Letters to the Editor
-
just to clarify
On the silica vs Bentonite issue.
silica is a component of bentonite. If silica was found by and x-ray analysis it could confirm the presence of benontite. However, bentonite also contains aluminum, so the absence of aluminum suggests that any mineralization of the spores is not done with bentonite.
On the cell culture issue.
A bio-reactor is more or less complicated depending on the requirements of the cells being cultured. I haven't worked with anthrax spores or anything like them, but I have worked with 'difficult to culture' membrane proteins. Bioreactors can now be run in a sterile, prefabricated bag for low cost at relatively large scales. If you really used the recent advances in technology for chemical biology, you could probably do it in a room. Think of the amount of marijuana produced in a closet using current, optimised techniques vs a field in Mexico. If there's a market, someone will push the envelope of the production techniques.
the term sol-gel is ill-defined
sol gel recipes vary all over the map. Some are simple and some are extremely complicated.
-
@batman valentino
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Not many people will argue that the Bush Administration "intended" for the Iraq occupation to turn into such a catastrophe. But it did. And it did because the post war planning was arguably non-existent, among other well documented reasons. I think a good analogy would be that drunk drivers don't "intend" to kill other people on their way home from the bar. But they do, and we make them pay a price for their criminal negligence.
-
Ross talks to Oreilly about sources
My apologies if someone else has pointed this out already, I don't have time to read all of the comments. Just came across this in researching a different matter, thought it had some bearing.
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2475086
Above text links to a Ross appearance on the "O'Reilly Factor." I didn't watch the whole thing, but they start out by talking about sources. Seems relevant to the issue at hand.
It's also pretty funny that O'Reilly starts the segment by announcing that Ross has just won a "Polk" for the CIA Prisons story. As far as I can tell, Ross actually won a "Peabody" for the story, not a Polk. If you didn't know O'Reilly has a long and ridiculous history of "confusing" the two awards, mostly in his claim that he won one or the other for his work as a "journalist" (a show he used to be on won a Polk, not a Peabody. Whether or not he was involved is something I'm not qualified to assess.) In the part that I watched, Ross didn't bother to point out the mistake.
-
Ross, Peabody vs Polk
My mistake. It seems Ross's Peabody came for other work, and he did win a George Polk award for the CIA Prison work. Egg's on my face, not O'Reilly's.
-
orbit boy:
Bush is an idiot and the war is a catastrophe. The original reference was to a comparison of Iraq with the Nazi occupation and descruction of Spain. The Nazi's never had any good intentions. That is the only difference. Iraq is best described as "another Viet Nam". Most would like now to have never been there, but cant bear to turn and run.
-
The famous ( infamous?) picture of Steven Hatfil ...
Showed him posing in an airtight suit standing behind a bioreactor, as if to demonstrate how easy it could be done. First, if you have created membrane proteins, you are a seasoned professional, not an amateur as implied by much of the FBI material. Also, membrane proteins, presumably for medical research do not require biosecurity level (BSL) 3 or 4 level containment. Unless you are trained and supported in an advanced BSL laboratory, a small mistake will kill you when working with this (Ames) strain of anthrax.
So how much membrane protein are you producing? More than a few milligrams in the purified state would probably mean you are commerial scale, not research lab scale.
-
thelastnamechosen:
I have an idea, why don't you get someone who has done actual testing to speak on the record and say there is no bentonite instead of arguing with me.
USA Today, October 31, 2001-
ABC is standing by its report, in which it quoted unidentified sources as saying that initial tests on anthrax sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle found traces of bentonite, which Iraq has used to make anthrax spores more infectious.
This is a hot-button issue: If true, it would point the finger at Iraq's Saddam Hussein being a prime suspect in the anthrax attack -- a charge the White House has been careful not to make.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Tuesday that the report by ABC News correspondent Brian Ross is wrong. He notes that Army Maj. Gen. John Parker, in charge of the investigation, has said that no traces of aluminum, a key ingredient of bentonite, have been found. . . .
Says Fleischer: "If ABC's sources are so good, perhaps they'd like to come out and identify themselves and share the information they have, just as Gen. Parker and the White House have done. It's easier to be an anonymous source floating allegations than be an on-the-record source sharing information and taking questions."
Gen. John Parker, "in charge of the investigation" - is that a named source? You asked that I "get someone who has done actual testing to speak on the record and say there is no bentonite." That qualifies, right?
George Stephonopolous, to Brian Ross, October 29:
I spoke with a senior White
House official this morning and they are standing by their story that no test has concluded that there was bentonite in this anthrax. What is this about?
From the Weekly Standard, April, 2002:
The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology has performed energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy on anthrax powder recovered from at least two of last fall's letters and has apparently discovered trace amounts of silica, but no sign of aluminum, an element basic to the best-known and most common form of bentonite (montmorillonite). Based on this result, government investigators have concluded, according to the Washington Post, that "it is unlikely that the spores were originally produced in the former Soviet Union or Iraq."
The overwhelming proponderence of the evidnece - including fro "named sources" as you define that term - make clear there was no bentonite.
Now, I will concede to you one point. This post was 3,000 words long already. Although - as I have said before - I write for people who want to read comprehensive accounts of things and don't feel a need to shorten what I write to standard-blog-size posts, I do have to be lenght-conscious to some degree, and this post was already well longer than what my usual self-imposed limits are.
So I had to focus on what really was important to establish and what wasn't. If you read around the anthrax literature, even among people who agree on nothing, virtually nobody still claims that the anthrax was laced with bentonite. It's all but universally assumed. So I focused on that part of the post least -- I gave some evidence to show that it was there and not something I was just making up - but since it's really not in dispute (the way it is if there was silica present in the anthrax), I wans't purporting to give some comprehensive case proving that fact.
But the evidnece is clearly overwhelming, FROM named sources, and I doubt even ABC would claim at this point there was bentonite there (though I have asked them to respond to the points in this post).
Can I prove to you with mathematical certainty that there was no bentonite? No. But you can't prove with mathetmatical certainty that Judy Miller's WMD claims were false. But the overwhelming evidence suggests that it is, and that is more than enough to compel an explanation from ABC.