, 38, who shot her seven times when she opened the door to a pizza delivery. Then he shot himself.
The final two deaths came one day after the other in March. David Wynn-Williams, 55, a respected astrobiologist with the British Antarctic Survey, who studied the habits of microbes that might survive in outer space, died in a freak road accident near his home in Cambridge, England. He was hit by a car while he was jogging.
The following day, Steven Mostow, 63, known as Dr. Flu for his expertise in treating influenza, and a noted expert in bioterrorism, died when the airplane he was piloting crashed near Denver.
So what does any of it mean?
"Statistically, what are the chances?" wondered a prominent North American microbiologist reached last night at an international meeting of infectious-disease specialists in Chicago.
Janet Shoemaker, director of public and scientific affairs of the American Society for Microbiology in Washington, D.C., pointed out yesterday that there are about 20,000 academic researchers in microbiology in the U.S. Still, not all of these are of the elevated calibre of those recently deceased.
She had a chilling, final thought. When microbiologists die in a lab, there's a way of taking note of the deaths and adding them up. When they die in freakish accidents outside the lab, nobody keeps track.
Suspicious deaths
The sudden and suspicious deaths of 11 of the world's leading microbiologists.
Who they were:
1. Nov. 12, 2001:
Benito Que was said to have been beaten in a Miami parking lot and died later.
2. Nov. 16, 2001:
Don C. Wiley went missing. Was found Dec. 20. Investigators said he got dizzy on a Memphis bridge and fell to his death in a river.
3. Nov. 21, 2001:
Vladimir Pasechnik, former high-level Russian microbiologist who defected in 1989 to the U.K. apparently died from a stroke.
4. Dec. 10, 2001:
Robert M. Schwartz was stabbed to death in Leesberg, Va. Three Satanists have been arrested.
5. Dec. 14, 2001:
Nguyen Van Set died in an airlock filled with nitrogen in his lab in Geelong, Australia.
6. Feb. 9, 2002:
Victor Korshunov had his head bashed in near his home in Moscow.
7. Feb. 14, 2002:
Ian Langford was found partially naked and wedged under a chair in Norwich, England.
8. 9. Feb. 28, 2002:
San Francisco resident Tanya Holzmayer was killed by a microbiologist colleague, Guyang Huang, who shot her as she took delivery of a pizza and then apparently shot himself.
10. March 24, 2002:
David Wynn-Williams died in a road accident near his home in Cambridge, England.
11. March 25, 2002:
Steven Mostow of the Colorado Health Sciences Centre, killed in a plane he was flying near Denver.
I don't want to go do all the online research again... but this man was in charge of guarding/keeping track of the viruses in storage. And the place is the world's largest housing of viruses.
When I first read about this guy, I thought, wow, how easy to fake a death like his. Just put him in there after you steal what you want.
I don't know about the rest of this thread, but this one guy made me incredibly nervous.
I kid you not and I am not an alarmist. It was so dang scary what happened that they seriously considered destroying everything and not breathing a word of what had happened. I will try to post some about it here.
That's fine, but you mix it with a paranoid world view and irrational thought.
A bad mix, lack of education and irrational paranoid thought combined with a sense of self superiority.
The fact is none of the people were top experts in their field excpet Wiley who wasn't a microbiologist.
None of them had any experience in weapons work.
All their deaths, except Wiley's, are not mysterious (actually Wiley's isn't either).
They were all killed or died in known ways except Wiley.
There is no basis for strange fantasies and conspiracies on this.
Don't lie.
I was on BJ's ping list and read every post. BJ went well above and beyond that -- way beyond. BJ was no different than any marxist commie conspiracy theorist of the last 30 years and then went on some.
What's wrong with you?
Your plumber is qualified to do brain surgery?
A bad mix, lack of education and irrational paranoid thought combined with a sense of self superiority.
and all the more so because as was evident by your post and in your own comment, you are not an expert on anything.
I admit I'm low level in the BioMEMS field, but have a sense of self superiority? Which one???
The Australian case was first reported in the New Scientist magazine earlier this month, and then was publicised worldwide through the BBC and major news agencies.
The New Scientist report began dramatically as follows: ‘A virus that kills every one of its victims, by wiping out part of their immune system, has been accidentally created by an Australian research team. The virus, a modified mousepox, does not affect humans, but it is closely related to smallpox, raising fears that the technology could be used in biowarfare.’
The researchers were trying to make a mouse contraceptive vaccine for pest control, and did not intend to produce a killer virus.
Two scientists, Ron Jackson of CSIRO and Ian Ramshaw of Australian National University, inserted into a mousepox virus a gene that creates large amounts of a molecule, interleukin 4 (IL-4), that is naturally found in the human body. The molecule was supposed to stimulate antibodies against mouse eggs, and thus make the mice infertile.
The mousepox virus was used as a vehicle to transport the egg proteins into mice to trigger an antibody response and the gene for IL-4 was added to boost antibody production.
'The surprise was that it totally suppressed the cell-mediated response - the arm of the immune system that combats viral infection,’ says the New Scientist report.
Mice normally suffer only mild symptoms from mousepox, but with the added gene, it killed all the mice in nine days. ‘It would be safe to assume that if some idiot did put human IL-4 into human smallpox, they’d increase the lethality quite dramatically,’ said Jackson.
