http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/011503/upd_075-7172.shtml
Ooooooohhhhhh boy.
WTF is this all about?
No need to worry… the campus police are working on it.
Well, heck. It’s not like anyone lives in Lubbock anyway. 
Robin
Oh, jeez, lieu…that makes me feel so much better.
Can’t you go over there with your knockdown farts and get something done?
As though we needed proof that the Enemy is dedicated to returning us to the Fourteenth Century.
Clearly, Texas Tech is part of the axis of evil. I hear troops are shipping out right now.
Some grad student is gonna be in major trouble when they realize the vials are just on another shelf in the freezer.
That would be akin to nuking the Andromeda Strain.
And in near record time, they’ve been “accounted” for
No details, and I’d bet we’ll never hear them.
“Sorry to nearly start a national panic, but Dr. Smith told me the vials were on shelf 4 when they were actually on shelf 2”
So that was a tempest in a teapot.
You’d think they’d keep stuff like that under lock and key…imagine some janitor moving a tube to clean under it, then he mistakingly puts it in his pocket…wanders down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee, finds the test tube, and leaves it on the shelf between the salt and the cumin…
I hate to get all pedantic (except I don’t, I actually love it), but I’d just like to point out that the plague bacillus, yersinia pestis, is still endemic over large portions of the world, including West Texas, so it’s not exactly like smallpox getting out or anything. There are a number of cases of plague treated every year, but with modern antibiotics and sanitary procedures, any sort of medieval-type epidemic is a pretty far-fetched scenario. Just watch out for rat fleas.
I should also point out that if aerosolized plague were released in a populated area, it could infect a number of people with pneumonic plague, which can spread from person to person, although it does so with difficulty. So, it’s not completely harmless, but hardly a doomsday scenariom since pneumonic plague can be treated with antibiotics (athough with no treatment, it has a high rate of fatality).
Yeah, the dentist warned me about bubonic plaque and I ignored him. Big mistake!
They were destroyed, & a scientist lied about it, for unknown reasons.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2662889.stm
Strange. Was he trying to dramatise some point? 
<cynic>
Scenario 1 (Probable but really paranoid). This is the fall-guy being provided to us by the powers that be so we do not fret any longer about bad stuff which is not accounted for.
Scenario 2 (Likely). He sold it or smuggled it to someone who wanted it. He reported it missing (knowing where it had gone). They did not find the trail OR they were too close to finding out the truth so he reported that he had destroyed it. End search. Bubonic plague journeys onward…
Whatever the ‘story’ turns out to believe I am sure that it was never accounted for and is now out ‘there’.
</cynic>
Hey!!!
Relax, Max. Robin meant to say that nobody important lives in Lubbock. 
Hey, wait! I have some in-laws there …
But is that evidence for or against that theory?
Oy, the only time my alma matter gets national exposure is when we hired Bobby Knight and when we lost some plague materials.
:sigh:
Speaking of which, did you see FARK’s headline about this?