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THE NEXT 9/11 The next “9/11” is apt to be something most people don’t want to hear about,read about,or even think about. I’m talking about biowarfare; and, unless I miss my guess,it is being studied-using human guinea pigs-by the People’s Liberation Army of China. They have succeeded in identifying a strain of “bird flu” , called H5N –RK7,that is extremely lethal to birds and to humans. ( It is just one of 10 strains they have been studying – via “controlled releases” into their own population ; and they are still looking for the “ideal strain”.) The goals seem to...

This year, once again, the annual report from the Joint United Nations Program on H.I.V./AIDS and the World Health Organization tragically documents the way the global AIDS epidemic is still killing millions of people and spawning hot spots in Asia and Eastern Europe. The most striking news is that AIDS is fast becoming a disease that strikes younger women disproportionately. Ignorance is part of the problem, but the laws and social customs that keep women powerless and poor - and subject to sexual exploitation - are far more insidious. According to the new report's eye-opening analysis, AIDS is spreading quickly...

AN envelope found at the Indonesian embassy in Canberra today has tested positive for a biological agent. The embassy has been shut down and its 22 staff will remain in isolation for at least 48 hours after the envelope tested positive for an as-yet unidentified biological agent. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer condemned whoever had sent the package and said the incident would not help Corby's case. "Further analysis of the powder has tested positive as a biological agent so further testing will need to be carried out to find out what that substance actually is," Mr Downer told Parliament. "As...

WASHINGTON, April 26 (UPI) -- Terrorists could spread smallpox via infected letters, similar to the 2001 U.S. anthrax attacks, bioweapon experts told United Press International. The experts' comments were spurred by an article in the May issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, which describes twin outbreaks of smallpox in 1901 that were traced to infected letters. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta doubted that smallpox could be spread through infected letters, but several bioweapons experts thought otherwise. D.A. Henderson, of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said it was possible to...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR TIMOTHY McVEIGH'S bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City seems as if it happened less than 10 years ago, but its 10th anniversary, which happened a week ago, seems as if it didn't happen at all. And for practical purposes it didn't. Lots of stories made a bigger ripple in the week's zeitgeist - some of them understandably (new pope chosen), some less so (on "American Idol," Anwar's journey ends). This attention deficit is partly explained by what took place in Lower Manhattan six years after the bombing. Osama bin Laden's atrocity dwarfed Timothy McVeigh's along...

Some interesting material here on this subject. Any comments.

THE al-Qaeda terror group made unexpected advances in developing a virulent biological strain - dubbed "Agent X" - before the September 11, 2001, attacks, a US presidential commission on US intelligence operations said today. The commission said in its final report that intelligence analysts were "surprised by the intentions and level of research and development" uncovered after the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. The commission, appointed by US President George W. Bush in response to intelligence failures in Iraq, said US intelligence had long held that al-Qaeda members had trained in crude methods for producing biological agents such...

In the fight against terrorism, few stones are left unturned. Every day, patient data from a handful of emergency rooms is sent to the Indiana State Department of Health to be crunched and analyzed. An epidemiologist watches intently for upward trends in rashes, fevers and unexplained deaths. Or a sudden surge in over-the-counter drug sales. The practice -- called syndromic surveillance -- broke onto the public health scene immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and later anthrax deaths. The surveillance method is widely viewed as a tool to detect a possible bioterrorism attack. Computers allow the instant sharing...

ASSOCIATED PRESS An Iraqi scientist has told U.S. interrogators that her team destroyed Iraq's stock of anthrax in 1991 by dumping it practically at the gates of one of Saddam's main palaces, but never told U.N. inspectors for fear of angering the dictator. Rihab Rashid Taha's decision in 2003 to remain silent stoked suspicions of those who contended Iraq still harbored biological weapons, contributing to the U.S. decision to invade Iraq two years ago this month. "Whether those involved understood the significance and disastrous consequences of their actions is unclear," the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group says of Mrs. Taha and...

Toronto — The military's intelligence arm has warned the federal government that avian influenza could be used as a weapon of bioterrorism, a heavily censored report suggests. It also reveals that military planners believe a naturally occurring flu pandemic may be imminent. The report, entitled Recent Human Outbreaks of Avian Influenza and Potential Biological Warfare Implications, was obtained under the Access to Information Act by The Canadian Press. It was prepared by the J2 Directorate of Strategic Intelligence, a secretive branch of National Defence charged with producing intelligence for the government. The report outlines in broad terms the methods that...

