Thursday, October 10, 2013
Freud on telepathy
It is a curious fact of history that Sigmund Freud, the no-nonsense realist who called belief in God delusional, was convinced of the reality of the phenomenon of telepathy.
The founder of psychoanalysis argued that while most tales of telepathic experiences are not credible, there remain a few which are hard to explain. His thought was that telepathy was a throwback to an earlier period of human evolution, an archaic means of communication later supplanted by the more useful verbal language.
For more on this, see the note Freud on telepathy posted at
http://randompaulr.blogspot.com/2013/10/freud-on-telepathy.html
The founder of psychoanalysis argued that while most tales of telepathic experiences are not credible, there remain a few which are hard to explain. His thought was that telepathy was a throwback to an earlier period of human evolution, an archaic means of communication later supplanted by the more useful verbal language.
For more on this, see the note Freud on telepathy posted at
http://randompaulr.blogspot.com/2013/10/freud-on-telepathy.html
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Hayden faults Obama's secrecy
on NSA surveillance programs
Michael Hayden, a former NSA chief, appeared to rebuke President Obama for his failure to seek broad public support for the spy agency's covert mass surveillance programs, according to a Guardian account of a talk in London that appears today.
Presidents can do "one-offs" without constitutional authority, Hayden is quoted as saying in the Guardian's paraphrase. But, said Hayden as quoted by the Guardian, "no president can do something repeatedly over a long term without that broad support."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/nsa-director-intelligence-public-support
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/nsa-director-intelligence-public-support
The Guardian has initiated a new NSA section with an editor assigned to post updates from the Guardian and from around the web, where an interesting analysis by Edward Snowden can be found.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Russia includes Israel
in bid for WMD-free zone
Russia is pressing for complete abolition of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. Though the Reuters report linked here does not mention the Jewish state, nevertheless it has long been an open secret that Israel stocks WMD, including nuclear bombs.
NSA'S Marina is a big fan of what you do
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/nsa-americans-metadata-year-documents
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/nsa-americans-metadata-year-documents
Should disenchanted Liberals quietly welcome shutdown?
President Obama's repudiation of all that he purportedly stood for with respect to the basic freedoms of Americans is something that angers and chagrins virtually all strong liberals. And, it is also true that liberals have found the crony-capitalism national health law very hard to swallow.
Some may argue that liberals should just suck it up and fight for Obamacare (more correctly named Romneycare). However, maybe the priority should be for all hands to resist the situation brought about by the Obama administration's stealth attack on the Fourth Amendment and its maneuvering to massively expand a covert parallel government.
Certainly there can be no gain without pain. Rather than do anything to bolster Obama politically, liberals may wish to consider standing clear and letting Obama fight without their help.
We're off Facebook
Sister pages of Newz from Limbo on Facebook have been taken down after Facebook or another party erased nearly all posts for 2013. Under such circumstances, there doesn't seem to be much to gain in using Facebook.
We're off Facebook
Sister pages of Newz from Limbo on Facebook have been taken down after Facebook or another party erased nearly all posts for 2013. Under such circumstances, there doesn't seem to be much to gain in using Facebook.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Pro-Soviet intrigue
in the White House
The strange case of Robert M. Gates
A top-level U.S. security official intervened to prevent the British and American press from embarrassing Russia's top communist with exposes of the Soviet Union's vast germ warfare program, it has been disclosed.
Eager to spotlight Soviet duplicity, British Prime Minister John Major's government was considering having a highly credible defector, Vladimir Pasechnik, make his charges public, perhaps in a television documentary, according to a published report. But, a top presidential aide, Robert M. Gates, was "horrified" and vetoed the plan, the report says.
Confronted years later by a reporter, Gates conceded: "The information was tightly held. And the Bush administration had a pretty good reputation for keeping secrets."
Gates defended his conduct by saying that his aim was to shield the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, from being destabilized by public awareness that the Soviets were busily ignoring the treaty banning biowar weapons and were piling up huge stockpiles of weaponized germs capable of wiping out the human race several times over.
Gates said he was worried that someone worse than Gorbachev might take over and derail Gorbachev's reforms. Had the public become aware of the staggeringly large germ war program, Gorbachev's much touted reforms would have been taken by many as a Soviet deception operation.
Gates's quoted remarks said nothing about the pro-democracy politician, Boris N. Yeltsin, who went on to liberate Russia from communism, although Gates's boss, George H.W. Bush, delivered a speech in Kiev backing Gorbachev's communist regime over the Yeltsin forces.
At the time of his intervention to shield the world from knowledge of communist perfidy, Gates was deputy national security director. He continued in Washington as chief of the CIA. More recently he served as secretary of defense for President George W. Bush and President Obama.
The remarkable, but little noticed disclosure, is found in a book by three New York Times reporters, Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William Broad. Their book, Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War was published by Simon and Schuster in 2001.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Why won't the communists
clear the world of the flu?
China's germ warfare against humankind
Public health authorities are well aware that the strains of influenza that sweep the globe every year are a consequence of lack of proper sanitary standards in the Chinese food industry.
The influenza virus has cohabited for tens of thousands of years in ducks, and does them little harm. However, when ducks congregate with chickens and pigs, an occasional mutation in the duck's flu virus will enter the chickens or pigs raised on Chinese farms. Once that mutated virus is propagated among the pigs and chickens, the likelihood of the virus transferring to humans increases.
The problem is that in China, migratory ducks flock to the water and feed provided to chickens, which are often raised along with herds of pigs. However, proper health standards would block the ducks from intermingling. Large chicken and pig growing operations could, for example, install cheap plastic mesh over areas where ducks tend to flock. The local farmers, who may regard the ducks as a potential delicacy, need to be educated on the public health menace that stems from current practices.
