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GlaxoSmithKline Released 45 Liters of Live Polio Virus
ferespo sends this news out of Belgium: As reported to ECDC by Belgian authorities, on 2 September 2014, following a human error, 45 liters of concentrated live polio virus solution were released into the environment by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline in Rixensart city, Belgium. The liquid was conducted directly to a water-treatment plant (Rosieres) and released after treatment in river Lasne affluent of river Dyle which is affluent of the Escaut/Scheldt river. Belgium's High Council of Public Health conducted a risk assessment that concluded that the risk of infection for the population exposed to the contaminated water is extremely low due to the high level of dilution and the high vaccination coverage (95%) in Belgium.
And see what happens ...
You're thinking of smallpox. Polio is still endemic in pakistan/afghanistan/india.
We have not eradicated polio; in fact, there's an outbreak now in Syria because of poor conditions and missed vaccinations. The vaccine is manufactured from the virus, hence why a drug company had a supply of active virus.
45 liters, even concentrated, of polio virus does not pose great danger, especially since it went into a modern sewage treatment facility. I am a polio victim myself, got it in 1966, 10 years after Salk released the vaccine in USA, but I was in rural South India with very very poor sanitary conditions. All through high school in every class I had another polio victim, typical class sizes are 50 to 60 in India at that time. So it works out to some 4% of the sample population (account for survivor bias, the dead victims did not make it into this sample). I was lucky, lost just part functionality in one leg. Right now in the slums of India, Pakisan and Bangladesh people are living constantly exposed to polio and still the infection rate is not all that high. So we need not go hyperbolic with this news.
Let us not underreact
We are giving more and more rights to the corporations, equating money with speech and even religious beliefs to corporations. But when it comes to criminal penalties they get to use limited liability corporation laws. Do not go after the underlings. Top management should not be able to create policy documents on one hand, then create incentive systems that encourage the violation of the same policies, and claim immunity, "Well, that employee violated our own established policy. It is her fault. Don't you think of touching my bonus!". Nominal financial penalties for those who were negligent are in order. But extraordinary penalties, amounting to all the pay and bonuses collected by the upper management in the last five or ten years should be assessed. Their performance review policies should be reviewed, and if they have practices that create perverse incentives to violate their own corporate policies, even harsher penalties are in order.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Homeopaths claim that a very diluted concentration of something harmful can actually be used to treat the symptoms it causes. So GlaxoSmithKline has just created the most potent homeopathic remedy for polio known to man!
Would have been useful to takeout all the mindless celebrities who don't vaccinate their children and thus assure a healthier society for us all.
... palace guard. Some sort of possibly armed unit that literally controls who has the virus from one moment to the next.
Right. Because this expensive and complicated solution would have prevented all zero of the infections that resulted from this release.
You're talking about the same Europe where people have actually been put on trial for 2 different genocides, which is the only continent where anyone has ever done that?
Nonsense. There is a long history of "victor's justice" on every continent. I'll only be impressed when the winners put their own people on trial. Lt William Calley got off with the "Nuremberg defense" that he was only following orders, while his superiors got off with the defense that "Hey, I was just giving orders, I didn't actually shoot anyone myself."
Killing millions of people due to a virus release is not genocide as it it not targeted at a specific ethnic or national group.
It would be targeted at those too stupid to get vaccinated.
It appears that someone accidentally dumped the wrong bucket down the drain . From that, you infer:
> create incentive systems that encourage the violation of the same policies, and claim immunity, ... Nominal financial penalties for those who were negligent are in order. But extraordinary penalties, amounting to all the pay and bonuses collected by the upper management in the last five or ten years should be assessed.
>
It is 45 liters of concentrated virus. It is polio this time it could be just simple salmonella or E Coli next time or ebola. The point is not to look one person dumping the wrong bucket. Something as serious as concentrated polio vaccine should not have reached this person pouring stuff down the drain. Every ml every drop of dangerous viruses and bacteria must be accounted for. There should be clear audit trails about who is getting what and how it was disposed of eventually. There should be a clear protocols to track it. One should not be able to get 45 liters of polio in ones hand to dump. Setting up procedures like this costs money. That is where the company cut costs. That is where perverse incentives come in. The top honchos will have a policy directive that says "you must follow these procedures to handle viruses classified as ABC". Then do not hire enough people to enforce the policy. If any team lead points it out, ruin that person's advancement and as an example to others. Nothing on paper. But everyone understands why the promising career of Dr XYZ suddenly foundered. That is how it is done. That is what we should go after.
It would be far too easy to fire some low level schmuck and pretend everything is hunky dory.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You could call this "viral marketing"?
(sorry.)
-- My Weblog.
We are regularly told that advanced Western nations shouldn't worry about Ebola, because we have advanced Western medicine, and aren't like those poor and primitive African nations. And then things like this happen. Or the recent CDC biohazard scandals. Or the hospital in Texas, just trained about Ebola, sends a recent arrival from Liberia who is showing symptoms back to his relatives with some antibiotics. And then, after he vomits on the sidewalk on the way back to the hospital, people without protective gear "clean it up" with a pressure hose, while a sandal-wearing woman walks by . And they reuse the ambulance before they decontaminate it. And the family violates their quarantine.
So when Top Men tell us there's no danger of an outbreak here, I am not reassured.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
And those unfortunate enough not to be able to be vaccinated.
Not that much of an issue really in western europe or even europe.
So many responses are like "meh, polio, who cares."
The devastating effects of this virus are obviously forgotten by this generation. It results in paralysis that is fatal when it hits things like lungs and hearts, and results in sometimes temporary, sometimes life-long paralysis in many victims. I knew people who permanently lost their ability to talk, others with one paralyzed leg, others who lost an arm, others with distorted facial muscles and other ugly effects. In the early 1960s when it was released people lined up for the vaccine, they would lie, cheat, and steal to get the vaccine when supplies were still limited.
In you're case, you're basically discounting anyone under age 6? Polio is a 4-dose vaccination where the last dose usually isn't until age 4-6. Google says that is a half million people in Belgium. That's "not much of an issue"?
Anyone who has had a reaction to one of the components and cannot have the series, they also are irrelevant? It's probably a million or so of the population. Again, you're okay with them getting a permanently disabling disease?
The vaccines are not 100% effective, many people who were vaccinated according to schedule are still able to become sick. No idea what the percentage is, but anything other than 0 is too much. Are they really not that important?
What would you think if it was YOU or a loved one in the hospital bed, hooked up to a ventilator because your lungs were paralyzed, hoping that the paralysis is temporary in your case.
Now, if we could limit the infections just to anti-vaxers (not the innocent children of anti-vaxers) that would be something else entirely. Anti-vax for chicken pox or milder diseases are not that bad, but anti-vax for polio and other seriously ravaging diseases is just stupid.
Polio is so close to global eradication. I applaud those like the Gates Foundation that are funding killing off the last few known wild cases.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement