MMMMMarburg!

Nature Magazine, in its February 24 issue, reported that Henry Niman, a biologist with Recombinomics, last November was examining flu virus gene sequences that were placed in GenBank, a public database in New Mexico run by the World Health Organization. Niman found a strain of human flu virus that was created in 1940 in a London lab by scientists who were experimenting with the virus that had caused the flu pandemic of 1918. The problem is that this mutated human flu virus was placed in GenBank by researchers at Chungnam National University Daejon, South Korea. It had been obtained from a pig! This flu gene sequence doesn’t exist in nature. It had to be artificially implanted into pigs.

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A few scattered reports appeared in the Boston Globe in January 2003 that Boston University Medical Centre plans to build a $1.6 billion biological weapons research facility in the city centre. In February, a proposal went to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases (NIAID), the federal institution charged with developing ‘centres of excellence’ in biological defence research. These Biosafety Level 4 (BSL4) facilities - designed for research on the most dangerous pathogens, such as Ebola virus, for which there are no known cures or treatments – are the centrepieces of the Bush administration’s strategy to counter bio-terrorism.

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There is also a danger that researchers will be trained in precisely the techniques needed for bio-terrorism. The post-September 11 anthrax attacks have been conclusively traced to the federal bio-defence laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland, according to Peter Shorrett and others.

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List of suspicious deaths of microbiologists here

I don't know what this all means but it sure raises alot of questions. It might be time to invest in Roche (makers of Tamiflu).