The Communist Party, which runs Chinese governments, have known about this for years, but have done absolutely nothing, once again showing that political power is a far bigger consideration among party members than is human life.
It is curious that China's trading partners are equally fatalistic. Why don't governments of the world press in the United Nations to have China cease and desist from annually scourging humanity with unnecessary, and sometimes fatal, disease? Such neglect amounts to germ warfare against humanity.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Biotech or bioterror? A global dilemma
This report was published in 2006 and has been mildly revised since. Though the article focuses on germ warfare rather than nerve gases, it does spotlight the very serious problem of nations -- especially unstable nations -- storing such diabolical arms.
Experts worry about
BBC thumbnail of Kenneth Alibek
Roger Brent's faculty page
https://depts.washington.edu/mcb/users/rbrent
Michael V. Callahan, DARPA scientist
http://cmedownload.com/faculty/michael-v-callahan-md-dtmh-msph
Basement gene tweakers -- Wired article
Professors embroiled in bioterror fears
Bioterrorism: a clear and present danger -- article by federal scientists
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v7/n12/full/nm1201-1271.html
Bioterrorism: a clear and present danger -- article by federal scientists
Helpful government bioterror info links
Globalization and biosecurity (National Academies)
Biotech and terror (National Academies)
Human genome project's private sector alliance
President's Council on Bioethics
Genome chip technology
Chilling E coli scenarios in fatal outbreaks
http://conantcensorshipissue.blogspot.com/2011/07/chilling-e_05.html
Arizona warned health care workers on E. coli terrorism
http://conantcensorshipissue.blogspot.com/2011/07/arizona-warned-health-workers-of.html
Copyright 2006 by Znewz1
JULY 2006--This article is drawn in part from a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack, which is part of the Homeland Security Committee. The Federation of American Scientists provided a transcript in July 2006. Other sources are National Academies reports. Permission is granted for reproduction of this article.
Could a lone crazed gene scientist or a cell of fanatical "suicide coughers" unleash a global pandemic that kills tens of millions of people?
Such a day is at hand, if it is not already here, say top U.S. biological weapons experts. And U.S. defenses against such attacks are far from adequate, they say.
The specter of Ted Kaczynski, the mathematician now imprisoned in the serial Unabomber murders, is much on the minds of those with an interest in America's biodefenses. Tools and knowledge now available, some of it via the Internet, are just waiting to fall into the hands of such a person, experts fear.
The revolution in biotechnology means that biologists can swap genes in and out of an organism to increase its virulence or resistance to antibiotics. Moreover, they can assemble an entire pathogen -- disease-causing microbe -- from scratch.
Unlike nuclear weapon construction, which is effectively contained by control of fissile materials, bioweapon construction is not nearly so difficult a challenge for terrorists, according to experts testifying before the House Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack.
The Centers of Disease Control have identified 60 pathogens that federal scientists consider dangerous and in need of controls and devlopment of countermeasures, such as vaccines, according to a panel member, James R. Langevin, D-R.I.
Langevin pointed out that supplies, such as DNA and growth media, that might be of use to bioterrorists can be obtained by mail-order.
Government, university and pharmaceutical research programs are involved in a wild scramble to develop biotech in the fight against disease, the engineering of superior crops and livestock and for varied and sundry other industrial purposes. For example, the federal Human Genome Project works hard to pass along a torrent of knowledge stemming from its work to the private sector.
Imposing controls on U.S. biotech research, however, makes little sense in the face of the industry's boom outside America, say experts who are pushing for more international safeguards -- arguing that the biological weapons treaty is inadequate. They note that China -- still straddled by authoritarian communism despite the fond hopes of the U.S. policy of "engagement" -- is a hub of biotech research, much of it intertwined with U.S. business.
Germ war expertise for sale
Nevertheless, regardless of the outcome of claims concerning Iraq biowar capabilities, other Middle Eastern states, perhaps employing ex-Soviet germ war scientists, also have the capability of posing major threats, according to experts. Iran is a central concern.
The Soviet Union ran a vast and dangerous germ warfare research program, known as Biopreparat, and once headed by Kenneth Alibek, who is a now a U.S. biowar consultant. Alibek testified in the July 2005 hearing that in the 1980s his experts were exploiting new discoveries in genetic engineering to create AIDS-type pathogens that were intended to subvert victim immune systems.
Alibek said lawmakers should focus on the fact that a new pathogen, perhaps resistant to antibiotics, can be formed by simple genetic engineering. "This knowledge exists; this knowledge is, let me say, widely published; and there is no significant problem to developing genetically engineered pathogens."
However, once a pathogen is engineered, terrorists still face the problem of brewing up large enough batches, though that problem is not as difficult as it once was, because the boom in genetic technology has resulted in the downsizing of key equipment.
Alibek said that the knowledge and capability is already in place for state-supported groups to produce biowar weapons but he was cautious about the thought that "low-level terrorist groups" might already be capable of such technology.
However, others voiced concerns about the possibility of "garage hackers" producing new biological pathogens rather than computer viruses. Interest in gene-splicing and DNA information is growing among amateurs, according to a July 2006 report in Wired magazine (see link above).Wired also cites the case of two professors caught up in bioterror fears over one's amateur interest.
Gene-splicing knowledge abounds
Increasing numbers of people have access to such information, according to witness Roger Brent, director of the Molecular Sciences Institute and a Pentagon consultant. Research into recombinant DNA is more than 30 years old, and the genetic technology revolution is proceeding exponentially, analagous to the accelerating pace of computer efficiency, he said.
