Once they make an effective race-specific bioweapon, one race will suddenly vanish.
On March 13, 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified human error – lapses in the appropriate use of personal protective equipment – as the cause of the accidental release of the deadly Burkholderia pseudomallei bacteria from the Tulane National Primate Research Center, which is a BSL-3 research facility.
In June, 2014, the CDC announced that 75 people were being monitored or provided antibiotics because they may have been unintentionally exposed to live anthrax after safety practices were not followed at the Atlanta, Georgia, Roybal campus BSL-3 laboratory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBia87fqZFE
Plum Island GPS
[url]https://www.google.com/maps/place/Plum+Island/@41.1826007,-72.1955622,180a,35y,227.45h,79.04t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x89e61dbc0c009615:0x6aa442badcd8d687!8m2!3d41.1758743!4d-72.1978842[/url]
Michael Christopher Carroll’s book LAB 257
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Germs Gone Wild: The Horrific Secrets of Plum Island
By Michael Braverman
Germs Gone Wild: The Horrific Secrets of Plum Island
(Reuters/Landov)
What Is on the Island?
Lurking in the dark waters of Long Island Sound is a mysterious place known as Plum Island. Just ten miles off the coast of Connecticut, this tiny speck of land has long been rumored to be the epicenter of top-secret biowarfare research. The U.S. government acknowledges that the island is home to a scientific facility. Its stated purpose is to study animal-borne diseases. But investigators are beginning to uncover startling new facts about this forbidding place. Insiders and ex-employees have come forward to tell their stories. From security breaches in germ labs, to escaped diseases and potential mass epidemics, this is the real Plum Island story.
But the government denies anything is wrong.
Plum Island’s Secret Past
Although the origins of Plum Island are shrouded in secrecy, investigations have revealed the startling fact that, in the 1950s, the lab was run by a German scientist named Erich Traub, who was brought to America after the Second World War. His specialty in the Third Reich was virus and vaccine research. Along with rocket scientists like Werner von Braun, Traub was spirited out of post-war Germany to help jump-start the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The well-documented U.S. government project to recruit German scientists and technicians was known as Operation Paperclip. President Truman approved the project, so long as only nominal Nazi party members without SS affiliation were recruited. However, because the Nazi party promoted so many of its top scientists, Operation Paperclip ended up white-washing the pasts of many of its recruits in order to get them into the U.S.
Traub’s particular expertise was in disease-carrying insects—in particular, the common tick. Ticks are often carried aloft by birds, and can therefore quickly spread over large swaths of territory. Called “vectors,” ticks and mosquitoes are also genetically similar. Both contain bacteriophages or plasmids that transfer genetic material into a cell, or from one bacterium to another. In other words, they can infect whatever host animal with which they come in contact. Multiply this by millions, and ticks become the perfect insect army.
Plum Island (Reuters)During the Cold War, both the Soviets and Americans searched for ways to cripple each other, short of a doomsday nuclear attack. One idea was to destroy Russia’s food supply. This is where Traub’s tick army came into play. If the bugs could be injected with lethal pathogens, and somehow released over the Soviet Union, we could literally starve our mortal enemy to death. It’s well documented that Traub was using Plum Island for this research.
In November 1957, U.S. military intelligence explored the elimination of the food supply of the Sino-Soviet bloc, right down to determining the calories required for victory:
In order to have a crippling effect on the economy of the USSR, the food and animal crop resources of the USSR would have to be damaged within a single growing season to the extent necessary to reduce the present average daily caloric intake from 2,800 calories to 1,400 calories; i.e., the starvation level. Reduction of food resources to this level, if maintained for twelve months, would produce 20 percent fatalities, and would decrease manual labor performance by 95 percent and clerical and light labor performance by 80 percent.
Attempts to obtain records about Traub’s past, and his possible connection to Third Reich war crimes, have been regularly rebuffed by Army Intelligence and the CIA. Traub died in Germany at the age of 78.
