Posted on 12/03/2002 2:42:31 PM PST by woofie
The C.I.A. is investigating an informant's accusation that Iraq obtained a particularly virulent strain of smallpox from a Russian scientist who worked in a smallpox lab in Moscow during Soviet times, senior American officials and foreign scientists say.
The officials said several American scientists were told in August that Iraq might have obtained the mysterious strain from Nelja N. Maltseva, a virologist who worked for more than 30 years at the Research Institute for Viral Preparations in Moscow before her death two years ago.
The information came to the American government from an informant whose identity has not been disclosed. The C.I.A. considered the information reliable enough that President Bush was briefed about its implications. The attempt to verify the information is continuing.
Dr. Maltseva is known to have visited Iraq on several occasions. Intelligence officials are trying to determine whether, as the informant told them, she traveled there as recently as 1990, officials said. The institute where she worked housed what Russia said was its entire national collection of 120 strains of smallpox, and some experts fear that she may have provided the Iraqis with a version that could be resistant to vaccines and could be more easily transmitted as a biological weapon.
The possibility that Iraq possesses this strain is one of several factors that has complicated Mr. Bush's decision, expected this week, about how many Americans should be vaccinated against smallpox, a disease that was officially eradicated in 1980.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Do you think he cares about that?
If Iraq is thinking of using a strain that is resistant to vaccines, the U.S. thus has a head start on developing a countermeasure. Iraq would probably be fully vulnerable. Conventional smallpox had a mortality rate of 30%. A more virulent strain would presumably have a higher mortality. If it unleashes this scourge, Iraq may suffer something worse than the Black Death.
Well, if he has it -- which I doubt -- we will be blackmailed, just as we were blackmailed by the Soviet nuclear deterrent. Some problems have no solution.
Lots of folks will pay for it.
Polies been talking publicly about biowar, specifically small pox, from before the anthrax attacks. They haven't been doing this for no reason.
The island, known as Renaissance Island in English, is between Kazakhstan and another Central Asian country, Uzbekistan. The United States recently spent $6 million to help both countries, which are now independent, to decontaminate anthrax that the Soviet military buried in pits on the island.
Alan P. Zelicoff, co-author of the Monterey report and a scientist at Sandia National Laboratories, said the Aralsk outbreak was a watershed because it demonstrated that the smallpox virus was more easily spread than previously thought and that there may be a vaccine-resistant strain.
The organism can indeed be made to travel long distances, city-size perhaps, and there may be a vaccine-resistant strain or one that is more communicable than garden-variety smallpox, he said in an interview.
Yes they do; just give war a chance! Seriously, if we wouldn't go to war with a country because it uses a WMD against us, we might as well wave the white flag right now.
I believe peace in Iraq lies on the other side of war. Saddam must go.
Interesting last paragraph, left sort of hanging out there, disconnected from everything else in the story. What information are they talking about?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.