Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!clyde.concordia.ca!nstn.ns.ca!news.cs.indiana.edu!att!cbnews!cbnews!military From: howard@cos.com (Howard C. Berkowitz) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Anthrax Message-ID: <1991Feb6.025351.17841@cbnews.att.com> Date: 6 Feb 91 02:53:51 GMT References: <1991Feb4.050514.12630@cbnews.att.com> Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: Corporation for Open Systems, McLean, VA Lines: 98 Approved: military@att.att.com From: howard@cos.com (Howard C. Berkowitz) One poster (Gene Miya?) suggested that information on biowar agent persistence, dispersal (which I interpret to mean optimal aerosol size), etc., is available. From experience in a previous life, the exact techniques of dispersal, and the desired concentration of organisms, are some of the more classifed aspects of BW. Let me merely say that building a disperser that can take the stresses of field handling, doesn't cook organisms while dispersing them, and achieves an optimal aerosol concentration is NOT a trivial engineering problem. In response to Hank Nussbacher, >You can thank the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) in >Atlanta for supplying their Iraqi counterparts with anthrax in 1985. >Iraq did not have any anthrax spores up till then. Hank, do you have a source for this? Anthrax is fairly available in many medical research centers, and especially in veterinary facilities because it is a common disease of sheep. See remarks below I made in alt.desert-storm.facts. In the past, I did research in bacterial biochemistry, and dealt with the American Type Culture Collection. I'm afraid the comments below may be looking at a conspiracy theory which may not be supported by the realities of how medicine, medical research, etc., are really done. In article <13010@life.ai.mit.edu> sundar@ai.mit.edu writes: >Hi: I tried posting this before, but wasn't too successful. Someone >asked if Department of Commerce records can be made public. They >can, but sometimes it takes an enormous amount of effort. >Regarding biological weapons and who supplied Iraq, the picture is indeed >very murky. >* In 1988, Senator John McCain's office begins investigating a non-profit >company called the American Type Culture Collection in Rockville, MD. >* This co. sells 130,000 cultures annually. Iraq has been a customer for >the past 20 years. >* In 1989, ATCC ships tularemia to Iraq. Dept. of Commerce approves the >sale, State and Defense okay it. Let's draw an analogy to what ATCC does. If you are a chemist, and you want an ultrapure sample of some chemical to calibrate your analytical equipment, you go to something approved by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (or directly to NIST). In like manner, NIST broadcasts extremely accurate time information over WWV and other specialized radios. If you are setting up a hospital bacteriology lab, or doing quality control on it, you need known samples of disease-causing microorganisms to test that you can diagnose them. You may need known samples to compare two similar bacteria -- for example, P. tularensis (which causes tularemia) vs. P. pestis (which causes plague) [Yes, I know these are now Yersinia species]. The point I would make is the average medical school (I assume there is one in Iraq), or the medical school attended by a cooperative Iraqi student, normally would have these cultures. ATCC has them more definitively identified as to subspecies, etc. >* Seventeen other shipments to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (thought >to be a fence for Iraq's biological weapons program), however, were NOT >cleared by the Pentagon or Defense -- no one there remembers any of the >applications. Yet they were shipped in the last couple of years anyway. >There have been anonymous leaks that these shipments contained botulin >and anthrax. Botulin, a common name for the toxins produced by Clostridium botulinum, is now being used as a drug, and is quite widely used in academic research. It really isn't hard to get. Similar, anthrax is also known as woolsorter's disease. It is a natural infection of sheep; Pasteur did the first immunization for it. Any nation with significant sheep has anthrax available. Think of the meat served at most middle Eastern restaurants -- Saddam probably has more sheep than Republican Guards. >* Last April, NBC breaks story of how PHS's Centres for Disease Control >has been shipping deadly viruses to researchers in Cuba, Iraq and South >Africa, and China via Express Mail -- all countries suspected of using >these for biological weapons research. (Biohazard level 3&4 materials >were shipped -- including an Israeli strain of West Nile encephalitis) [more examples deleted] I don't doubt that these countries are doing biological warfare research. However, remember that "deadly" microorganisms are readily available at most universities, for quite legitimate purposes. Don't sensationalize the dissemination of these; it's not the same as the diversion of weapons-grade plutonium or uranium. Those materials can be assumed to be for weapons use; you can't make the same assumptions about microbial cultures. -- howard@cos.com OR {uunet, decuac, sun!sundc, hadron, hqda-ai}!cos!howard (703) 883-2812 [W] (703) 998-5017 [H] DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Corporation for Open Systems, its members, or any standards body.