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Panel wonders if West Nile is bioterrorism, Diana Washington Valdez El Paso Times -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Is West Nile virus bioterror? The U.S.-Mexico Border Commission plans to take up as one of its topics later this year the West Nile virus. Dr. Laurance Nickey, one of the commissioners, said experts are projecting a favorable season for the mosquito that transmits the virus. It is intriguing that the Centers for Disease Control says on its Web site that the virus was not detected in the Western Hemisphere until 1999, when it hit New York City. Before that, the CDC reports, the virus was...

<p>March 17, 2003 -- Scientists are furious that China hid a mysterious illness that raged there for months, preventing them from getting an early jump on the pneumonia-like disease that has affected hundreds - including a doctor who visited New York City last week.</p>

"...as Washington threatens to bring Saddam’s own reign to an end, U.S. officials are afraid he might use such gruesome tactics against Americans. Outgunned on the traditional battlefield, Saddam is looking to fight back on his own terms. That, according to American officials, could mean any number of terror plots, from isolated assassinations of U.S. citizens overseas to biological or chemical attacks in the American heartland."

Last week the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the award of two contracts together worth $20 million to develop safer smallpox vaccines. According to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, "To protect ourselves from the remote but extremely grave threat of a deliberate release of smallpox virus, we need a vaccine that can be safely given to all Americans, including individuals with weak immune systems, children and pregnant women." Pamela McInnes, the deputy division director of microbiology and infectious diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says the problem with the current vaccine is that...

The Bush administration, seeking to rescue its foundering smallpox immunization campaign, has agreed to a limited compensation package for medical personnel and emergency responders who are injured by the vaccine, health officials said yesterday. After months of pressure, the administration acquiesced to demands from unions, hospitals and public health departments in the hope that providing financial protection for the nation's front line against bioterrorism would entice skeptical health care workers to be immunized. The decision to provide disability and death benefits comes when just 12,404 health care workers have answered President Bush's call for 500,000 volunteers to be vaccinated. Hundreds...

In 1946, a smallpox outbreak shook Seattle. Citizens lined up at businesses, schools and even churches for the vaccine. Today, the doctors who helped quell the outbreak want everyone vaccinated in case of a terrorist attack. As a combat medic in the Philippine jungles during World War II, David Hurlbut saw his share of horror in broken, bullet-riddled bodies. None of it was worse than the face of smallpox, which he saw on a troop ship coming home to Seattle.

The federal government awarded contracts to two companies yesterday to develop a safer smallpox vaccine -- one that might even be suitable for immuno-compromised people, such as those who have had organ transplants or are infected with the AIDS virus. The vaccine will be a virus called "modified vaccinia Ankara" (MVA), a severely crippled version of the microbe used as a smallpox vaccine. MVA is unable to replicate in mammalian cells, although it does grow in chicken cells, which is where it is made.

World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org WSWS : News & Analysis : North America US health care workers spurn Bush smallpox vaccination plan By Patrick Martin 1 March 2003 Back to screen version | Send this link by email | Email the author The vast majority of the health care workers who were to be inoculated against smallpox over the past month, under plans linked to the Bush administration’s preparations for war with Iraq, have declined the vaccine. By February 24, one month into the program, just over 7,300 volunteers have been inoculated, compared to projections by federal officials of 450,000...

The state attorney general's office has located a company marketing bogus bioterrorism products in Arkansas and nationwide as treatments for smallpox and anthrax exposure. The Ohio-based company, named Silver, Nature's Original Anti-Biotic, was discovered in an investigation after a Greene County man contacted the attorney general to verify if a colloidal silver product being offered by the company was an effective treatment for exposure to biological agents, a spokesman for the office said. The man's inquiry prompted the investigation. Attorney General Mike Beebe issued a warning Thursday to consumers about products being advertised as protective measures or cures. The...

Whenever you're not doing anything else on the machine -- even during the split-second between two keystrokes -- the software will run its chemical analysis. All you have to do is log onto the Internet once in a while,

(from poster: "THIS IS JUST A HYPoTHETICAL ARTICLE" warning to readers/posters. I don't want any lurkers/posters to do a "War of the Worlds" suicide number due to this post.) (excerpt from Feb. 21, 2003 L A Weekley article about the aftermath of a HYPOTHETICAL anthrax attack that kills about 38,000 LA residents): Others focus their emotions on the need to strike back, although it isn't clear at whom, since the FBI hasn't caught anyone yet. Even so, they post furious tirades on FreeRepublic.com urging the president to kill all "ragheads and camel drivers," "nuke Mecca" and turn Baghdad into "a...

Newspaper: Tech professor carried plague on airlines 02/22/2003 The Associated Press LUBBOCK, Texas — The Texas Tech University researcher accused of lying to the FBI about missing plague vials has carried live samples of the bacteria aboard commercial airlines, a newspaper reported. The attorney for Thomas Butler said the professor's method of transporting specimens of the plague-causing organism yersinia pestis, or YP, was safe. Lawyer Floyd Holder said Butler secured the samples — taken from infected Tanzanians — in a plastic container in his luggage. "He described it to me that it would be impossible to break it with...

Tel Aviv University has decided to establish a center for the study of bioterrorism to conduct research on intentionally caused diseases, new vaccines to counter bioterror agents, better ways of detecting and controlling disease and the psychological aspects of unconventional warfare. The idea of a TAU Center for the Study of Bioterrorism was submitted a few months ago to TAU president Prof. Itamar Rabinovitch by Prof. Manfred Green (current center of the Health Ministry's Israel Center for Disease Control and outgoing chairman of the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine at TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine) and Prof. Daniel Cohen,...

Tel Aviv University has decided to establish a center for the study of bioterrorism to conduct research on intentionally caused diseases, new vaccines to counter bioterror agents, better ways of detecting and controlling disease and the psychological aspects of unconventional warfare. The idea of a TAU Center for the Study of Bioterrorism was submitted a few months ago to TAU president Prof. Itamar Rabinovitch by Prof. Manfred Green (current center of the Health Ministry's Israel Center for Disease Control and outgoing chairman of the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine at TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine) and Prof. Daniel Cohen,...

While millions of protesters were on the street , demonstrating for "No war on Iraq", an internal paper from the German Health Ministry made its way to the press, documenting that the German Secret Service has evidence, that Iraq has illegally produced small-pox viruses. Despite the official direction of the "peace-chancellor Schroeder", the German Health Ministry has started to stockpile more than 70 million small pox vaccinations. According to the German Secret Service BND Several suicide-terrorists trained in Iraq, have already entered the Federal Republic of Germany as diplomats, businessmen or students and are ready to use biological weapons of...

BIOTERRORISM MONITORS TO BE PLACED THROUGHOUT USA... intended to tell within 24 hours whether anthrax, smallpox and other deadly germs have been released into the air, senior administration officials tell Wed NYT... MORE... system uses sophisticated data analysis which officials said had been quietly developed since the Sept. 11 attacks... MORE...

Terrorists posed as asylum seekers to get a London flat which they turned into a poison factory, it has emerged.Two 17-year-old youths claiming their right to be housed by the local council were given the flat above a chemist's shop in Wood Green. Then it is believed a gang moved in to make a batch of the poison ricin with the intention of spreading terror in the capital. Three members of the gang are being hunted in the biggest police operation of its kind following a raid on the flat, where traces of the poison were found. Seven North African...

Cases of a winter sickness bug have doubled in the past year and have now reached a record high, it emerged today. Hospitals across London are on the alert for signs of the virus which can spread rapidly through wards and affect hundreds of people at a time. Cases of Norwalk-like virus - named after the Ohio town where it was first identified - are on the increase in the wake of Christmas and the New Year. Experts warned there will almost certainly be large-scale outbreaks of the bug, better known as winter vomiting virus, in the coming weeks as...

The Government is looking at redrawing the laws allowing emergency cordons to be set up around cities targeted in a terrorist attack. This could mean people living in areas hit by a biological or chemical weapon would be prevented from leaving in order to contain the problem and prevent it spreading. The Sunday Times reports that ministers are planning to introduce new laws giving the police and military power to evacuate or quarantine swathes of London or other cities by force.A "health cordon" would be set up around the affected area and no one would be allowed to pass through...

Okay fellow Freepers, don't throw rocks and don't send me any tinfoil beanies. Here's a fair observation and I'm wondering if any of you are making the same observations as I have regarding the strange outbreaks of illnesses across the U.S. It really started to hit me as odd, with West Nile, the cruise ship illness outbreaks,the unexplained deaths of students near Hershey, Pennsylvania, the outbreaks now of antibiotic resistant Strep in Texas and the Marine Corps tragedy in San Diego where one marine has passed away and over 100 Marines have been hospitalized with a potentially life-threatening form of...