Category Archives: Germ Warfare

Although I frequently drive through downtown Kokomo, I still marvel at new construction and recently completed marvels. A dozen years ago, who could have predicted todays Kokomo?

No one can predict the future. We can make predictions, and sometimes (just by virtue of statistical probability) they are going to be right. Tomorrow, for example, the temperature is going to be (1) typical, (2) warmer than usual or (3) colder than usual. If I make enough guesses, I will accurately predict the future temperature perhaps a third of the time.

Futurists men and women who specialize in studying trends and taking the futures pulse tend to offer visions of the future that are worth noting, even if they sometimes miss the mark. When documented changes are already occurring, we need to wake up and smell the coffee.

When I was a lad, one major fear was an over-crowded world. We were told mass starvation and a host of others woes would characterize our planet because the earth could not sustain the large population looming at our door.

I am not sure when the sky-is-falling bunch turned their focus elsewhere, but when was the last time you heard a political crusader rant and rave about overpopulation? There is a reason for this silence, according to bbc.com:

Its a largely untold story gradually, steadily the demographic forces that drove the global population growth in the 20th Century have shifted. Fifty years ago the world average fertility rate the number of babies born per woman was five. Since then, this most important number in demography has dropped to 2.5 something unprecedented in human history and fertility is still trending downwards ... The population will continue to grow as the Peak Child generation grows up and grows old. So most probably three or four billion new adults will be added to the world population but then in the second half of this century the fast growth of the world population will finally come to an end.

Our quest to consider the future leads us to Bill Gates. Bill Gates is not so much a futurist as he is a man who makes the future happen. Gates is quite concerned about germ warfare. According to futurism.com:

When billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference for the first time Saturday, he argued a very alarming possibility: the future of international security will be fought on the biological front. Specifically, Gates warned about the dangers of a bioterrorist attack that could wipe out 30 million people in less than a year and how were not prepared for it.

... What makes Gates warning even more alarming is the fact that bioterrorism can now be done from behind a computer. Its also true that the next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus ... or a super contagious and deadly strain of the flu, said Gates.

His suggestion: We need to develop the facilities to develop vaccines within 90 days instead of the more typical two-year period. Will our governments take note?

Lets move on to renewable energy. Green energy is no longer a futurists dream, but a dream that is clearly materializing. One state, Texas, leads the way. According to theguardian.com:

For Texas, this most Republican-dominated, oil-rich and fracking-friendly of states has found itself with the improbable status of being a national leader in this growing form of renewable energy.

Texas has 11,592 turbines and an installed wind capacity of 20,321 megawatts, according to the American Wind Energy Association: three times as much capacity as the next state, Iowa. (California is third.) For the 12-month period ending in October last year, wind provided 12.68% of Texass electricity production equivalent to powering 5.7 million homes.

The ever-surfacing future has arrived and continues to arrive at breakneck speed!

Ed Vasicek is pastor of Highland Park Church and a weekly contributor to the Kokomo Tribune. Contact him at edvasicek@gmail.com

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Ed Vasicek: The ever-surfacing future has arrived - Kokomo Tribune

We live in a world where for the last 40 years everyone faces the risk of being infected by antibiotic-resistant bugs and contagious, infectious diseases. Humanity has become complacent to the global threat of new and re-emerging infectious diseases (such as: T.B.reemerging; the Avian flu that impacted as many as 40 countries; sexually transmitted diseases like HIV and AIDS; Ebola; Cholera; MRSAa Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (thats a mouthful) MRSA is pronounced: mer-sa, and is a skin-eating bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics, is contagious, and rapidly progressing throughout the continental United States, and globally). Therefore, getting ready for a global pandemic is just as important as nuclear deterrence or avoiding the imminent repercussions of global warming catastrophes.

At the Munich Security Conference on bioterrorism, which occurred from February 17 19, 2017, philanthropist and Microsoft computer founder, Bill Gates warns that a global pandemic is right around the cornercould break out in as little as 10 to 15 years. Gates said, We are underprepared for a global pandemic but we have the technology to work on vaccines and other drugs; we just need the investment.

BIOTERRORISM & PANDEMICS: Bioterrorism and pandemics are real, folks. Germ warfare is not new, though. In my research at the University of Southern California, for example, more than two millennia ago, Scythian archers dipped arrowheads in manure and rotting corpses to increase the deadliness of their weapons. In World War I, the Germans spread glanders (an infectious disease that occurs primarily in horses, mules and donkeys, and other animals), among the mounts of rival cavalries. Then, in World War II, the Japanese dropped fleas infected with plague on Chinese cities, killing hundreds, maybe even thousands of people. In 1918, a deadly strain of flu, called the Spanish Flu (which was a naturally-occurring pandemic) killed between 50-100 million people. The next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virusor a super contagious and deadly strain of the flu, Gates said. Whether a global pandemic occurs by a quirk of nature, or at the hand of a terrorist, epidemiologists say an airborne, fast-moving pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year, Gates stated.

SOLUTIONS: How do we prepare, at the personal level, to fight contracting contagious infections that assault us everywhere or the onslaught of a pandemic? We could start with preparedness exercises with your families and even just with self. For example, make the washing of hands an intricate part of your daily living activitieseven when we are not confronted with a present epidemic. The washing of hands curtails the passing on, or contraction of, bacteria (germs). Cough in a handkerchief, tissue, or in your elbow area if you have a cold virus (mouth masks are helpful to wear to not pass on a flu or cold virus). I also cannot sufficiently emphasize to teenagers and adults alike, if you engage in sexual activities with someone that you are unfamiliar with their daily activities, or if you are having sex with multiple partners, PLEASE take the necessary precautions by wearing protective condoms. In fact, it is my opinion that teenagers are not emotionally prepared for adult sexual activities, anyway, therefore, they should abstain from having sex until they are responsible emotionally and financially to handle a possible pregnancy, or even the possible contraction of a sexually transmitted disease, that they may have to live with for the rest of their lives.

In a panic type of situation (i.e., an epidemic), plan in advance on how to deal with overloaded communication systems or clogged streets and highways. Keep emergency preparedness first-aid kits at home, at work, and in your car. Battery-operated flashlights should be kept in every room and in your car. It is always a good idea to keep extra drinking water, and extra food supplies. Hope this column helps you with ideas (some of you might hopefully already be practicing) on living responsibly and healthfully.

Check us out next week when well share with you, information regarding Obesity, Its Link to Degenerative Diseases, and Maintaining a Healthy Weight Management Compatible with Your Body Type.

Dr. Pam Reyes is Chairwoman of Caribbean Educational Media, a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, dispersing information on health, educational & legal issues, and exploring the communication highway of the present and future, via the media of print journalism, nonprofit public radio & television, and nonprofit public participation.

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Getting ready for a global pandemic - Amandala

Germ defense

L-R delivering wipes to Brooks Elementary are Jess Eastep-Youth Director at Killen Church of Christ, Eli Aday, Kurt Peck, Dimple Newell-BES Guidance Counselor, and Jonathan Aday.(Courtesy photo)

Posted: Tuesday, February 28, 2017 12:00 am

Killen Church Youth Taking Out Germs

KILLEN - The youth of the Killen Church of Christ recently launched Project Germ Warfare. They collected over 200 tubes of disinfectant wipes to help Brooks Elementary School and Brooks High School battle the germs that are spreading infection in all area schools. Killen church members were asked to donate disinfecting wipes at the church building, but everyone in the community is invited to help. Donations may be brought to the church building located at 1560 Highway 72 in Killen (at the traffic light) or by calling 256-757-2918. Donations may also be taken directly to the schools or may be sent with children who attend those schools.

Brooks High School had a clean-up period last week, so the initial delivery of wipes to the high school and elementary school took place the morning of February 20.

The photo titled BES Delivery depicts the stop at Brooks Elementary where we delivered 104 tubes of disinfectant wipes.

Posted in News on Tuesday, February 28, 2017 12:00 am.

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Killen Church Youth Taking Out Germs - courierjournal

PHOTO PROVIDED Heather Stafford, left, director of infection prevention and control at UPMC Susquehanna, instructs a nurse on proper hand washing techniques to prevent the spread of germs.

Trying to avoid the many germs that lead to colds, influenza and other health problems may seem like navigating a minefield, especially during the winter months.

But protection against germ warfare to stay healthy is not so much a battle as much as it is a common-sense approach.

Germs are spread mostly through hands and what a person touches, said Heather Stafford, director of infection prevention and control at UPMC Susquehanna.

And each day, most people come into contact with objects both in public places and the household on which the germs are waiting, she noted.

Door handles, elevator buttons, hand railings, phones, computers and, of course, the TV remote control, are some of the most commonly touched objects where people can encounter germs that get passed from person to person.

Cellphones carry all sorts of bacteria, Stafford said. You are touching it all the time.

Sneezing and coughing can result in the expulsion of droplets containing germs, and viruses and bacteria survive on many objects people come in contact with every day, she said.

Some viruses can live 14 days on an inanimate object, she said.

Its best to avoid placing hands, which may have come in contact with germs, on the face and mouth.

Proper handwashing has been universally accepted, Stafford noted, as one of the best means of protecting oneself against germs as well as preventing the spread of them.

But it must be done properly to be effective.

Ideally, hands should be washed with soap and in warm water for a least 15 seconds. Unfortunately, many people simply lack the patience to adequately clean their hands.

Alcohol-based disinfectants are a good option for cleaning hands, especially after one has been in public places. Many dispensers can be found outside grocery stores and other heavy-traffic sites.

For your house, its really key to keep wipes handy. Wipe your kitchen counters and your remote. Spray with a disinfect, she said.

Alcohol-based wipes or hydrogen peroxide applied to a cloth are effective for eliminating germs on surfaces, Stafford added.

She noted UPMC Susquehanna is seeing more flu in the immediate area than last year, and quite a few cases in the past few weeks.

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We're 'in touch' every day with things that can make us sick - Williamsport Sun-Gazette

Germ warfare Leonard Hayflicks use of human cells helped pave the way to a revolution in public health. Photograph: Alamy

In March 1968, biologist Leonard Hayflick visited the basement of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia. He was seeking a set of 375 vials, each bearing the code WI-38. Once found, he placed them in a nitrogen-cooled container and then hid them in a friends house. He informed no one at Wistar, his former employer, of his actions.

A few days later, Hayflick transported the vials to Stanford University, where he had just been made professor of medical microbiology. There he started to sell them to drug companies.

Each vial contained several millioncells grown from a single aborted human foetus. Infected with rubella, polio, rabies, hepatitis A and other viruses, the WI-38 cells would act as hosts for growing these viruses so they could be used as the basis of vaccines, Hayflick argued. Crucially, they would be free of contaminants that had recently been found in vaccines made from viruses grown in animal cells not an issue for his pristine foetal cells.

A gifted experimenter, Hayflick had created the WI-38s (which stands for Wistar Institute sample 38) in 1962. They were the worlds first line of normal, noncancerous human cells and held fantastic promise. However, they were not Hayflicks property. They belonged to the Wistar Institute, and their removal and subsequent sale for profit left him wide open to charges of theft. In the end, he only narrowly avoided prosecution. So why did the biologist take such extraordinary action?

Meredith Wadman is clear about the source ofHayflicks woes. He was working under duress, reined back by obdurate, ultra-conservative, self-protective vaccine regulators who were preventing him from using his cells for vaccine work. Hence his decision to sell them on the quiet to pharmaceuticals companies.

The move would haunt Hayflick for the rest of his life. He was hounded from office and never received the accolades he deserved for deriving his cells (which are still used by vaccine makers today). It took a decade of procrastination before US regulators capitulated and approved his cells for vaccine development. (Europe was far quicker off the mark.) Since then, more than 6bn vaccine doses based on his cells have protected the west against rubella, rabies, chicken pox, and other lethal or debilitating illnesses.

Hayflick achieved great things but let his pigheadedness lead him into trouble

In the case of rubella, which can cause severe foetal damage in pregnant women, the vaccine halted infections and stopped mothers seeking abortions as they had done widely in the past after finding themselves infected in early pregnancy. Thus a vaccine itself based on aborted foetal tissue had a far greater pro-life effect than all the efforts of anti-abortion religiousactivists.

It is an extraordinary story and Wadman is to be congratulated, not just for uncovering it but for relaying it in such a pacy, stimulating manner. This is a first-class piece of science writing that does considerable justice to Hayflick, a character who achieved great things but let his pigheadedness lead him into trouble.

For long periods in his later life, Hayflick, a family man, was cold-shouldered by US academia and he had to scrabble for work in the wake of his raid on Wistars freezers. In a fair world, he should have been heading departments of leading researchers although today, aged 86, he does find himself at least partially rehabilitated, having served as an adviser to several biotech companies and authored some well-received books.

Much of this restoration concerns the crucial role he played in the field of ageing research, for in developing his WI-38 cells, Hayflick discovered an intriguing fact. There was an upper limit for the number of times each of his cells would divide known today as the Hayflick limit. Previously, scientists thought that cells in a culture could continue to divide for ever. The existence of an upper limit gave scientists a means to explore cellular senescence, by homing in on the mechanism that regulates thelimiting of cell division and so creating a flourishing field that today offers important insights into cancer and ageing.

More to the point, Hayflicks relentless campaigning for the right to use human cells instead of animal cells to make vaccines helped speed up a revolution in public health in the west, though few thanked him at the time. Nevertheless, he played a key role in the victory in the war against viral diseases such as rubella and polio, an achievement that freed us from truly terrible scourges.

This point is worth recalling whensome individuals, including Donald Trump, openly question theworth and effectiveness of vaccines. For them, Alan Shaw, a former vaccine researcher, has a perfect response quoted by Wadman.Developing vaccines is probably one of the most productive things you can do, simply because if you succeed in getting one made, you watch a disease disappear.

The Vaccine Race by Meredith Wadman is published by Doubleday (20). To order a copy for 16 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99

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The Vaccine Race: How Scientists Used Human Cells to Combat ... - The Guardian

Biopreparat (Russian: , "Biological substance preparation") was the Soviet Union's major biological warfare agency from the 1970s on. It was a vast, ostensibly civilian, network of secret laboratories, each of which focused on a different deadly bioagent. Its 30,000 employees researched and produced pathogenic weapons for use in a major war.

Biopreparat was established in 1973 as a "civilian" continuation of earlier Soviet bio-warfare programs (see Soviet biological weapons program). The project was reportedly initiated by academician Yuri Ovchinnikov who convinced General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev that development of biological weapons was necessary.[1] The research at Biopreparat constituted a blatant violation by the Soviet Union of the terms of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 which outlawed biological weapons. Its existence was steadfastly denied by Soviet officials for decades.

In April 1979, a major outbreak of pulmonary anthrax in the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) caused the deaths of 105 or more Soviet citizens. Sverdlovsk contained a Biopreparat facility. The Soviet Union attempted to cover up reports of the incident, but details leaked out to the West in 1980 when the German newspaper Bild Zeitung carried a story about the incident. Moscow described allegations that the epidemic was an accident at a biological warfare facility as "slanderous propaganda" and insisted the anthrax outbreak had been caused by tainted meat.

The first senior Soviet biological weapons engineer to defect to the West was Vladimir Pasechnik (19372001) who alerted Western intelligence in 1989 to the vast scope of Moscow's clandestine program. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President George H. W. Bush put pressure on Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to open up Russia's germ warfare facilities to a team of outside inspectors. When the inspectors toured four of the sites in 1991, they were met with denials and evasions. Production tanks, the purpose of which seemed to be to manufacture large quantities of hazardous materials, were clean and sterile when presented to inspectors. Laboratories had been stripped of equipment before being presented to inspectors.

Pasechnik's revelations that the program was much greater in scope than previously suspected were confirmed in 1992 with the defection to the United States of Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov (b. 1950), the First Deputy Director of Biopreparat. Alibekov (now known as Ken Alibek) held his role in Biopreparat from 1988 to 1992. He claimed that development of new strains of genetically engineered weapons was still continuing.

Alibekov later wrote the book Biohazard (1999) detailing publicly his extensive inside knowledge of the structure, goals, operations and achievements of Biopreparat. He was also featured in the October 13, 1998 episode of Frontline (PBS TV series).

