BW Factoids Accumulation Thread

[nbk2000]

This thread is for the purpose of collection of various factiods one may find in books and articles about BW that don't warrant a new topic.

While any one fact by itself doesn't do much, by accumulating many facts, they begin to form a coherent picture, like pieces of a puzzle.

Of course, it's also possible that such 'facts' may be, in fact, disinformation by government agencies or good ol' journalistic stupidity, but such is to be expected. By having enough information from many sources, you become able to seperate the real from the false.

Please be sure to include the source of the information, for verification, avoidance of duplication, and just general good practice.

And for your own continued presence and well-being, don't use anything from a movie.

Please do NOT use this thread for discussion. It's intended as a resource, like a dictionary. Use other threads for discussion of any ideas or commentary of anything posted here.

===================
The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston:

Paper has microscopic holes in it that are up to fifty times larger than an anthrax spore.

If a pore in the envelope paper was a window in a house, than an anthrax spore would be a tangerine sitting on the sill.

If you take a sheet of paper and seal it against your mouth and then blow against the paper, you will feel the warmth of your breath coming through the paper. This suggests what the anthrax spores did when the envelopes were squeezed through the mail-sorting machines.

++++++++

Most primates (monkeys and such), not conditioned by long captivity, will not sit or lay down in the presence of a human being, they will stand up.

If the primate is sick, it'll sit down and hug its knees, but stand when the human is around.

If it's very sick, it'll sit and hug its knees when the human is looking at it, but lay down when the human isn't looking.

Only when the primate is terminal (near death) will it remain laying down in the presence of a human.

++++++++

Mice, near death, hunch over with the fur at the nape of their necks standing up.

++++++++

The standard cookbook for virus engineering is a four-volume series in ring binders with bright red covers, entitled Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, published by John Wiley and Sons.

++++++++

The Ames strain was natural anthrax. It had not been "heated up" in the lab—had not been genetically engineered to be resistant to antibiotics. Nowadays it is so easy to make a hot strain of anthrax that's resistant to drugs, intelligence people simply assume that all military strains of anthrax are drug resistant.

++++++++

[National Geographic, Date unknown]
Fleas infected with the Plague, when backlit. have what appears to be a black band across their abdomen.

++++++++

[Popular Science, October 1931]

Influenzea and Yellow Fever viruses can be cultured on a slurry of pig intestines, a technique developed by Arthur I. Kendall of Northwestern University.

[nbk2000]

An article from Scientific American, about how the 1918 flu virus was recovered and why it was so lethal.

[simply RED]

I have no clue is this true or not...

From a colegue BG scientist :

"There is a BW (unknown to him if bacteria, virus or toxin) that causes :
severe fever after 7 hours - followed by pancreatitis, internal bleeding in the abdominal area, severe demadge of the cells of the pancreas and death - several days after contamination. Only very little percent of the victims could be saved after extremely complex therapy, but they remain unable to fight for more than a year. In this period, amylase is spotted in the blood. The BW is resistant to water."

From the russian TV - a serious program about steam cells research:

"Several scientists working in the area of steam cells have been murdered with unknown biological weapon. They had degradation of pancreatic cells and internal bleeding."
They even showed refrigerators with the bodies of the victims.

Again to say: this looks like desinformation, I never heared of such thing before and nobody spotted the micro organism that causes it.
Desinformation or not, the idea is intriguing...

[nbk2000]

is not for speculation, rumor, or conjecture.

It's a place for (presumed) factual information with reputable sources that are publicly verifiable.

Otherwise we get into the "My third cousin removed, who used to scrub the toilets at Edgewood, overheard..." type of B.S.

Thank you for your understanding and support in keeping this thread factual. :)

[simply RED]

This maybe true or not but the facts are:
Even slightest damage to the pancreas causes extreme pain and long disability.
The highest level of pain one could experince is due to pancreatitic damage (found in the medicine literature).

http://www.mamashealth.com/pancreatitis.asp

In pancreatitis, the enzymes that help digest fats, proteins and carbohydrates in food become active inside the pancreas and start digesting the pancreas.
So, anything that damages the pancreas effectively could be a BW/CW.


