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Live Anthrax Shipped Accidentally To S Korea and US Labs
New submitter hamsterz1 writes: U.S. Officials say that the military mistakenly sent live anthrax to laboratories in nine states and an air base in South Korea, after apparently failing to properly inactivate the bacteria. Four lab workers in the United States and up to 22 overseas have been given precautionary medical treatment. The CDC is investigating the incident and Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren says, "Out of an abundance of caution, [the Defence Department] has stopped the shipment of this material from its labs pending completion of the investigation."
it would be a shame if something.....
USPS would have misdelivered it.
You'd think NOT GETTING ANTHRAX would be an effective incentive for your lab monkeys to follow the lab's safety protocols. Is it really THAT depressing a workplace environment?
"Hey Bob! Looks like we need to ship some anthrax to Korea."
"Ok! Did you make sure it wouldn't kill us before we start handling the samples."
"Does it really matter?"
"... No... I guess not..."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Should have mailed the anthrax to David Cameron instead.
http://slashdot.org/submission...
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Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You guys, Anthrax Live is pretty fucking awesome! Their shows can get loud, but they play all... oh, not the band. Never mind.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
Morons.
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Why do we have Anthrax? Why is it even possible to be shipped anywhere? Are we preparing a biological weapon? Come on!
Stopping shipments sound like the minimum of caution, not an "abundance".
Various Toolbars, like Ask.com, and other shit.
No, your information is not safe. SF is hijacking accounts claiming them to be abandoned (and being caught in the lie) in order to wrap the installer around the software package without consent of the account owner.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
According to half the people here on Slashdot, the solution to any and all problems is to have another federal government department do _something_. Do what? Anything, really, as long as they do _something_. These guys are their great hope, people so dense they mail out live anthrax all over the place. Good luck getting them to solve all of your problems.
I'd like to know why Slashdot is so far behind the curve on this story. Soylent picked it up this morning, almost twelve hours ago, and they're usually the last to approve anything. Why isn't Slashdot running a crucial story on SourceForge tampering with Open Source software and inserting adware/malware in total violation of the trust that it earned through the years?
The link you gave calls the WTC attack a "nuclear demolition". I'm not sure how credible the link is.
--PM
Because Slashdot Media, owner of SourceForge, doesn't want it getting out.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I hope they catch those terrorists who were attacking our bases, and giving biological weapons to our enemies. No doubt they'll spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Now we can't use it for false flag operations : (
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Indeed, which is why it's so damn stupid. I'd wager the people who read Slashdot exclusively and don't hear anything from any other tech sites is vanishingly small nowadays. This news has spread quite a bit. Slashdot Media can't exactly pretend that people won't find out independently. They have very little influence in the tech news arena anymore.
The best thing they could do is post the story with an impartial, emotionally-detached summary, add a disclaimer that Slashdot Media also owns SourceForge, and leave it at that. By pretending that it doesn't exist when most people are now clearly aware of the link between Slashdot and SourceForge just makes Slashdot look like a bunch of prissy kids.
Great, Now we're at war with SOUTH Korea and are all going to die of anthrax.
Thanks Obama
I absolutely love the example of how news reports represent things.
This morning they started out "Live anthrax shipped to nine labs and Korea". The quotes talk about an abundance of caution and that spores were "detected". Since I happen to have read about it before, I already knew live anthrax is already shipped around the world in sheep and other livestock. So I wondered why the media would be on this so much.
Later in the day, different headlines "Live anthrax detected in possibly ten labs".
Now at the end of the day, different headlines, "Live anthrax detected in a single shipment, others under investigation", with details "the containers were properly packed and there is no risk of exposure to anyone but those on the base; all military personnel are given anthrax vaccinations when they join the service..."
The latest news stories have the base commander saying procedures were followed and the CDC saying it was only one sample that was mostly, but not completely, sanitized by irradiation, so the few live spores continued to grow.
While anthrax is potentially deadly, so are diseases like influenza. Anthrax is common in lots of animals, including livestock around the world. It is only when the bacteria is weaponized into an aerosol that it becomes extremely deadly. And this stuff wasn't.
Lots of hype about a virtually non-issue. End result is the protocol gets adjusted, run it through the irradiation machine three times.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
lack of nuclear safe guards, and it's very close to the same thing.
But we will (and should), as if nothing had happened.
If chemical and bacterial warfare have been banned, the why do we still have it?
Well, it's not only that he mischaracterized the attack on the WTC as "nuclear".
He claims that pneumonic plague is 100% fatal even if treated.
While very serious, pneumonic plague is treatable and not 100% fatal. I couldn't find a mortality rate when treated, but I found a reference that said "mortality significantly reduced if treatment starts at onset of symptoms."
He also misunderstands smallpox. There were multiple strains of smallpox, one had a fatality rate of up to 30-35% the other had a fatality rate of 1%, though he was correct that different populations had different susceptibility.
And these are the things I KNEW off the top of my head he got wrong. I'm sorry, but given his track record compared to things I knew already and to what I could find with a teeny bit of research, this guy is completely an unreliable source of information.
--PM
OK you have a good point, check this out.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=30&v=fknMGEVUvyM).
Also this is very interesting.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkaX5n3pfZE).
They still require mucus surface or wound. And they may have been partially weakened by the ineffective sterialization procedure.
On the other hand spores, enhanced by a combined aerosol are mire effective infecting people. Apparantly fromthe 2001 incident, it takes a certain skill to do this.
" I'd wager the people who read Slashdot exclusively and don't hear anything from any other tech sites is vanishingly small nowadays."
Yup. Slashdot has very few exclusives. To think they could keep this under wraps is bullshit.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.