Mr. Snrub
10-25-2001, 05:17 AM
Anthrax link to US bioweapon of the 60s
The anthrax now spreading terror in America closely matches a strain developed as a US bioweapon in the 1960s, it has been claimed.
According to the evidence, the germ is not the same type as that mass-produced for weapons by Iraq or the former Soviet Union.
The FBI has confirmed that the anthrax sent to Florida, NBC, and Senator Tom Daschle were all the same strain, called "Ames".
This was the name given to a strain isolated by the US Department of Agriculture's veterinary laboratory in Ames, Iowa, in the 1930s and which still strikes cattle in western America.
But it also has a more sinister connotation, a special report in the magazine New Scientist claimed.
Experts analysing the anthrax used in the US attacks are comparing its DNA with a library of strains collected from all over the world.
The name "Ames" was given to one of the strains in this collection, which belonged to a freezer sample at the British biodefence establishment at Porton Down, Wiltshire, in the 1980s.
Porton Down had acquired it from the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Maryland, said New Scientist.
Those who compiled the library said it was the same strain the US used when it produced anthrax weapons. The program ended in 1969 and the mass-produced anthrax was destroyed, but samples were kept both by the US and its allies.
"To be identified as Ames by these scientists, therefore, the anthrax used in the recent attacks must either be the American military strain or one that's very similar," said New Scientist.
One expert interviewed by the magazine, Martin Hugh-Jones of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, said the Ames strain was "a challenge to any vaccine".
When laboratory animals immunised with a vaccine now being given to thousands of American troops were exposed to anthrax, many were still killed by the Ames strain.
Ken Alibek, former deputy head of the Soviet bioweapons program, said neither the Soviets nor the Iraqis mass-produced Ames. Like Britain in the 1940s, Iraq favoured another strain called Vollum, isolated at Oxford in 1930, which has been identified in samples from the Iraqi Al Hakam plant.
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The anthrax now spreading terror in America closely matches a strain developed as a US bioweapon in the 1960s, it has been claimed.
According to the evidence, the germ is not the same type as that mass-produced for weapons by Iraq or the former Soviet Union.
The FBI has confirmed that the anthrax sent to Florida, NBC, and Senator Tom Daschle were all the same strain, called "Ames".
This was the name given to a strain isolated by the US Department of Agriculture's veterinary laboratory in Ames, Iowa, in the 1930s and which still strikes cattle in western America.
But it also has a more sinister connotation, a special report in the magazine New Scientist claimed.
Experts analysing the anthrax used in the US attacks are comparing its DNA with a library of strains collected from all over the world.
The name "Ames" was given to one of the strains in this collection, which belonged to a freezer sample at the British biodefence establishment at Porton Down, Wiltshire, in the 1980s.
Porton Down had acquired it from the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Maryland, said New Scientist.
Those who compiled the library said it was the same strain the US used when it produced anthrax weapons. The program ended in 1969 and the mass-produced anthrax was destroyed, but samples were kept both by the US and its allies.
"To be identified as Ames by these scientists, therefore, the anthrax used in the recent attacks must either be the American military strain or one that's very similar," said New Scientist.
One expert interviewed by the magazine, Martin Hugh-Jones of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, said the Ames strain was "a challenge to any vaccine".
When laboratory animals immunised with a vaccine now being given to thousands of American troops were exposed to anthrax, many were still killed by the Ames strain.
Ken Alibek, former deputy head of the Soviet bioweapons program, said neither the Soviets nor the Iraqis mass-produced Ames. Like Britain in the 1940s, Iraq favoured another strain called Vollum, isolated at Oxford in 1930, which has been identified in samples from the Iraqi Al Hakam plant.
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