New approach is needed in order to make BW (or the means to defend against it) safely - with "limited tools".
Standard BW are impossible to be created outside a professional lab. Many times P4 trap or equivalent (defense) is needed.
I've studied microbiology and molecular biology in the uni - the procedures described there are too sophisticated for a "rogue scientist".
It is easy in words to add the DNA chain of a powerful toxin to plasmide in super resistant bacteria...
Do you think recombinant DNA could be done in a garage?

Anyway BZ, F-VX or Novichok derivates are also impossible to be made with "limited tools", but Thio-VX,Tetramethylenedisulfotetramine and bicyclophosphates are "easy". There should be an alternative for BW too.

Comeone everybody - add fresh data!

[nbk2000]

Biosynthesis and Peptide engineering of novel BW agents:

http://www.technologyreview.com/BioTech/wtr_16485,306,p1.html?PM=GO

[thermobaric]

Patent on Botulinum neurotoxin preparations.

US5512547

[nbk2000]

Sulfites are not allowed on red meat. Sodium bisulfite does such a good job of color fixing, that sulfited ground beef can be rotten and you can’t tell by looking at it. For this reason, the FDA has an absolute prohibition against sulfites in meat.

[thermobaric]

Production of Ebola virus-like particles from cDNA's:http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/full/78/2/999?view=long&pmid=14694131

A database of various poxvirus sequences:http://poxvirus.org/blastDisplay.asp?BlastOutput_UID=2006105233858761. 1357964874&db=gene

Some info on yersinia pestis:http://www.clinmedres.org/cgi/content/full/4/3/189

[archaios]

The incorporation of the cytokine IL-4 into mousepox resulted in a universally fatal strain of mousepox; smallpox, being genetically analogous to mousepox, would be expected to exhibit similar effects in man. Indeed, it seems that such strains are resistant to vaccination (!). With automated DNA synthesis techniques becoming less and less costly, the open nature of the smallpox genome presents the possibility of a (often overblown by the media) revival of said virus.

[FullMetalJacket]

Doxycycline and ciprofloxacin, the two wide-spectrum antibiotics most commonly suggested for use against anthrax and other offensive BW agents are both available in (slightly lesser dose per pill) as anti-acne prescriptions.

Being a teenager helps sometimes, I'm stockpiling.

[FullMetalJacket]

In immunodeficient monkeys, Simian Virus 40, a vacuolating polyomavirus, has been identified as the source of several tumours and cancers. Whilst it usually persists as a lasting infection, malignant growths are also encountered quite commonly. Our current research suggests that it damages gene p53, responsible for apoptosis. Soon after its discovery, SV40 was identified in the injected form of the polio vaccine produced between 1955 and 1961. This is believed to be due to kidney cells from infected monkeys being used to amplify the vaccine virus during production. Both the Sabin vaccine (oral, live virus) and the Salk vaccine (injectable, killed virus) were affected; the technique used to inactivate the polio virus in the Salk vaccine, by means of formaldehyde, did not reliably kill SV40. An analysis presented at the Vaccine Cell Substrate Conference in 2004 [1] suggested that vaccines used in the former Soviet bloc countries, China, Japan, and Africa, could have been contaminated up to 1980, meaning that hundreds of millions more could have been exposed to the virus.

Not too long ago (the precise date and nationality of this group eludes me) some recombinant genetics was being done by some scientists, including with SV40. For some reason, they thought it was a good idea to recombine it with E. coli. They had them successfully replicating in step for a few days until somebody realised the terrible danger they were placing the world in by risking releasing food poisoning that could cause cancer, if there was ever an accidental breach or contamination.

We don't have a very good record with SV40.

[W4RGASM]

During the gruinard island testing and cattle cake anthrax dissemination tests; the spores were produced by (and I quote)

At first, enamelled iron trays of about 15x10x2" containing solid agar-based medium were seeded with spores and the subsequent growth was collected with a hand-held suction device. The resulting mixture was milled with glass beads an filtered to give a suspension concentrate. Subsequently, fifty-litre milk churns set in a hot room and subject to periodic stirring were used. later still, heating elements were put into the churns and agitation was achieved through an air-sparger. After sporulation was complete, the suspension was precipitated and concentrated.

