Free Republic

Bavarian Nordic wins freeze-dried Imvamune contract from US government 20 November, 2009 The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) in the US has awarded a US$40m contract to Bavarian Nordic of Denmark to develop a freeze-dried version of its Imvamune smallpox vaccine. The funds will be used to validate the freeze-dried manufacturing process and the associated pre-clinical and clinical studies to support the development of this version of the vaccine. The funding represents 33% of the total contract value, followed by four additional years of optional funding, which will be triggered by the completion of pre-determined technical milestones. The...

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...

It wasn't a bullet or roadside bomb that felled Lance Cpl. Josef Lopez three years ago after nine days in Iraq. It was an injection into his arm before his unit left the states. The then 20-year-old Marine from Springfield, Mo., suffered a rare adverse reaction to the smallpox vaccine. While the vaccine isn't mandatory, the military strongly encourages troops to take it. However, it left Lopez in a coma, unable for a time to breathe on his own and paralyzed for weeks. Now he can walk, but with a limp. He has to wear a urine bag constantly, has...

The guy pictured below in the tie-less bad Don Johnson/"Miami Vice" look from the '80s is Drew Parenti, FBI Special Agent in Charge of Sacramento. But this brown-nosing uber-panderer isn't auditioning for the role of Crockett or Tubbs (either of whom frankly would be more competent at dealing with the enemy). No, he doesn't have a tie on because Muslims--the most extreme among them--don't respect ties. It's Western garb, and they want the world to know, Ahmadinejad-style, that they reject all things western. So congrats, Agent Parenti, you're now a graduate of the Islamist School of Barbaric Fashion. Would Don...

Sure, the economy is causing a crisis, but what about anthrax? How about smallpox? In a little noticed move, federal officials this month have declared a series of public health emergencies relating to potential weapons of biological terror. On Oct. 1, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt declared an anthrax public health emergency. On Oct. 10, he declared health emergencies for smallpox, radiation sickness from the detonation of a nuclear device and poisoning from botulinum toxins, the active ingredient of Botox. There’s no clear evidence that terrorists have managed to weaponize anthrax or stolen large caches of Botox from...

Enlarge ImageEat me.Poxvirus (in green) may enter its host cell (in red) by sporting a "garbage" tag that prompts the cell to swallow it.Credit: Jason Mercer/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology It might not be the most elegant entrance, but poxviruses have engineered a way to sneak into cells through the garbage chute. According to a new study, the virus disguises itself as junk so that it will be gobbled by cells cleaning up floating debris. The discovery could explain how the virus that causes smallpox infects its hosts. In order to replicate, viruses must find some way of getting...

GLOUCESTER'S ROMAN MASS GRAVE SKELETONS WERE PLAGUE VICTIMS By 24 Hour Museum Staff 29/04/2008 Archaeologists work to uncover the Roman mass grave in Gloucester during 2005. © Oxfod Archaeology A mass Roman grave, discovered in Gloucester in 2005, may have contained the victims of an acute disease of epidemic proportions, possibly plague. This is the startling conclusion to a new report by Oxford Archaeology and archaelogical consultancy CgMs, who have been conducting an 18-month programme of scientific study on the grave, which contained around 91 skeletons. The discovery of a mass grave of Roman date is almost unparalleled in British...

Call it one price of globalism. Last year, tuberculosis increased in four of the Bay Area's five largest counties, and the San Jose area in 2006 had the highest TB rate of any large American metro area, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the California Department of Public Health. San Francisco, after an outbreak of TB among Latino day workers in the Mission district, has the highest TB rate of any...

HBO miniseries on "John Adams" demonstrates early form of vaccination for smallpox For many who watched Sunday night's airing of "John Adams," the new HBO series, one scene seemed almost barbaric: A doctor makes incisions with a lancet in the arms of Abigail Adams and her children and places smallpox material directly into the wounds. Abigail Adams believed that you could protect healthy people by injecting them with a deadly disease. Wouldn't that be just as dangerous as hanging around with the infected soldiers shown in the movie? No, Abigail knew what she was doing when she insisted that her...

