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Flu scientists are hoping to vaccinate themselves against another outbreak of a crippling controversy. In a letter published this week by Nature and Science (see p. 612), 22 researchers make their case for launching potentially risky experiments with the H7N9 avian influenza virus, which emerged earlier this year in China and which some scientists fear could spark a deadly human pandemic. The scientists, who mostly work in U.S.-funded labs, also detail the safety and security precautions that they would take to prevent the possibly dangerous viruses they create from escaping from the lab—or falling into the hands of terrorists. In...

Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world's richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.

It is no secret that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), despite being a signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention, regards the development of bioweapons as a key part of achieving military dominance. The vice-president of China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, He Fuchu, said in 2015 that biomaterials were the new “strategic commanding heights” of warfare. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) general Zhang Shibo went even further in his 2017 book, “War’s New High Land,” claiming that “modern biotechnology development is gradually showing strong signs characteristic of an offensive capability,” including the potential for “specific ethnic genetic attacks.” To be perfectly...

As China attempts to contain the spread of a new coronavirus that has left more than 100 people dead, rumors and disinformation have spread amid the scramble for answers. Some of the speculation has centered on a virology institute in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak began. One fringe theory holds that the disaster could be the accidental result of biological weapons research. But in conversations with The Washington Post, experts rejected the idea that the virus could be man-made. “Based on the virus genome and properties there is no indication whatsoever that it was an engineered virus,” said Richard...

The deadly animal-borne coronavirus spreading globally may have originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan linked to China’s covert biological weapons program, said an Israeli biological warfare analyst. Radio Free Asia last week rebroadcast a Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China’s most advanced virus research laboratory, known the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The laboratory is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses. Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biological warfare, said the institute is linked to Beijing’s covert bio-weapons program. “Certain laboratories in the institute have...

<p>This thread is a friendly collaborative place for FReepers to analyze information and share opinons. FReepers have a wide variety of reasons for investigating Q Anon content; this is not the appropriate place to criticize or badger those who choose to use some of their time in this manner.</p>

A dangerous, large scale outbreak of painful Lyme Disease is being predicted for this summer by a video reporter who has suggested that this animal disease might have been spread to the U.S. population as an inadvertent escape pathogen from the U.S. Plum Island Animal Research facility. Because we've had a very mild winter, "all the conditions are right for one of the biggest outbreaks of LD this summer," says video researcher David Zublick. "What if your backyard is a breeding ground for a most heinous act of bioterrorism by our own government," asks Zublick about research done at Plum...

Chemical terror plot foiled in London Fri November 21, 2003 11:43 PM ET LONDON (Reuters) - An attempt by a London-based terror group to buy half a tonne of toxic chemicals was foiled after the supplier became suspicious and alerted police, the Financial Times has reported.It said the group had attempted to buy 500 kgs (1,102 lb) of the toxin saponin from Amersham Biosciences late last year but the sale was refused after staff became concerned about the size of the order. A spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police told Reuters on Saturday that police were "not prepared to discuss the...

ISIS terrorists are reportedly urging supporters to use a new weapon against the West. A Spanish official claims ISIS is exploring how to use Ebola as a biological weapon. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence officials say the constant coalition airstrikes are not slowing the tide of 1,000 foreign fighters who join with the terrorists each month. …

Details of Bioweapons Lab Emerge, but Not Proof U.S. intelligence analysts have been closely examining satellite images of the west bank of the Tigris River in Baghdad for signs of a laboratory rumored to exist there. Called Tahhaddy, or "Challenge," the lab is purported to have 85 employees and a top-secret mission: making biological weapons for Iraq's military.Details about the lab have trickled out of Iraq in recent months in accounts from defectors and Iraqi exiles opposed to President Saddam Hussein. They tell of underground test chambers, heavy security and a viral strain code-named "Blue Nile," which sounds suspiciously like...

