Much ado about Anthrax.
Jun. 3rd, 2015 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dalesqlThe news media have been making much FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) over the recent shipment of live anthrax spores to a number of research labs. The failure is that for some reason, they were supposed to be irradiated before shipment to kill the spores, and one of the labs made a test culture to verify that assumption, and found they were not dead yet.
Attaboys for the receiving lab who did this QA test to verify the deadness of the spores. The lab who sent them gets a bunch of ahshits for failing to do a proper job of killing the spores. The other labs who failed to do the test cultures get some small ahshits for trusting and not verifying.
Yes, Anthrax is a potentially deadly disease, and the mouthbreathing editorials from the media and assorted government bashers over the release of this deadly disease are full of hot air and not much factchecking. Anthrax spores are still readily available in the soil of pretty much anyplace herds of sheep are found. So obtaining more anthrax spores are easily in the grasp of any organization that chooses to expend moderate effort. A couple shovelfuls of dirt from a long term sheep pasture or feed lot should suffice.
It's not like Smallpox which is believed to be eradicated from the entire human population, and there are only a couple of carefully protected samples of the virus in high level bio labs left. Anthrax spores have been found in the wild in freaking antartica. If only the news media had a couple of people who actually factchecked their stories and editorials.
Attaboys for the receiving lab who did this QA test to verify the deadness of the spores. The lab who sent them gets a bunch of ahshits for failing to do a proper job of killing the spores. The other labs who failed to do the test cultures get some small ahshits for trusting and not verifying.
Yes, Anthrax is a potentially deadly disease, and the mouthbreathing editorials from the media and assorted government bashers over the release of this deadly disease are full of hot air and not much factchecking. Anthrax spores are still readily available in the soil of pretty much anyplace herds of sheep are found. So obtaining more anthrax spores are easily in the grasp of any organization that chooses to expend moderate effort. A couple shovelfuls of dirt from a long term sheep pasture or feed lot should suffice.
It's not like Smallpox which is believed to be eradicated from the entire human population, and there are only a couple of carefully protected samples of the virus in high level bio labs left. Anthrax spores have been found in the wild in freaking antartica. If only the news media had a couple of people who actually factchecked their stories and editorials.