Whatever Happened To... Smallpox?Humanity stomps nature but is still vulnerable to humanity. by Stephen Ornes Once the most feared disease on the planet, smallpox killed countless people in the course of human history. The first signs of smallpox are fever and aches. Then come the disfiguring pustules, often followed by death. But there hasn’t been a case in nearly 30 years. In 1979, after an aggressive 12-year campaign of vaccination, the World Health Organization declared human beings smallpox-free. William Foege, who worked on the effort and is now a senior fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, says smallpox...

HOUSTON, May 17 (Reuters Life!) - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln may have come closer than previously realized to dying from smallpox shortly after delivering his Gettysburg Address, medical researchers said on Thursday. After giving the Civil War speech, Lincoln became ill with symptoms of smallpox: high fever, weakness, severe pain in the head and back, "prostration" -- an old-fashioned word for extreme fatigue -- and skin eruptions that lasted for three weeks in late 1863. Lincoln's doctors told the ailing president he suffered from a cold or a "bilious fever" before one physician told him he had a mild form...

CHICAGO A 2-year-old Indiana boy and his mother contracted a rare and life-threatening infection from his soldier father's smallpox vaccination, according to a published report. The boy and his mother were being treated in a specially ventilated room at the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital, the Chicago Tribune reported Saturday. The family's name and home town were not released at their request. The boy developed a virulent rash over 80 percent of his body earlier this month after coming in contact with his father, who had recently been vaccinated for smallpox before he was to be deployed overseas by...

Study: Federal vaccination plan inadequate PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- A U.S. scientist is criticizing the effectiveness of a federal plan to vaccinate hospital healthcare workers against a threat of smallpox. Temple University researchers who conducted the first metric analysis of the prophylactic health program say it fell short on several levels and raises questions about future preparedness. In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked each state to vaccinate at least 50 to 100 healthcare workers per hospital -- a number the government considered large enough to respond to a possible smallpox outbreak. "Some states requested thousands...

The emergency room at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood has been reopened after part of the ER was briefly closed this morning, hospital officials said. Earlier today, a man entered the ER with a high fever and a rash -- symptoms that resembled smallpox, a potentially fatal infectious disease. Following standard procedure, hospital officials quarantined one area of the ER. Doctors later said the man did not have smallpox. They have not said what he had.

HOLLYWOOD – Memorial Regional Hospital was put under lockdown for a short time shortly after 7 Friday morning over worries a sick patient was suffering symptoms similar to smallpox, a hospital official said in an e-mail release. Infectious disease experts at the 690-bed hospital and trauma center quickly confirmed that a patient complaining of a high fever and a skin rash was not suffering from deadly smallpox. They did not say what the patient suffered from.

The emergency room at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood was put on lockdown this morning after a possible smallpox scare, fire-rescue officials said. A single patient in the ER could be exhibiting signs and symptoms of the potentially fatal disease, authorities said. It is unclear if the patient was brought in by a rescue team or came to the hospital alone. The emergency room was under quarantine until further notice, fire-rescue officials said.

Mass vaccination would not be necessary in the event of a large-scale smallpox bioterrorist attack in the United States, according to a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that appears online in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. Instead, the current U.S. government policy of post-release surveillance, prompt containment of victims and vaccination of hospital workers and close contacts would be sufficient to thwart an epidemic, according to lead author Ira M. Longini Jr., Ph.D., a world leader in using mathematical and statistical methods to study the natural course of infectious diseases. "We found that a...

A collection of 9/11 tributes I’ll add to the list below, and if you have any you’d like to add to this (or any other sort of tribute/remembrance), please do so here. Either leave a comment with the link, or link to this post and send a trackback. 9/11: The 5th Year Anniversary Tribute Blood of Heroes September 11th, Uncensored From Brain Terminal: Crystal Morning: September 11th, 2001 From William Teach: 9/11 Plus 5 From Crusader: WTC Tribute More from YouTube: 911 tribute September 11th - Five Years Later: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 September 11th - Flash...

(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) URGENT calls have been made for the law to be changed to stop ingredients for deadly biological weapons being bought over the Internet. A shocking investigation has exposed how elements of the deadly smallpox virus can be purchased online then delivered through the post in Britain. It is feared terrorists could use the same tactics to create a biological weapon. Concern over the potential risk to public health last night prompted calls for the law to be changed to close current loopholes. Smallpox is one of the biggest killers in history, having claimed...

