Free Republic

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., talked broadly about health care Monday when he visited Rocky Mount, reprising a familiar call for medical liability reform and sounding an alarm about prescription drug costs to the public. But standing in front of the Rotary Club microphones, he didn't talk about what might be his most important job in government ? his role as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health. While serving in Congress, Burr sponsored the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act, a set of laws to provide money to train first responders and stockpile vaccines, along with a...

WASHINGTON and COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Feb. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- IMVAMUNE(TM), a third-generation Modified Virus Ankara (MVA) vaccine under development by Bavarian Nordic of Denmark, is expected to be effective against smallpox three days after one vaccination compared to traditional replicating vaccines (i.e., DryVax(R)) that only show protection after 10-14 days. Presenting today on the status of the company's IMVAMUNE safe smallpox vaccine program at the BIO CEO & Investor Conference in New York City, Peter Wulff, President and CEO of Bavarian Nordic said: "Based on data from a number of our animal models and clinical trials, Bavarian Nordic expects IMVAMUNE(TM) to...

D.C. Planning for Bio-terrorism Lab Within City Updated: Monday, Feb. 7, 2005 - 3:02 PM by Mark Seagraves, WTOP Radio WASHINGTON -- The D.C. government is partnering with the Federal government to build a level-3 bio-terrorism lab within the city, WTOP Radio has learned. A level-3 lab can handle such deadly agents as ricin and anthrax. Level-3 is the second most secure type of facility. There are a handful of level-4 labs around the country, including Ft. Detrick in Frederick. One of the preferred sites for the lab is the former D.C. General Hospital site near the U.S Capitol, according...

DAVOS, Switzerland - The world needs an effort similar to that behind the creation of the atomic bomb to tackle the multi-faceted threat of biowarfare, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Thursday. "We need to do something that even dwarfs the Manhattan project," Frist told the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Manhattan project was the codename for the United States's World War II effort to devise an atomic weapon. "The greatest existential threat we have in the world today is biological. Why? Because unlike any other threat it has the power of panic and paralysis to be global."...

Notwithstanding former President Jimmy Carter's recent statement to the contrary, Undersecretary of State John Bolton's remarks about Cuba's biological weapons capabilities underscore lingering concerns with the rogue island only 90 miles from the United States. Bolton, on May 6, told an audience at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation that the U.S. is suspicious about Cuban biomedical laboratories and their ability to transfer biological weapons technology to Iraq, Syria and Libya, all countries that Cuban President Fidel Castro visited last year. Bolton also made remarks, which may be interpreted as a clear signal of hardening State Department policy toward Cuba, faulting...

AN influential World Health Organization committee is sending shock waves through the scientific community with a recommendation that researchers be permitted to conduct genetic-engineering experiments with the smallpox virus. The idea is to be able to better combat a disease considered a leading bioterrorism threat though it was eradicated publicly 25 years ago. The WHO previously had opposed such work for fear that a "superbug" might emerge. Because the disease is so deadly, the WHO at times has recommended destroying the world?s two known smallpox stockpiles, located in secure labs at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta...

WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (AFP) - Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former French health minister Bernard Kouchner were among the dignitaries playing the role of president of their respective countries in an exercise conducted here Friday to explore how governments around the Atlantic would react to a biological terrorist attack in the region. Under the scenario, presidents and prime ministers of several countries were gathered for a summit in Washington Friday when they learned at 9:00 am that a total of 51 cases of smallpox had been reported in Germany, Turkey, Sweden and the Netherlands. An unknown group...

Researchers have made an unexpectedly sudden advance in synthesizing long molecules of DNA, bringing them closer to the goal of redesigning genes and programming cells to make pharmaceuticals. But the success also puts within reach the manufacture of small genomes, such as those of viruses and perhaps certain bacteria. Some biologists fear that the technique might be used to make the genome of the smallpox virus, one of the few pathogens that cannot easily be collected from the wild. The advance, described in the Jan. 6 issue of the journal Nature by Dr. George M. Church of the Harvard Medical...

BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi lawyer said Friday that one of Saddam Hussein's former top scientists, known as "Mrs. Anthrax," has cancer and is dying in U.S. custody where she has been held for more than a year. A U.S. military spokesman for detainee operations in Iraq refused to comment on the report that Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash has cancer. "I am not able to discuss the health condition of our detainees," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson. "Certainly we have medical care available to take care of any detainee." Ammash, a top Baath party official and biotech researcher who got her...

