Missing virus vial raises concerns at UTMB facility

Originally posted by ausername
With the level of security in a lab containing samples like this, NOTHING simply goes missing.

If it actually did, then it was taken... But by who, how, and for what reason?

How do you know this? Facts and sources please. Do you think it's so because of something you've seen ina movie or on TV. - Stuff goes missing all the time from 'secure' facilities - ie Nuclear and Convention Weapons, Bio-agents, Money, you name it - information. Systems are in place, to be sure, however they can and are circumvented - and people get sloppy. So by human error or deliberate intent - stuff goes missing....

A single vile of a haemorrhagic fever virus that CAN infect humans but is uncommon amoung humans, does not strike me as a viable candidate for a bio weapon, unless it was being used as a base agent to breed with something a little more lethal and effective.

Either way this kind of virus is typically a corner case for bio weapons as it has a high repciprocity rate, and would most likely burn itself out rather quickly.

Also to my knowledge, no one has yet managed to fabricate an effective dispersal channel for a bio agent, and until that happens viral bio agents are not really viable as weaponised platforms.

The fact that that no one noticed that it was missing, or when it disappeared is a good indication of just how dangerous this is. If this was something that we should be worried about you can bet everyone would know exactly where every milligram of the stuff was at any given moment, possibly even painted it with radioactive isotopes so that it can be tracked in the event it is released.

Originally posted by redshoes

Also to my knowledge, no one has yet managed to fabricate an effective dispersal channel for a bio agent, and until that happens viral bio agents are not really viable as weaponised platforms.

Unless you have radical Islamic terrorists willing (like suicide bombers) to infect themselves and then spread that infection in high human traffic areas and among targeted populations.

The "Suicide Bio-Terrorists"

I was just about to make my own thread, but I used the search and found one was already made..may I sugest using a better headline next time, I don't think your headline portrays the seriousness or the gravity of this situation..anyways without further adieu I'll just contribute to your thread for now..

watch this

Originally posted by HumanitiesLastHope
..may I sugest using a better headline next time, I

Being the news forum, I used the headline of the article. That's the rules.

Here is some interesting and informative information about the (guanarito virus)...


ci.vbi.vt.edu...


This article says it is found in the (cane mouse) and that outbreaks have happened in Venezuela.

I am just wondering...why this virus was supposedly at a lab in Texas...other than to study it. What may be the hidden agendas. Could one reason be perhaps (biological warfare) also know as (germ warfare).

Originally posted by CirqueDeTruth
Yeah but will they track the vial down before the vial is poured all over the jungle gym equipment at a McDonalds or Burger King play land?

Scary stuff.

Cirque

Won't happen.

If it's intended to kill, it makes sense whoever has it will want to kill the most people possible, so will culture and grow it from the sample they have.

A few ml's will easilly become gallons or hundreds of gallons if that's their intention. Spray from shopping mall air con ducts, light aircraft, dump into municiple water supplies, among other methods are all relatively simple methods to infect and kill many, many people.

Such a nasty incident would undoubtably require DHS and other equally well armed agencies onto the streets to take 'control of the situation' and those FEMA camps might get some new, but very ill residents.

Let's just hope the vial just got knocked under a cabinet or something.

reply to post by redshoes


It can and does infect Humans, killing up to 30% of all infected...while Human TO Human transfer is rare, it does happen.

As a kid, Regan was president, and not being old enough to understand what they were talking about, I was freaked out about nuclear war, Now that I have had the chance to "mature", and understand a lot more, This kind of stuff is just down right scare-the sh!t out of you scary.

Won't know if they will find it, like someone else said, if people start dropping around you.....wonder.....

And NEO, I loved the book and the movie. But everytime I hear The Blue Oyster Cult, Don't fear the Reaper, The first thing that comes to mind is Campion driving out of the base, and people who look like they suffered the Bubonic Plague.

I have a question. I hope it's not a stupid one.
Is it possible this virus could somehow mutate or be manipulated to mutate?
Just wondering......

Originally posted by Elliot
Ah! A Twelve Monkeys moment!

Could be! It's probably gone as I'm sure there was a thorough search once it was potentially identified as missing. You would hope it's misplaced, but I doubt that is the case at this point in time.

Given that it can be spread in a aerosol form, it's possible the genes which cause the damage to the platelets could be spliced into something more common and contagious -- like a rhinovirus or a flu virus. I believe a lot of work has been done with "safe" versions these like has been done with E. Coli. If the genes fit in the viral capsid, turn on in the host, and the virus replicates true, this could become a major world-wide problem.

OTOH, the scenario which would worry me the more than the vial being missing would be to have it discovered that the vial had been replaced with different contents. I wonder how often that scenario gets checked? I'd bet, virtually never.

This kind of falls in line with something I've known for decades -- if you want to mess up a database, you don't delete, you modify it.