Ten Stanford University faculty members, including a Nobel Prize winner, have signed a letter with 700 other scientists nationally protesting a federal policy that prioritizes bio-terrorism research over public-health issues. The letter was sent to National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Elias Zerhouni on Monday, Feb. 28. “The diversion of research funds from projects of high public-health importance to projects of high biodefense but low public-health importance represents a misdirection of NIH priorities and a crisis for NIH-supported microbial research,” the letter states. Stanford scientists who signed the letter include Arthur Kornberg, a Nobel Prize winner, and Charles Yanofsky, who...

How soon we forget !! The Anthrax murders of 2001-believed by many to have been a "second wave" accompaniment to the 9/11 outrages - spurred renewed interest in-and funding for-bioterror detection and prevention. A group of US scientists-apparently miffed because their pet projects have not received as much attention (although funding has not diminished-is pitching a national hissy fit. "How dare the government attempt to protect us against the horrors of biowar when we are working on important stuff -like dandruff,and athlete's foot,and,and...."

Efforts to defend the US against bioterrorists - by throwing money at research - are backfiring, says a 750-strong group of top scientists The US has poured billions of dollars into biodefence research since its anthrax attacks in 2001. More than half of the US scientists studying bacterial diseases have this week written to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) - their main funding agency - charging that the largess has created "a crisis for microbiological research". "We are staging a no-confidence vote," says Richard Ebright of Rutgers University in New Jersey, who organised the protest. In an open...

Newswise ? In a finding that represents an entirely new approach to treating viral diseases such as smallpox, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and collaborating institutions have shown that infections can be stymied by interfering with signals used by viruses to reproduce in human cells. The results, reported in the February issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, point to a possible strategy for broadly treating acute viral infections that affect millions of people worldwide. If the technique leads to a drug capable of treating people infected with the smallpox virus, it could eliminate the virus? potential as a bioterror...

Cancer drugs have unexpectedly led to an entirely new way to beat viral infections - and particularly smallpox - a new study suggests. Viruses are hard to stop and, with few exceptions, drugs aimed at killing viral infections have not worked nearly as well as the antibiotics that kill bacteria. Now, US scientists have found that an experimental drug aimed at stopping the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells actually prevents the smallpox virus from replicating inside human cells, and can save mice from dying of a closely related virus, Vaccinia. Viruses succeed by invading a cell and hijacking the "machinery"...

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., talked broadly about health care Monday when he visited Rocky Mount, reprising a familiar call for medical liability reform and sounding an alarm about prescription drug costs to the public. But standing in front of the Rotary Club microphones, he didn't talk about what might be his most important job in government ? his role as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health. While serving in Congress, Burr sponsored the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act, a set of laws to provide money to train first responders and stockpile vaccines, along with a...

WASHINGTON and COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Feb. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- IMVAMUNE(TM), a third-generation Modified Virus Ankara (MVA) vaccine under development by Bavarian Nordic of Denmark, is expected to be effective against smallpox three days after one vaccination compared to traditional replicating vaccines (i.e., DryVax(R)) that only show protection after 10-14 days. Presenting today on the status of the company's IMVAMUNE safe smallpox vaccine program at the BIO CEO & Investor Conference in New York City, Peter Wulff, President and CEO of Bavarian Nordic said: "Based on data from a number of our animal models and clinical trials, Bavarian Nordic expects IMVAMUNE(TM) to...

A former KGB spy and expert on biological warfare has been living quietly in New Zealand for a decade. Anthony Hubbard reports. Alexander Kouzminov, green-eyed and serious, helped prepare Soviet war plans to poison the west. Now he is a Ministry of Health scientist doing environmental health and safety in New Zealand. Yes, he says in his Russianised English, I was a poacher and now I am a gamekeeper. He doesn't smile. Kouzminov is short and hard, a kung fu exponent and painter of watercolours. He likes organ music, French poetry, Pushkin, and privacy. But the secretive former spy has...

Spy reveals Soviet attack plans 05:50 AEDT Mon Feb 14 2005 Soviet agents were prepared to poison military targets, including an Australian naval base, a former KGB spymaster has revealed. Scientist Alexander Kouzminov said agents were ready to poison military figures, civilian settlements and political leaders with lethal bacteria should war break out between the Soviet Union and the West, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Dr Kouzminov said one of the places selected was an area used by the US Navy, close to an Australian naval base, believed to be at Townsville. Dr Kouzminov had to decide whether it was...

Britain and America's most guarded germ warfare secrets have been known to the Russians for decades and spies continue to operate at the heart of the West's biotechnology industry, a former KGB spymaster says today. Alexander Kouzminov also discloses that covert Soviet sabotage agents prepared secret sites where phials of lethal bacteria would be left, ready to poison western military establishments, civilian settlements and even assassinate political leaders in the event of war with the Soviet Union. The scientist, once a senior member of the KGB unit responsible for biological espionage, says that the secrets of Porton Down and the...