Saturday, October 11, 2014

BU Biolab Cooking Up Ebola

Before getting into the laboratory you need to see this first:

".... What Really Happened has got a s-load of Ebola news up at the beginning of the articles list today, from yesterday and that might change in a few hours but you can find them. Yes, the government invented it and the government is disseminating it and if their usual policies hold true they will soon be taxing you for the privilege of catching it. However, if you are rich you will not have to pay for hosting Ebola in your system because the rich don't pay taxes. That's why God made so many poor people, so that they could finance the system, which is designed to make things go real smooth for the rich. In fact, the gears that turn the mechanical assemblies that pump out financial profit for the rich are designed to run on human blood. Not only is human blood the fuel that runs the machinery but human blood is also what lubricates the gears. You would have to say it is seriously multipurpose, especially considering that people (people?) like Little Georgie Sorrows, David Rockefeller, Lloyd Blankfein, Michael Bloomfield and many others also drink it as a cordial, aperitif, general cocktail and food supplement served up in smoothies. This is as it should be because they are smoothies. They slide through existence, like a lizard on a greased, inclined mesa.

A short while ago, the government propaganda agency, also known as the Crass Media, was mentioning how Ebola was created by the Russians but... since the completely Zionist owned American government owns the patent on Ebola and since GKS and the CDC and others are blockading all natural means for treating Ebola, it is to be presumed that this is a multifaceted assault on the public. On one hand they want to kill off as many useless eaters as they can in Africa and they've been killing Africans for profit and sport for decades now, while also testing whatever toxic diseases they can think of on them so that they can screw them over with pharmaceutical vaccines and, of course, they tested AIDS on them and of course they test all their jungle warfare weapons on them too....



I'm wide awake.

Time for incubation:

"BU biolab nears OK amid hopes for tackling Ebola, safety concerns; 2 more steps for approval; opponents cite other facilities’ troubles" by Felice J. Freyer | Globe Staff   October 06, 2014

As the Ebola outbreak rages in West Africa, a seven-story laboratory designed to study that virus and others like it stands mostly empty in Boston’s South End.

But researchers at Boston University, which built the high-security lab with $200 million in federal money, expect a decade of frustration to end soon, perhaps within a year.

BU’s plans have survived 11 years of risk assessments, public hearings, and lawsuits from critics who question the laboratory’s safety and value. Now, a review by the Boston Public Health Commission and an inspection by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are the final hurdles before scientists can hunt for treatments and vaccines against the world’s deadliest pathogens.

“There are superb scientists anxious to get on with their work,” said Jean L. Patterson, a scientist at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, who used to work at Harvard and has been following the BU struggle from afar. “This has been their life’s dream to work on these pathogens.”

The biolab nears approval, however, just as controversy about this type of facility — known as a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory — heats up in the United States and around the world.

Embarrassing mishaps at US government laboratories have prompted calls to suspend Level 4 work and close some of the labs.

See: CDC Slowing Releasing Infectious Agents

That would explain a lot.

And scientists argue about the wisdom of research that involves making microbes more dangerous, research that some fear might take place in Boston (although BU says it has no plans to do so).

This is a fear worth having.

The recent laboratory safety breaches have intensified the concerns of some neighbors and scientists who have long opposed BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, built six years ago and today about 25 percent occupied, with researchers working on less dangerous pathogens in Biosafety Level 2 labs. Utilities and security at the seven-story building cost $700,000 a month, most of it to support the empty Level 4 lab.

Would you want it in your neighborhood?

Research in a Level 4 lab is cumbersome and exceedingly expensive, said biolab opponent Lynn C. Klotz in an interview in August. Klotz, a Gloucester resident, is senior science fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. He noted that there are already 10 Level 4 labs around the country.

“This lab is not needed and there are many, many other things they could be studying,” including more common diseases such as drug-resistant tuberculosis and AIDS, he said.

But it is their life's dream.

Research on deadly organisms for which there are no vaccines or treatments, including Ebola, can take place only in a Level 4 laboratory, which must meet federal standards. BU won a competitive federal grant to build its biolab in 2003, part of the Bush administration’s response to biowarfare fears in the wake of the anthrax mailings that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Related: Anthrax in Atlanta

Over the years, the university has obtained more than 50 permits or approvals from federal, state, and city agencies for the lab, prevailed in two lawsuits that sought to block the facility, and in May persuaded the Boston City Council to reject a proposed ordinance banning Level 4 labs.

Opponents had pinned their hopes on Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who as a candidate last year proclaimed his opposition to the biolab. But he has made no move to prevent its opening, saying only that he supports “furthering Boston’s position as a leader in the life sciences while ensuring the safety and security of our residents.” 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Mayor Wal$h.

A risk assessment by the environmental consulting firm Tetra Tech, whose conclusions were backed by two independent panels of specialists, examined more than 300 possible ways something could go wrong at the BU biolab. It found that the risk of infections to the public is “extremely low or beyond reasonably foreseeable.”

But recent news about the mishandling of dangerous pathogens at the CDC, the very agency that will inspect the biolab, pointed to the potential for flaws in even the toughest security protocols.

“The thing is, you can’t prepare for human error,” said Klare Allen, a Roxbury activist who was the lead plaintiff in the unsuccessful federal lawsuit against the lab. And if a microbe escapes, she and other opponents say, low-income residents of the South End and nearby Roxbury will suffer the most.

Hmmmmmmmm!

At the CDC earlier this year, a low-risk strain of influenza was inadvertently contaminated with highly dangerous bird flu and sent to another laboratory without proper transfer procedures. Then in June, 80 people were exposed to deadly anthrax after samples wrongly thought to be harmless were delivered in plastic bags.

Neither incident resulted in illnesses, but both involved a failure to follow protocols.

And they are not exactly doing a stellar job handling Ebola, either.

Ronald B. Corley, the BU lab’s director, said his team studied the causes of the CDC errors and concluded that BU has checks and balances to prevent such incidents. “The likelihood of that happening here is next to zero,” Corley said.

Not good enough.

John R. Murphy, who put aside retirement plans to serve as the lab’s interim director, called the breaches of protocol at CDC “unconscionable,” but emphasized: “As bad as that was, there was not a single person that got sick.

“Does the public really want,” Murphy said, “to close down facilities that could develop or help develop a therapeutic agent against a disease as terrible as Ebola?”

We want you sick psychos to stop creating these things, that is what we want.

Lab opponent Marc Pelletier, who described himself as a biotechnology professional who has worked in drug development, said that many other laboratories are developing Ebola treatments and vaccines that work in nonhuman primates.

Trials are in Africa.

Patterson, whose San Antonio lab has developed potential Ebola vaccines, said there is still ample work to be done on Ebola, as evidenced by the surprises in the West African epidemic.

“If we had another one [Biosafety Level 4 lab], would we be addressing the Ebola outbreak in a better way?” she asked.

Klotz and Pelletier raised concerns the laboratory might someday conduct research manipulating the genes of pathogens to make them more dangerous, such as the recent case when two laboratories altered a deadly bird flu to make it more easily transmissible.

Why would they do that?

The purpose is to better understand how these pathogens might evolve in nature and work on measures to contain them.

I don't know if I believe them.

Scientists are sharply divided on whether such work is worth the risk that the genetically engineered virus could escape.

If they are divided it is too big a risk.

In July, hundreds of them formed the Cambridge Working Group to argue against such research. Soon after, hundreds of others scientists who believe such work is essential formed Scientists for Science.

Will BU engage in such research? “We do not plan on making pathogens more dangerous,” Corley said. “I cannot go on record that we will never do work that is similar, but our goal is never to make a pathogen more virulent or more dangerous.”

But they are leaving the petri dish uncovered.

Each project the lab wants to undertake must first win approval, in a public review process, from BU’s Institutional Biosafety Committee and the Boston Public Health Commission, which gets advice from an 18-member committee composed primarily of scientists knowledgeable about biosafety.

But first, the health commission has to decide whether to allow the lab to open. It has held eight meetings on the issue and expects to make a decision this fall.

If the biolab wins approval, Ebola and its cousin, Marburg, will be the first microbes studied. A BU microbiologist, Elke Mühlberger, plans to examine how Ebola undermines the immune system when it first invades cells.

The BU biolab would be the 11th Level 4 lab in the country, but only the second at a university academic medical center. The academic setting, Corley said, brings together people from diverse fields, potentially sending research in surprising and fruitful directions.

