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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...

The elite media continues to insist that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. attacked in March, citing the scant evidence of any actual weapons finds by U.S. arms inspector David Kay. But if it's true that Saddam Hussein was actually innocent on the WMD charge, then why did he confess in 1998 that his country had amassed huge stockpiles of highly toxic weaponized poisons - along with the delivery systems to take them beyond Iraq's borders. That's right - lost in the debate over why U.S. weapons inspectors have yet to uncover the Iraqi version of...

Scientists discover ‘deadliest substance known to man’ By News.com.auOctober 15, 2013 | 1:34pm Scientists have discovered a new type of botox they believe is the “deadliest substance known to man” and have withheld the DNA sequence because an antidote is not known. It is the first time the scientific community has made such a move to withhold such information but security concerns have dictated that they do so. New Scientist reports that just 2 billionths of a gram, or inhaling 13 billionths of a gram, of the protein botulinum produced by the soil bacterium Clostridium botulinum will kill an adult.

Condoleezza Rice has revealed the moment she thought that she and President George W. Bush had suffered deadly botulism poisoning. In her new book, the former secretary of state reveals that in the weeks following 9/11, there were scares over smallpox and radioactive attacks on Washington – and a potential poisonous toxin attack on the White House. She was on a trip to a summit meeting in China with Bush when former-Vice President Dick Cheney delivered the blow via a secure video conference line. In an interview with ABC News, Ms Rice explained: ‘The vice president came on the screen...

You need to start stocking food. You can do a lot if you start early. Unfortunately, “early” might have been yesterday. Now we’re way past early, and you need a reasonable plan to get food supplies that will store well and don’t cost too much. Buy extra, use FIFO. Go ahead and buy more food than normal when you’re out shopping, and set it aside as preparedness. Use the “first in, first out” rule to eat your older supplies first. Keep rotating your supplies so you never abandon food “way in the back.”

The CIA's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found no evidence that former president Saddam Hussein tried to transfer chemical or biological technology or weapons to terrorists, according to a military and intelligence expert. Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provided new details about the weapons search and Iraqi insurgency in a report released Friday. It was based on briefings over the past two weeks in Iraq from David Kay, the CIA representative who is directing the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq; L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator...

Plastic surgeon Frederic Corbin was intrigued last year when he saw an ad for a product that offered the same protein used in the wildly popular wrinkle treatment Botox — only much, much, cheaper. "My initial reaction was, 'Hmm, Botox now has some competition,'" recalled Corbin, who practices in Beverly Hills, Calif. But when he received a vial of the botulinum toxin in the mail, he was puzzled by the warning: "For Research Purposes Only. Not for Human Use." He says he returned it and more or less forgot about it until he heard about four people last December whose...

After 9/11, the testing to detect contaminants in water supplies abruptly moved from an arcane laboratory exercise to a front-burner item in the forefront of the rapidly developing homeland security market. One of the biggest newsmakers in the emerging marketplace may be a tiny organism called daphnia. The tiny water fleas–typically about 3 mm long–are commonly used as bioindicators. Now, Aqua Survey Inc. is unveiling a detection kit that uses daphnia to quickly determine whether ricin, cyanide, VX, botulinium toxin and other toxins are present in a municipal water supply. The Flemington, N.J.-based firm presented slides and film of daphnia...

Here's some GOOD NEWS you may have missed in your daily wire reports......... Fairpress: Washington D.C., Oct. 2, 2003 -- After three months of careful investigative work in Iraq, David Kay delivered the Iraqi Survey Group's (ISG) detailed preliminary findings to select Congressional committees last Thursday.   Many articles have been written about last week's WMD report.   Members of the Bush administration recommend that we read the report.   To sum up: the ISG team found evidence of WMDs.   According to David Kay:   "Iraq's WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and was elaborately shielded by security and deception operations...

Saddam Hussein may have possessed weapons of mass destruction and hid them, the chief U.S. weapons inspector says. Or the Iraqi dictator may have had the weapons and moved them outside the country just before the war. Or perhaps Saddam never had them at all, and just bluffed to appear strong. Weapons inspector David Kay cited those three theories — and a few others — on Friday as possible answers to why his survey team has so far failed to uncover any weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq Iraqis interviewed by his team have provided information pointing to each of...