I just saw this on my local news. They said that the only way to spend the disease is through Venezuelan rats! Now I'm no expert, but that's a blatant lie. Oh how they try to make people feel at ease. I'll let y'all know if the zombie apocalypse happens anytime soon.

Creepy stuff. They could have at least come up with a better story than it being thrown out and not a hazard.

Originally posted by fictitious
I just saw this on my local news. They said that the only way to spend the disease is through Venezuelan rats! Now I'm no expert, but that's a blatant lie. Oh how they try to make people feel at ease. I'll let y'all know if the zombie apocalypse happens anytime soon.

Not the best source, but...

en.wikipedia.org...

Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever (VHF) is a zoonotic human illness first identified in 1989. The disease is most prevalent in several rural areas of central Venezuela and is caused by the Guanarito (GTOV) arenavirus belonging to the Arenaviridae family. The short-tailed cane mouse (Zygodontomys brevicauda) is the main host for GTOV [1] which is spread mostly by inhalation of aerosolized droplets of saliva, respiratory secretions, urine, or blood from infected rodents.[2] Person-to-person spread is possible, but uncommon.

And...

Because the virus is contracted by aerosol dissemination, concern arose shortly after the first cases emerged in 1989 due to fear of biological warfare. Potential biological terrorism agents were identified and categorized in 1999 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as part of the Congressional initiative to further response capabilities to biological weapons [4] . Arenaviruses causing hemorrhagic fevers, along with a genus of virus called filoviruses, were categorized in Category A; these are pathogens with the highest potential impact on public health safety.

reply to post by caladonea

I am just wondering...why this virus was supposedly at a lab in Texas...other than to study it. What may be the hidden agendas. Could one reason be perhaps (biological warfare) also know as (germ warfare).

No hidden agenda. The CDC has the same sort of freezer in their Level 4 bio hazard laboratory. They keep frozen samples of every known disease (and some unknown ones). The reason they keep these is to help identify outbreaks of disease by comparing them to the pathogen sample from an actual outbreak. The University does not store virulent bio weapons in their laboratory freezer. Anyone who understands this kind of work chuckles to hear this.

These samples are dead by the way. Frozen to preserve the sample for evaluation on the microscopic level. Let me say that again... the samples preserved in freezers are dead. It would not be possible to start a plague from such a frozen bit of virus.

Now the sample brought into the lab for comparison against known frozen bits of virus are the dangerous ones. Thats the stuff to worry about.

One would think that access was not as restricted as it should have been. There should not have been many individuals with access to this freezer, that way it would be easy to figure out who could have taken it. If too many people had access, of course it is going to be difficult to determine the guilty party. So it needs to be determined how many people had access.

I am already seeing the fearmongering starting, and this is the same mentality the government uses to scare the public into complicity. Even if it was stolen for some terrorist group who was planning to disperse it in some unknown place and manner, I would not let that any fear that I had dictate my views on freedom or the Constitution, and therefore I would not give up any of my rights for better "protection," whether it is existent or not.

This may not have anything to do with this particular case, but I just wanted to draw a parallel between this case and what has been happening in the US for some time now. And my main point is to not let fear dictate or run your lives. At worst, you can only be killed once, and the odds of that happening from a stolen vial of anything are relatively slim, even in this day and age.

Originally posted by ausername
With the level of security in a lab containing samples like this, NOTHING simply goes missing.

If it actually did, then it was taken... But by who, how, and for what reason?

This is a very big factor. The level of security is extremely high and nothing would ever go missing. So it was deliberate.

Originally posted by intrptr
reply to post by caladonea

 

These samples are dead by the way. Frozen to preserve the sample for evaluation on the microscopic level. Let me say that again... the samples preserved in freezers are dead. It would not be possible to start a plague from such a frozen bit of virus.

Are you sure that is true in this case?

A director at the facility stated that this virus would only be a threat to the public "if it was stolen"

And as you know, bacteria and viruses can be stored frozen virtually forever, and be live again anytime they want it... What about frozen human embryos?

They can be stored for years, in fact there are cases where they were used successfully after being frozen for more than 10 years.

That said in this case I don't think it just walked out the door, and I believe it is more of an inventory/accounting error or something like that.

If someone really wanted to get their own sample of this particular virus, they could travel to an area where the infection is more common and collect it from the rodents themselves... No elaborate plot to steal it from a lab is required....

Someone will probably release it in Washington DC. That would be the best target area. I wonder how much a worker got paid for this vial? It is probably a cash strapped employee that is in jeopardy of loosing their way of life that took it. Possibly a high ranking official there.

2011 December - Transmission of Guanarito and Pirital Viruses among Wild Rodents, Venezuela

note:
Acknowledgments.

We thank Nuris M. C. de Manzione for facilitating the shipment of samples from Portuguesa, Venezuela, to the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...