Here’s the link:
My question is, was anything like the facility we saw in The Andromeda Strain ever built?
Besides being a cool and wonderful hard SF movie, making something like this sounds very logical.
There was a very secure building for that purpose at Fort Dietrick, Maryland at one time.
A small point about the column (unrelated to Freyr’s question; sorry): Cecil claims that a passel o’ PhD’s are required to make a “credible bioweapon.” I thought I should mention, I attended a lecture by a USAMRIID expert on this very subject, the threat of bioterrorism. (My wife’s an epidemiologist; we get invites to all kinds of fun presentations.) The lecturer used a sequence of slides to show how anthrax can be weaponized using easily available materials and tools by someone who doesn’t know anything and just follows a step-by-step recipe. He left a couple of steps vague, just in case a terrorist was attending the lecture (!), but asserted that they were just as simple. (I won’t reproduce the instructions here; the SDMB may be about fighting ignorance, but learning how to make a bioweapon doesn’t count in that, I think.)
I suppose it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that the military-affiliated expert was engaged more in a mission of institutional agitation, to exaggerate the threat in hopes of generating public anxiety (including from hospitals and healthcare professionals) with the goal of increasing the budget for counter-bioweapon research and readiness. I mean, hey, it’s not like our military lies to us on a regular basis, or anything. ( :rolleyes: ) Still, he made an awfully good case for certain basic biotoxins being a lot easier to work with than Cecil seems to indicate. (Not all, naturally; Ebola, for example, is apparently a pain in the ass.)
Just thought it was worth mentioning.
Biohazard : The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World-Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It
I was referred to this book by my sensei who worked with Ken Alibek, the Russian defector that wrote it.
I asked him how Dr. Alibek could work in the D.C. area while knowing of the research they had done and the scenarios they had developed, and he said that Alibek had a rather fatalistic attitude towards what he felt was an inevitable problem.
On the plus side, when he defected he did detail a great deal of the internal workings of the program. So at least the government has presumably been making some effort to keep tabs on his former workmates.
(edited by moderator to eliminate link that caused horizontal scrolling)
[Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 12-11-2000 at 04:08 PM]
I live across the streeet from Detrick, it’s still there. They do mostly cancer research there, but one never knows what they might do on the Military side of it. Detrick is also the main link between Moscow and Washington.
As for the OT I don’t see why it would be that difficult really. Especially since many of the terrorists are will and do die when they use their bombs why not just do a suicide mission with some sort of Bio Warfair. hmmm… I guess living that close to Detrick isn’t such a good idea afterall! 
I remember in the Sacramento California Area about 8 or 9 years ago, there was a scare involving terrorists putting cyanide or something to that effect in grapes, I remember seeing on the news that we couldnt eat grapes for a while and you couldnt buy them in stores, at the end of it all they only found two grapes with “poison” in them. Does any of this ring a bell? I was pretty young.
While there are suicide bombers, I don’t think they’d be as eager to be suicide researchers. I’m assuming, of course, that working with biohazards is as dangerous as Cecil proposed. I just can’t see our hypothetical terrorists taking a lot of risks before actually getting the weapon to the target. Dying to give anthrax to hundreds of my enemies – that might be appealing. Dying of anthrax I contracted in a U-Stor-It because somebody overturned a test-tube – much less cool.
Also, we’re probably overrating the fanaticism of most terrorist groups here. I mean, even the Yemen bomb makers let unskilled grunts deliver the payload. Even terrorist groups realize that brains are at a premium, and aren’t likely to put their best and brightest at risk making bioweapons, when there are much safer and just as destructive means available.
[[A small point about the column (unrelated to Freyr’s question; sorry): Cecil claims that a passel o’ PhD’s are required to make a “credible bioweapon.” I thought I should mention, I attended a lecture by a USAMRIID expert on this very subject, the threat of bioterrorism. (My wife’s an epidemiologist; we get invites to all kinds of fun presentations.) The lecturer used a sequence of slides to show how anthrax can be weaponized using easily available materials and tools by someone who doesn’t know anything and just follows a step-by-step recipe.]]
Anthrax is easy to get and to grow (the Russians apparently got their first supply by simply ordering it via the mail from a US Science supply catalog). Almost anybody can cook up botulism or salmonella, too (such as that cult in Oregon a few years back). I think Cecil was referring to using germs that have secondary spread - person to person - for biowarfare. This is much more complicated stuff to handle and work with.
Jill
What kind of epidemiologist is your wife?
