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(回答先: 【関東軍７３１部隊の唯一正統なる後継者ｗ】米軍生物戦の牙城フォートデトリックで９２００件以上の病原体サンプルが行方不明 投稿者 passenger 日時 2009 年 6 月 19 日 06:37:51)
【関東軍７３１生物化学戦部隊の唯一正統なる後継者ｗ】
米軍生物戦の牙城フォートデトリックで９２００件以上の病原体サンプルが行方不明
フォートデトリックは米軍の生物兵器研究開発の牙城であるが、
この生物兵器拠点が誕生した背景には、日本軍がアジア大陸で
進めていた生物戦活動に対する警戒があった。
日本軍が中国で行なっていた生物戦の情報はワシントンに報告
されていたが、とりわけ米国の政府と軍部が、自らの危機として
日本軍の生物戦能力に備える必要性を実感した契機は、
日本が関東の太平洋岸から放出していた風船爆弾が米国西海岸で
報告されるようになったことだったという。
米軍の生物戦準備を指揮したのはメルク製薬のトップであった。
米軍が警戒しつづけた関東軍の７３１部隊は、「終戦」とともに証拠を
破壊して逃亡し、姿をくらませたが、この部隊を率いていた石井四郎
軍医中将や、その右腕として活躍した軍医大佐・内藤良一（のちに
日本ブラッドバンク＝ミドリ十字〔現在の田辺三菱製薬〕の創設者・会長
となった）が駐日占領軍およびワシントンと交渉し、７３１部隊の軍事機密
を米軍に譲り渡す見返りとして、戦争責任の“お咎めなし”を手に入れた。
こうして７３１部隊の血まみれの実験データを手に入れた米軍フォート
デトリックは、日本の生物戦部隊の唯一正統なる後継者となった。
関東軍の生物戦部隊に「丸太」扱いにされて惨殺された、中国人や
モンゴル人やロシア人の怨霊が徘徊するフォートデトリック……。
そして今では「炭疽菌テロ」のテロリストたちが集うフォートデトリック……。
その生物戦争準備の伏魔殿で、6万6千件におよぶ病原体サンプルの
“棚卸し”を実施したところ、9220件の紛失が確認されたという。
紛失した病原体サンプルのなかには、エボラウイルス、炭疽菌、
ボツリヌス毒素、ベネズエラ馬脳炎ウイルス、野兎病（ツラレミア）菌
なども含まれていたという。
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/17/AR2009061703271.html
FORT DETRICK
Inventory Uncovers 9,200 More Pathogens
Laboratory Says Security Is Tighter, but Earlier Count Missed Dangerous Vials
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FBI investigators concluded that Fort Detrick probably was the source of the anthrax spores used in the deadly mailings of 2001. (2008 Photo By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 18, 2009
An inventory of potentially deadly pathogens at Fort Detrick's infectious disease laboratory found more than 9,000 vials that had not been accounted for, Army officials said yesterday, raising concerns that officials wouldn't know whether dangerous toxins were missing.
After four months of searching about 335 freezers and refrigerators at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, investigators found 9,220 samples that hadn't been included in a database of about 66,000 items listed as of February, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, the institute's deputy commander.
The vials contained some dangerous pathogens, among them the Ebola virus, anthrax bacteria and botulinum toxin, and less lethal agents such as Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus and the bacterium that causes tularemia. Most of them, forgotten inside freezer drawers, hadn't been used in years or even decades. Officials said some serum samples from hemorrhagic fever patients dated to the Korean War.
Kortepeter likened the inventory to cleaning out the attic and said he knew of no plans for an investigation into how the vials had been left out of the database. "The vast majority of these samples were working stock that were accumulated over decades," he said, left there by scientists who had retired or left the institute.
"I can't say that nothing did [leave the lab], but I can say that we think it's extremely unlikely," Kortepeter said.
Still, the overstock and the previous inaccuracy of the database raised the possibility that someone could have taken a sample outside the lab with no way for officials to know something was missing.
"Nine thousand, two hundred undocumented samples is an extraordinarily serious breach," said Richard H. Ebright, a professor at Rutgers University who follows biosecurity. "A small number would be a concern; 9,200 . . . at an institution that has been the focus of intense scrutiny on this issue, that's deeply worrisome. Unacceptable."
