Replies

“No where has this been found except for the envelopes.”

Wasn’t a mixed genotype used by the Navy Medical Research Center, in its mice vaccine challenge studies, as reported in the proceedings of the 4th conference on anthrax (the meeting was in Annapolis in June 2001).

You’ll recall that Dr. Knudson sent the ISU professor the mailing label that I uploaded. It had the NRMC fax number for the lab there.

It involves development of a DNA vaccine involving a mutated plasmid. I describe it in the thread with “Alibek” in the title a day or two ago.

There is no evidence that historical collection had Ames. USDA lab magager’s Thomas Bunn is quoted at the time saying it didn’t.

I have a suspicious mind which is why I called all the professors involved in the destruction and contacted the USDA.

I came away with no citable evidence that any Ames was destroyed. Instead, the historical strains involved 5 or 6 strains from locals cows. Bessie, Angie, Coral, Monroe, and Clarabelle.

Folks talking about the destruction of the ISU inventory routinely fail to distinguish between ISU and the USDA lab.

Question: Did the USDA lab assist the UNMC in the vaccine research I mention? Was Dr. Bunn previously at USAMRIID doing vaccine research at the time Dr. Knudson was at USAMRIID doing vaccine research? Is that why Dr. Knudson routed the request to USDA Iowa? If a mutated strain was used in developing the UNMC strain with the mutated plasmid, and there was an Iowa destruction that was countenanced by USAMRIID (which was advising the FBI), now that would be very notable.

BattleAxe,

I’m kidding about Clarabelle, of course.

But here is what Tom Bunn said in late January 2002.

Dr. Tom Bunn, Chief of Diagnostic Bacteriology at the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) lab in Ames, IA, on the same subject – “Many people were
concerned that someone had stolen this from us. Now we can say that they
couldn’t have stolen it from us, because we never had it.”

Battle Axe,

Aren’t you correct that the inverted plasmid is important and highly probative evidence in proving Amerithrax? Consider the work done by the fellow who collected Ames on mutagenesis. And the work done by UNMC circa 2000. And then consider Ali Al-Timimi’s high security clearance for work for the Navy. The UNMC’s DNA vaccine research had caused it to expand to require experts in genomics. Ali’s field was genomics. Didn’t SRA International, Ali’s employer, work with the Navy in the Spring of 2001?

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, who runs the Federation of American Scientists’ chemical and biological arms control program, announced in December 2001. “I’m certain it’s someone connected with a government program, or who works in a laboratory connected with a government program,” she said. “The grapevine has it that the results of an experiment on genetic variation at certain locations suggest that this material was made in a very small batch, and that suggests that the material was not made in some old weapons program on a large scale,” she said, citing sources inside and outside the government. “All the available information is consistent with a U.S. government lab as the source, either of the anthrax itself or of the recipe for the U.S. weaponization process,” wrote Rosenberg on a webpage.

Wasn’t BHR correct? Just mistaken that it was Dr. Hatfill? And mistaken that the motive was to sound an alarm so as to increase spending?

Sources:

Elliott TB, Brook I, Harding RA, Bouhaouala SS, Peacock SJ, Knudson GB.

Radiation Medicine Department, Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Interactions and Countermeasures Research Team, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, 8901 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20889-5603, USA.

[AFFRI is at UNMC]

Bacillus anthracis infection in irradiated mice: susceptibility, protection, and therapy.
Mil Med. 2002 Feb;167(2 Suppl):103-4. No abstract available.
PMID: 11873486 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]