ATS: US Reluctant To Share Important Flu Samples

Substances deemed "select agents" are NOT SHARED - they are reserved for use by US scientists, under CDC oversight.


If you have Intel that the USA intends to share 1918 bird flu samples with other nations - despite its designation as a "select agent" - please post your reference here.

A quote from President Bush would be nice. No strings attached would be even nicer.



.
.





[edit on 21-10-2005 by soficrow]

www.cdc.gov...
1. What is the select agent program?

The "Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 and the Agricultural Protection Act of 2002" (the Acts) require entities to register with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or Agriculture (USDA) if they possess, use, or transfer biological agents or toxins (i.e. select agents and toxins) that could pose a severe threat to public health and safety; to animal or plant health; or animal or plant products. In addition to ensuring that laboratories safely handle these select agents and toxins, the Acts also require increased safeguards and security measures for these agents, including controlling access, screening entities and personnel (i.e., security risk assessments) and establishing a comprehensive and detailed national database of registered entities. The Act also imposes criminal and civil penalties for the inappropriate use of select agents and toxins.

The HHS Secretary has delegated the responsibility for promulgating and implementing regulations under the "Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act" to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At CDC, the Division of Select Agents and Toxins (DSAT) in the Coordinating Office of Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response oversees these activities and registers all laboratories and other entities in the United States that possess, use, or transfer a HHS or "overlap" select agent or toxin.

www.research.dfci.harvard.edu...

and heres what select agents are: www.ehrs.upenn.edu...

[edit on 21-10-2005 by namehere]

The entity should submit paperwork well in advance of the training event to ensure that a delay of the training will not occur. For additional clarification contact CDC's Select Agent Program by telephone (404-498-2255), facsimile (404-498-2265), e-mail (lrsat@cdc.gov), or mail at:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Select Agent Program
1600 Clifton Rd NE, Mailstop E-79
Atlanta GA 30333

there you go, ask the cdc...

Show Me?????? Linky Linky

I looked over them all and I cannot find any reference to "US only" ecept for your OP/ED's that is

Hum, there seems to be some heated contraversy here. I decided to take a moment and analyze some of the statments for review.

************************************************************
Statement:


Observation: Misleading statment. Wont Share? War? WTF?

Fact: If scientists desire to work with the (1918 reconstructed) agent, consideration will be given to hosting them at CDC.

www.cdc.gov...

************************************************************

Statement:


Observation: False and misleading statment. Perhaps unintentional, but never the less, there is a huge difference between the 1918 flu virus, and the reconstructed 1918 flu virus.

Fact 1: The 1918 influenza virus is NOTcurrently designated as a select agent.

Fact2:The Intra-governmental Select Agents and Toxins Technical Advisory Committee convened on September 30, 2005, and recommended that the reconstructed 1918 influenza virus be added to the list of HHS select agents.

www.cdc.gov...

************************************************************


Statement:


Observation: Misleading statment. 1. This statment was based on the 2 misleading and false statements listed above. 2. This statement is subtly indicating that there was once hope, and now there is not.

Fact 1: Researchers are in progress using both the virus and the reconstructed virus to develop better antiviral drugs.

Fact 2: A highly contagious virus should be restricted. Nowhere does the article state that only US scientists will have access to either the 1918 virus, or the reconstructed 1918 virus.

************************************************************


Statement:


Observation: Misleading statment. This statement indicates that the US could not care less about the emergency nature of the situation.

Fact: The US just had a similar meeting, and is working with the WHO and other international bodies to further the vaccine research and freely spread knowledge of the virus.



www.nature.com...


************************************************************

Statement:


Observation: False and Misleading statement

Fact 1: The 1918 influenza virus is NOTcurrently designated as a select agent.

www.cdc.gov...

************************************************************


There is more, but I grow weary of this.

Fair and balanced article?

You decide.

makeitso

It's weird that this gross twisting of facts keeps happening over and over. Isn't it? Some kind of bizarre pattern I guess.

Yes, it is weird. And disconcerting.

I thought this board had moderators who might at least attempt to correct some of this. You know, the whole motto of the Web site, which I need not write again.