Moreover, the modified virus is unusually resistant to vaccine as the vaccine applied to the mice to protect them against mousepox worked in only half the mice exposed to the killer version. If a human version of the virus is created, vaccination programmes would be of limited use. -------------------------------------------------------
The story I read was in a science peer-review kind of thing and went into more detail about the terror these scientists faced when they figured out what they had done. Without cell-mediated immunity you are cooked, trust me. Absolutely cooked. The terror goes far beyond terrorist concerns here and is more about having something unleashed that could literally wipe our species from the earth. ----------------------------------------------------------
Here is some on that from the New Scientist article. The thing is both mousepox and smallpox are extremely contagious and difficult to control. This little trick removes any use of having been vaccinated. I worked in vaccine research for many years and this is by far the scariest thing I have ever read.
excerpt below-
Defence experts are also worried about preserving the freedom to publish medical findings while trying to stop the information falling into the wrong hands. According to D. A. Henderson, a former US presidential adviser, and director of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, what are effectively blueprints for making microorganisms more harmful regularly appear in unclassified journals. "I can't for the life of me figure out how we are going to deal with this," he says.
The Australian researchers consulted their country's Department of Defence before submitting the work for publication, and only decided to go ahead after considerable thought. A report will appear in a February issue of the Journal of Virology. "We wanted to warn the general population that this potentially dangerous technology is available," says Jackson. "We wanted to make it clear to the scientific community that they should be careful, that it is not too difficult to create severe organisms."
In one thread not long ago, BJ(is she, according to her !) speculated that the power-that-be planted the story of Iraqi involvement in OKC bombing on Sherman Skolinic(sp?) site, one of well-known conspiracy theory site. So that it can drum up support on Iraqi invasion. That sounded really ludicrous to me because the site has limited reach even for spreading credible allegations. There are other sites which has much wider reach, including Drudge's site.
She implore that we do not fall into this trap. She was categorically ruling out any possibility of Iraq's involvements. Her argument is that Iraq is innocent, Saudi is all guilty. American should not invade Iraq but America would never attack Saudi. She never advocated taking any action against Saudi in terms of military and economic means. As always, her story boils down to taking out corrupt elements in America, but doing nothing to foreign enemies, be it Saudi or Iraqi, who allied with such domestic elements. It is either unethical or impossible. She apparently winces at people discussing miliary scenario against potential enemies. I ran into it once either in China/Taiwan thread. I and another guy, zog, were discussing possible scenario of unconventional invasion of Taiwan.
I am all for rooting out US domestic elements who had dealings with these terrorists or enemies. But she does not consider any actions to deal with their foregin counterparts. Even N. Korean nuke crisis is purely for Bush associates' enrichment scheme. She never brought up geopolitical angle until I made the issue out of it.
My conclusion is that a lot of her accumulated materials are useful but her interpretation of them was many times real suspect.
You tell us what the article says to you, and then get back to us sparky.
Right. In BJ's case, her conclusions always fall to one side of the spectrum, regardless of the situation. I do not think that all conspiracy theories are false. People conspire secretly and systematically sometimes at the horrendous cost to others. But when you see people attributing to these conspirators enormous ability of planning a scheme which will require the near-perfect prediction of outcome, and power to control every power players and resources, I become really skeptical. She routinely confuses opportunistic exploitation of events with preplanned deliberate plans, or reckless handling of proxy groups with part of elaborate subversion.
One such example is her claim that US created N. Korean nuke situations so that American company can sell a $1bn nuclear reactor to N. Korea. Another example is that WTC attack and Iraqi invasion are planned just to get the control of oil only. These are enormous risk to take if they just do it for oils. If these purported operations backfire, oil companies are the least of the concern. If there is oil interest angle, it is that, now that OBL attacked, oil interest is exploiting it to this full advantage. But that is not satisfying enough to some folks. They see 9/11 and others preplanned meticulously.
If people SAW the carnage---actually saw it---they'd REALLY get mad. A LOT would proceed from that anger that would be different than what we have now or what we have seen from 911 until now.
We have seen more of what happened at Pearl Harbor than we have seen of the WTC, where thousands of cameras and miles of tape captured everything for history. The outrage we have is SO out or proportion to what HAPPENED. I imagine if there were a terrorist bombing that killed three or four people in a U.S. city, in a mall or a pizza parlor, once a week for the next 10 years. Can you imagine? Yet, we had something of that magnitude on one day last September. But I think that to most people, it is about as real as a TV-movie. People should see those jumpers hit the pavement and should see the body parts to remember how real this is, how serious, and how important it is that we elminate this threat to our civilization.
One thing is more important to struggle and survival than might or any other factor: WILL. We have to have the will to do what must be done. We had the will against the Nazis, and against imperial Japan. We don't have that will in this conflict. We have to believe that what we have is worth preserving.
But I was talking more about a specific conspiracy theory spread by specific person. That kind of simplistic paranoid angle does not help solve the problem, while such paranoid can be aggravated by government coverups. If we take care of all American part of problem, but leave Muslim extremist part of problems, do you think that Balkans and Caucasus will be completely safe from Muslim Jihad ?
You betcha, Laz!
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