The institute has been under pressure to tighten security in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks, which killed five people and sickened 17. FBI investigators say they think the anthrax strain used in the attacks originated at the Army lab, and its prime suspect, Bruce E. Ivins, researched anthrax there. Ivins committed suicide last year during an investigation into his activities.
Kortepeter noted that since 2001 the lab has imposed multiple layers of security to check people entering and leaving, that there are now cameras in the labs, and that employees are subjected to a reliability program and random inspections.
"The bottom line is, we have a lot of buffers to prevent anybody who shouldn't be getting into the laboratory," Kortepeter said.
Sam Edwin, the institute's inventory control officer, said most of the samples found were vials with tiny amounts of pathogens that would thaw quickly and die once they were taken out of a freezer, making smuggling something off the base difficult.
The probe began in February, when a problem accounting for Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus triggered the suspension of most research at the lab. A spot check in January found 20 samples of the virus in a box of vials instead of the 16 listed in the institute's database. Most work was stopped until the institute could take a thorough inventory of its stock of viruses and bacteria.
Edwin said about 50 percent of the samples that had been found were destroyed. The rest were added to the catalog. Because the lab will now conduct an inventory every year, "it's really less likely that we will be in a situation like this again," he said.
Procedures have changed, too. Scientists who have worked at the lab said that in the past, departing scientists turned over their logbooks to their successors, but records were sometimes incomplete or complex. As generations of scientists passed through, the knowledge of what was in the freezers was lost. With a comprehensive database, every sample is now tracked until it is destroyed or transferred.
But some scientists are skeptical. Unlike uranium or chemical weapons, pathogens are living materials that can replicate and die. A small amount can easily be turned into a large amount. They said the strict inventories slow their work without guaranteeing security.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/09/AR2009020903511.html?sid=ST2009061703604
INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Most Research Suspended at Fort Detrick
By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The U.S. Army's Frederick-based laboratory for studying some of the world's deadliest diseases has suspended most research activities as it tries to find errors in an inventory of its biological materials, a spokeswoman for the institute said yesterday.
Col. John P. Skvorak, the head of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, ordered most lab work to stop last Friday, according to an order first obtained and posted on the ScienceInsider blog. He said the order was required to meet the Army and Defense Department's standards for keeping track of "biological select agents and toxins," known as BSAT, such as anthrax bacteria and the Ebola virus.
The lab has been under heavy pressure to tighten security since the 2001 anthrax attacks, which killed five people and sickened 17 others. FBI investigators think the anthrax strain used in the attacks originated at the Army lab, and its prime suspect in the investigation, Bruce E. Ivins, researched anthrax there. Ivins committed suicide last year.
The order to stop most work came after a spot check last month found 20 samples of Venezuelan equine encephalitis in a box of vials instead of the 16 that had been listed in the institute's database, according to Caree Vander Linden, the spokeswoman for the institute.
The lab has made inventory mistakes before, "probably due to accounting errors, transcription errors, or BSAT that had not been reassigned when an employee left the Institute," Skvorak wrote in the memo. "I believe that the probability that there are additional vials of BSAT not captured in our . . . database is high."
One common reason for mistaken tallies of biological materials was that researchers would leave samples behind when they took other jobs, said a scientist who works at the institute who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of lab security.
"They want those freezers cleared out and to find anything that's unaccounted for," the researcher said. "We would find stuff that had been left there by investigators who had departed the institute five years or even longer ago. It was difficult to backtrack what those samples are."
Vander Linden said the search could take months.
"It's going to be labor intensive," she said. "We've estimated up to three months. That's a ballpark, but we'll see. We've got to do it right. We've got to be accurate. We're not going to try to speed it up and miss anything."
The scientist, as well as others no longer at the lab, said the order could frustrate researchers because keeping inventories for biological materials is next to impossible. Unlike nuclear weapons materials, which can simply be weighed, viruses and bacteria are constantly multiplying and dying, meaning the amount of material changes from hour to hour, they said.