No word (from this source) on weaponizing, not yet at least (haven't finished reading the book).

+++++++++=

A Higher Form of Killing, would be the book I assume? NBK

[nbk2000]

How can you NOT love a brain-eating amoeba? :D

I saw this organism mentioned years ago in a National Geographic article about Yosemite park, and about how the hotsprings there are toxic because of this amoeba, which loves the hot water.

I wonder if this organism would survive long in a buffered saline nasal spray? ;)

6 die from brain-eating amoeba in lakes

By CHRIS KAHN, Associated Press Writer Fri Sep 28, 2:18 PM ET

PHOENIX - It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.
ADVERTISEMENT

Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

"This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."

According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri (nuh-GLEER-ee-uh FOWL'-erh-eye) killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases — three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.

In Arizona, David Evans said nobody knew his son, Aaron, was infected with the amoeba until after the 14-year-old died on Sept. 17. At first, the teen seemed to be suffering from nothing more than a headache.

"We didn't know," Evans said. "And here I am: I come home and I'm burying him."

After doing more tests, doctors said Aaron probably picked up the amoeba a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu, a popular man-made lake on the Colorado River between Arizona and California.

Though infections tend to be found in southern states, Naegleria lives almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even dirty swimming pools, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment.

Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose — say, by doing a somersault in chest-deep water — the amoeba can latch onto the olfactory nerve.

The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up into the brain, where it continues the damage, "basically feeding on the brain cells," Beach said.

People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers. In the later stages, they'll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes, he said.

Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have stopped the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said.

"Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," he said.

Researchers still have much to learn about Naegleria. They don't know why, for example, children are more likely to be infected, and boys are more often victims than girls.

"Boys tend to have more boisterous activities (in water), but we're not clear," Beach said.

In central Florida, authorities started an amoeba phone hot line advising people to avoid warm, standing water and areas with algae blooms. Texas health officials also have issued warnings.

People "seem to think that everything can be made safe, including any river, any creek, but that's just not the case," said Doug McBride, a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Officials in the town of Lake Havasu City are discussing whether to take action. "Some folks think we should be putting up signs. Some people think we should close the lake," city spokesman Charlie Cassens said.

Beach cautioned that people shouldn't panic about the dangers of the brain-eating bug. Cases are still extremely rare considering the number of people swimming in lakes. The easiest way to prevent infection, Beach said, is to use nose clips when swimming or diving in fresh water.

"You'd have to have water going way up in your nose to begin with" to be infected, he said.

David Evans has tried to learn as much as possible about the amoeba over the past month. But it still doesn't make much sense to him. His family had gone to Lake Havasu countless times. Have people always been in danger? Did city officials know about the amoeba? Can they do anything to kill them off?

Evans lives within eyesight of the lake. Temperatures hover in the triple digits all summer, and like almost everyone else in this desert region, the Evanses look to the lake to cool off.

It was on David Evans' birthday Sept. 8 that he brought Aaron, his other two children, and his parents to Lake Havasu. They ate sandwiches and spent a few hours splashing around.

"For a week, everything was fine," Evans said.

Then Aaron got the headache that wouldn't go away. At the hospital, doctors first suspected meningitis. Aaron was rushed to another hospital in Las Vegas.

"He asked me at one time, 'Can I die from this?'" David Evans said. "We said, 'No, no.'"

On Sept. 17, Aaron stopped breathing as his father held him in his arms.

"He was brain dead," Evans said. Only later did doctors and the CDC determine that the boy had been infected with Naegleria.

"My kids won't ever swim on Lake Havasu again," he said.

___

On the Net:

More on the N. fowleri amoeba:

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dpd/parasites/naegleria/factsht_naegleria.htm#what

[W4RGASM]

The book was "Killer Germs", but it's got a bibliography as long as my arm so it could easily be taken from there.

And from the few path/medical professionals I've talked to who are familiar with Naegleria, apparently outside it's normal warm environment it's very fragile...