Gadgetory

people like to push the boundaries sometimes in the area of scientific research they like to see if it can be done no matter how scary a reckless risky it is I got involved in the subject matter in 2006 when our local congressman tried to bring the country's second-biggest bio defense facility to a farm in Pulaski County Kentucky he said that it would be as safe as going to walmart the local newspaper published stories stating that facilities like this had been operating in the country for over 50 years and had never had an accident well this particular facility is a bsl-4 facility vsl force facilities study diseases for which there is no cure or effective treatment like smallpox and Ebola and bsl-4 facilities have tighter containment conditions the researchers have to wear the sealed space suit and have an independent oxygen supply when I got to researching the history I discovered all the claims they were making were absolutely false there had been numerous problems and incidents including people researchers or janitors dying from diseases then in 2007 there were a series of accidents around the country at Texas A&M the CDC in a foot mouth outbreak in Britain that caused a congressional subcommittee to conduct an investigation and the government accountability office conducted an investigation and issued a long report there had been over 1200 new high risk germ labs constructed in the US since 2001 that nobody in the government was even keeping track of all the facilities accidents were always a risk and were in fact occurring we have 15,000 people who now have access to these bio weapons agents 15,000 chances for a mentally unbalanced person to use them in a bad way or for an accident to happen can affect members of the general public in 2001 most people are probably aware of the anthrax attacks that killed five people sickened 20-plus people these attacks were used as a basis for attacking Iraq supposedly to find weapons of mass destruction that it was claimed sodom Hussein had anyone who's researched that history knows that most of that evidence was fabricated by people in the bush administration the FBI he had let it be known as as early as 2002 that they believe the attacks had come from Fort Detrick our largest bio defense facility in the US what that should have meant is that we are much more careful about whose hands we put these agents into and instead we constructed over 1,200 new high risks labs around the country well they're doing all kinds of things in in bio defense facilities they're researching the germs in various ways unfortunately in too many cases they're actually creating scarier versions of the germs to see if it's possible to do so and then I suppose if they find if it's possible to do so they're going to try to develop a countermeasure to the thing that they just created so you have an endless cycle of a dog chasing its tail and at plenty of work for bio defense facilities it was an overreaction to the fear of bioterror the federal government has put about 70 billion dollars into bio defense since 2001 the average annual funding for bio defense has gone up four to five times they are funding the construction of new labs around the country by universities government agencies private companies the problem is the federal government is giving money to build the lamps the money for maintenance in annual operations is going to come from ordinary budgets like universities even government agencies and we know there are a few budgetary problems so these things that might have seemed safe at the time they're being built are going to be maintained at a questionable level of protection the government's chief regulatory agencies the CDC and NIH the ones who are supposed to regulate these dangerous labs operate dangerous labs themselves and so they have a vested interest in making it appear to the public that this is all safe and no problems with it there have been various efforts to create antibiotic resistant versions of existing buy weapons agents things like anthrax tularemia q fever brucella these are all things that if you're diagnosed early enough you can get some antibiotics and you'll probably be okay but if they create antibiotic resistant versions of the germs that's a whole different question I think if there were an accidentally infected researcher they might actually try to cover it up for a while and making it much less likely that we'd be able to respond quickly so that's another whole aspect of this a 1918 flu killed 50 million to a hundred million people worldwide the CDC and others brought the 1918 flew back to life it was dead it was not out there in the general public and they recreated it from DNA from a corpse and they have been constructing experiments with the 1918 flew around the country including crossing it with other flus and I just think there's a really scary and stupid thing to be doing we presumably have some immunity to it because some of our flus are descended from it they've said that it can be treated with Tamiflu and things like that but just bringing it back to life something so scary in creating the possibility not only creating the possibility but deliberately trying to cross it with other forms of flu to see what might happen it may be interesting to scientists but it's really scary and reckless for the rest of us