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Examining New York's Bioresearch Laboratory
Evangelion quotes from a NY Press story about Plum Island: "'Located just two miles off the tip of Long Island and six miles from the Connecticut coastline, Plum Island is home to a Bio-Safety Level 4 (BSL-4) research facility... During the fifth month of [an Engineer's] strike, a three-hour power outage renewed public interest in the island... Without power, the air filtration systems are inoperable. Without power, decontamination procedures break down. Without power, the seals in the pressurized airlock doors start to deflate. According to one report, workers were desperately sealing the doors with duct tape...'"
We don't have level 4 labs where I work (levels 1-3 only), but we have emergency backup power that kicks in in under 10 seconds. Why on earth would this place not have that?
Trolling is a art,
Just sayin...
You don't, the lab has three backup generators, which were not running for unexplained reasons.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You forgot Fort Detrick Right between Washington D.C. and Baltimore.
USAMRIID has over 10,000 square feet of Biosafety Level 4 (BL4) and 50,000 square feet of Biosafety Level 3 (BL3)....
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
Here's one
He has done an audio interview on rense.com and onNPR (can't find the link)
What he describes sounds similar to the problems laid out by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.
From a United Stataes Animal Health Association's 1998 Report:
Beyond the traditional four biosafety levels, U.S. Agriculture has an additional level, biosafety level 5 (BL5), designed for agents that by law are not allowed on the U.S. mainland. Both foot-and-mouth disease virus and rinderpest virus require that BL3-Ag facilities in which they are studied be separated from the mainland. There is only one facility in the U.S. that meets BL5 criteria -- the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
Original Report Here.
The proposal for the one at UC Davis was dropped due to public opinion. Although the federal government is still looking at building a new one. There were several proposed sites, and that list was narrowed down and UC Davis dropped from that list.
Part of the site determination that the government is doing for this new one is the surrounding area public opinion of the lab. UC Davis and the surrounding Sacramento and bay area had a very negative reaction to a BSL-4 lab being created. Therefore the government determined that it would not be a good idea to build it here.
We are talking about a lab where they analyze viri and microbes that are deemed Level 4. Ebola is considered Level 4 because it's lethal and incurrable. On the other hand based on research done on the Zimbabwe outbreak Ebola is almost only transmissible in unsanitary hospital conditions (such as sharing needles).
Experimentation with these Level 4 infectious diseases is to develop cures and/or vaccines. The specimens are contained in sealed media, in sealed cabinets, in pressurized rooms protected by airlocks and pressure flow. Given the complete failure of the pressure system and a catastropic release of the specimen out into the building (of which there is probably a better chance that the facility will be hit be a metor) it's still not going to sail miles away and depending on the specimen may not even infect any of the workers even if they were exposed. We are taking about microorganisms here, they dont' get up and walk out of the building. For the vast majority of infectious diseases without a vector to transmit the disease the other microorgasims present in every square inch of this planet will consume the infectious organism.
Quoted from Cryptome:
Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Dirac, Faraday, Planck, Kelvin, Maxwell and Einstein believed in God. So do I.
Interesting actually. Einstein didn't. A common misconception amongst many religious groups in some desperate hope to hang onto some credibility in this age of reason and common sense, is that Einstein was religious, and believed in god.
While a Jew by descent, he had no religious beliefs of his own - in fact when this nonsense was brought to his attention he was indignant at the suggestion:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religion then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.". (From Albert Einstein, "The Human Side", ed. H. Dukas and B. Hoffman (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1981).
That quote doesn't make sense. I saw a video clip of him announcing something (I don't remember what) in Germany, while Nazis were on the rise. He something like "I am re-affirming my existance as a scientist...and a Jew." (That's a seriously butchered quote so far as my mind can recall.)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Maybe a similar system could be used to automaticly seal off contaminated areas, in case power is lost?
