SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Safety concerns at a prominent military germ lab have led the government to shut down research involving dangerous microbes like the Ebola virus.
"Research is currently on hold," the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, in Fort Detrick, Md., said in a statement on Friday. The shutdown is likely to last months, Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman, said in an interview.
The statement said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to issue a "cease and desist order" last month to halt the research at Fort Detrick because the center did not have "sufficient systems in place to decontaminate wastewater" from its highest-security labs.
[...] The suspended research involves certain toxins, along with germs called select agents, which the government has determined have "the potential to pose a severe threat to public, animal or plant health or to animal or plant products." There are 67 select agents and toxins; examples include the organisms that cause Ebola, smallpox, anthrax and plague, and the poison ricin.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/health/germs-fort-detrick-biohazard.html
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 09 2019, @07:19AM (1 child)
Cut the red tape, move the lab in Trump Tower!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @11:09AM
This is part of Trumps plan to drain the swamp, the lab was probably leaking on purpose to cause an epidemic to distract from the epstein investigation.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @08:23AM (5 children)
I feel I am coming down with lime disease.Can't stand limes, even if you put them in the coconut.
You put the lime in the coconut. [google.com] And then you feel better. Sucks to be a millennial, yes?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Friday August 09 2019, @02:08PM
Don't worry.
Be happy.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @03:24PM (1 child)
Maybe put the lime in an avocado, then spread it on your toast.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 09 2019, @04:20PM
Actually, it sounds more like another shampoo. Or, facial wash. Or, maybe a hair conditioner. Looking at labels on the wife's beauty products can make you feel hungry. Lime and avacado? Maybe it opens your pores or something?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 09 2019, @05:50PM
Why, because they missed out on such a musical masterpiece? How can they possibly survive without 'Nilsson Schmilsson,' such a travesty!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @11:00PM
Hey, mister tally-man, tally my banana!
Daylight come and I wanna go home!
(Score: 1) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Friday August 09 2019, @10:27AM (10 children)
Gosh golly this bloated federal government wasting our tax dollars on all manner of things that may kill every last one of us.
Wal Mart is going into crypto currency, why not sub contract the development of weaponized ebola out to them and their cutting edge Benton Arkansas team of blue vested scientists?
What could go wrong!?
Frankly I'm surprised that the oversight entities had anywhere near enough power to shut down a research base, it's unheard of. They must have been some kind of super-incompetent. Who cares about the viruses getting loose and killing us, well I do, but the priority here is the local economy and the health of the contracting corporations which are getting hit super hard by this.
Our hearts and prayers are with their bottom line. /s
It is getting pretty obvious that actual human well-being here on planet earth calculates about 0, -10, -1000, idk whatever the lowest possible factor is, into the decisions of the decision-makers. These are the policies and practices I would implement if I was trying to wipe out all human life and seem outright oppositional to the concept of 'defense.'
Like with cyberdefense, it is more important to maintain the offensive capacity to shut down traffic lights in siberia than it is to establish a means to protect the civilians who are paying through the nose for defense. I have been hearing about this base and its scary problems for literally decades now and nearly all of it has been ignored by the news media until now. The one time their expertise mattered during a certain thrax attack they provided no help whatsoever besides being on the short list of sources for the attack itself.
You could not make up anything this incompetent and terrifying, ticks escaping with contagious incurable diseases etc., no one would believe it. For these reasons I wonder, who and what kind of people are these? That they make more money than I do and likely maintained steady jobs through it all is a real kick in the shorts too. I have gotten fired for things like not commenting an address out of a long string of forwarded emails when it didn't even matter, by comparison. These guys aren't washing their hands after working with ebola and are getting raises and paid vacations probably.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DavePolaschek on Friday August 09 2019, @11:09AM (1 child)
It’s not just us. The Russians may have nuked [reuters.com] some of their own population accidentally. Oopsie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @04:24PM
No worries, Mate! Russians are white people, so an accident like that falls in line with our globalist agenda.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @11:49AM (7 children)
We need to raise taxes on the rich to fix this problem!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 09 2019, @01:25PM (6 children)
That would fix a lot of problems.
Nevertheless, it is good to always strive to make good efficient use of taxpayer money. How many billions are we wasting on SLS that could be used to develop ways to better train AIs to be good at phone sex.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @01:52PM (5 children)
No, it wouldn't fix any problems. It would just give people who cause problems more resources. If you want people to pay their "fair share", no one making below $200,000 should pay any income taxes at all (this was the original lowest tax bracket when adjusted for inflation).
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday August 09 2019, @03:20PM (4 children)
>. It would just give people who cause problems more resources
Yeah, like road builders. Who needs roads? Or how about police. I mean police, what do they do that doesn't involve doughnuts? On OUR taxpayers dollars? Railways! Pah! Shove your railways where the sun doesn't shine (and I don't mean rail tunnels).
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 09 2019, @03:33PM (2 children)
Things we don't need:
* roads
* bridges
* parks
* traffic signals
* street lights
* public edumacation - is our children learning
* public libraries
* drivers licensing, inspections
* police
* courts
* jails
* national weather service
* geological survey
* environmental protection
* food safety -- who needs food to be safe, if they don't like it, don't eat it
and many other things we take for granted
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 09 2019, @03:34PM (1 child)
* GPS
* military
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:39AM
> military
Well, arguably, we (USA) could cut back a whole hell of a lot on our military spending, and even with extreme cuts, the only noticeable effect would be a bunch of unemployable folks currently on military welfare going on (the much less expensive to the taxpayer) regular sort of public assistance welfare. That, and trillions of dollars, not wasted murdering folks in far away lands to steal their natural resources, that could go to useful things. We could fund a proper national health system, and make universities free again. Not to mention, all those people, in those far away lands, who won't be murdered/tortured/raped/orphaned/widowed/etc. in US wars of aggression anymore.
And, an additional bonus since the US military is a larger greenhouse gas emitter than many entire countries, we could substantially reduce our negative impacts on climate-- overnight!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @07:43PM
Your taxes don't go to "road builders", they go to people who take 75% to piss away on god knows what like this "ebola factory", then choose which road builder to give it to based on patronage and kickbacks so another half is wasted. All in all you probably get 10% of the roads vs just paying road builders yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @12:48PM
I'm not trying to troll, but this is why NIMBY exists (and frustrates progress across the board like with nuclear proponents). A lot of experts say how safe things are now (as compared to how we did things in the past) and then... well, then stories like pop up affirming the belief that humans will be humans. I hope the CDC never has an off day.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 09 2019, @01:32PM (1 child)
Why should the CDC be concerned with the potential of bio contaminants entering wastewater? Especially when our government is in a mode of allowing corporations to contaminate and pollute anything and everything for profit. God bless America[n corporations].
The CDC's fears are misplaced. Until those misplaced fears can be located by a careful search for the misplaced fears, they should not act on the fears that they do not currently have in their possession.
Why is our government concerned about wastewater when it is unconcerned about drinking water in Flint MI?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by dwilson on Friday August 09 2019, @05:31PM
You make a very good point, but you're also drastically over-simplifying the problems so that they can be presented as more-or-less the same. They aren't.
If biowaste consisting of (potentially militarily enhanced) $InfectiousDisease enters the wastewater, there is a non-zero (perhaps even a reasonably high) chance of someone downstream contracting it. Let's say it's me, for the sake of my argument. Perhaps I work in a wastewater treatment plant! I pass it to my neighbor, when I go over to return the table saw I borrowed. He passes it to his kids, who share it with their school. One of the students at that school has an airline stewardess for a mother, who catches it from her daughter and spreads it on her next flight. Those travelers go on destinations or connections at a dozen international airports around the globe. Given that this is a military lab, it's reasonable to assume they're aiming to increase the time delay between infection and first showing symptoms, along with the infectiousness and fatality rate. Congratulations, we've just killed an eighth of humanity!
Contrast to Flint, MI: Corporate greed has lead (pun intended!) to a unacceptably high level of lead in the groundwater, long-time exposure to which has caused various heavy-metal-induced ailments in the population. No one outside Flint, MI is affected; Those passing through and drinking the water for less than a day are none the worse for it.
I hope the difference in those two scenarios is obvious. Both warrant serious concern and looking-in-to from the powers that be, but one is a whole lot more serious than the other.
- D
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday August 09 2019, @03:05PM (2 children)
I'm not going to look up all the other select agents and toxins, but as of last year EVD (Ebola) patients can use the bathroom [cdc.gov]. Although the WHO document the statement in my link reference recommends sewers or pit latrines specific for Hemorrhagic Fever patients, it also states, "Standard precautions should be taken to prevent contamination of the environment by faeces and urine. Ebola is likely to inactivate significantly faster in the environment than enteric viruses with known waterborne transmission (e.g., norovirus, hepatitis A virus)." Link [who.int].
This does cause some controversy - one can find a couple of articles questioning the wisdom of this practice. It would change if it were known that Ebola could thrive in a sewer environment and/or infect sewage workers who take their usual precautions. Any EVD-contaminated objects are understandably treated as class A medical waste, which means it must be sealed.
It's not that the article is wrong - some of the other thngs listed like ricin might be a problem and IIRC anthrax spores are particularly hardy. Just wondering if Ebola should have been the lead to use given what we know about it.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:36AM (1 child)
Actually, I think anthrax is forever. Yeah, that is "particularly hardy". It's in the soil all around me, and herds of cattle in the area have had to be destroyed in the past. Corpses burnt, and the residue bulldozed under the topsoil, I think it was six feet. Which, of course, puts it all into the groundwater. It would be equally impossible to destroy every last anthrax spore, as to destroy all of any other disease, whether it originates from the jungle, the deserts, or - tundra.
Isn't it exciting to anticipate what might be released from the tundra if/when it all thaws out?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday August 12 2019, @02:47PM
*rubs hands in anticipation*
...with Hibiclens. May stain, but it does the job better than anything...
...then I end up inhaling the spores anyway...
and end up like this [warnecke.me]
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @05:51PM (1 child)
no BSE (prion) on the list: https://www.selectagents.gov/SelectAgentsandToxinsList.html [selectagents.gov] ?
i guess it's not alive enough ^_^
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday August 12 2019, @03:04PM
You're right, their non-inclusion is a little weird. While they can be denatured it doesn't read like doing so is very easy.
This sig for rent.