Basic Questions on Bioterrorism Elude F.B.I., an Official Admits By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and DAVID JOHNSTON ASHINGTON, Nov. 6 — In a blunt exchange with members of the Senate, a senior counterterrorism official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation acknowledged today that one month into its bioterrorism investigation, his agency still could not answer such basic questions as how many laboratories in the United States handle the anthrax bacteria. The official, James T. Caruso, deputy assistant director of the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism division, told senators that the agency was "pressing hard" to answer that question and many others, including how ...

Bioterrorism has been in the minds of millions of Americans ever since the 'anthrax letters' were sent just after 9/11. Unlike conventional terrorism, where a bomb blast is a clear sign that something has happened, biowarfare methods such as spraying viruses into the air or polluting water sources are silent and often leave no visible trace. How do we know if something has happened, and, more importantly, what do we do about it? Israeli scientists are coming up with answers from several different angles.

The New York Police Department, the F.B.I. and the city's health department have agreed for the first time on a set of rules that will govern investigations of suspected biological attacks in the city, detailing the roles the agencies will play as well as how confidential medical information is to be shared. The "protocol," a six-page document that officials regard as something of a remarkable cooperation agreement, resulted in part from lessons learned in New York during the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, which killed five people in Florida and the Northeast and infected more than a dozen others in the...

If you are familiar with plant and/or animal medicine,or reasonably well-versed in rural-area law enforcement and security,you are invited to register at this free-no-strings attached message board,and participate in discussions on "agroterrorism" ( Bioterrorism applied to animal and plant life. Just click on this link: http://listeningpost.mywowbb.com/forum1/12.html Thank you !

CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO - The terrorism attacks of September 11, 2001, bring images of burning skyscrapers and cities in chaos. But rural leaders say the threat is real in agricultural areas, too. Agri-terrorism could be a disease or a contaminant introduced by terrorists to a plant or animal that can spread to other plants or livestock. Southeast Missouri State University professor John Kraemer helps run the university's Center for Environmental Analysis. Kraemer says the first step to preventing agri-terrorism is to monitor the situation abroad, then monitor borders and ports. He also cites a need to improve methods of inspection...

RE: Flu vaccine

On 6 Oct 2004 at the railway station of Sants de Barcelona, a blue paper bag was stolen from the owner of a clinical laboratory. It contained 5 glass tubes, 15cm long x 2cm wide, with black stoppers, containing cultures of _Mycobacterium tuberculosis_. They were wrapped in absorbent paper inside an opaque white plastic container with a black double cap. This was wrapped in brown parcel paper, with a letter describing the contents, which are highly contagious. The finder is asked to contact urgently the Cuerpo Nacional de Policia, tel. 091, the local police, tel. 092, and the Servicio de...

<p>WASHINGTON -- The first bioterrorist attack against the U.S. government began during a routine meeting to discuss whether a tapped-out South Dakota gold mine should be converted into a research laboratory.</p> <p>It was Monday, Oct. 15, and 10 members of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's staff were holding their weekly South Dakota planning meeting on the fifth floor of the Hart Office Building. A painted buffalo hide, donated by a Sioux Indian tribe, hung on the wall.</p>

With all this fuss about Iran's nuclear weapons program (excuse me, nuclear power program for a country that's overflowing with oil), everyone seems to have forgotten that terrorism by small groups and not countries is probably our biggest threat. And judging by past behavior, launching a nuclear weapon is not as likely to occur as something else that can be done on a smaller, less expensive scale. The goal of this would not merely be to inflict mass murder, but panic and the potential economic upheavals or collapse that are so valued by the criminal Islamists. Enter Monkeypox Mohammed. Bioweapons...

My last editorial delved into bio-terrorism: the possible perpetrators and methods. I now follow up that discussion with a series of articles that will detail what we can do to prevent, and in the event of an attack, minimize the effects of, biological warfare. This first article will deal with what we can do as individuals. The second will highlight what governments (federal and state) can do. The third will address the role of the private sector, i.e. biotechnology and similar companies. Individual actions can be divided into preventative and therapeutic actions. Prevention: 1. Maintain a high state of alert...

Bioterror Defense - Forbes staff, 08.13.04, 6:00 AM ET NEW YORK - Pharmathene is one of a smattering of small and undercapitalized biotechnology outfits trying to develop either vaccines or antidotes for anthrax, which remains, in the opinion of a lot of experts, the most likely weapon to be used against the U.S. in a bioterror attack. The threat of biological attack is considered so serious that President George W. Bush in late July signed Project Bioshield, creating a $5.6 billion fund to stockpile treatments for smallpox, botulism and anthrax over ten years, without the need for approval from the...