The Biopreparat complex suffered with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then several large bioweapons production lines have been officially closed. Its current state is unknown, however it is likely that Biopreparat and successor entities continued bioweapons research and development at least through the 1990s.[1]

Biopreparat was a system of 18, nominally civilian, research laboratories and centers scattered chiefly around European Russia, in which a small army of scientists and technicians developed biological weapons such as anthrax, Ebola, Marburg virus, plague, Q fever, Junin virus, glanders, and smallpox. It was the largest producer of weaponized anthrax in the Soviet Union and was a leader in the development of new bioweapons technologies.

The project had 18 major labs and production centers:

Pathogens that were successfully weaponized by the organization included (in order of completion):

Annual production capacities for many of the above listed pathogens were in the tens of tons, typically with redundant production facilities located throughout the Soviet Union.

[1]

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Biopreparat - Wikipedia

I cant have a single conversation these days without what Messr. Trump has decreed or done in the last 12 minutes intruding.

Similarly, I can no longer see a topical play without shuddering because I keep picturing his apparent belief that all journalists except those who toil for Fox should be drawn and quartered.

Consider Ideation, a Marin Onstage production directed by Queenelle Minet at the Belrose Theatre in San Rafael.

Its a creepy serio-comedy that builds to a crescendo of, well, ambiguity.

Minet, in the program, says she likes the plays unique ability to make us laugh and feel horrified at the same time.

Unfortunately, the laughs are rare.

Ideation readily plays into all my night terrors, especially with germ warfare being about the only apocalyptic item not on Trumps wish list.

Sandeep, a Harvard-educated engineer from India competently portrayed by Heren Patel, wonders if the mysterious, secretive Senna Project he and his think-tank colleagues are working on is really a plan to kill brown guys named Mohammed, foreigners people who look like him.

Is the project meant to save humanity?

The four co-workers start to worry that their backers are involved in a sinister conspiracy.

And as the corporate consultants paranoia grows, they begin to become excessively suspicious of each other.

Ben Ortega as Brock, who futilely strives to be cool and always think logically, provides the funniest moment when hes so overwhelmed with possibilities he stammers.

And stammers. And stammers.

Another amusing interlude occurs when three members of the ensemble cast search hither and yon for electronic bugs, laying waste to anything in their way.

And I grinned when smiley and frowny faces are used to illustrate grim scenarios on the blackboard.

But its impossible not to wince when the dialogue focuses on liquidation facilities and a doomsday virus, or choosing between crematoria, a mass grave or burial by sea (in sinkable shipping containers).

Ted (Len Shaffer), whose southern accent vanishes from time to time, reminds them theyve been asked to save the human race from extinction.

But Brock asks, What are we gonna do with all the bodies?

Upwards of 2 million of them.

Later, however, he tongue-lashes the groups lady boss, Hannah, for being worried about imaginary people in imaginary death camps.

Bringing to the forefront of my mind shades of Nazi Germany.

Interestingly, Marianne Shine, who plays Hannah a tad stiffly, has dedicated her performance to her father, a Holocaust survivor.

The fifth actor, Jeremy Judge, is Scooter, 22-year-old intern squeezed onto the team through nepotism, again reminding me of our peerless leaders penchants.

The entire cast, which needed to memorize and understand an inordinate number of phrases and concepts, deserves at least a B for its efforts.

Playwright Aaron Loeb only merits a C, though for coming up with a laborious peek at mental masturbation, a satire unduly convoluted, complicated and complex.

Loquacious to the nth degree.

Even the title which means a creative process of forming new notions isnt a word Ive ever used in a polite sentence.

Ideation premiered at San Francisco Playhouse a few years back and then moved to off-Broadway.

It lasts only 90 minutes and has no intermission. But its exhausting since it contains about 1,768 thoughts and what seems like 2,958,854 words.

And it still doesnt answer any of the big questions it poses.

Ideation will run at the Belrose Theatre, 1415 5th Ave., San Rafael, through March 4. Night performances, 8 p.m. Fridays and Sundays; matinees, 2 p.m. Saturdays. Tickets: $12 to $24, subject to change. Information: 415-290-1433 or http://www.marinonstage.org

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'Ideation' is complex, convoluted, not-so-funny satire - Marinscope Community Newspapers

This particular column is brought to you courtesy of the man in front of me at Stop & Shop who open-mouth coughs then wipes his nose with his hand before touching anything and everything. Thanks for sharing, Bud.

Mid-winter is a tough time to go out in public. Its cold, its usually sleeting, and germs are lurking on every surface. Or at least it seems that way. I hibernate like a possum each winter, digging into my burrow of blankets and only come out when I have to come out. My alarm assaults my ears each morning, forcing me to leave my nest and enter the world. I cant afford my burrow of blankets if I dont earn my paycheck after all.

I get out of bed in the dark, creaky as an old ship. I am the Mayflower at the end of its long journey across the sea, listing to the right with sails askew and my timbers shouting and bulging in a riot against the elements. What is going on? Its raw and Im another year older, but Im not a hundred years older? Why is it so difficult to move in the morning? And why do I have arthritic pain like the old crone in Snow White must have had? Why do my hands feel like they should look like hers as she thrust out that apple, her tortured fingers wrapped like vines around the fruit? Im not an old crone yet. Really, Im not. I call my doctor and get checked out. Turns out I have Lyme disease. Ive had it before and it always manifests itself in joint pain rather than a bulls-eye rash.

Im sick but not contagious, so I get antibiotics and keep working. I probably contracted the disease over the summer, but since I never got a rash or found a tick, I had no idea. Its not until my joints start behaving like they belong to a centenarian that I take notice.

Im the only one in the office with Lyme disease, but Im not the only one whos ill. The office is one big ol petri dish. All offices are at this time of year. One person has bronchitis and a sinus infection, as if having either one isnt bad enough. Others have colds and at times theres a chorus of hacking like frogs in a pond who smoke too much. Those who have children get the dreaded Stomach Bug. I will capitalize because this is the most feared of all office ailments. The Most Feared. No one is afraid of my Lyme disease because its not communicable. Were all vaguely concerned about the bronchitis and the colds, but figure we can take careful steps to avoid contact with the afflicted.

As for the Stomach Bug, the idea of contracting it and having it come on like the Acela Express train while Im at work and then having to drive all the way home hoping my system stays in control long enough for me to get to my very own Bathroom of Solitude (I capitalize again), is not good at all. Being ill at work is bad enough, but being that kind of ill is mortifying.

And so we all Purell bomb our hands at every chance. Lysol is sprayed like Agent Orange over the desk and phone of the latest victim who has declared absence due to Stomach Bug. Even the persons chair gets a Lysol shower. You cant be too careful. Antibiotic washes and wipes are our swords and shields. Let the battle begin!

My antibiotic pills are like little soldiers in my bloodstream, brawling with the enemy that is Lyme. As for the flu and the Stomach Bug, antibiotics wont help. So I will do my best to fight them through those days and nights when everything is locked up tight as a barrier against the chill and germs are bouncing off the walls. I will fight them off like a Jedi until spring, also known as allergy season. Or should I say, Allergy Season?

Juliana Gribbins is a writer who believes that absurdity is the spice of life. Her book Date Expectations is winner of the 2016 IPPY silver medal for humor. Write to her at jeepgribbs@hotmail.com. Read more of her columns at http://www.zip06.com/shorelineliving.

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Germ Warfare - Zip06.com

On 9 October 1964, a baby girl was born at Philadelphia general hospital. She arrived early, when her mother was about 32 weeks pregnant. The baby weighed 3.2lb and was noted to be blue, floppy and not breathing. The only sign of life was her slow heartbeat. Nonetheless, she clung on, and her 17-year-old mother named her.

One month later, the baby was still in the hospital, and a doctor listening with a stethoscope heard a harsh heart murmur. A chest X-ray showed that she had a massively enlarged heart because a hole in the organ was preventing it from pumping blood efficiently. It also emerged that the baby had cataracts blinding both eyes. Later, other signs indicated that she was profoundly deaf.

The baby also suffered from recurring respiratory infections and had trouble gaining weight. A psychologist who assessed her in July 1965 judged the nine-month-old to be the size of a two- or three-month-old infant and at about that stage of development, too. She needed heart surgery if she was going to survive. Just before her first birthday, surgeons made an incision in her chest wall and repaired her heart. After the operation, she remained in hospital. The chronic respiratory infections continued. The baby was 16 months old and weighed just 11lb when she died of pneumonia on 18 February 1966.

The young mother had told the doctors that when she was one month pregnant, she had contracted German measles, also known as rubella.

The early 1960s marked a coming of age for the study of viruses such as the one that causes rubella tiny infectious agents that invade cells and hijack their machinery in order to reproduce themselves. Biologists, with new tools in hand, were racing to capture viruses in throat swabs or urine or even snippets of organs from infected people and to grow them in lab dishes. Isolating a virus in the lab made it possible to make a vaccine against it. And making antiviral vaccines promised huge inroads against common childhood diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella, along with less common killers including hepatitis. The principle of vaccination is simple: if a person is injected with, or swallows, a tiny amount of a virus either a killed virus or a weakened live virus that person will develop antibodies against the virus. Then, if he or she is exposed in the future to the naturally occurring, disease-causing form of the virus, those antibodies will attack the invader and prevent it from causing disease.

But if the concept is simple, making effective vaccines is anything but. In the early 1960s, that reality was all too evident. In 1942, as many as 330,000 US servicemen were exposed to the hepatitis B virus in a yellow fever vaccine that was contaminated with blood plasma from infected donors (the plasma was used to stabilise the vaccine). Around 50,000 of the vaccinated servicemen contracted the liver disease and up to 150 died.

In 1955, a California-based company named Cutter Laboratories made a polio vaccine with the live, disease-causing virus in it. As a result, 192 people were paralysed many of them children and 10 died. Every senior US government employee involved in the Cutter incident lost his or her job, right up to the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the secretary for health, education and welfare.

Then, in the summer of 1961, Americans learned that cells used to manufacture the widely used Salk polio vaccine, harvested from monkey kidneys, harboured a virus named SV40. Tens of millions of American children had already received contaminated injections, and while the jury was still out on the tainted vaccines long-term health consequences, the risks were of great concern to regulators in the US and further afield.

It was against this backdrop that, on a drizzly June morning in 1962, a 34-year-old scientist named Leonard Hayflick went to work in his lab at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology an elegant 1890s brownstone tucked in the heart of the University of Pennsylvanias campus.

A serious, slight man with close-cropped dark hair, Hayflick was a product of working-class Philadelphia and hungry to make his name. He was in love with biology and had come to believe that he was extremely smart a fact that was far from appreciated. Hayflicks boss, the polio-vaccine pioneer Hilary Koprowski, saw him as a mere technician, hired to serve up bottles of lab-grown cells to the institutes scientists.

The ambitious Hayflick was undeterred. That day, he planned to launch a group of human cells that would revolutionise vaccine-making. He was convinced that, compared with monkey cells, which were often laden with viruses, human cells would serve as cleaner, safer vehicles for producing antiviral vaccines.

Several days earlier, a woman living near Stockholm had had an abortion. The eight-inch-long female foetus was wrapped in a sterile green cloth and delivered to a yellow brick outbuilding on the grounds of the National Biological Laboratory in north-west Stockholm. The lungs were removed, packed in ice and flown to the Wistar Institute.

Hayflick had been waiting months for this opportunity. These lungs would be the source of the new cells he needed to make antiviral vaccines. Viruses cant multiply outside living cells, and huge quantities of virus were needed to produce vaccines.

Now, at last, the lungs were here in his bustling second-floor lab, two purplish things floating in clear pink fluid in a glass bottle. They had been sent to Hayflick by a top virologist at the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Hayflick knew that he was uniquely positioned to produce a long-lasting supply of these cells. He had spent the previous three years perfecting the procedure that would do it.

Hayflick took the lungs into a tiny room just off his lab what passed for a sterile area in 1962. He picked up a pair of tweezers, dipped them in alcohol and passed them through the flame of a Bunsen burner. He waited for them to cool and then, gently, one at a time, lifted the organs and placed them on a petri dish. Each was no larger than his thumb above the knuckle. He began carefully slicing them into innumerable pieces, each smaller than a pinhead.

Hayflick nudged the minute pieces of tissue into a wide-mouthed glass flask. The translucent pink fluid was full of digestive enzymes from slaughtered pigs. These biological jackhammers broke up the mortar between the lung cells, separating millions upon millions of them. Later, he transferred those cells into several flat-sided glass bottles and poured a nutritious solution over them. