Posted on 04/12/2014 7:23:32 PM PDT by canuck_conservative
....Virologists, using serologic and early genetic tests, soon began to suggest the cause of the reappearance was a laboratory escape of a 1949-50 virus, and as genomic techniques advanced, it became clear that this was true. By 2010, researchers published it as fact: “The most famous case of a released laboratory strain is the re-emergent H1N1 influenza-A virus which was first observed in China in May of 1977 and in Russia shortly thereafter.” The virus may have escaped from a lab attempting to prepare an attenuated H1N1 vaccine in response to the U.S. swine flu pandemic alert.....
In 2007, Foot and Mouth Disease appeared again in Britain, 4 kilometers from a biosafety level 4 laboratory—a designation indicating the highest level of lab security—located at Pirbright. The strain had caused a 1967 outbreak in the United Kingdom but was not then circulating in animals anywhere. It was, however, used in vaccine manufacture at the Pirbright facility. Investigations concluded that construction vehicles had carriedmud contaminated with FMD from a defective wastewater line at Pirbright to the first farm. That outbreak identified 278 infected animals and required 1,578 animals to be culled. It disrupted U.K. agricultural production and exports and cost an estimated 200 million pounds.
Federal law bans FMD virus from the continental United States, and it is held only at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Plum Island facility off Long Island, N.Y. Currently, however, its replacement, the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, is under construction in Manhattan, Kan., under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security. Moving FMD research to the agricultural heartland of the United States was opposed by many groups, including the Government Accountability Office, but Homeland Security decided on the Kansas location. In upgrading facilities to counter the threat of agro-bioterrorism, the department is increasing the risk....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...
Ooopsie...
It’s a flu virus so deadly that scientists once halted research on the disease because governments feared it might be used by terrorists to stage a biological attack.
Remember the accidental release of SMALLPOX back in 1978 England?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Parker
I sort of remember the Chinese-Soviet episode. I believe there was a report on AP or UPI (about all there was stateside then) about some kind of outbreak. Facts were sparse and detail non-existent. Further, I believe there was quite a bit of tension between the commie states at that time and skirmishes were not unknown. I always thought somebody deliberately used chemical agents and had some backdraft but, who knew?
Interesting - thanks!
The other factor is we assume all these things were accidental. We are dealing with govts here.
Just take the secrets withheld from the public in an average season of “24” and double it, and you have the terrifying reality in which we live.
” Department of Homeland Security. Moving FMD research to the agricultural heartland of the United States ...”
No doubt overseen by Capt. Tripps...
The Big Bang Theory: Bernadette and her colleagues have a pact to never admit that they actually crossed Ebola with the common cold when a petri dish of a genetically modified super virus went missing.
Naaah:
I think the scariest lab boo-boo that killed a LOT of folks came at a Russian weapons lab:
They were working with weaponized anthrax and some vodka-addled worker forgot to replace some facility filters —devices that sealed the atmosphere inside the lab with the air of the nearby village.
Something over 200 bewildered civilians died, and the Soviet authorities lied their as*es off about it, of course.
Now our gummint is so dirty that I have NO DOUBT GayMuzzie’s henchmen would do the same thing...
And I worked with quite a few loony tune MD/PhD’s when I worked in R&D.
It’s just a matter of time.
Exactly correct —I, too, read Alibek’s book with considerable consternation.
I vaguely remember that the Soviets had built the Sverdlvosk facility using plans captured from the Japanese Unit 731, who had a very advanced bio program there until being displaced by the invading Soviets.
In that incident they’d had been playing around with their most powerful strain of Anthrax:
The tech who had removed the filters did make a notation in the logbooks, but it went un-noticed by the supervisor in charge of the next shift of workers.
They simply turned all the fans with effectively no barrier to the outside world.
Across a nearby river from the lab was a ceramic factory crowded with innocent workers, and within a week all those who’d inhaled even the tiniest particles were all dead.
They blamed it all on “infected meat” or something.
Whoops!
I left out that Unit 731 had been in MANCHURIA, and was displaced from there by the Sovs.
Sorry.
Just how do you say, “Ooops!” in Mandarin?
The problem is that they are apparently not the only ones to slip up.
You want egg roll with the Flu?
You want egg roll with the Flu?
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