As a consequence, Brent said, great potential benefits for humanity are clouded by the fact that there are tens of thousands of people who have the knowledge to engineer drug-resistant anthrax, or who could remake the savage SARS virus, or who might augment existing organisms to make them more deadly. Though the 2001 anthrax attacks showed the hand of an experienced scientist, biowar knowledge is no longer the province of a few shadowy specialists, witnesses said.
Brent aired the scenario of a group of militants who inflict themselves with a highly contagious disease, such as reformulated SARS, who cough on people with the consequence of millions of deaths.
The threat from cult terrorists, who might not be concerned with preserving a particular population, is illustrated by the cult Aum Shinrikyo, which killed 20 people in a Japanese subway using the deadly toxicant Ricin in 1995. The group turned to Ricin after experiments with microbial warfare succeeded only against cult members, it has been reported. But another cult might prove more successful.
James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix encodement of DNA, has said that the perils of genetic engineering were foreseen in the 1970s, but money pressures eventually broke the moratorium on such research. Watson eventually broke ranks and joined those who favored experimentation.
Other experts have warned that the recombinant DNA genie is already having unknown, but far-reaching consequences in the global ecology, as genetically modified plants and animals escape into the wild and, following classical environmental pressures, mutate and diversify. Some experts say there is no way to know whether such a mutant will eventually lead to a major extinction event that could include the human race (though this fear also applied prior to genetic engineering).
Brent said there is no easy solution to the biodefense problem, but warned that programs to stockpile vaccines are likely to be ineffective in that germ war specialists would simply design a pathogen that circumvents the vaccine. Specifically, anthrax can be modified to sidestep the current vaccine, he said.
The anthrax threat is still with us
Genocidal weapons are not the only concern. In 2001, Alibek noted, a relatively small amount of weaponized anthrax -- 5 to 7 grams -- sent through the mails resulted in months of uncertainty and large sums of money spent to defuse public anxiety and counter the contamination.
Anthrax, which does not easily spread from one person to the next, could still be aerosolized and sprayed into, for example, subway tunnels. The effect on the public would be so great as to perhaps warrant the permanent closure of the underground system, Alibek said.
Michael V. Callahan, an expert on biodefense and mass casualty care who in July 2006 was employed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, warns of 200 laboratories in sub-Saharan Africa, a number of them in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists, which have the capability to isolate and purify anthrax and plague pathogens. These laboratories run across these organisms in normal veterinary and medical work, he said.
Disseminaton of products -- called reagants -- for amplifying such pathogens must be monitored, he said, though such technology is easy to get. Callahan also cited a test whereby experts found that they could produce 14 million lethal doses of anthrax for a reagant cost of less than $100.
The people who ran the bioterror test obtained all their information from open sources, including the U.S. Patent Office and out-of-date microbiology books, Brent emphasized. Much DNA information has been patented by genetic technology businesses.
In what he called an "exciting" development, Callahan, who has assisted in the decommissioning of Biopreparat operations, noted that the Soviet bioweapons program had included development of recently disclosed countermeasure drugs that strengthen the immune system.
Possibilities are getting worse
However, Callahan reported that the world of bioterror has, if anything, grown grimmer since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its germ war program. "Our scientific understanding of microbial metabolism and the improved efficiency of automated small scale fermenters have increased the amount of vegetative bacteria that can be produced with minimal resources," he said. Very troubling is the growing availability of small-scale fermentation systems which reduce the need for skilled technicians and a major support structure, he said.
"Potentially, a former weapons scientist from Stepnogorsk could travel to a country in the Middle East and reconvene a weapons capability from available veterinary, agricultural and clinical microbiology resources," he said.
The witnesses did not address the issue of Iraq's purported program for weapons of mass destruction, though Callahan's testimony indicates that Saddam Hussein would have had little trouble in implementing such a program, had he wished. Hussein's biowar stocks appear to have been destroyed after the first war with the United States though President Bush has said he was convinced that Hussein was hiding such weaponry prior to the second war with the United States. However, U.S. military authorities made little effort to find the purported germ war stocks in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.
Advances in understanding of lung airflow that have benefited numerous respiratory patients are also available to designers of anthrax borne on aerosols, Callahan warned. Specially coated anthrax spores would penetrate lungs after the fashion of the new class of lung medications, he said.
He also pointed out that biowar pathogens can be engineered that evade vaccines.
Development of such superbugs, however, is not necessarily cost-effective. A military biowar unit might find that coming up with an effective contagiously spread pathogen is too time-consuming. Merely because a pathogen is initially virulent doesn't mean it is stable after many replications. It might have a tendency to peter out, to mutate into something relatively innocuous. However, a group of terrorists might be willing to try an untested organism and, against the odds, succeed at killing millions, experts say.
The Kaczynski factor
Concerned about this point, subcommittee Chairman John Linder, R-Ga., asked whether someone with a "modicum of talent in this business" might genetically alter the SARS virus and "make it more virulent, spread faster and make it more difficult to treat?"
The "short answer is yes," replied Brent, though the recombinant virus might actually be weaker than the original.
Still, resynthesized SARS spread by suicidal coughers is a real concern, said Brent.
Anthrax, though not contagious in humans, is the more serious threat, said witnesses, Callahan noting that "you don't have to store it, it lives forever, and you don't have to feed it." The pathogen is also easy to obtain because the disease afflicts animals in many places, he said.
However, Callahan put avian influenza -- bird flu -- as a top concern because of its extreme mortality in humans. If a mutated bird flu pathogen becomes contagious among humans and remains extremely deadly, it could kill some 50 million people worldwide, experts have said. Artificial alteration of the pathogen is a severe worry, Callahan testified. Still, "new inhibitor" drugs are available against bird flu, and biowar experts might face obstacles in getting past these defenses, he conceded.
Another big concern is the possibility that smallpox, once considered eradicated, might be bred from some old Soviet stash. Treatment of smallpox is difficult.
Other pathogens potentially subject to terrorist manipulation include famine-inducing microbes, such as Glanders and zoological agents, that might wreak havoc among livestock and agriculture, said Callahan. Another top concern, he said, is the engineering of microbes resistant to light, making them difficult to decontaminate.
Of keen interest to microbiologists are the thermophiles, microbes that thrive in extreme heat. Other microbes consume metals and are of interest to the military as a means of weakening enemy infrastructure.
Porous biodefenses
Though the United States has drastically improved security of biohazard stocks, said Callahan, such safeguards are "easily circumvented by the novel engineering of a new agent" and "getting a new anthrax strain out of Texas, South Dakota or Maine" can be accomplished within a few days, he said.
Not only is intentional terrorism a worry, but a new concern is adolescent hackers, who maliciously send out deadly bugs without fully realizing what they are doing.
One lawmaker worried that "already the technology exists to resynthesize small viral genomes," a technology that might easily fall into the hands of DNA hackers.
Callahan expressed alarm at the easy availability of biotech knowledge that is spreading like wildfire as biotech businesses and research surges. He said that in the first third of last year, "there are 19 papers that have been produced which provide heavy, excellent answers for the challenges facing a biological weapon scientist" working in some mountain cave lab.
Callahan said the rate of open-source publication of biotech papers was outpacing the Homeland Security Department's ability to monitor them to assess the threat of the published information. "We are just picking up the big stuff, and we are probably about a year behind. We have received several red alerts this month for publications that will show up next month."
Additionally, amateurs and potential "garage hackers" have increasing access to biotech information and new portable equipment, he said.
Brent told lawmakers that he was unconvinced that there were any good means of choking off terrorist access to germ war technology.
Though experts seem wary that DNA-tech savvy teenagers pose an imminent threat, there is the 1995 report of the Detroit Boy Scout building a nuclear reactor at home, using local pitchblende ore and components available at Home Depot. And a National Aacademies report said that high school students routinely do recombinant DNA experiments.
Problems of surveillance
Such worries have undoubtedly strengthened the hand of those who argue that the Bush administration's use of extraordinary surveillance measures is well justified. In particular, the use of network theory might help monitors to zero in on threats, though mathematicians are not unanimous on the efficacy of such programs.
The problem of "false positives" may put monitors in the position of "crying wolf" too often.
Callahan suggested that a new technology was needed, whereby detection equipment was not focused on a single pathogen, but on changes in various pathogens. Callahan is currently heading DARPA research into biowar countermeasures.
Brent urged a "greatly beefed-up World Health Organization" that could be used in efforts to monitor possible biowar activities.
Callahan said WHO's bioterror awareness had improved but Alibek cautioned that "the international community" is inadequately involved in biodefense.
Alibek said DARPA was doing sophisticated work in anthrax defense and urged passing on these countermeasures for public use but Brent said a foe would simply strike with something other than anthrax.
The experience of coping with SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, demonstrates that biodefense authorities are not in an easy position, experts said. In Asia in 2003, the SARS virus killed 10 percent of the 8,000 people who were sickened by it.
Another concern is the possible engineering of pathogens that target specific DNA subgroups, informally known as "races." Since some diseases, such as sickle-cell anemia, are specific to racial type, it is a concern that a malicious group might bio-engineer a pathogen intended to wipe out a particular race.
The witnesses did not discuss the possibility of nanotech terrorism. However, as nanotechnology and nanomedicine gain ground, the fear is likely to worsen.
Nano-computers and nano-machines -- devices that are no bigger than a few atoms -- are in the developmental stages. At some point, they may be used in medicine to enter the body to control molecular interactions. Some have foreseen the possibility of self-replicating nano-robots, which, if misused, could swarm through a victim like a microbial infection -- with devastating results.
In May 2006, Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, re-emphasized that "we cannot become complacent" about bioterror threats. Fauci's agency, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, has been undertaking research into vaccines against anthrax and other bioterror threats.
In a Nature article published after the 2001 anthrax attacks -- which killed four people and forced 30,000 others to take antibiotics -- Fauci and fellow agency scientists, pointed out that, in the event of a bio-attack, the appropriate antibiotic regimen and duration of treatment can be uncertain.
The NIAID has identified three categories of potential bioterror agent:
Category A. Anthrax, botulism, plague, smallpox, tularemia ("rabbit fever") and viral hemorrhagic fevers.
Category B. Q fever (carried by livestock), trucellosis, Glanders, ricin toxin and staphylococcus enterotoxin B1.
Category C. Nipah virus, Hanta viruses, tick-borne encephalitis viruses, yellow fever, drug-resistant tuberculosis.
These categories, however, do not adequately address emerging bioterror threats, according to a panel of experts writing for the federally funded National Academies, which focus on science and technology.
Two reports, one in 2004 and another in 2006, by National Academy experts stress the need to develop a comprehensive security structure within the biotech arena, whereby scientists, journal publishers and others continually watch for potential threats from wide dissemination of information.
But, the 2006 report found that censorship is not an easy issue. Commenting on the furor over publication of the method of altering the mousepox virus that made it more vicious and immune to vaccine, the panel said the technology the authors cited -- incorporating the IL4 gene into the mousepox genome -- has been known for decades. Similarly, the panelists said, the synthesis, from scratch, of the poliovirus genome, was accomplished with well-known methods. Though such replication might pose a threat, in this case the poliovirus was considerably weaker than wild strains, probably because of synthesis methods.
Also, the very knowledge that is needed to identify how a pathogen works so that it can be combated is potentially of use to a bioweapon maker, experts say.