What say you mods? Any chance we could have some action here? Or how 'bout a warn for consistent, deliberate abuse of status to push a consistent, deliberate agenda filled with consistent, deliberate falsehoods?

What does us more harm, this constant lying by our so-called experts, or a couple of curse words?

Sounds like a bad idea to me to be sending out samples deadly bio-agents of the 1918 flu. Humans are prone to error and terrorists would love a crack at stealing the samples.

A Flu Hope, Or Horror?

Germ lab hit by power failure


Might as well mail nuclear warhead plans to the Ayatollah too.

Key phrase that - in the United States.

Again:

If you have information that the USA is sharing it's 1918 bird flu samples with scientists in other nations, please do post your links here. A quote from President Bush would be nice.

I would be happy to be proved wrong.


At the same time as insisting that the USA is in fact sharing these samples, critics here also claim that the US is right NOT to share the samples - due to bioterror threats. ...And when, exactly did you'all quit beating your wives?

...FYI - the bioterror threat is here, it's loose, and has been for nearly half a century. It now almost has mutated out of control - and the critical turning point was about 2 1/2 to 3 years ago.

The US can accept that the world is one single system - and that migrating birds and other animals carrying bird flu do NOT respect borders - or not. Either way, working cooperatively is still a positive thing. And maybe the only hope we have for species survival.



.

Again:


The US Government defined this as a "war issue" when the bird flu samples were designated "select agents" under the Bioterrorist legislation. I filed my article under War on Terror - exactly where I should have, under the circumstances.



There are people here who do not want this issue addressed - or the US role in obstructing international efforts to fight bird flu brought to light. And they have sufficient power to get the title changed, and the article placed in a non-controversial category. So what? It's still out there. Floating around the net for all to see, just like all the other dissed, deleted, and otherwise manipulated media.



.

OK, who will benefit the most in case of an epidemic if one country happens to hold the only cure for it?

That is a fair question, When it comes to the multibilion empire that is our pharmaceutical industry It can not be any clear, they will manufacture the vaccine and then sell it at outrageous prices to other countries.

Is call profiting.

The only issue we do not seem addressing here is the fact that your story was misleading and inaccurate at best. In case you missed it ATS has a quite active H5N1 Avian Flu Issues forum, and ATSNN has more topics than you can shake a stick at. So far the only articles discussing US obstruction efforts have come from YOU based on one journal article



So are you saying that you deliberately misrepresented the post with its content and title and placed in a category it was not suited to simply generate controversy? While Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst would recognize this style, the rest of us would see it as another case of "Yellow" Journalism
.




Yes I have to agree here 100% in this case, you did write the news. But you failed to Report the news as you would expect from an ATSNN Expert submitter. The Bias was there from the title to the cut an paste article (trying to support you conclusions and was total unrelated) that many in this thread pointed out.



Again the only evidence for this has come from the two OP/ED's (lets call them what they are this one and Flu Researchers Slam US for Hoarding Data. Where else has this been covered? Where is the WHO complaint that the US is withholding data? Where the outraged statements from Europe? Where Where Where? No can I find the nature article that you based the other OP/ED on at this time (If you can point me in the correct direction Id be much obliged, but a search of the nature site reveals nothing?)

---

You have failed to cite any sources within the US nor the world that have stated that samples have been denied. Nor have you shown me ANY federal regulation that states it will not be done. Can you please show me where a request for the 1918 flu has been denied other than you assertions of course which now I must treat with a healthy dose of skepticism.

And why the issue with the CDC making sure the agent is safe when being used for research? I can see you next OP/ED guised as a news submission "Bush lets deadly flu sample escape" or other such nonsense. Even the Journal of Nature is concerned so much as to say this:




So again where is the long list of countries that have been so denied, or was all this an exercise to generate controversy for the sake of doing so in one submitted article

Well Soficrow I see you changed the title of this thread--the new one is much better because it gives the more nearly correct situation. That dadgum virus is so virulent that if it excapes containment we could easily have a rerun of the 1918 epidemic. Further, that virus could well combine with the current Avian Flu virus(if it escaped) with a totally unknown, but in all likelihood, lethal result.