A new human pathogen arises every 18 months, and no one knows “what nature is going to throw at us” in the coming years, Corley said. “Two or three years from now, there will be pathogens that you or I have never heard of that we’ll be studying.” 

!!!!!!!!! 

So what ARE they working on now?

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Also see: Postdoc Depre$$ion 

Why worry?

U.S. Government Has Ebola Epidemic Under Control 

Why worry?

"Stiffer testing under review for passengers from Africa" by Connie Cass and Lauran Neergaard | Associated Press   October 07, 2014

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Monday that the US government is considering ordering more careful screening of airline passengers arriving from West Africa, as a nurse in Spain became the first person known to catch Ebola outside the outbreak zone.

In dealing with potential Ebola cases, Obama said, ‘‘we don’t have a lot of margin for error.’’

Ban flights then.

A critically ill Liberian man already hospitalized in the United States, Thomas Duncan, began receiving an experimental drug in Dallas. Medical workers are among the Americans waiting to find out whether they had been infected by Duncan.

Related: Duncan's Last Days

There were encouraging signs for an American video journalist who returned from Liberia for treatment. Ashoka Mukpo, 33, who grew up in Providence, was able to walk off a plane in Nebraska, and his symptoms of fever and nausea appeared mild.

"Mukpo will undergo an experimental treatment for the illness, medical center spokesman Taylor Wilson said Monday. But it is unknown at this point what drug will be used."

I wonder how he is because I have seen nothing in the Globe since.

In Spain, the stricken nurse had been part of a team that treated two missionaries who had been flown home to Spain after becoming infected with Ebola in West Africa.

The nurse’s only symptom was a fever, but the infection was confirmed by two tests, Spanish health officials said. She was being treated in isolation, while authorities drew up a list of people she had had contact with.

The White House continued to rule out any blanket ban on travel from West Africa. People leaving the outbreak zone are being checked for fevers before they are allowed to board airplanes, but the disease’s incubation period is 21 days and symptoms could arise later.

Airline crews and border agents in the United States already watch for obviously sick passengers, but officials at a high-level meeting at the White House discussed potential options for screening passengers when they arrive in the United States as well. 

They are too busy grabbing crotches to be bothered with something serious.

Obama said the United States will be ‘‘working on protocols to do additional passenger screening both at the source and here in the United States.’’ He did not outline any details or offer a timeline for when new measures might begin.

Meaning that was all lip service.

RelatedLogan won’t get stricter Ebola checks

But JFK will?

The Obama administration maintains that the best way to protect Americans is to end the outbreak in Africa. To that end, the US military was working Monday on the first of 17 promised medical centers in Liberia and training up to 4,000 soldiers this week to help with the Ebola crisis.

The United States is equipped to stop any further cases that reach this country, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

Are they?

‘‘The tragedy of this situation is that Ebola is rapidly spreading among populations in West Africa who don’t have that kind of medical infrastructure,’’ Earnest said.

About 350 US troops are already in Liberia, the Pentagon said, and will begin building a 25-bed field hospital for medical workers infected with Ebola. A torrential rain delayed the start of the job on Monday.

The virus has taken an especially devastating toll on health care workers, sickening or killing more than 370 in the hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, places that already were short on doctors and nurses before Ebola.

In Dallas on Monday, Candace White, a spokeswoman for Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, said Duncan was receiving the new antiviral drug brincidofovir after the Food and Drug Administration approved its use on an emergency basis.

He died. Did the drug kill him?

Brincidofovir, made by Chimerix of Durham, N.C., is taken orally and is being tested against several common viruses. M. Michelle Berrey, chief executive of Chimerix, said the company was working closely with federal and local health officials, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Looking for Guinea pigs.

Governor Rick Perry of Texas urged the US government to begin screening air passengers arriving from Ebola-affected nations, including taking their temperatures. Perry stopped short, however, of joining some conservatives who have backed bans on travel from those countries.

You are reading one if those labels mean anything. It's the fear.

Federal health officials say a travel ban could make the desperate situation worse in the afflicted countries, and Earnest said it was not under consideration.

Airlines have dealt with previous epidemics, such as the 2003 outbreak in Asia of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

If it is not airborne why would they be worried?

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