She identifies herself in this thread (yes, she’s on the board; she grew up in Chicago and introduced me to the work of Cecil). She’s spent the last couple of years specializing in public-health issues – bicycle helmets, gun safety, that sort of thing – as opposed to what most people think of as epidemiology, which is to say infectious disease (e. coli outbreaks, tuberculosis, etc.). Her PhD dissertation looks at the effectiveness of mental health treatment on criminal recidivism among mentally ill offenders. Fascinating stuff.
The New Mexico Dept. of Health recently made gun injuries/deaths reportable. Very interesting data. I’m an HIV/AIDS epidemiologist myself. Sorry to highjack the thread, but Cervaise doesn’t list his email address.
- Jill
[[Biohazard : The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World-Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It
I was referred to this book by my sensei who worked with Ken Alibek, the Russian defector that wrote it.]] Kyberneticist]]
Richard Preston (author of the highly recommended book “The Hot Zone” about Ebola Reston virus)interviewed Mr Alibek in a very interesting article about bioterrorism for the New Yorker, which I’m quite sure is online but I’m too lazy to check.
- Jill
(edited by moderator to correct text that caused horizontal scrolling)
[Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 12-11-2000 at 04:13 PM]
Ah, yes, 1989. A very good year. “Sacramento cyanide grapes” brought up the reminder that it was Chilean grapes. “Chile cyanide grapes” brought up a lot of hits. Even the Feds were interested.
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/NEW00129.html
Two grapes, a phone call that was “possibly a hoax”, and the entire Chilean produce industry temporarily goes into the toilet. I do remember that–I personally didn’t buy any grapes for a while, period, because “you never know…” And don’t we all feel a little silly now. :rolleyes:
have we all forgotten the overly threatening rumour that the aids virus is in fact a man made problem accidentally released? seems to me that it’s worked pretty well and as yet goes basically unchecked. good thing we’re spending trillions of dollars in space exploration instead of finding a cure for diseases . of course that’s just my opinion. being bad feels pretty good huh?
Oh please. There are so many logical fallacies there I don’t even know where to begin. There is a great deal of money and man-hours being put toward researching AIDS. Probably more so than any other infectious disease.
And no we haven’t forgotten the “rumor”. You can watch as Cecil rips it a part in the classic column Is AIDS a manmade disease?
Welcome to the board, by the way. We welcome various opinions. Just be prepared to be called on them.
…Not to mention the fact that a ten year incubation period (from infection to full-blown disease without treatment)isn’t a great feature for a military disease.
Jill
(also putting “woman-hours” into researching AIDS)
Oh no! Looks like the conspiracy of silence and misinformation has corrupted even the authorities of the Straight Dope! Guess we’re running out of people who we can trust to give us true, unbiased information, huh, wouldn’tcha say, there, Buck?
:rolleyes:
Shhhhh!!!
The threat of person-made biological weaponry seems to be small potatoes compared to the arsenal already in place in nature. The idea of a crazy terrorist in a secret lab manufacturing some sort of biohazard is less scary the thought of Ma Nature concocting one of her little pandemics. In either case, the ability to manufacture vaccines in a timely manner (or not) is the issue which truly needs to be addressed.
[[The idea of a crazy terrorist in a secret lab manufacturing some sort of biohazard is less scary the thought of Ma Nature concocting one of her little pandemics. In either case, the ability to manufacture vaccines in a timely manner (or not) is the issue which truly needs to be addressed.]]
Exactly. Hopefully the money and energy being put into “Emergency preparedness” for bioterrorism by CDC will also be put to use streamlining and improving timely surveillance of naturally-occurring epidemics. And the technology Cecil described in his column for cooking up viruses may also be useful for making vaccine quicker than growing it in chicken eggs.
Couple of things. Sure any one can cook up and work with Anthrax, the trick is dispersing it (they also keep very careful track of what sorts of information those phds are checking out). The folks with the attempted attack in Japan ran into this problem. You can’t just rent a crop duster that has the correct sprayer type to spread it around. You have to be able to spread it without deystroying it. They tried using sprayers on building tops and one running out the exhaust pipe of a car driven around government buildings but were deystroying what they were attempting to spread because of an incorrect dispersion nozzle. (that always helps me sleep well…)
On a related tack there is an interesting story circulating about events towards the end of the gulf war. Ruour has it that a single SCUD was launched with an odd trajectory towards a population center. It came down well short but had the correct sprayers and a dummy payload equivlelent to a bio attack. General thought is that Saddam was letting folks know he had all the knowledge, if pushed, to do just what we have been talking about. His message seems to have worked as he did remain in power.