The Lyme Disease Connection
Traub regularly experimented with injecting dangerous pathogens into insects. The Joint Chiefs of Staff authorized this and similar research in 1952. Dusty files labeled “Tick Research” in the National Archives revealed this quote:
“Vigorous, well-planned, large-scale [biological warfare] test, with results to the secretary of defense. Steps should be taken to make certain adequate facilities are available, including those at Fort Detrick, Dugway Proving Ground, Fort Terry (Plum Island) and an island field testing area.”
In November 1957, the Joint Chiefs also advised that “‘research on anti-animal agent-munition combinations should continue, as well as field testing of anti-food agent munition combinations'”
In the mid-1970s, a mysterious disease broke out in the area around the town of Old Lyme, CT. This severely debilitating syndrome was given the name Lyme disease. At first, doctors were mystified as to why the disease was clustered around this particular town. To this day, some medical authorities question whether the disease isn’t partly psychosomatic.
But its victims know differently.
Lyme disease is marked by powerful fatigue, muscle aches, inability to focus and, in some cases, almost total incapacity. After cases mushroomed throughout the Northeast, it was finally investigated seriously. Health researchers determined that Lyme disease had only one cause: deer ticks.
In the 80s, scientists were able to isolate the infectious bacteria carried by the ticks. It was named Borellia burgdorferi, after the Austrian biochemist who made the initial breakthrough. Modern gene-sequencing techniques cracked the code of borellia; in fact, it was only the third microbial gene ever sequenced (after influenza and a rare form of genital herpes). [Watch Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura on truTV]
When the data came in, it rocked the scientific world.
Borellia burgdorfieri turned out to be the single most complex bacterium known to man. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. As time went on, other subsidiary diseases were discovered to go hand in hand with Lyme. These include chronic schizophrenia, psychosis, severe osteoarthritis, lupus, bladder problems, bipolar delusions, vertigo, encephalitis, infection of the brain stem and many others. Some researchers believe that multiple sclerosis is also a cofactor of Lyme.
This leads us back to Erich Traub, the German scientist who participated in research at Plum Island.
Once they had the genetic footprint of the Lyme disease germ, researchers began to comb through disease cluster histories. It didn’t make sense that Lyme would suddenly emerge, seemingly out of nowhere, in one town in rural Connecticut. Some of these investigators believe they found traces of borrelia in preserved insect and animal samples taken from nearby Shelter Island, as well as Long Island. The samples dated from the late 1940s to the early 1950s—the timeframe in which Erich Traub was infecting ticks on Plum Island.
Building 257’s Super Secret Research
A local television reporter named Karl Grossman took up the cause of Lyme disease victims. He discovered that more than 140 species of birds frequent and nest on Plum Island. Suspicion then fell heavily on one particular building on the island—the ominous and supposedly super-secure Building 257.
A maintenance worker on the island named James McKoy repeatedly complained about shoddy security at Building 257and was summarily fired for his trouble. Tom Ridge, then head of Homeland Security, the agency ultimately responsible for operations at Plum Island, refused to comment on the firing even when the firing was personally questioned by Senator Clinton. McKoy told an alarming tale about a cold December day in 2002. The power in the labs failed, and the emergency generators were unable to pick up the load. For four hours, workers were frantically trying to seal the doors of Building 257 with duct tape, which is good for a lot of things, but not stopping microscopic particles.
And there are other stories like Jim McKoy’s.
But something happened that was even more bizarre.
Monsters and Mutants
Drawing of human body with elongated fingers
that washed up on Long Island (truTV)One sunny day in the summer of 2008, vacationers in Montauk, Long Island, ran screaming from the beach. Something unspeakable had washed ashore. At first glance, it appeared to be the carcass of large animal—but what kind? The dead beast emitted a sickening odor. Bloated and leathery, it had patches of coarse hair spread unevenly across its body. With its hideous elongated, almost dinosaur-like skull, and odd matchstick-shaped fingers, it looked like nothing anyone had ever seen before.
