I think the resources to moderate the comments are not there. One learns quickly to skip the 9/11 and civil war comments, and the personality contests between various participants. Maybe the comments thread seems chaotic to one who has not yet learned to do this.

thank you - you sound like a very decent person - See i really always try very hard to stay on topic and i actually wanted to ad to the discussion very seriously that this is probably also the wrong site tp play detective, because some decent people are not interested in disecting Ivins liver - ups here i go again - and you right we shouldn't love the audience - Glenn probably doesn't - So - do you think i can post again or would you say i am one of these terrible trolls you are talking about...

They found that Dr. Ivins, who had a history of alcohol abuse

He was in some kind of Group Therapy setting (Duley) and probably of the substance abuse kind. It would make sense, wrt Duley. Recovering addicts often become substance abuse counselors. They have more credibility with their clients than professionals who haven't been through it.

Had a full autopsy been conducted, this claim could have been substantiated. It could account for Ivins being particularly sensitive to Tylenol poisoning if he indeed did have a long-term alcohol problem, as both acetamenophen and alcohol target the liver. A randomly found article I found when googling "autopsy liver Tylenol damage alcohol" is here:

http://www.postgradmed.com/issues/2000/01_00/draganov.shtml

That's an older paper, 2000.

This is cribbed from Harvard Med and other sources, and more recent, just at an AOL Health page:

http://www.aolhealth.com/conditions/avoiding-acetaminophen-related-liver-injury

How does the liver get into trouble?

Acetaminophen itself isn’t toxic. But when the liver breaks down acetaminophen, it produces a toxic by-product, N-acetyl-p-benzoquinone imine (NAPQI). Normally, NAPQI is neutralized and ushered out of the body by a substance called glutathione. But excess acetaminophen can overwhelm glutathione stores, allowing NAPQI to build up and damage the liver. Alcohol can deplete glutathione, which is one reason why it shouldn’t be mixed with acetaminophen. Glutathione levels are also reduced by certain genetic defects, inadequate nutrition, and some medical conditions or medications.

It's an unusual method of suicide for a gun owning male, even with some likely knowledge, based on his science background, of the dangers of acetaminophen overdose. Acetomeniphen deaths are usually accidental, not intentional.

Juan Cole reminds readers today that it was Reagan's administration who gave Saddam anthrax... and it was the Ames strain! And that was AFTER he gassed the Kurds.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article807098.ece

Think Progress reminds readers that Colin Powell mentioned Saddam's anthrax in his UN speech:

Iraq declared 8,500 liters of anthrax, but UNSCOM estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons. And Saddam Hussein has not verifiably accounted for even one teaspoon-full of this deadly material.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002472.html

Anyone working on vaccine research would have a lyophilizer. This is from the wikipedia:

Pharmaceutical companies often use freeze drying to increase the shelf life of products, such as vaccines and other injectables. By removing the water from the material and sealing the material in a vial, the material can be easily stored, shipped and later reconstituted to its original form for injection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeze_drying

Secondly, as CargoCult has mentioned, the spores must be separated from the culture to make the sample that was used in an attack. Unlike many bacilli, anthrax cannot be raised on “broth”, at least in the same sense as e. coli. Anthrax must consume live animal cells which gave raise to the now infamous picture of Hatfil in full protection posing with a “bioreactor”. A bioreacter is a machine for large scale “3d “ cell culture as opossed to 2D plates. The culture produced contains feeder cells, anthrax bacilli and anthrax spores. The spores must be separated from the slurry. To get 2 grams of spores, one would have to centerfuge a huge amount of raw material. A discussion if the centerfuge process, and it's complications has already been placed on salon.

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/09/abc_anthrax/permalink/e98e82a8f07ea67ad138787107fd5685.html

1. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda 2. Saddam Hussein and Iraq 3. Dr. Ayaad Assaad 4. Stephen Hatfill 5. Bruce Ivins. The government and the mainstream media have bent over backwards NOT to mention the name of the best suspect in the case: Philip Zack and the Camel Club (Google it). The FBI is in a great hurry to shut down the investigation forever, after destroying the life of Bruce Ivins and driving him to suicide on the flimsiest of evidence. Does this look like a screw-up or a cover-up? Because I am not as dumb as a rock, I'll go with cover-up.

I don't think they are saying he took the lyophilizer home. They are saying he moved it from another part of the complex into the biosafety area where he did his vaccine work.

those who are wasting bandwidth arguing about off-topic issues should take it elsewhere....or is the issue that you want an audience? this isn't the venue.

9-11 is not the issue here. You are being extremely rude to your hosts, Glenn and Salon, to continue to argue off-topic issues on this forum. You are more off-putting than the trolls here!

No one here KNOWS the truth about Ivins or Duley, Hatfill, Zack, etcetc (even 9-11) --and those here who claim they do, who speak about this issue in absolutes, discredit anything they have to say.

please respect the request of Glenn to stop this o-t stuff. please do not attack others who post things you don't like to read. please use your intellect to sort information, not draw conclusions.

so. Dr. Ivins took a piece of equipment home ...

- does anyone know what reason he gave at the time?

- did anyone else ever take a similar piece of equipment home?

- is this a delicate, expensive or highly technical piece of equipment?

- are there any obvious domestic purposes to which it might be put to use?

When you are holding a hammer (or possess needle and thread) everything looks like a nail (or something that might benefit from being sewn or plied together with needle and thread) ... see also hairpins.

Again, since these are bright people, who ever did this would know that the higher grade of anthrax utilized, the smaller and high up the circle of suspicion would focus -- no?

Also, who ever sent the anthrax has apparently lived undetected with the guilt of the deaths and the illnesses, when almost everything seems to suggest there was no intention of killing anyone... more like (though we do not know) scaring a few "someones" ... Bio-agents have never been off the radar or forgotten, though they have been relegated to "dirty" technology no "upstanding" (treaty signing, civil rights upholding) country would use -- see also Iraq AND, irrc, Iran (and god knows who else has stockpiles and history)

Technology has its own siren call.