[TrebleRebel]

When Geisbert killed the spores with radiation, he didn’t get that effect. Why would that be? All he saw was “pure spores.”

Not true - go back and read the book. He saw the fried egg gunk on these spores also.

Maybe you should put your energies into finding out why Beecher failed to provide his data - after all, it was quite a simple request. Publish SEM and EDX data of the attack spores demonstrating the complete absence of additives. He claimed there are no addtives - and, as Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[EdLake]

Not true - go back and read the book. He saw the fried egg gunk on these spores also.

I have a personally autographed copy of Richard Preston's book in front of me. On page 175 he describes killing the spores in a "cobat irradiator -- which fried the DNA in the spores, rendering them sterile."

On page 176 he talks about static electricity causing the spores to jump all over the place. Then, when he finally gets to see the spores in the SEM, he says, "The spores were stuck together like moon rocks ..." And, "The anthrax particles had an eroded, pitted look, like meteorites fallen to earth. Most chunks were very tiny, sometimes just one or two spores, but there were also boulders." And he described how the chucks fell apart as he watched.

On page 177 is this image of a reference sample, similar in character to the spores in the Daschle letter:

Note that there is NO sign of any silica in that image. The spores in that image look NOTHING like any kind of silica coated spores.

And that's the last mention of what he saw. Where's the mention of "fried egg gunk?"

Ed at www.anthraxinvestigation.com