The beach where the monster was found is just 10 miles from Plum Island.
Local officials offered no explanation. Socialites in the ritzy Hamptons were thrown into a panic. Speculation immediately mounted that the creature was the result of an animal experiment gone horribly wrong. Official denials were quick to come from Plum Island, which was now operated by the Department of Homeland Security. But this monster wasn’t the only one.
In spring of 2009, a second hideous corpse came ashore at Montauk. This one was almost identical—same elongated skull, same weird claw-like fingers. Once again, local officials had no explanation. The carcass was quickly spirited away and, to anyone’s knowledge, was never examined by an independent zoologist.
And just when you think the story couldn’t get freakier, it did.
Police were called to Plum Island in January, 2010. A human body—a mutated human body—had been found by workers on the island. The official police report described “very elongated fingers.” The body had no identification. Moreover, five symmetrical holes had been drilled into its skull. At first, Suffolk County police said it was the body of a white man.
A day later, they changed their story and claimed it was a black man. To date, they have offered no explanation for the two conflicting reports, except to say it was an “oversight.”
Mutated corpses, hideous monsters, terrifying germ leaks, secret experiments? Could the stories about Plum Island get any more frightening?
What if they moved this dangerous research to the middle of America’s breadbasket?
Monsters in the Heartland
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently announced that the island was slated for permanent closure. The germ labs and research facilities will move to Kansas State University—the epicenter of U.S. agriculture. Known as the “beef belt,” this swath of the Midwest contains huge herds of livestock.
One of the major contagions studied at Plum Island is the deadly hoof-and-mouth disease. In England and Europe, untold thousands of beef cattle were slaughtered and the carcasses burned when they were found to be infected with hoof-and-mouth. People on the ground in Kansas—among them professors at Kansas State—banded together to oppose the move. But so far, their protests have been futile. DHS seems determined to carry out its plan.
Congressman Tim Bishop represents the district that contains Plum Island. In repeated interviews, he has stated his satisfaction with the official explanations given about mishaps and safety violations at the lab. He claims to have been concerned at earlier times, but now believes security has been stepped up.
Others beg to differ.
Karl Grossman, the reporter who originally broke the Lyme disease story, says that shadowy terrorist figures have been caught with dossiers about Plum Island. Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani scientist who, at one time, was named one of the seven most wanted al-Qaeda fugitives. They called her “Lady al-Qaeda.” When captured in 2008, she was carrying handwritten documents about a “mass casualty attack” and a list of targets. [Watch Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura on truTV]
At the top of that list was Plum Island.
Grossman points out that the island is still not heavily secured or guarded. Pleasure boats often come within hailing distance of the labs—including Building 257. As Grossman points out, it would be a relatively simple matter for terrorists on a rented boat to blow the place sky-high with a shoulder-fired Stinger missile. He says it terrifies him to speculate on the human devastation that would result from a mass release of pathogens. As he says, it keeps him up at night.
Unanswered Questions
Plum Island from the air (USDA)But the litany of official denials just keep coming. Dr. Roger Breeze was the director of the Plum Island research center in the 1990s. Breeze has given several interviews claiming that the island poses absolutely no danger to civilians, animals or the environment. However, a recent interview with Breeze revealed a startling slip of the tongue.
While trying to explain all the “good work” done at Plum Island, Breeze vehemently denied the existence of biowarfare research. He repeated the official line that only animal diseases are studied. He flatly denied that Lyme disease originated on the island. He even claimed to have no knowledge of German scientist Erich Traub. But he did state that workers in the lab where hoof-and-mouth disease is studied actually inhale the virus in the course of a normal day. The deadly virus is trapped, according to the good doctor, in the back of the throat. Breeze then made the astonishing admission that there has always been a Plum Island rule that workers inside the lab cannot visit a zoo or circus or even a pet store.
