Here's what I want to know. Why is our military shipping anthrax to many places?

[L0oniX]

The news isn't asking that question but rather why was it shipped with a commercial shipper. Gorilla in the room folks!

[KamaAina]

1. Apparently the bacteria were supposed to have been killed

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/U-S-government-looking-into-shipments-of-live-6292442.php

Human error probably was not a factor in the Army’s mistaken shipment of live anthrax samples to numerous U.S. government and commercial laboratories in the U.S. and in South Korea, the Army’s top general said Thursday.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, told reporters the problem may have been a failure in the technical process of killing, or inactivating, anthrax samples. The process in this case “might not have completely killed” the samples as intended before they were shipped, he said.

Odierno said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating that aspect of what went wrong at Dugway Proving Ground, the Army installation in Utah that sent the anthrax to government and commercial labs in nine states across the U.S. and to an Army lab in South Korea.

The Pentagon disclosed on Wednesday that at least one of nine labs in the U.S. that received anthrax from Dugway got live rather than dead bacteria. It has not identified any of the U.S. laboratories by name but said they are in nine states: Texas, Maryland, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, California and Virginia.

[L0oniX]

5. Yea well that's the news but they don't say why it's being shipped out.

[KamaAina]

6. Presumably for research purposes

all the shipments were to laboratories.

[L0oniX]

7. So would there have been any harm is the MSM saying that?

I am curious. What are they trying to do with it? Bio weapons or cures?

[Warren Stupidity]

9. And why exactly is our military stockpiling live anthrax?

[L0oniX]

10. Yes and that is the more important question ...not asked.

[LordGlenconner]

23. This was covered last night on CBS News

Sometimes it's a good idea to do a little digging, or, simply pay attention to find answers to questions we have.

[hack89]

11. Who says we are stock piling the stuff

they were supposedly send dead anthrax to various labs for research and screwed up.

[Warren Stupidity]

14. Seriously?

Instead of sending the dead version they sent the live version. So "they" stock both dead and live anthrax. Why? Why is our military "storing" if you object to "stockpiling" live anthrax?

[hack89]

15. There are few places that store live anthrax for obvious reasons

but there is a high demand for dead anthrax- vaccine research being one. If you take the time to read the news you would see that Dugway has been sending dead anthrax to private labs for decades. In this case, their process failed and some antrax survived and was shipped out.

The army keeps a small stock of antrax for research purposes- and that research extends beyond weapons - antrax is still common in the wild.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. "research that extends beyond weapons" - not likely.

The appropriate place for non weapons research would be within civilian agencies, not the military.

[hack89]

18. Ok. Take it up with Hillary after the election. Nt

[LordGlenconner]

24. +1

The tinfoil hats are out on this one.

[RKP5637]

2. Amazing! My first thought too! Just one more of my many WTF's. n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Well this is one of those stories that

make me reach for the tin foil, and make sure it is well adjusted.

[TheNutcracker]

4. Is this a distraction from something else....stay tuned

[Warren Stupidity]

8. That was exactly what I was wondering.

WTF are we up to now?

[hack89]

12. They routinely ship dead anthrax

it is used for research into detecting and treating anthrax, which is very common in the world.

[jeff47]

13. Anthrax is actually a somewhat common bacteria.

There's 89 known strains of the bacteria that causes Anthrax (Bacillus anthracis). Two were weaponized by the US, USSR, UK and Iraq. Most were not.

The non-weaponized strains mostly infect livestock, so there's a fair amount of research into it in order to prevent/cure it.

AFAIK, no one has mentioned if this was a weaponized strain or one of the non-weaponized strains. Though the weaponized strains were isolated from natural infections (one in the UK, one in the USSR), and were not heavily modified. So weaponized or not may not really be a reasonable distinction - weaponization was about how to spread the spores, not lots of genetic modifications.

[hack89]

19. Don't introduce facts into a tinfoil thread! Nt

[Rex]

22. Yeah facts that don't mean one thing toward the OP, but nice try anyway.

Good information, but it doesn't change the question one bit.

[hack89]

26. Antrax research is done in hundreds of labs

Dugway makes tiny amounts of certain strains and distributes them for this research. The antrax is usually dead.

Spend some time on Google. I found articles going back 15 years describing these shipments.

[Rex]

21. That's nice, but it still doesn't answer the question nor will it ever.

I guess we don't need transparency on this one, it is the MIC so we should just look the other way and not worry about it. What could go wrong?

[jeff47]

25. Your implied accusation is the military is handing out biological weapons.

You're making that assumption because all you know about anthrax comes from things like Powell's bullshit before the UN. So you're quick to leap directly to a nefarious purpose to these shipments. You're also unaware of just how often potentially dangerous organisms are shipped around the country, and the world.

Wanna order a vial of the bacteria that caused the Black Death? It costs a couple hundred dollars. It comes from a private company that supplies a massive variety of bacteria and viruses. Their catalog, back when they printed one, was the size of a phone book.

I'm trying to let you know that shipping dangerous bacteria is not in and of itself unusual. Nor is it unusual for the military to do the shipping - they grow anthrax and they sell it for less than private companies charge. The military says they grow it to test anti-biological warfare equipment, because it's a relatively easy-to-make biological weapon. You just need to figure out how to make the spores not clump together.

As for why people are buying anthrax, it is a somewhat common livestock disease, and does some unique things with the outside of its cells, so it is actively being studied by scientists who are not making biological weapons.

Did this article explain why they military was shipping it? No, because shipping anthrax is about as unusual as shipping humvees. The "man bites dog" thing that happened this time is the spores were not killed, so that's what the reporters are going to talk about.

[grahamhgreen]

20. I want to know, did they ship it to Congress?