Slashdot Mirror
Colleague Comes Forward To Defend Anthrax Suspect
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times writes about Henry S. Heine, a former Army microbiologist who worked for years with Bruce E. Ivins, whom the FBI has blamed for the anthrax letter attacks that killed five people in 2001. Heine told a 16-member National Academy of Sciences panel reviewing the FBI's scientific work on the investigation that he believes it is impossible that the deadly spores could have been produced undetected in Ivins's laboratory, as the FBI asserts. Heine told the panel that producing the quantity of spores in the letters would have taken at least a year of intensive work using the equipment at the army lab, an effort that would not have escaped colleagues' notice. Lab technicians who worked closely with Ivins have told Heine they saw no such work. Heine adds that, in addition, the biological containment measures where Ivins worked were inadequate to prevent the spores from floating out of the laboratory into animal cages and offices. 'You'd have had dead animals or dead people.' Asked why he is speaking out now, almost two years after Ivins's suicide, Heine says that Army officials had prohibited comment on the case, silencing him until he left the government laboratory. Although Heine does not dispute that there was a genetic link between the spores in the letters and the anthrax in Ivins's flask, Heine says samples from the flask were widely shared. 'Whoever did this is still running around out there. I truly believe that.'"
it screams conspiracies and secret government involvement
but real life is not a hollywood movie, occam's razor is unfortunately mundane and boring. the simplest, lamest, conspiracy-free explanation is the truth
but flame on paranoid schizophrenics: this story is made for you. wig out and bug out while you can
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Okay, skipper, thanks for the heads up. Opinion noted, for what that's worth. It's printed on every god damned container of the stuff: APAP 500mg/codeine 5mg. Nobody reads their pill bottles? Nobody can tell from context what I'm talking about? Slashdot was suddenly infested with morons? Sorry you feel intellectually threatened by me, but maybe, just maybe, that's your fucking problem, not mine.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'm not saying that Vice President Cheney was involved in any way...
Baloney.
Of course you are.
It's the message you intended to deliver. Don't try to weasel your way out of it.
Either say it - and prove it - or keep your big mouth shut.
Then you're his target audience.
This guy is giving second-hand and speculative "evidence", and it's not holding up to scrutiny.
The tobacco industry has plenty of "qualified" people on its research staff as well, and it still sells cancer on a stick.
See above about argumentum ad verecundiam