None of these people have pets at home? After Breeze’s amazing revelation, are we actually supposed to believe that we are safe from Plum Island’s deadly germs?
One thing is sure: the terrifying stories about Plum Island aren’t going to disappear. The victims of Lyme disease demand answers. A skeptical public, used to government lies and cover-ups, demands answers. The people of Kansas demand answers. So stay tuned. Courageous researchers and scientists will keep digging. You haven’t heard the last of the mysterious place called Plum Island.
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[url]https://rielpolitik.com/2016/11/21/eugenics-lab-257-where-operation-paperclip-meets-the-taliban/[/url]
Where Operation Paperclip Meets the Taliban
The Smoking Man / November 21, 2016
Source – counterpunch.org
– “… Animal handlers and a scientist released ticks outdoors on the island. ‘They called him the Nazi scientist, when they came in, in 1951 they were inoculating these ticks.” Lab 257” goes on: “Dr. Traub’s World War II handiwork consisted of aerial virus sprays developed on Insel Riems and tested over occupied Russia”:
(Plum Island: Where Operation Paperclip Meets the Taliban)
The segment on Plum Island examines how the lab there, once under the Dept. of Agriculture, now falls under the authority of The Dept. of Homeland Security. It also examines how tightly controlled access is to the island, its history and connections to Nazi Germany, Dr. Erich Traub and Operation Paperclip, and how the U.S. brought him to the island to exploit the scientific knowledge he gained as the head of the Nazi bio lab and his previous experiments with diseased ticks. It examines the possibilities of bio containment breaches, the foot and mouth disease outbreaks on the island, and theories that some have about the island’s connection to the 1977 outbreak of Lyme disease in Lyme, CT. It also takes a look at its connections to the Taliban through Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood.
http://www.constantinereport.com/plum-island-where-operation-paperclip-meets-the-taliban-2/
Related…
The Deadly Secrets of Plum Island – By Karl Grossman
Michael Carroll, author of the best-selling book, “Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory,” was back on the East Coast, vacationing with his family, and amazed over recent developments concerning Plum Island.
Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island …
Carroll, an attorney from Long Island who worked seven years on “Lab 257” which became a best-seller after its 2004 publication, has since moved to California where he and his wife, a California native, established a law practice.
Back on Long Island, where he is a native, Carroll finds as astonishing Representative Tim Bishop’s fight against the plan of the federal government to shut down its Plum Island Animal Disease Center and shift its operations to a new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility it would build in Manhattan Kansas. Bishop, of Southampton, is mainly concerned about the loss of 200 federal jobs at the center which is in his eastern Long Island Congressional district.
“It is utter foolishness to try to save 200 jobs at the price of protecting the entire region from this island and the threat it represents,” said Carroll in a recent interview. An outbreak of disease agents worked with on Plum Islandnotably those affecting both animals and peoplein the heavily populated area off which the island sits could be “devastating.” Plum Island is just off and midway between the New York-Boston megalopolis and its millions of people, Carroll pointed out. The 843-acre island is a mile-and-a-half off Orient Point in Southold Town on the North Fork of Long Island. Connecticut is less than 10 miles to the north.
A spokesperson for Bishop, Oliver Longwell, responded that Bishop’s “position on the island is indistinguishable from every other elected official who represents Southold Town at all levels of government.”
As to the call by a grouping of Long Island environmentalists for preservation of the island as opposed to the federal government’s consideration of having housing developed on it, Carroll said that making the island a preserve is all that could be done with Plum Islandbut, he emphasized, it will need to be a preserve closed to people. “You can’t let anybody on it,” he said.
“The island is an environmental disaster,” said Carroll. “Every effort to decontaminate Lab 257, the1950s-era germ warfare building on it, has failed,” said Carroll. “They can’t get that building clean.” (Subsequently, a new laboratory building was constructed after the U.S. Department of Agriculture Department took control of the island from the U.S. Army.)
