John Clark wrote:
>
> Alex F. Bokov <alexboko@umich.edu>
>
> > If you were a terrorist, and you had several kilos of stolen Russian anthrax
>
> I doubt the anthrax was stolen from the Russians.
>
> 1) The strain was garden variety and first isolated in Ames Iowa about 1950 so Russians
> are not needed, anthrax is not that hard to grow, any competent first year microbiology
> graduate student could do it. The Russians have developed much more exotic strains
> that are resistant to antibiotics.
News now is that this strain was not from the Iowa lab. Anthrax could be
isolated by anyone even with high school biology training (I once did
just that in research project in high school, along with pennicillin,
tetanus, and other interesting organisms). The easiest place to find it
is any building that once functioned as a woolen mill (or still does).
Find the rooms where wool was/is stored, and dig dirt out of the cracks
in the floor boards. Culture from the dirt samples, and isolate the
desired bacteria.
>
> 2) If they stole the bacteria you'd think they would have also stolen something
> more valuable, a device to reliably produce an aerosol of the Spores.
>
> I'm not going to get really worried unless a case of Smallpox occurs anywhere in the
> world. That would be bad.
No doubt.
One thing I find interesting is how quickly all the 'New World Order'
paranoia about vaccinations, the CDC, and the stationing of foreign
troops in the US has dissapeared. Now we have NATO forces patrolling our
skies (NATO AWACS planes), widespread public panic about biowarfare, and
the federal law enforcement gaining unprecedented powers (fortunately
there seems to be a two year sunset provision on these new powers.)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:13 MDT