Originally posted by kleverone
Anthrax can Kill(not likely) but won't if caught early,
Weaponized anthrax is nearly 100% fatal.
I wonder where you're getting this info with respect to Abilek. I've read a good deal about this stuff, and I don't remember hearing about HIV
being transferable via sneezing. I know that the USSR was producing variant strains of smallpox, by the metric ton, and certainly old standbys like
inhalation anthrax, and bubonic plague. But nothing about HIV.
HIV is in fact a horrible bioweapon. It has a long incubation time; the median time of progression is like nine to ten years. So let's launch a
bioweapon, and sit around and wait for a decade and hope they don't find a cure in the meantime. HIV is a horrible choice for a bioweapon. Properties
possessed by good candidates for bioweapons include: high infectivity, robustness, efficacy of aerosol delivery, high lethality. HIV has none of these
characteristics.
In any case, I worked on two projects, one for the DoD, and one for homeland security. Both projects were focused on the early detection of
bioweapons. In one case we were sampling for 10 bioweapons, and in the other 20 different bioweapons. There's a long and sordid list of bugs there,
but HIV wasn't on the list... never even came up once a meeting.
Finally, if you simply look at the epidemiology of the disease (ignoring Africa, as an AIDS diagnosis doesn't require a positive HIV test), the
disease does not follow the pattern of a typical infectious disease. In fact, its pattern of infection is actually suggestive of something other than
an infectious disease, and certainly not an infectious disease that you contract via a sneeze.
Sorry, but this just doesn't add up.
But remember this is one I can speak of without initial fear of retribution. There are other Bioligical weapons far worse that I will not
speak of due to Incrimnation.
What? You can talk about bioweapons all you want... watch this: Bubonic plague, ricin, botulism toxin, anthrax, Typhus, Ebola, Cholera, Q Fever,
Smallpox, encephalitis, yellow fever, rift valley fever, psittacosis, shigella, brucellosis.
Wow, I just talked about more than a dozen bioweapons... and I bet I'll still be on line tomorrow.
[edit on 19-9-2006 by mattison0922]