The 2006 National Academies report identifies technologies that seek to:
* Acquire new biological or molecular diversity.
* Generate new but predetermined and specific biological or molecular entities via directed design.
* Understand and manipulate biological systems in a more comprehensive and effective manner.
* Enhance production, delivery and packaging of biologically active materials.
Of particular concern are transfer of antibiotic resistance to microbes, modification of a microbe's antigenic properties, modification of a microbe's stability in an environment, and transfer of pathogenic properties to a microbe.
The 2004 National Academies report outlined seven types of experiment that should be watched:
* How to render a vaccine ineffective. A vaccine-resistant smallpox strain could prove devastating.
* How to make pathogens resistant to antibiotic and antiviral drugs.
* How to increase the transmissibility of pathogens, whether within or between species.
* How to alter the range of the pathogen -- that is, making it a danger to more lifeforms.
* How to evade diagnostic testing for a disease, through use of microencapsulation or alteration of gene sequences to change the DNA fingerprint.
* How to enable the weaponization of of a biological agent or toxin. Example: synthesis of the smallpox virus.
In their 2005 book Microbe,
In their 2005 book Microbe, Alan P. Zelicoff and Michael Bellomo report the Pentagon's short list of bioterror threats to civilian or military populations. They give this breakdown:
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Hot Wire -- found at https://Facebook.com/OutOfLimbo -- follows an editorial format that is substantially different than the format of Newz from Limbo.
Experts worry about
- A 'Ted Kaczynski' who turns bio-terrorist
- Mischievous teenagers who 'hack' superbugs
- Availability of biotech knowledge amid boom
- Possibility 'suicide coughers' could kill millions
BBC thumbnail of Kenneth Alibek
Roger Brent's faculty page
https://depts.washington.edu/mcb/users/rbrent
Michael V. Callahan, DARPA scientist
http://cmedownload.com/faculty/michael-v-callahan-md-dtmh-msph
Basement gene tweakers -- Wired article
Professors embroiled in bioterror fears
Bioterrorism: a clear and present danger -- article by federal scientists
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v7/n12/full/nm1201-1271.html
Bioterrorism: a clear and present danger -- article by federal scientists
Helpful government bioterror info links
Globalization and biosecurity (National Academies)
Biotech and terror (National Academies)
Human genome project's private sector alliance
President's Council on Bioethics
Genome chip technology
Chilling E coli scenarios in fatal outbreaks
http://conantcensorshipissue.blogspot.com/2011/07/chilling-e_05.html
Arizona warned health care workers on E. coli terrorism
http://conantcensorshipissue.blogspot.com/2011/07/arizona-warned-health-workers-of.html
Draft 5
By Paul Conant
Copyright 2006 by Znewz1
JULY 2006--This article is drawn in part from a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack, which is part of the Homeland Security Committee. The Federation of American Scientists provided a transcript in July 2006. Other sources are National Academies reports. Permission is granted for reproduction of this article.
Could a lone crazed gene scientist or a cell of fanatical "suicide coughers" unleash a global pandemic that kills tens of millions of people?
Such a day is at hand, if it is not already here, say top U.S. biological weapons experts. And U.S. defenses against such attacks are far from adequate, they say.
The specter of Ted Kaczynski, the mathematician now imprisoned in the serial Unabomber murders, is much on the minds of those with an interest in America's biodefenses. Tools and knowledge now available, some of it via the Internet, are just waiting to fall into the hands of such a person, experts fear.
The revolution in biotechnology means that biologists can swap genes in and out of an organism to increase its virulence or resistance to antibiotics. Moreover, they can assemble an entire pathogen -- disease-causing microbe -- from scratch.
Unlike nuclear weapon construction, which is effectively contained by control of fissile materials, bioweapon construction is not nearly so difficult a challenge for terrorists, according to experts testifying before the House Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack.
The Centers of Disease Control have identified 60 pathogens that federal scientists consider dangerous and in need of controls and devlopment of countermeasures, such as vaccines, according to a panel member, James R. Langevin, D-R.I.
Langevin pointed out that supplies, such as DNA and growth media, that might be of use to bioterrorists can be obtained by mail-order.
Government, university and pharmaceutical research programs are involved in a wild scramble to develop biotech in the fight against disease, the engineering of superior crops and livestock and for varied and sundry other industrial purposes. For example, the federal Human Genome Project works hard to pass along a torrent of knowledge stemming from its work to the private sector.
Imposing controls on U.S. biotech research, however, makes little sense in the face of the industry's boom outside America, say experts who are pushing for more international safeguards -- arguing that the biological weapons treaty is inadequate. They note that China -- still straddled by authoritarian communism despite the fond hopes of the U.S. policy of "engagement" -- is a hub of biotech research, much of it intertwined with U.S. business.
Germ war expertise for sale
Nevertheless, regardless of the outcome of claims concerning Iraq biowar capabilities, other Middle Eastern states, perhaps employing ex-Soviet germ war scientists, also have the capability of posing major threats, according to experts. Iran is a central concern.
The Soviet Union ran a vast and dangerous germ warfare research program, known as Biopreparat, and once headed by Kenneth Alibek, who is a now a U.S. biowar consultant. Alibek testified in the July 2005 hearing that in the 1980s his experts were exploiting new discoveries in genetic engineering to create AIDS-type pathogens that were intended to subvert victim immune systems.
Alibek said lawmakers should focus on the fact that a new pathogen, perhaps resistant to antibiotics, can be formed by simple genetic engineering. "This knowledge exists; this knowledge is, let me say, widely published; and there is no significant problem to developing genetically engineered pathogens."
However, once a pathogen is engineered, terrorists still face the problem of brewing up large enough batches, though that problem is not as difficult as it once was, because the boom in genetic technology has resulted in the downsizing of key equipment.
Alibek said that the knowledge and capability is already in place for state-supported groups to produce biowar weapons but he was cautious about the thought that "low-level terrorist groups" might already be capable of such technology.
However, others voiced concerns about the possibility of "garage hackers" producing new biological pathogens rather than computer viruses. Interest in gene-splicing and DNA information is growing among amateurs, according to a July 2006 report in Wired magazine (see link above).Wired also cites the case of two professors caught up in bioterror fears over one's amateur interest.
Gene-splicing knowledge abounds
Increasing numbers of people have access to such information, according to witness Roger Brent, director of the Molecular Sciences Institute and a Pentagon consultant. Research into recombinant DNA is more than 30 years old, and the genetic technology revolution is proceeding exponentially, analagous to the accelerating pace of computer efficiency, he said.
As a consequence, Brent said, great potential benefits for humanity are clouded by the fact that there are tens of thousands of people who have the knowledge to engineer drug-resistant anthrax, or who could remake the savage SARS virus, or who might augment existing organisms to make them more deadly. Though the 2001 anthrax attacks showed the hand of an experienced scientist, biowar knowledge is no longer the province of a few shadowy specialists, witnesses said.
Brent aired the scenario of a group of militants who inflict themselves with a highly contagious disease, such as reformulated SARS, who cough on people with the consequence of millions of deaths.
The threat from cult terrorists, who might not be concerned with preserving a particular population, is illustrated by the cult Aum Shinrikyo, which killed 20 people in a Japanese subway using the deadly toxicant Ricin in 1995. The group turned to Ricin after experiments with microbial warfare succeeded only against cult members, it has been reported. But another cult might prove more successful.
James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix encodement of DNA, has said that the perils of genetic engineering were foreseen in the 1970s, but money pressures eventually broke the moratorium on such research. Watson eventually broke ranks and joined those who favored experimentation.
Other experts have warned that the recombinant DNA genie is already having unknown, but far-reaching consequences in the global ecology, as genetically modified plants and animals escape into the wild and, following classical environmental pressures, mutate and diversify. Some experts say there is no way to know whether such a mutant will eventually lead to a major extinction event that could include the human race (though this fear also applied prior to genetic engineering).
Brent said there is no easy solution to the biodefense problem, but warned that programs to stockpile vaccines are likely to be ineffective in that germ war specialists would simply design a pathogen that circumvents the vaccine. Specifically, anthrax can be modified to sidestep the current vaccine, he said.
The anthrax threat is still with us
Genocidal weapons are not the only concern. In 2001, Alibek noted, a relatively small amount of weaponized anthrax -- 5 to 7 grams -- sent through the mails resulted in months of uncertainty and large sums of money spent to defuse public anxiety and counter the contamination.
Anthrax, which does not easily spread from one person to the next, could still be aerosolized and sprayed into, for example, subway tunnels. The effect on the public would be so great as to perhaps warrant the permanent closure of the underground system, Alibek said.
Michael V. Callahan, an expert on biodefense and mass casualty care who in July 2006 was employed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, warns of 200 laboratories in sub-Saharan Africa, a number of them in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists, which have the capability to isolate and purify anthrax and plague pathogens. These laboratories run across these organisms in normal veterinary and medical work, he said.
Disseminaton of products -- called reagants -- for amplifying such pathogens must be monitored, he said, though such technology is easy to get. Callahan also cited a test whereby experts found that they could produce 14 million lethal doses of anthrax for a reagant cost of less than $100.
The people who ran the bioterror test obtained all their information from open sources, including the U.S. Patent Office and out-of-date microbiology books, Brent emphasized. Much DNA information has been patented by genetic technology businesses.
In what he called an "exciting" development, Callahan, who has assisted in the decommissioning of Biopreparat operations, noted that the Soviet bioweapons program had included development of recently disclosed countermeasure drugs that strengthen the immune system.
Possibilities are getting worse
However, Callahan reported that the world of bioterror has, if anything, grown grimmer since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its germ war program. "Our scientific understanding of microbial metabolism and the improved efficiency of automated small scale fermenters have increased the amount of vegetative bacteria that can be produced with minimal resources," he said. Very troubling is the growing availability of small-scale fermentation systems which reduce the need for skilled technicians and a major support structure, he said.
"Potentially, a former weapons scientist from Stepnogorsk could travel to a country in the Middle East and reconvene a weapons capability from available veterinary, agricultural and clinical microbiology resources," he said.
The witnesses did not address the issue of Iraq's purported program for weapons of mass destruction, though Callahan's testimony indicates that Saddam Hussein would have had little trouble in implementing such a program, had he wished. Hussein's biowar stocks appear to have been destroyed after the first war with the United States though President Bush has said he was convinced that Hussein was hiding such weaponry prior to the second war with the United States. However, U.S. military authorities made little effort to find the purported germ war stocks in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.
Advances in understanding of lung airflow that have benefited numerous respiratory patients are also available to designers of anthrax borne on aerosols, Callahan warned. Specially coated anthrax spores would penetrate lungs after the fashion of the new class of lung medications, he said.
He also pointed out that biowar pathogens can be engineered that evade vaccines.
Development of such superbugs, however, is not necessarily cost-effective. A military biowar unit might find that coming up with an effective contagiously spread pathogen is too time-consuming. Merely because a pathogen is initially virulent doesn't mean it is stable after many replications. It might have a tendency to peter out, to mutate into something relatively innocuous. However, a group of terrorists might be willing to try an untested organism and, against the odds, succeed at killing millions, experts say.