"It's extremely difficult to completely account for replicating agents because, by definition, they replicate," said Thomas W. Geisbert, associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories at Boston University, who previously worked on Ebola at the Army lab. "You can make a large amount from a small amount."
"That certainly is an issue," Vander Linden said. "At the end of the day, people realize this is the cost of doing business now. We have to be accountable, and we'll have to do it."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/22/AR2008102203082.html?sid=ST2009061703604
Huge New Biodefense Lab Is Dedicated at Fort Detrick
By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 23, 2008
The Department of Homeland Security dedicated a massive biodefense laboratory in Frederick yesterday, moving toward the facility's opening despite questions raised about the risks of deadly pathogens to be studied there.
When the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center at Fort Detrick is fully operational in March, about 150 scientists in the lab will be tasked with protecting the country from a bioterrorist attack through prevention or containment. Another goal is to allow investigators to fingerprint biological agents such as viruses and bacteria, quickly tracing their source and catching the offender.
But critics cite the case of Bruce E. Ivins, a researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, also at Fort Detrick, as evidence that such installations might help bioterrorists get access to lethal agents. FBI investigators think Ivins, who committed suicide in July, was responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks.
Construction began in June 2006 on the $143 million, 160,000-square-foot facility inside the fort, the Army's sprawling medical research post in Frederick. The ship-shaped building will be divided between the lab's major divisions: a forensic testing center, which aims to identify the culprits in biological attacks; and the Biothreat Characterization Center, which seeks to predict what such attacks will look like and guide the development of countermeasures.
Scientists affiliated with the lab have been working in leased space at Fort Detrick, but officials who spoke at the dedication yesterday said they were anxious to move into the new center.
"This is a great day. Many of us have been waiting for this day for a long time," said Jamie Johnson, director of the Office of National Laboratories of the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security. "I feel very passionately about this facility, and I feel even more passionately about its mission. This is state-of-the-art, cutting-edge bio-forensics."
Barry Kissin, a Frederick lawyer who has strongly opposed the lab's construction, said he fears the facility would be used to create biological weapons even though the government said its mission is defensive.
"It's not only a huge threat to local public health and safety, it is in the forefront of the instigation of a brand-new arms race in the realm of bioweapons," he said. "Here we are, expanding by about 20 times the size of the program that we're now being told generated the only bioattack in our history."
Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md.), who has a PhD in human physiology, said the closure of the U.S. bioweapons program in 1969 had perhaps placed the country a step behind other nations that continued to operate secret programs.
"As a scientist, I knew how important it was to be at the cutting edge," Bartlett said. "I don't have complete confidence that our intelligence community will be able to tell us what's going on at the cutting edge." The scientists at the new Detrick lab, he said, are "going to have to divine what's happening." But he said he has "great confidence that this organization will indeed be able to protect us."
Democrat Jennifer Dougherty, a former Frederick mayor who faces Bartlett in the 6th District race, said relations between the city and Fort Detrick have gradually improved.
"I think it's essential that we make sure there's a level of transparency and a level of trust between residents, the city and the post," Dougherty said.
The directors of the campus were eager to demonstrate the facility's security, leading guests and reporters through a tour of the lab. Construction required everyone to wear hard hats and protective glasses.
The facility was clean and bright, with large windows allowing most scientists in sealed labs a view of the outdoors. About 40,000 square feet will be taken up by Biosafety Level 3 labs, which handle agents such as anthrax. In addition, 10,000 will be dedicated to the Level 4 labs, which handle agents such as the Ebola virus.
Next to the windows, digital monitors displayed air pressure, ensuring that air would flow from the outside into the lab. The air is constantly filtered, and three large pressure cookers sterilize contaminated waste. To get into the Level 4 labs, workers must pass through a chemical shower that cleanses their suits.
The thick, reinforced concrete walls were painted white. The rooms were empty of the testing equipment, animals and biological supplies that the scientists will use for their work. Exposed wires and pipes were in evidence, and sheeting was taped to parts of the floor.
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- Re: 【また隠蔽する日本のマスゴミｗ】いつもならワシントン・ポストの記事に飛びつく日本のマスゴミが今回は無視ｗ 官からアメリカ人へ 2009/6/19 09:02:33
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