We do that when designing safety systems in chemical plants and refineries . . . critical systems are designed to "fail open" or "fail closed" depending on the situation. By "fail", I mean if the system loses power (whether it be electric, pneumatic, etc.) For example, one would not want a fuel gas valve on a boiler to "fail open" and one would not want a chilled water quench system on that same boiler to "fail closed." Also, there are almost always manual block valves in the event of a more catastrophic failure.If the doors cited in the article fail open, it would imply that it is impossible/impractical to design a fail closed system for sealing the doors, triple redundant backup generators were considered sufficient to address the failure mode, or the engineer that designed the system should be sent to remedial engineering school.
That's not what the article said, it said UP UNTIL 1954 it was used for those purposes:
"In 1954, the research took a more aggressive turn, with scientists looking to cook up ways to inflict damage on Soviet livestock"
"President Clinton to include Plum Island in his expanded bioterrorism program based on the possibility of a biological attack on the nation's agricultural base. Last year the administration of the island's research facilities was transferred from USDA to the Department of Homeland Security.
"
Mod +5 Drunk
Are you perhaps thinking about the Soviet anthrax release in 1979 at a bioweapons lab in Sverdlovsk? Killed about 60 people and a lot of livestock.
Mother Jones has an interesting article that provides some background on the labor problems at Plum Island. It appears that the contractor, LB&B Associates, with USDA assistance, is trying to destroy the union.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I have no personal knowledge of the research done at Plum Island. However, they do have a website.
Not that you are likely to believe what they say about themselves. I suspect the father of your childhood friend just got tired of explaining what he did to freaked out people like you, and don't really consider that anecdote evidence of some big coverup of the research that goes on there.
There is also no point in arguing over whether or not the US is still involved in bioweapons research. None of us knows for certain... and those that do, can't say, or aren't believed (when they say that there is no research aimed at developing bioweapons going on).
However, I don't think the two diseases you mention are likely targets for such research, if it is continuing. Nor is "escaped from a bioweapons research lab" the most likely explanation for the arrival of these diseases.
The disease that we call Lyme disease has been around in Europe for quite awhile. Here is a short history. You are correct that no one really knows when it showed up here, but given the tick-infested state of many of the early immigrants to America, I don't think we really need to invoke some governmental conspiracy theory to explain it. As many of the patient testimonials show, this is a difficult disease to diagnose, and I don't find it hard to believe that it existing for a hundred years or so in the US before anyone really noticed it. Furthermore, I don't think Lyme disease would be a likely target for bioweapon research. It requires a tick bite to transmit, and not even a bite by an infected tick is guaranteed to transmit the illness. And the disease doesn't quickly disable the infected person. So: flakely transmission and unreliable effects. Not the best characteristics for a weapon.
Last I heard, the theory for how West Nile came here was via airplane: either a mosquito or two hitched a ride, or a person on board was infected. Since many infected people never really think they have anything worse than the flu, this is not unreasonable.
West nile is also not the big scary disease it is often made out to be, and again strikes me as an unlikely target for bioweapons research. According to the cdc:
"From 1999 through 2001, there were 149 cases of West Nile virus human illness in the United States reported to CDC and confirmed, including 18 deaths. "
Compare that to these numbers for deaths from the flu: somewhere in the 20,000 to 30,000 range EVERY YEAR.
Well, the campus is still trying to put one in and get a future site here. The public is a bit upset that they're still at it (and the campus is refusing to talk to the public self-appointed liason people). The uproar here after the last proposal round was rather strong. The campus can't convience the public that there is no reason for concern, as much as they try.
Ah, Davis politics. It's a fun place to live.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
It was a Janitor strike. last time I checked janiors were only called sanitation engineers behind their backs, not in the paper. Is this even a real newspaper?
Here's a Terraserver view of the island. I don't see anything dangerous! Well, nothing bigger than 1 meter, anyway.
Here's an interview with Michael Carroll archived at http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/03032004 RealPlayer is the format, I think.
"He thinks that there might even be a link between Plum Island research and outbreaks of Lyme disease and the West Nile virus."
It doesn't matter that they 'only' study animal diseases, these diseases can easily jump the species barrier. A few recent examples are SARS and the various flus.
And a website for Carroll's book: www.lab257.com