“There is contamination all over the island,” said Carroll. He noted that up until recent years, nothing was ever removed from the islandeverything was disposed on it, much of it buried. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) have brought charges through the years in connection with the Plum Island waste, cases cited in his book, he went on. “If this was a private business, it immediately would have been shut down,” said Carroll. But only “nominal” fines were meted out.
As to a shift of Plum Island operations to Kansas, that’s “going out of the frying pan into the fire,” said Carroll. “Is there is no better place to study foreign animal diseases than in the middle of America’s farm belt?”
“What research that needs to be conducted should be done nowhere near a human population center or a food production center,” said Carroll.
As for Plum Island, “There’s no way that island can be made fit for human habitation,” declared Carroll.” The island needs to be “forsaken. It’s very sad.”
The federal government, however, believes Plum Island can be habitable as evidenced by it contemplating housing on it with the center’s closing. And real estate mogul Donald Trump has jumped into the situation by saying he would like to buy the island and, he said last month, develop a “really beautiful, world-class golf course” on it.
Meanwhile, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has written to the General Services Administration, which would manage the planned sale, and the Department of Homeland Security, which after the 9/11 attack took over the island from the Department of Agriculture, calling for a “comprehensive investigation” of Plum Island by the state DEC, and a clean-up plan. This would include “the need to properly close Building 257.” Discussing his letter at a recent appearance at Orient Beach State Park, Cuomo called Plum Island “the island of secrets.”
The Cuomo family is very familiar with Plum Island. Andrew’s father, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, with whom Carroll worked as a lawyer in New York City, is quoted on the jacket of “Lab 257” as calling the book a “carefully researched, chilling expose of a potential catastrophe.”
Carroll’s “Lab 257” also documents a Nazi connection to the original establishment of a U.S. laboratory on Plum Island. According to the book, Erich Traub, a scientist who worked for the Third Reich doing biological warfare, was the force behind its founding.
During World War II, “as lab chief of Insel Riemsa secret Nazi biological warfare laboratory on a crescent-shaped island in the Baltic SeaTraub worked for Adolph Hitler’s second-in-charge, SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, on live germ trials,” states “Lab 257.
The mission was to develop biological warfare to be directed against animals in the Soviet Union. This included infecting cattle and reindeer with foot-and-mouth disease.
“Ironically, Traub spent the prewar period of his scientific career on a fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, perfecting his skills in viruses and bacteria under the tutelage of American experts before returning to Nazi Germany on the eve of war,” says “Lab 257.” While in the U.S. in the 1930s, too, relates the book, Traub was a member of the Amerika-Deutscher Volksbund which was involved in pro-Nazi rallies held weekly in Yaphank on Long Island.
With the end of the war, Traub came back to the United States under Project Paperclip, a U.S. program under which Nazi scientists, such as Wernher von Braun, were brought to America.
“Traub’s detailed explanation of the secret operation on Insel Riems” given to officials at Fort Detrick in Maryland, the Army’s biological warfare headquarters, and to the CIA, “laid the groundwater for Fort Detrick’s offshore germ warfare animal disease lab on Plum Island,” says “Lab 257.” “Traub was a founding father.” And Plum Island’s purpose, says the book, became what Insel Riems had been: to develop biological warfare to be directed against animals in the Soviet Unionnow that the Cold War and conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union had begun.
The Long Island daily newspaper Newsday earlier documented this biological warfare mission of Plum Island. In a lead story on November 21, 1993, Newsday investigative reporter John McDonald wrote: “A 1950s military plan to cripple the Soviet economy by killing horses, cattle and swine called for making biological warfare weapons out of exotic animal diseases at a Plum Island laboratory, now-declassified Army records reveal.” A facsimile of one of the records, dated 1951, covered the front page of that issue of Newsday.