Urgent calls for regulation after Guardian buys part of smallpox genome through mail order DNA sequences from some of the most deadly pathogens known to man can be bought over the internet, the Guardian has discovered. In an investigation which shows the ease with which terrorist organisations could obtain the basic ingredients of biological weapons, this newspaper obtained a short sequence of smallpox DNA. The deadly virus has existed only in laboratories since being eradicated from the world's population 30 years ago. The DNA sequence of smallpox, as well as other potentially dangerous pathogens such as poliovirus and 1918 flu...

ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON -- Cabinet officials gathered at the White House complex on Saturday for a drill simulating a smallpox attack against the United States. The four-hour exercise to test the government's response plans was conducted by Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and Centers of Disease Control Director Dr. Julie Gerberding and others. The World Health Organization reported the disease was eradicated in 1980. But there are fears that smallpox could be used by terrorists as a biological weapon. The United States ended routine childhood vaccination against smallpox in 1971. But the Bush administration,...

BIOLOGICAL WAR-FEAR Smallpox vaccine usesfetal cell line Some Americans may refuse shot, worsening potential outbreak By Jon Dougherty © 2001 WorldNetDaily.com A company that would use a stem-cell line from an aborted fetus to manufacture a new smallpox vaccine is one of only a few firms being considered for a major new government contract despite concerns that the use of such tissues could lead many people to refuse the shots, thereby worsening any outbreak. The company, Acambis PLC of England, in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, has already been contracted by the federal government to ...

ASSOCIATED PRESS ATLANTA -- Smallpox shots may have triggered a painful heart inflammation in a very small number of emergency workers vaccinated after Sept. 11, researchers say. A study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association showed a higher rate of heart inflammation cases than ever documented before in people who got smallpox vaccinations. "I think that was completely not anticipated," said Dr. Inger Damon, an author of the study. Overall, however, the vaccine appears to carry an extremely small risk of serious side effects, researchers reported after looking at nearly 700,000 civilians and soldiers who received vaccinations after...

U.S. Preparing For Potential Bioterror Attack New vaccine technologies are emerging that offer a fresh chance to devise a strategy against smallpox, the most fearsome potential weapon in the bioterror arsenal. Two companies are reporting rapid progress in developing a new vaccine designed to be safer than the standard one, and a third company, with no government support, is developing yet another new vaccine. That vaccine could offer significant advantages if terrorists were to unleash the smallpox germ in several cities at once, requiring the vaccination of huge numbers of people. The government stumbled badly in its campaign after Sept....

Biowarfare : Another “Sverdlosk Incident” in Russia ? I’ve been looking at two recent (and ongoing) outbreaks of Tularemia in Russia: (Source: ProMed : Archives # 20050824.2503; # 20050822.2467; # 20050718.2066 ) 1. 96 people –66 from Dzerzhinsk region; 30 from Nizhniy Novogorod. 2. 56 people – all from the Ryazan area , which borders on Nizhniy Novogorod and Vladimir. What makes it notable is that Tularemia is a fairly rare disease: the Ryazan area had only 4 known cases in 2004. (No historic stats were furnished on the Nizhniy Novgoros area or Dzerzhinsk , but the number of cases...

<p>The CIA yesterday concluded that two truck trailers seized by coalition forces in northern Iraq were designed by Saddam Hussein's regime to produce biological weapons agents.</p> <p>A six-page agency white paper said an examination of the trailers' equipment showed that "BW [biological weapons] agent production is the only consistent, logical purpose for these vehicles."</p>

PRINCE GEORGE, British Columbia -- Andrew Knickle found something he hardly expected - or wanted - after he haggled down the price of a box of sailing tarpaulins to $2.50 at a yard sale. "It was a kind of a hard, plastic tube with a screw cap that was labeled smallpox vaccine," Knickle said. "It scared me. All kinds of things went through my head, wondering if this could be meant for some evil purpose in this day and age of bioterrorism." When he shook the package, which bore a label from Connaught Laboratories in Willowdale, Ontario, and an expiration...

The photos of the victims are horrifying. With their bodies covered with huge pustules that will have left large craters in their skin forever (if they survived), the victims of smallpox suffered unimaginable agony. Along with the pus-filled lesions came crushing headaches, delirium, extensive bleeding, crippling backaches, chronic fatigue, unstoppable diarrhea and vomiting, bone infections, pneumonia, and fevers that oftentimes ran above 104 degrees. Highly contagious, it is easily spread through droplets expelled by sneezing, coughing or breathing, and it can also be spread through contact with an item touched by an infected person, like a set of keys, cell...

Smallpox is an acute, highly contagious and often fatal disease caused by the variola virus. The virus is so dangerous and potentially deadly that one confirmed case of smallpox is considered to be a public health emergency. Oh .. and there is no proven treatment for the disease once a person falls ill. You just administer fluids and antibiotics to handle any secondary infections, and hope that the patent is one of the 70%. The other 30% will die. In case you don't already know, Smallpox has been eradicated worldwide. The eradication is so complete that we don't even vaccinate...

WASHINGTON, June 7 (Reuters) - The threat of biochemical attacks by al Qaeda has declined, but the availability of agents and the group's professed interest in using them make the danger very real, a top German counterterrorism official said on Tuesday. "Why are we focusing on biological terrorism? We do so because it fits very well into the strategy, into the thinking of modern terrorists," Georg Witschel, counterterrorism coordinator at Germany's Foreign Ministry, told a biosecurity conference in Washington. "Looking at al Qaeda, since they have lost their territorial base, and since state sponsoring is in general declining, the probability...

The charge: Fabrication Did Ward Churchill falsely accuse the U.S. Army in small pox epidemic? Our findings: His claim isn't supported by the sources he has cited. By Kevin Vaughn, Rocky Mountain News June 6, 2005 The year was 1837, the place was the Upper Missouri River Valley in present-day North Dakota, the disease was smallpox, and the effects on American Indians were devastating. None of that is in dispute. One key fact is: how the disease got there. Numerous historical accounts put the blame in the same place - infected travelers on a steamboat bound for a trading post...

BOSTON, June 1 - A federal initiative as ambitious as the Manhattan Project is needed to protect the nation from infectious diseases, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said Wednesday in a lecture at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Frist, who studied medicine at Harvard, said the effort would defend against both bioterrorism and diseases that are spread naturally. He said that the United States and the rest of the world were unprepared for a potential pandemic despite signs that emerging viruses like the avian flu are capable of causing sharp losses of life. "Any number of known and...

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...

"...This essay analyzes Ward Churchill’s accusations that the US Army perpetuated genocide. Churchill argues that the US Army created a smallpox epidemic among the Mandan people in 1837 by distributing infected blankets. While there was a smallpox epidemic on the Plains in 1837—historians agree, and all evidence points to the fact—that it was accidental, and the Army wasn’t involved...Situating Churchill’s rendition of the epidemic in a broader historiographical analysis, one must reluctantly conclude that Churchill fabricated the most crucial details of his genocide story. Churchill radically misrepresented the sources he cites in support of his genocide charges, sources which say...

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"...

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 2 (HealthDayNews) -- Researchers report that they've been able to stop a smallpox-like virus in mice in just eight days, a development that could lead to more effective treatments for other kinds of illnesses in humans. While the treatment is not ready for use in people, "it represents a new approach toward antiviral therapies," said Dr. Ellis Reinherz, a researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and co-author of the study in the February issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Doctors banished the deadly smallpox virus from the earth in the 1970s, and universal vaccination against the disease...

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...

DAVOS, Switzerland - The world needs an effort similar to that behind the creation of the atomic bomb to tackle the multi-faceted threat of biowarfare, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Thursday. "We need to do something that even dwarfs the Manhattan project," Frist told the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Manhattan project was the codename for the United States's World War II effort to devise an atomic weapon. "The greatest existential threat we have in the world today is biological. Why? Because unlike any other threat it has the power of panic and paralysis to be global."...

AN influential World Health Organization committee is sending shock waves through the scientific community with a recommendation that researchers be permitted to conduct genetic-engineering experiments with the smallpox virus. The idea is to be able to better combat a disease considered a leading bioterrorism threat though it was eradicated publicly 25 years ago. The WHO previously had opposed such work for fear that a "superbug" might emerge. Because the disease is so deadly, the WHO at times has recommended destroying the world?s two known smallpox stockpiles, located in secure labs at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta...

WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (AFP) - Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former French health minister Bernard Kouchner were among the dignitaries playing the role of president of their respective countries in an exercise conducted here Friday to explore how governments around the Atlantic would react to a biological terrorist attack in the region. Under the scenario, presidents and prime ministers of several countries were gathered for a summit in Washington Friday when they learned at 9:00 am that a total of 51 cases of smallpox had been reported in Germany, Turkey, Sweden and the Netherlands. An unknown group...

We are watching a program about an epidemic of smallpox that started in New york city. Pretty interesting to see the way the producers put it together.

Hoping to hasten the doomsday their leader foretold, scientists who were members of Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult brewed batches of anthrax in the early 1990s and released it from an office building and out the back of trucks upwind of the Imperial Palace. But the wet mixture kept clogging the sprayers the Aum Shinrikyo scientists had rigged up, and, unbeknown to them, the strains of anthrax they had ordered from a commercial firm posed no danger to anyone. Frustrated by their failure at biowarfare, they turned to a less arduous method of mass killing -- chemical attack -- and in...

Bioterrorism has been in the minds of millions of Americans ever since the 'anthrax letters' were sent just after 9/11. Unlike conventional terrorism, where a bomb blast is a clear sign that something has happened, biowarfare methods such as spraying viruses into the air or polluting water sources are silent and often leave no visible trace. How do we know if something has happened, and, more importantly, what do we do about it? Israeli scientists are coming up with answers from several different angles.

THE Federal Government has begun distributing thousands of doses of drugs to combat the effects of a terrorist "dirty bomb" attack on Australian soil. A stockpile of nuclear antidote pharmaceuticals and drugs such as Prussian Blue are being distributed to the states along with equipment to detect radioactive contamination. In the event of a dirty bomb attack, the states would be responsible for first response treatment of victims, including the administration of Prussian Blue, in pill form, to combat the effects of radiation. The Federal Government is also boosting stocks of antidotes, vaccines and prophylactics in preparation for an attack...

An advisory committee to the World Health Organization has recommended that Russian and American scientists be allowed to manipulate a gene in the smallpox virus for the first time to speed up discovery of drugs effective against the virus, the agency said today. The proposed laboratory experiments would involve inserting a marker gene into the smallpox virus that glows green under fluorescent light. The technique is a standard test to screen for potential antiviral drugs, but the manipulation would not change the virulence of the virus, said officials of W.H.O., a United Nations agency in Geneva. But approval must first...

Bioterror Defense - Forbes staff, 08.13.04, 6:00 AM ET NEW YORK - Pharmathene is one of a smattering of small and undercapitalized biotechnology outfits trying to develop either vaccines or antidotes for anthrax, which remains, in the opinion of a lot of experts, the most likely weapon to be used against the U.S. in a bioterror attack. The threat of biological attack is considered so serious that President George W. Bush in late July signed Project Bioshield, creating a $5.6 billion fund to stockpile treatments for smallpox, botulism and anthrax over ten years, without the need for approval from the...

Illegals Face a Gauntlet of Doom: The Border Patrol Faces Dopers, Terrorists, and the Desperate Victims of Coyotes. The 2,100 mile southern border of the U.S., with its treacherous mountain ranges, canyons, rivers and deserts, has become an uncontrollable stretch of violence, death, rape and exploitation. Over a decade ago, SOF rode with Border Patrol Agents in Arizona when the situation already seemed out of hand. One of those agents, now retired, recently contacted SOF with a disturbing and frustrated update, reflecting the deterioration of the Mexico-United States border. "In my career, spanning three decades, many of my friends and...

WASHINGTON, June 30 — The Pentagon announced a major expansion of its vaccination program with a new order on Wednesday requiring that anthrax and smallpox vaccine be administered to all soldiers and essential civilians in the Middle East and, for the first time, to troops in South Korea. Pentagon officials said the decision resulted from an increased supply of vaccine, and not from indications of an increased threat of biological or chemical attacks. Even so, these officials also said their concerns that an adversary might attack troops with such unconventional weapons were undiminished. William Winkenwerder Jr., the assistant secretary of...