The Kaczynski factor
Concerned about this point, subcommittee Chairman John Linder, R-Ga., asked whether someone with a "modicum of talent in this business" might genetically alter the SARS virus and "make it more virulent, spread faster and make it more difficult to treat?"
The "short answer is yes," replied Brent, though the recombinant virus might actually be weaker than the original.
Still, resynthesized SARS spread by suicidal coughers is a real concern, said Brent.
Anthrax, though not contagious in humans, is the more serious threat, said witnesses, Callahan noting that "you don't have to store it, it lives forever, and you don't have to feed it." The pathogen is also easy to obtain because the disease afflicts animals in many places, he said.
However, Callahan put avian influenza -- bird flu -- as a top concern because of its extreme mortality in humans. If a mutated bird flu pathogen becomes contagious among humans and remains extremely deadly, it could kill some 50 million people worldwide, experts have said. Artificial alteration of the pathogen is a severe worry, Callahan testified. Still, "new inhibitor" drugs are available against bird flu, and biowar experts might face obstacles in getting past these defenses, he conceded.
Another big concern is the possibility that smallpox, once considered eradicated, might be bred from some old Soviet stash. Treatment of smallpox is difficult.
Other pathogens potentially subject to terrorist manipulation include famine-inducing microbes, such as Glanders and zoological agents, that might wreak havoc among livestock and agriculture, said Callahan. Another top concern, he said, is the engineering of microbes resistant to light, making them difficult to decontaminate.
Of keen interest to microbiologists are the thermophiles, microbes that thrive in extreme heat. Other microbes consume metals and are of interest to the military as a means of weakening enemy infrastructure.
Porous biodefenses
Though the United States has drastically improved security of biohazard stocks, said Callahan, such safeguards are "easily circumvented by the novel engineering of a new agent" and "getting a new anthrax strain out of Texas, South Dakota or Maine" can be accomplished within a few days, he said.
Not only is intentional terrorism a worry, but a new concern is adolescent hackers, who maliciously send out deadly bugs without fully realizing what they are doing.
One lawmaker worried that "already the technology exists to resynthesize small viral genomes," a technology that might easily fall into the hands of DNA hackers.
Callahan expressed alarm at the easy availability of biotech knowledge that is spreading like wildfire as biotech businesses and research surges. He said that in the first third of last year, "there are 19 papers that have been produced which provide heavy, excellent answers for the challenges facing a biological weapon scientist" working in some mountain cave lab.
Callahan said the rate of open-source publication of biotech papers was outpacing the Homeland Security Department's ability to monitor them to assess the threat of the published information. "We are just picking up the big stuff, and we are probably about a year behind. We have received several red alerts this month for publications that will show up next month."
Additionally, amateurs and potential "garage hackers" have increasing access to biotech information and new portable equipment, he said.
Brent told lawmakers that he was unconvinced that there were any good means of choking off terrorist access to germ war technology.
Though experts seem wary that DNA-tech savvy teenagers pose an imminent threat, there is the 1995 report of the Detroit Boy Scout building a nuclear reactor at home, using local pitchblende ore and components available at Home Depot. And a National Aacademies report said that high school students routinely do recombinant DNA experiments.
Problems of surveillance
Such worries have undoubtedly strengthened the hand of those who argue that the Bush administration's use of extraordinary surveillance measures is well justified. In particular, the use of network theory might help monitors to zero in on threats, though mathematicians are not unanimous on the efficacy of such programs.
The problem of "false positives" may put monitors in the position of "crying wolf" too often.
Callahan suggested that a new technology was needed, whereby detection equipment was not focused on a single pathogen, but on changes in various pathogens. Callahan is currently heading DARPA research into biowar countermeasures.
Brent urged a "greatly beefed-up World Health Organization" that could be used in efforts to monitor possible biowar activities.
Callahan said WHO's bioterror awareness had improved but Alibek cautioned that "the international community" is inadequately involved in biodefense.
Alibek said DARPA was doing sophisticated work in anthrax defense and urged passing on these countermeasures for public use but Brent said a foe would simply strike with something other than anthrax.
The experience of coping with SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, demonstrates that biodefense authorities are not in an easy position, experts said. In Asia in 2003, the SARS virus killed 10 percent of the 8,000 people who were sickened by it.
Another concern is the possible engineering of pathogens that target specific DNA subgroups, informally known as "races." Since some diseases, such as sickle-cell anemia, are specific to racial type, it is a concern that a malicious group might bio-engineer a pathogen intended to wipe out a particular race.
The witnesses did not discuss the possibility of nanotech terrorism. However, as nanotechnology and nanomedicine gain ground, the fear is likely to worsen.
Nano-computers and nano-machines -- devices that are no bigger than a few atoms -- are in the developmental stages. At some point, they may be used in medicine to enter the body to control molecular interactions. Some have foreseen the possibility of self-replicating nano-robots, which, if misused, could swarm through a victim like a microbial infection -- with devastating results.
In May 2006, Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, re-emphasized that "we cannot become complacent" about bioterror threats. Fauci's agency, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, has been undertaking research into vaccines against anthrax and other bioterror threats.
In a Nature article published after the 2001 anthrax attacks -- which killed four people and forced 30,000 others to take antibiotics -- Fauci and fellow agency scientists, pointed out that, in the event of a bio-attack, the appropriate antibiotic regimen and duration of treatment can be uncertain.
The NIAID has identified three categories of potential bioterror agent:
Category A. Anthrax, botulism, plague, smallpox, tularemia ("rabbit fever") and viral hemorrhagic fevers.
Category B. Q fever (carried by livestock), trucellosis, Glanders, ricin toxin and staphylococcus enterotoxin B1.
Category C. Nipah virus, Hanta viruses, tick-borne encephalitis viruses, yellow fever, drug-resistant tuberculosis.