 OPERATION: IRAQI FREEDOMBotulinum 'is WMD' State Department spokesman: Lethal bio-toxin 'kills people, it kills people in large quantities' Posted: October 4, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com The vial of botulinum bacteria discovered in Iraq by U.S. arms inspectors – which experts call the most poisonous substance known to man – is "a weapon of mass destruction," the State Department's top spokesman announced yesterday. "Botulinum kills people, it kills people in large quantities. Botulinum is a weapon of mass destruction, yes," said State spokesman Richard Boucher," according to an Agence France-Presse report. "Anything that destroys on a massive scale is a weapon...

“We have yet to find any weapons of mass destruction. …Does it matter that we were misled into war?” - New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, 4/29/03 “Nissar Hindawi, a leading figure in Iraq's biological warfare program in the 1980's, says the stories and explanations he and other scientists told the United Nations about the extent of Iraq's efforts to produce poisons and germ weapons ‘were all lies.’ …He said military officials had asked him to tell inspectors that he was the head of a single-cell protein facility. The plant, in fact, had made botulinum toxin and anthrax. He said...

U.S. faces repercussions if weapons are not found Wednesday, April 16, 2003 BY JOHN HASSELL Star-Ledger Staff [Newark, NJ] -- The list of banned Iraqi weapons cited as the central reason for war by President Bush was lengthy and specific: Anthrax. VX. Botulinum toxin. Nerve gas. R-400 aerial bombs. Bush's assurances that U.S. troops will unearth these weapons of mass destruction, however, have not been borne out by searches at suspect sites in Iraq -- so far. The dilemma for Washington, according to foreign policy analysts, is that with each passing day, the failure to produce evidence of Saddam Hussein's...

SARGAT, Iraq, April 4 — Preliminary tests conducted by MSNBC.com indicate that the deadly toxins ricin and botulinum were present on two items found at a camp in a remote mountain region of northern Iraq allegedly used as a terrorist training center by Islamic militants with ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network. The field tests used by MSNBC.com are only a first step in the evidentiary process and are typically followed by more precise laboratory testing that MSNBC.com has not conducted. U.S. intelligence agents were conducting their own tests in the same area and had not yet released their results,...

<p>SARGAT, Iraq, April 4 — MSNBC.com tests reveal evidence of the deadly toxins ricin and botulinum at a laboratory in a remote mountain region of northern Iraq allegedly used as a terrorist training camp by Islamic militants with ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is conducting its own tests at the same area, but has not yet released the results, according to officials in northern Iraq.</p>

SARGAT, Iraq, April 4 — MSNBC.com tests reveal evidence of the deadly toxins ricin and botulinum at a laboratory in a remote mountain region of northern Iraq allegedly used as a terrorist training camp by Islamic militants with ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is conducting its own tests at the same area, but has not yet released the results, according to officials in northern Iraq. Excerpted. Full article here: http://www.msnbc.com/news/895185.asp

A Vile Business By Gary Milhollin and Kelly Motz The Wall Street Journal March 24, 2003, pp. A16 As our soldiers fight their way across Iraq, the world is wondering what sort of weaponry they will uncover. Outside Saddam's inner circle, no one knows for sure how many germs and poisons, how many nuclear and missile parts, may be hidden away. What we do know is the lion's share of it came from our European allies - and some even from the U.S. It is a sad if not outrageous fact that we must wage war once again to counter...

WASHINGTON, Sept 20 (AFP) - Iraq could unleash a biological attack on the West by using unsuspecting people traveling abroad as carriers of deadly germs, a prominent Iraqi defector warned late Thursday. Nuclear scientist Khidhir Hamza, who left Iraq in 1994 and now lives in the United States, told the US Congress he suspected the Iraqi security service, which runs the country's biological weapons program, had already used people traveling abroad to reunite with relatives to infect exiled dissidents with the deadly AIDS virus. "An angle rarely reported -- and I found extensive incidents regarding it when I left...

Today: July 13, 2002 at 10:10:14 PDT U.S. Says Iraq Would Target Troops ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON- The threat from Iraq's chemical and biological weapons is primarily to U.S. troops and to enemies of President Saddam Hussein inside and near Iraq rather than to civilians in the United States, defense and intelligence officials say. Iraq is believed to have biological weapons including anthrax spores and botulinum poison, which causes botulism. As for chemical agents, Iraq is thought to possess mustard, tabun, sarin and possibly VX gases, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Those are what U.N. inspectors had...