The article went on: “Documents and interviews disclose for the first time what officials have denied for years: that the mysterious and closely guarded animal lab off the East End of Long Island was originally designed to conduct top-secret research into replicating dangerous viruses that could be used to destroy enemy livestock.”
“Lab 257” has many pages about this based on documents including many that Carroll found in the National Archives.
The book also tells of why suddenly the Army transferred Plum Island to the Department of Agriculture in 1954the U.S. military became concerned about having to feed millions of people in the Soviet Union if it destroyed their food animals.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff “found that a war with the U.S.S.R. would best be fought with conventional and nuclear means, and biological warfare against humansnot against food animals,” says “Lab 257.” “Destroying the food supply meant having to feed millions of starving Russians after winning a war”
Still, “Lab 257” questions whether there ever was a clean break.
Officials at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center have, however, insisted over the years that the center’s function is to conduct research into foreign animal diseases not found in the U.S.especially foot-and-mouth diseaseand the only biological warfare research done is of a “defensive” kind.
“Lab 257” also maintains that there is a link between the Plum Island center and the emergence of Lyme disease. It “suddenly surfaced” 10 miles from Plum Island “in Old Lyme, Connecticut in 1975.” Carroll cites years of experimentation with ticks on Plum Island and the possibility of an accidental or purposeful release.
“The tick is the perfect germ vector,” says “Lab 257,” “which is why it has long been fancied as a germ weapon by early biowarriors from Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan to the Soviet Union and the United States.”
“A source who worked on Plum Island in the 1950s,” the book states, “recalls that animal handlers and a scientist released ticks outdoors on the island. ‘They called him the Nazi scientist, when they came in, in 1951 they were inoculating these ticks.” “Lab 257” goes on: “Dr. Traub’s World War II handiwork consisted of aerial virus sprays developed on Insel Riems and tested over occupied Russia, and of field work for Heinrich Himmler in Turkey. Indeed, his colleagues conducted bug trials by dropping live beetles from planes. An outdoor tick trial would have been de riguer for Erich Traub.”
Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College of New York, is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.
SOURCE [url]https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/25/the-deadly-secrets-of-plum-island/[/url]
Yeah, good idea Mil-Mongers, Put the Foot-and-Mouth Creation Lab in Kansas, Smack in the middle of Beef Country
[url]http://outbreaknewstoday.com/plum-islands-move-to-kansas-this-research-facility-is-an-accident-waiting-to-happen-55361/[/url]
Plum Island’s move to Kansas: ‘This research facility is an accident waiting to happen’
by STAFF
June 3, 2015 Animal diseases, US News 17 Comments
Groundbreaking for the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), a $1.25 billion project by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), took place last Wednesday in Manhattan, Kansas. The new facility will focus biosafety level 3 agriculture (BSL-3Ag) research on dangerous livestock diseases such as African swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and will focus its BSL-4 research on such deadly pathogens as the Hendra and Nipah viruses, which are zoonotic pathogens that can be transmitted from animals to humans and for which no treatment is available.
R-CALF USA Vice President Mike Schultz who raises cattle in Brewster, Kansas, said the United States is making a terrible mistake by bringing the live FMD virus into Kansas.
“Congress and the President are ignoring the science that tells us this research facility is an accident waiting to happen,” he said.
When construction is complete, and for the first time since the 1929 FMD outbreak in California, the live FMD virus will once again be reintroduced to the United States’ mainland. Foot-and mouth disease is the most highly infectious animal disease presently known to cloven-footed animals such as cattle, swine, sheep and deer. Nearly 100 percent of exposed animals become infected. To accommodate the DHS’ request to bring the live FMD virus to the mainland, Congress first had to change U.S. law that restricted use of the live FMD virus to coastal islands. Since the 1950s, all U.S. research on FMD was conducted at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, located on an island off the northern tip of Long Island, New York.
Related: Transplanting Plum Island to Kansas: is the country’s food supply at risk?
In 2008 the independent, U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) conducted a study and concluded that the DHS lacks evidence to conclude that FMD research can be done safely on the U.S. mainland. The GAO raised numerous concerns regarding the inherent dangers of conducting research in close proximity to susceptible animals, such as the wildlife and cattle that surround the Manhattan site, particularly since FMD can be carried from farm-to-farm on the wind. The GAO pointed out that the DHS did not examine data from past releases of FMD – including the inadvertent release of FMD from Plum Island in 1978 that, according to reports, was carried harmlessly away over the Atlantic Ocean by prevailing winds. As a result, only the research cattle in pens at the facility had to be destroyed.
Image/Keith Weller
Image/Keith Weller
In 2010 the National Academy of Sciences (Academy) conducted its own independent study of the proposed Manhattan site and concluded that the Manhattan site would more likely than not result in an FMD outbreak within the 50-year life span of the NBAF. The Academy found that some of the risks associated with the Manhattan site were generic to any high-containment large animal facility, such as sites where the virus is inoculated in live cattle rather than being contained in biosafety cabinets. However, the Academy found that the risk of FMD infection, spread, and impact were largely related to the Manhattan site.
The Academy concluded that the probability of an infection resulting from a laboratory release of FMD from the NBAF site in Manhattan, Kansas approaches 70% over 50 years, with an economic impact to the U.S. cattle industry of $9-50 billion. Human error will be the most likely cause of an accidental pathogen release from Manhattan, according to the Academy.
Schultz said that human error was the cause of accidental releases of FMD that occurred both internally in and externally from the Plum Island facility. “If, or when, such accidents occur in Manhattan, the consequences will be far more severe than they were on the isolated island.”
There have been numerous, human-error-caused releases of deadly pathogens from BSL-3 laboratories both here and abroad over the past decade. In 2007 the FMD virus was accidently released from the Pirbright BSL-3 laboratory in Surrey, England, causing widespread outbreaks on surrounding farms.
Schultz said it is ironic that the same week that groundbreaking occurs for this dangerous NBAF laboratory, the Pentagon reports that the U.S. Army has mistakenly sent live anthrax spores to 24 laboratories in 11 states and two foreign countries.
Related: Did Lyme disease originate out of Plum Island?
On March 13, 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified human error – lapses in the appropriate use of personal protective equipment – as the cause of the accidental release of the deadly Burkholderia pseudomallei bacteria from the Tulane National Primate Research Center, which is a BSL-3 research facility.
In June, 2014, the CDC announced that 75 people were being monitored or provided antibiotics because they may have been unintentionally exposed to live anthrax after safety practices were not followed at the Atlanta, Georgia, Roybal campus BSL-3 laboratory.
Schultz said these recent examples of human-caused breaches at high-containment facilities demonstrate that conducting FMD research at the Manhattan-based NBAF will likely result in an accidental release at some point.
“Equally alarming,” said Schultz, “Is that a study conducted this month by the GOA concludes that the federal government is not prepared to address a large-scale animal disease outbreak like an FMD outbreak.”
The GAO report found that federal agencies do not have enough veterinarians to respond to a major crisis, nor do they even know how many veterinarians they would need.
The report comes after the U.S. swine industry lost an estimated 8 million pigs to the recent porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) and while the U.S. poultry industry is destroying tens of millions of poultry resulting from the out-of-control outbreak of avian influenza. Latest reports indicate that about 30 million chickens and turkeys have been destroyed.
“If our cattle industry were to lose the same number of cows as the poultry industry has now lost to avian influenza, we would wipe out our entire 29.7 million head of beef cows here in the United States.
“The NBAF in Manhattan will irresponsibly increase the risk of yet another deadly disease outbreak and the federal government does not even have an effective strategy to protect our nation’s food security if or when that outbreak occurs,” Schultz concluded.