U.S. Army To Ramp Up Anthrax Purchasing

An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist reports that the U.S. Army wants to purchase a large supply of an anthrax strain." From the article: "A series of contracts have been uncovered that relate to the US army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. They ask companies to tender for the production of bulk quantities of a non-virulent strain of anthrax, and for equipment to produce significant volumes of other biological agents ... Although the Sterne strain is not thought to be harmful to humans and is used for vaccination, the contracts have caused major concern. 'It raises a serious question over how the US is going to demonstrate its compliance with obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention if it brings these tanks online,'"

Comments

Yep

[krist0]

how did the US know Saddam had those WMDs?

They have the receipt

Re:Yep

[Xaositecte]

Except Saddam signed a treaty saying he wouldn't have them...

Sorta've like how a convicted felon can't own guns legally.

Re:Yep

[Xaositecte]

No, it didn't.

The US signed Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction and thePROTOCOL FOR THE PROHIBITION OF THE USE IN WAR OF ASPHYXIATING, POISONOUS OR OTHER GASES, AND OF BACTERIOLOGICAL METHODS OF WARFARE

Both of which allow having biological agents for peaceful and protective purposes. I.E. Exactly what the US is doing here.

BTWC site

[HasBean]

FYI: the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention has a website.

Fearmongering?

[Aoreias]

The whole argument just smacks of fearmongering, and throws the word anthrax around as much as possible. They're not creating a biological weapons lab, just procuring enough to probably use for threat assessment of biological weapon dispersion. This is something I'd actually expect a sane government to do, and not be surprised about.

It's not going to be used for weaponry, and the US has enough nuclear firepower to not need biological weaponry, which are much more unpredictable in effect, and less reliable.

Bad journalism, coming straight from NewScientist.

Re:Fearmongering?

[n54]

You're spot on. The NewScientist angle is no surprise really, at least not to me and I've been reading NewScientist on and off for years - they often pay lip-service to the less rational segments of society/university culture in Britain to boost their circulation.

What else can one call a "news report" that says:
"Although the Sterne strain is not thought to be harmful to humans and is used for vaccination"
but still avoids mentioning the fact that anthrax has to be militarized to be classified as a biological weapon and then goes on to cry wolf even though it should be clearly selfcontradictionary to even a casual reader? They're obviously playing on the fact that most of their readers don't have a clue about anthrax as naturally occuring in the soil (and who in their right mind would classify the soil itself as a biological weapon? Doing so would be as bizarre as the "news"...). Or maybe they're betting on most of those readers willfully ignoring this if they are aware of it in order to revel in their already firmly established selfgratifying world-view.

Sunshine Project http://www.sunshine-project.org/ is just another typical activist organisation and not someone exactly brimming with scientific credibility (they're an NGO who find scientists that support them just like any other halfassed activist group like Greenpeace).

I bet 95% of all slashdotters will gobble this "news" up without much further thought (lest this post prevents that).

Not that NewScientist is a real scientific journal, it's just a popular science rag, but this is the same reasons society needs something better to replace the often ambiguous claims to being "a peer-reviewed journal/publication" or in general those words that have sadly lost any meaning beyond their buzzword value like "integrity" and "independent".

No matter the kind or size of media we need to know who those "peers" are (and not just the final link but all the way into the news source) and how and what they were thinking to make any such system have any real credibility (no more hiding behind anonymous facades or dubious groups). In short: we need truly responsible transparent journalism to replace what has become a putrid wound festering with personal political bias, plain corruption and lack of understanding and knowledge be it scientific or otherwise. Otherwise the noise-to-signal ratio will simply always remain so high as to make it all irrelevant to any intelligent reader.

Re:Just goes to show...

[ocelotbob]

From the article:

It is not known what use the biological agents will be put to. They could be used to test procedures to decontaminate vehicles or buildings, or to test an "agent defeat" warhead designed to destroy stores of chemical and biological weapons.

Quit your mindless fearmongering.

Re:no treaty obligations

[Maset]

The nuclean non-proliferation treaty calls for all nuclear weapon armed states to steadily reduce their nuclear weapons stockpile, not try and develop new mini-nukes or stall weapons reduction.

Think vaccine

[jeffs72]

It's a violation of the USA's own weapons policy to mass produce, or use in the field of war under any circumstances, biological agents. As a retired NBC weapons/decon grunt, I can tell you that you'd have rank and file desertions if a unit was ordered to deploy a bioweapon. Indoctrination at the private level and above preaches against the use of biological agents over and over.

What the DoD is doing here is making some anthrax vaccine, because we're out. We used a lot of it with our second Iraq deployment, and the fear is very real that someone will use an anthrax weapon in a terrorist attack. The army wants to get some vaccine, and start making their own so they aren't reliant on outside contractors to produce it. It's always been a weak point in our policy I think to rely upon civilan companies to produce vaccines for biological agents (and checmical for that matter).

A crop duster full of anthrax would cause some serious mayhem in the US, or anywhere else for that matter, think about it.

Re:no treaty obligations

[kaitou]

I'd like to quote you Article 4 of the Geneva convention:
Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it. Nationals of a neutral State who find themselves in the territory of a belligerent State, and nationals of a co-belligerent State, shall not be regarded as protected persons while the State of which they are nationals has normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands they are.

Not sure how it applies in the case of armed fighters not fighting on behalf of a government or fighting on behalf of a government not signatory to the geneva convention.
I'd also disagree on the "terrorism against captives" bit, terrorism is against civilians. Pearl Harbor wasn't a terrorist attack for example. A captured enemy fighter is not a civilian by definition.

Yeah, you sure done showed us good!

Seems he has if you can't even log in to post.