Ahh. Sorry - I assumed background knowledge here. The "silencing scientists" strategy of the US administration is an old problem - and this current permutation is just a continuation of the old problem.

As you can see, there is a situation, and a history, and documented impacts - of the US using the "select agent" designation to obstruct research and sharing of information.

For example, U.S. Still Silencing Scientists:


...scientists say business interests apply political pressure to reverse scientific conclusions that might interfere with profits, including timber, grazing, development and energy companies. "The pressure to alter scientific reports for political reasons has become pervasive at Fish and Wildlife offices around the country," says Lexi Shultz of the Union of Concerned Scientists. According to critics, the Bush administration routinely alters science to suit political objectives.

---

A Mad Cow-like prion disease that infects deer and elk, called "chronic wasting disease," is epidemic in the US and is obviously a good part of the reason for this most recent debacle in the Fish and Wildlife Service. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is talking publicly about the epidemic, and wants to start regulating the disposal of deer and elk carcasses. Chronic wasting disease is found in wild herds in Wyoming and Colorado, and also Nebraska, New Mexico, Illinois, South Dakota, Utah and Wisconsin. It has spread to domestic herds in Colorado, Montana and other states.

"Mad Cow" Spreading in Deer and Elk


The Bush admininistration has worked to silence scientists or modify scientific reports on several other occasions. Commonly, scientific information about Mad Cow or prion related diseases was lurking in the background, threatening to make headlines.

It all started when Bush defined 'Mad Cow' BSE and TSE prions as "select agents" under anti-terrorist legislation. By January of 2004, researchers went discreetly public with their concerns about constraints on Mad Cow research.




By April, EPA modelers said it out loud, "Science is being altered to suit objectives."

Original Story


By June of 2004, US scientists were on a very short leash:





The new policy prevented key US scientists from attending the 2004 International AIDS conference in Bangkok. Scheduled US speakers were forced to cancel their presentations.





The political difficulty with HIV-AIDS is that the 'virus' is most likely a mutated prion-virus hybrid, related to Mad Cow.

Mad Cow and AIDS

Gay Concern over Hyping AIDS 'Superbug'


Beyond covering up the Mad Cow epidemics, this administration silences US scientists in every discipline.





The Bush administration silences US scientists in every field to protect corporate interests, at the expense of ordinary peoples' health, lives and economic well-being.





.

[edit on 23-10-2005 by soficrow]

Got an idea. Why not stick to the original topic, rather than making this a convoluted mess.

Edited for lousy typing.

[edit on 23-10-2005 by Thomas Crowne]

TC - the topic is about the US hoarding data needed to deal with the bird flu pandemic. The fact is, there is a related history - of the US hoarding data, silencing US scientists, and preventing scientific collaboration that would help ordinary people deal with the numerous -and related- epidemic diseases in the world today.

The argument presented above against my article can be summed up as follows.

There is no story because:

a. The US does not hoard scientific data; and

b. The US does hoard scientific data, but it's to protect Americans so it's justifiable.


...Interesting argument.

Requires a more detailed response, methinks.





Oh yeah - the point is, after creating the "Bioterrorism Preparedness" legislation, the US has used the "select agent" designation to obstruct much-needed scientific research and collaboration. The 1918 flu virus being the latest example.






Ed. brain burp - to make point.

[edit on 23-10-2005 by soficrow]

what I find odd about this is the fact that talks of a pandemic on h5n1 surfaced before those 119 people ever got it (50% died).

Ironic isn't it.

I still say this was man made for population control.

The two are not necessarily related and the second can also be brought up for debate, so this is nothing more than convolution.

What two?





Which second?





You do mean the also self-contradictory argument aaginst my article, right?



.

I find very troublesome that while all these new or no so new viruses are starting to pop all over, I see not hurry by the scientific community to find cures even when they said otherwise.

But rather spend their time and money looking for remedies and treatments as to make sure that people that get sick will be Dependant of the miracle pills while still been sick.

Is all about control, and as usual poor third world countries are the ones that suffer the most and die the in higher quantities.

I think you have a point Truelies is all about population control.