These categories, however, do not adequately address emerging bioterror threats, according to a panel of experts writing for the federally funded National Academies, which focus on science and technology.
Two reports, one in 2004 and another in 2006, by National Academy experts stress the need to develop a comprehensive security structure within the biotech arena, whereby scientists, journal publishers and others continually watch for potential threats from wide dissemination of information.
But, the 2006 report found that censorship is not an easy issue. Commenting on the furor over publication of the method of altering the mousepox virus that made it more vicious and immune to vaccine, the panel said the technology the authors cited -- incorporating the IL4 gene into the mousepox genome -- has been known for decades. Similarly, the panelists said, the synthesis, from scratch, of the poliovirus genome, was accomplished with well-known methods. Though such replication might pose a threat, in this case the poliovirus was considerably weaker than wild strains, probably because of synthesis methods.
Also, the very knowledge that is needed to identify how a pathogen works so that it can be combated is potentially of use to a bioweapon maker, experts say.
The 2006 National Academies report identifies technologies that seek to:
* Acquire new biological or molecular diversity.
* Generate new but predetermined and specific biological or molecular entities via directed design.
* Understand and manipulate biological systems in a more comprehensive and effective manner.
* Enhance production, delivery and packaging of biologically active materials.
Of particular concern are transfer of antibiotic resistance to microbes, modification of a microbe's antigenic properties, modification of a microbe's stability in an environment, and transfer of pathogenic properties to a microbe.
The 2004 National Academies report outlined seven types of experiment that should be watched:
* How to render a vaccine ineffective. A vaccine-resistant smallpox strain could prove devastating.
* How to make pathogens resistant to antibiotic and antiviral drugs.
* How to increase the transmissibility of pathogens, whether within or between species.
* How to alter the range of the pathogen -- that is, making it a danger to more lifeforms.
* How to evade diagnostic testing for a disease, through use of microencapsulation or alteration of gene sequences to change the DNA fingerprint.
* How to enable the weaponization of of a biological agent or toxin. Example: synthesis of the smallpox virus.
In their 2005 book Microbe,
In their 2005 book Microbe, Alan P. Zelicoff and Michael Bellomo report the Pentagon's short list of bioterror threats to civilian or military populations. They give this breakdown:
# Toxins. Among the most worrisome are botulism, known to grow in improperly canned foods; clostridium perfringens, a water-borne disease which causes intense diarrhea leading to death from dehydration; ricin, a poison made from castor beans with symptoms similar to clostridium (two people have been charged with mailing ricin-laced letters to President Obama and other politicians in separate incidents in April and May 2013); staphylococcus enterotoxin B, effects include high fever, septic shock and death; tricothecene mycotoxin, effects include weakness, loss of muscle control -- including the heart muscle -- and death.
A vaccine is available for botulism.
# Pathogenic bacteria. Among the most worrisome are anthrax, which brings on flu-like symptoms followed by severe respiratory distress; cholera, a water-borne illness that inflicts intense diarrhea leading to death from dehydration; plague, begins as flu-like, followed by pneumonia or severe swelling, to the point of blistering, of lymph nodes; tularemia, slow-growing ulcer at an open wound and, if the bacteria are inhaled, pneumonia.
Vaccines are available for all these diseases.
# Pathogenic viruses. Among the most worrisome are Crimean-Congo hemmorhagic fever, initial effects include high fever, confusion, vomiting, diarrhea and chest pain; Q fever, effects similar to Crimean-Congo fever; Rift Valley fever, flu-like symptoms, back pain, dizziness and weight loss; smallpox, declared eradicated but still possibly present in germ war stocks, symptoms include high fever, aches, and a severe rash; Venezuelan equine encephalitis, effects include fever, vomiting, back pain,
Vaccines are available for all these diseases, but only on a restricted basis.
All the pathogenic diseases listed, with the exception of smallpox, are zoonotic: they are pathogens that can jump from animals to humans.
Zellicoff and Bellomo warned that public health authorities, and physicians in general, were ill-prepared to deal with outbreaks of these and other diseases -- whether those having a long pedigree or those that are newly emergent.
The material below the rule was added Sept. 14, 2013.
The material below the rule was added Sept. 14, 2013.
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Saturday, September 7, 2013
OF NOTE
Bloomberg tech writer lashes NSA
http://www.businessweek.com/Google races to wall off data flows
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
A curiosity
Every now and then when I try to reach this blog's URL, I receive a message saying http://conantcensorshipissue.com does not exist, leading me to wonder whether access to it is being controlled -- perhaps via a collaboration between Google and some federal agency. If this were the only such oddity, I would not be suspicious. But there have been a great many oddities cropping up over the course of this blog and a previous one.
CBS confirms sophisticated hacking of reporter
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57589559/sharyl-attkisson-on-computer-hacking-im-outraged/
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Hot Wire -- found at https://Facebook.com/OutOfLimbo -- follows an editorial format that is substantially different than the format of Newz from Limbo.
Jailed for teaching how to beat polygraph
A curiosity
Every now and then when I try to reach this blog's URL, I receive a message saying http://conantcensorshipissue.com does not exist, leading me to wonder whether access to it is being controlled -- perhaps via a collaboration between Google and some federal agency. If this were the only such oddity, I would not be suspicious. But there have been a great many oddities cropping up over the course of this blog and a previous one.
CBS confirms sophisticated hacking of reporter
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57589559/sharyl-attkisson-on-computer-hacking-im-outraged/
Follow us at Hot Wire on Facebook
Hot Wire -- found at https://Facebook.com/OutOfLimbo -- follows an editorial format that is substantially different than the format of Newz from Limbo.
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