Lack Of Security At Labs Handling World’s Deadliest Pathogens Could Lead To Epic Pandemic
February 20, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 20th, 2012
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
The mainstream media appears to be priming the public consciousness once again for the inevitable release of a highly-deadly pathogen in the very near future. A recent Reuters report explains that many of the world’s biosafety level-3 (BSL-3) and biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) laboratories, which house some of the deadliest pathogens in existence, may not be as safe and secure as people think they are because federal regulations technically require nothing more than a single locked door at such facilities as a security measure.
According to the report, some labs voluntarily employ rigorous safety and security measures, including the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas, which is a highly-protected complex with at least eight levels of secured entry, closed-circuit video monitoring, and negative air flow and dedicated exhaust systems to prevent the accidental release of deadly pathogens. But many other such labs do not have this same tight level of a security, as federal law does not regulate the safety protocols used by private research labs.
“Galveston’s strict security underlines a little-known fact about hundreds of labs working with bacteria and viruses that could make the 1918-19 Spanish flue epidemic — when as many as 40 million people died — seem like a summer cold,” says the report. “Many of the precautions it takes are not required by law.”
Will the militarized H5N1 avian flu strain be ‘accidentally’ released from an unsecured BSL facility?
The report conveniently comes just a few months after it was first announced that scientists in Europe had deliberately created a weaponized H5N1 avian bird flu strain capable of spreading between humans (http://www.naturalnews.com/034228_bioterrorism_flu_strain.html). And since that announcement, there has been a lot of chatter about whether or not the results of this creation should be published in scientific journals, and what the likelihood is that this vicious strain will someday get released into the wild where it could kill off populations around the world at pandemic levels.
The stage is being set, in other words, for the “accidental” release of one of these pathogens at some point in the future, upon which there will be a host of scapegoats to blame. And since all this private research being conducted on deadly viral and bacterial strains at private BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs around the world is apparently not much of a security concern to the federal government, it appears that it is only a matter of time before something catastrophic occurs.
There are also few specifics on the types of research that must be conducted in BSL-4 labs versus BSL-3 labs, which means that the deadly new H5N1 mutant strain can technically be conducted at either, even though BSL-3 labs are intended for less-serious bacterial and viral strains. This is highly concerning because, according to a 2009 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, there were 400 accidents at BSL-3 labs just in the U.S. alone that year.
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Drug Crestor Being Pushed on to People with no Prior Heart Problems
December 18, 2009 by admin
Filed under News Stories
December 18, 2009
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Research is emerging that casts serious doubt on the major hypothesis as to the cause of Alzheimer’s disease, raising questions as to whether scientists really understand the disease at all.
The most effective drug currently in use for the treatment of Alzheimer’s is not any of the complex drugs developed or used in the United States or in Western Europe, which slow cognitive decline for only about six to nine months. That honor goes to a Russian antihistamine named dimebolin, which reverses the symptoms of Alzheimer’s for a full year. Although not currently approved for U.S. use by the FDA, dimebolin is shaking up the Alzheimer’s research world.
In a study conducted by researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and presented at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Vienna, dimebolin was found to drastically improve symptoms at the same time that it led to a drastic increase in the levels of the beta amyloid protein in brain cells, both in cell-based experiments and in the brains of mice. Yet beta amyloids are the very molecules that most Western researchers have, until recently, believed to be the cause of the disease, by forming sticky plaques in the brain that interfere with neural functioning.
“I would say that conventional wisdom in the field … is that an amyloid benefit would mean amyloid-lowering,” researcher Sam Gandy said. “Certainly, up until now, no one has been looking (intentionally) to treat Alzheimer’s by raising amyloid levels. [So] it was startling to observe that a compound with an apparently beneficial clinical effect on cognition caused acute elevation of amyloid beta levels in three out of three systems, in two labs.”
The pharmaceutical industry has been pouring massive amounts of time and money into drugs capable of lowering amyloid levels directly – efforts that it now seems may do more harm than good. In light of recent findings, some researchers are now suggesting that amyloid plaques might actually function as a toxic waste dump of sorts, sequestering dangerous compounds to defend the brain from further damage. If so, eliminating them might drastically accelerate the progress of dementia.
Research Shows We are Behind on Alzheimer’s Advancements
December 18, 2009 by admin
Filed under News Stories
December 18, 2009
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Research is emerging that casts serious doubt on the major hypothesis as to the cause of Alzheimer’s disease, raising questions as to whether scientists really understand the disease at all.
The most effective drug currently in use for the treatment of Alzheimer’s is not any of the complex drugs developed or used in the United States or in Western Europe, which slow cognitive decline for only about six to nine months. That honor goes to a Russian antihistamine named dimebolin, which reverses the symptoms of Alzheimer’s for a full year. Although not currently approved for U.S. use by the FDA, dimebolin is shaking up the Alzheimer’s research world.
In a study conducted by researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and presented at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Vienna, dimebolin was found to drastically improve symptoms at the same time that it led to a drastic increase in the levels of the beta amyloid protein in brain cells, both in cell-based experiments and in the brains of mice. Yet beta amyloids are the very molecules that most Western researchers have, until recently, believed to be the cause of the disease, by forming sticky plaques in the brain that interfere with neural functioning.
“I would say that conventional wisdom in the field … is that an amyloid benefit would mean amyloid-lowering,” researcher Sam Gandy said. “Certainly, up until now, no one has been looking (intentionally) to treat Alzheimer’s by raising amyloid levels. [So] it was startling to observe that a compound with an apparently beneficial clinical effect on cognition caused acute elevation of amyloid beta levels in three out of three systems, in two labs.”
The pharmaceutical industry has been pouring massive amounts of time and money into drugs capable of lowering amyloid levels directly – efforts that it now seems may do more harm than good. In light of recent findings, some researchers are now suggesting that amyloid plaques might actually function as a toxic waste dump of sorts, sequestering dangerous compounds to defend the brain from further damage. If so, eliminating them might drastically accelerate the progress of dementia.
Swine Flu Escaped From Lab
November 25, 2009 by admin
Filed under News Stories
November 25, 2009
Bloomberg
By Simeon Bennett
Adrian Gibbs, the virologist who said in May that swine flu may have escaped from a laboratory, published his findings today, renewing discussion about the origins of the pandemic virus.
The new H1N1 strain, which was discovered in Mexico and the U.S. in April, may be the product of three strains from three continents that swapped genes in a lab or a vaccine-making plant, Gibbs, and fellow Australian scientists wrote in Virology Journal. The authors analyzed the genetic makeup of the virus and found its origin could be more simply explained by human involvement than a coincidence of nature.
Their study, published in a free, online journal reviewed by other scientists, follows debate among researchers six months ago, when Gibbs asked the World Health Organization to consider the hypothesis. After reviewing Gibbs’ initial three-page paper, WHO and other organizations concluded the pandemic strain was a naturally occurring virus and not laboratory-derived.
“It is important that the source of the new virus be found if we wish to avoid future pandemics rather than just trying to minimize the consequences after they have emerged,” Gibbs and colleagues John Armstrong and Jean Downie said in today’s eight- page study.
Gibbs and Armstrong are on the emeritus faculty at the Australian National University in Canberra and Downie is affiliated with the Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Laboratory Services at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital, according to the study.
While the exact source of the new H1N1 strain is a mystery, their research has “raised many new questions,” they said. The authors compared the genetic blueprints of flu strains stored in the free database Genbank and found the pandemic virus’s nearest ancestors circulate in pigs.