Andy Stern wasn’t kidding when he publicly stated the most famous rallying cry of Communism:[1] Stern professed, “Workers of the World Unite? It’s not just a slogan anymore.” Snip SIGA Technologies, Inc. is a company specializing in the development of pharmaceutical agents to combat bio-warfare pathogens and it was announced on June 21, 2010 that Andy Stern is joining SIGA’s Board of Directors. But wait, it gets even better… SIGA is also a Federal contractor for the government. For a list of SIGA’s contracts with the Federal government, go to: http://www.usaspending.gov/search?query=&searchtype=JTdFZnElM0Q…. SNIP Without question, Andy Stern’s new position at SIGA...

There are many who argue that President Obama has (repeatedly) broken his promise to bring transparency and openness to the White House. In literal terms, however, Obama may not have actually broken that specific promise ,.. it’s just that people may not have understood what Obama meant by transparency and openness. ..Here’s a case in point: First Dot: Several months ago, the union world was shocked when Andy Stern, the ignominious president of the Service Employees International Union abruptly “quit” as leader of the Purple Hand. Surprise and speculation swelled. Was it the Blago Trial? Is he sick?Second Dot: Then,...

CONAKRY, Guinea — Ebola, one of the world's most deadly viruses, has spread from a remote forested corner of southern Guinea to the country's seaside capital, raising fears that the disease, which causes severe bleeding and almost always death, could spread far beyond this tiny West African nation's borders.

“We have yet to find any weapons of mass destruction. …Does it matter that we were misled into war?” - New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, 4/29/03 “Nissar Hindawi, a leading figure in Iraq's biological warfare program in the 1980's, says the stories and explanations he and other scientists told the United Nations about the extent of Iraq's efforts to produce poisons and germ weapons ‘were all lies.’ …He said military officials had asked him to tell inspectors that he was the head of a single-cell protein facility. The plant, in fact, had made botulinum toxin and anthrax. He said...

I’ve written about this before … but with the release of the WIKILEAKS documents, even Wired magazine acknowledges that US troops found chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. But don’t worry; if you liberals keep telling yourself “Bush Lied”… you’ll get through this. By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But for years afterward, WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins, and uncover weapons of mass destruction In...

An outbreak of plague, which is considerd a potential bioweapon, among the Syrian military may be raising more questions than answers. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recently ordered the shutdown of all Syrian military exercises due to a plague that currently affects a large number of military personnel, according to Examiner.com. The Syrian president has told Syrian news sources that food and drinking water in military bases, coupled with one of the country’s worst droughts in over 40 years, are responsible for the outbreak of plague. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are experiencing food shortages, nearly 60,000 small livestock owners have...

Though the always-transparent (NOT!) White House web site contains no news of it, President Barack Obama has reportedly signed an executive order -- yes, another one. This time, he's tasked the United States Postal Service to help distribute countermeasures in the event of a biological weapons attack within the United States.

SNIPPET: "Steven Cucuzzella, of North Charleston, pleaded guilty in federal court to sending a threat by mail to destroy the Naval Brig near Charleston. Another charge of threatening to kill former President George W. Bush was dismissed."

North Korea’s armed forces are capable of carrying out 13 kinds of viral and bacterial attack, the South Korean Government said yesterday in one of the most detailed assessments of the dictatorship’s biological weapons arsenal. In a submission to the South Korean National Assembly, the Defence Minister also said that the North had 5,000 tonnes of chemical weapons, believed to include mustard gas, phosgene and sarin. Among its biological agents are cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, typhus, typhoid fever and dysentery. Despite the alarming assessment, Kim Tae Young also said that his country’s armed forces had the capacity pre-emptively to destroy...

The history of warfare and the history of disease are unquestionably interwoven. Throughout the history of warfare, disease and non-battle injury have accounted for more deaths and loss of combat capability than from actual battle in war itself. The most striking example is the great influenza pandemic during World War I that killed 20 million people or more worldwide in 1918.1 Although this was a naturally occurring event, what if a country could create a biological agent that could yield the same catastrophic loss of life on the enemy? That, in essence, is the potential effect of applying genetic engineering2...