Ebola � A Serious Threat

JB,I haven't found any definitive proof that ebola has been crossed, just that many leading scientists think it is technically feasable. As for crossing other germs, it apparently has been done.
Biopreparat was on a scale which was hard to imagine. The scientists made breakthroughs ( such as peptide research ) which if made public would have won them a noble prize. However the Soviets valued these discoveries for their military benefit and thus kept top secret.
It is quite possible their are pathogens developed in these labs which haven't even been speculated at.
Anyway when you read about Biopreparat you will understand the resiurces devoted to bioweapons research.

Thanks M-S,I will look into it.

John, Prostitutes would be my target owing to their ability to distribute bodily fluids to a large number of people quickly. Its a relatively cheep and quick method of viral introduction.

As was previously stated the book Hotzone is an excellent source of information on Ebola. The scary part is that the strain of ebola that was responsible for the massive simian holocaust in Reston was an airborne pathogen. If this strain had effected human it could have devastated humanity. The death toll could have been worse than that of the black plague. Forunately The Ebola Reston strain (incredibly similar in structure to the strain Ebola Zaire, which is the deadliest) for some reason only effects monkeys. Several animal workers at Reston were exposed to the virus and are living today, having experienced no ill effects. The reason that ebola is so scary is because it doesn't require very many organisms to infect. If you were to breathe in five strands of ebola, or if they were to land on an open wound or your eye you would have a ten percent chance of survival, at best. You would get a strong headache, and flulike symptoms, if you sneezed or coughed on someone they would most likely get infected to. Anyone you have sex with would get it too. As you progessed you would ge a strange rash and bruises all over your body, and you would get aches and pains as your organs begin to disintergate. You might start vomiting and you vomit would be filled with black and red fluid which is highly infectious. You might be diagnosed with malaria. Unfortunately by that time you might have only a few days left. Your face would be paralized and your personality would disappear and you would become Zombie-like. By then you would probably be in a hospital, the worst place to be. In a hospital you would infect your doctors and nurses and in turn they would infect their patients and the disease would be amplified. In the end you would crash and bleed out as the disintegration internally finishes and you bleed from every pore and opening. Imagine a few disease particles getting into a water droplet and from there into someones system. This is why ebola is so scary. imagine a disease this contagious and deadly getting into an airport. It would decimate humanity if not completely eliminating humans.

XAOS

I could have sworn that Ken Alibek was discredited. If I recall rightly, wasn't he the one with the "ebolapox" report that was later found to be false?

I'm not seeing it on a quick googling (sheesh... I feel as though I've stepped through a time portal) but could have SWORN that it was faked.

Byrd, I have seen nothing which states that Ken Alibek has been lying. Some scientists may doubt his claims, but they weren't working in Biopreparat. See above posts. Anyway he was the head of the Soviet offensive bioweapons program. If anyone would know it's him.

His first job after graduating in 1975 was with Biopreparat - an organisation established in Russia in 1973 which was ostensibly a state-owned pharmaceutical facility developing drugs and vaccines, but in fact was a front for the USSR's secret offensive bio weapons programme.

Alibek began to have grave doubts following an inspection visit to the US in which he saw no evidence of an active biowarfare programme.
He quickly rose through the ranks and in 1983 became director of a huge bio-weapons research and production facility in Stepnogorsk. In 1987, when he was only 37, Alibek went to Moscow to become chief scientist and first deputy director of Biopreparat. During this time he supervised the development and production of an 'improved' smallpox weapon.

SOURCE BBC


KEN ALIBEK

Originally posted by Toltec
Turning Ebola into a strain which would be airborne is great stuff for TV but in reality is another story. Thomas most antibiotics do not work on such things as anthrax in the first place. Your reference to a "retired" military doctor is not impressive. Perhaps you have some other reference which you can share with us who's credentials are more valid.

Military doctors, especially as they climb ranks, are aquainted with more knowledge than just streps and pox of dependant children. As far as he, a military doctor, retired, aand have spent the last 20 years researching the topic not impressing you, I suppose I just don't realize with whom I've been corresponding. Considering your medical background and extensive research, and have been doing your medicine in the military (you know, where they train for bio/chem hazard), maybe you should write your own books, refuting this doctors extremely valid credentials and information.

And, yes, if you'd like, you can gather more information on the internet and if you Ph.D. is related (as far as I know, it is in underwater basketweaving) you will understand far maore than us non-medical types without the superior background that would enable us to dismiss Col. Weeks' paper. I merely placed this here for anyones information, not necessarily to convince you of anything.
(Yes, if you notice that your pompous dismissal has chaffed me, then it would seem that Ph.D. in whatever it is has made you observant enough to notice it!)

Found a good interview with Ken Alibek. This is the first 2 questions :


During the process of production in the Soviet Union's program, how many tons of biological warfare agents were storehoused?

The Soviet Union has two main directorates responsible for developing and manufacturing biological weapons. Biological weapons were stored at the Minister of Defense facilities. For example, [the] Kirov facility was responsible for storing Plague, about 20 tons of Plague. The Zagorsk facility (now it's Sergiev Posad) was responsible for storing smallpox biological weapons, about 20 tons as well. And the Ekaterinburg facility (at that time Sverdlovsk) was responsible for continuous manufacturing [of] anthrax biological weapons. The amount of this weapon produced was hundreds of tons.

What were the total amount of biological weapons agents storehoused?

Nobody calculated these weapons in such a way. The problem was that some weapons were stockpiled and some weapons were just prepared for stockpiling. The amount of weapons stored was dozens or even hundreds of tons. There were several facilities there that were considered mobilization capacities. They could manufacture biological weapons in case of getting a special order.


THE REST !!!

[Edited on 14-12-2002 by mad scientist]

Marbug is almost as deadly and a very close relative of Ebola :

An with Richard Preston and Ken Alibekov

In late 1990, Biopreparat researchers tested airborne Variant U on monkeys and other small animals in special explosion-test chambers at the Stepnagorsk plant. Marburg Variant U proved to be extremely potent in airborne form. They found that just one to five microscopic particles of Variant U lodged in the lungs of a monkey were almost guaranteed to make the animal crash, bleed, and die. With normal weapons-grade anthrax, in comparison, it takes about eight thousand spores lodged in the lungs to pretty much guarantee infection and death.

Alibek said that by the fall of 1991, just before Boris Yeltsin came to power, Marburg Variant U was on the verge of becoming a strategic/operational biological weapon, ready to be manufactured in large quantities and loaded into warheads on MIRVs. These warheads are sinister things. Ten separate cone-shaped warheads, each targeted on a different location, sit atop a missile. Special cooling systems inside each warhead keep the virus alive during the heat of reentry through the earth's atmosphere. "If we can land a cosmonaut to earth alive, we can do the same with a virus," Alibek explained. "We use parachutes." The biowarheads are parachuted over a city, and at a certain altitude they break apart. Out of each warhead bursts a spray of more than a hundred oval bomblets the size of small cantaloupes. The cantaloupes fly out a distance and then split in overlapping patterns, releasing a haze of bioparticles that quickly becomes invisible.


and with regards to genetic manipulation of bioweapons :

"Russia has researched the genetic alteration of smallpox," Alibek told me. "In 1990 and 1991, we engineered a smallpox at Vector. It was found that several areas of the smallpox genome" -- the DNA -- "can be used for the introduction of some foreign genetic material. The first development was smallpox and VEE. VEE, or Venezuelan equine encephalitis, is a brain virus. It causes a severe headache and near-coma, but it is generally not lethal. Alibek said that the researchers spliced VEE into smallpox. The result was a recombinant chimera virus. In ancient Greek myth, the chimera was a monster made from parts of different animals. Recombination means the mixing of genes from different organisms. "It is called smallpox-VEE chimera," Alibek said. It could also be called Veepox. Under a microscope, Alibek said, the Veepox looks like smallpox, but it isn't.

According to Alibek, there was one major technical hurdle to clear in the creation of a workable Veepox chimera, and he says that it took the Vector researchers years to solve the problem. They solved it by finding more than one place in the smallpox DNA where you could insert new genes without decreasing smallpox's ability to cause disease. Many researchers feel that the smallpox virus doesn't cause disease in animals in any way that is useful for understanding its effects on humans. Alibek says that the Russians tested Veepox in monkeys, but he says that he doesn't know the results.

More recently, Alibek claims, the Vector researchers may have created a recombinant Ebola-smallpox chimera. One could call it Ebolapox. Ebola virus uses the molecule RNA for its genetic code, whereas smallpox uses DNA. Alibek believes that the Russian researchers made a DNA copy of the disease-causing parts of Ebola, then grafted them into smallpox. Alibek said he thinks that the Ebolapox virus is stable -- that is, that it will replicate successfully in a test tube or in animals -- which means that, once created, Ebolapox will live forever in a laboratory, and will not uncreate itself. Thus a new form of life may have been brought into the world.

"The Ebolapox could produce the form of smallpox called blackpox," Alibek says. Blackpox, sometimes known as hemorrhagic smallpox, is the most severe type of smallpox disease. In a blackpox infection, the skin does not develop blisters. Instead, the skin becomes dark all over. Blood vessels leak, resulting in severe internal hemorrhaging. Blackpox is invariably fatal. "As a weapon, the Ebolapox would give the hemorrhages and high mortality rate of Ebola virus, which would give you a blackpox, plus the very high contagiousness of smallpox," Alibek said.


THE REST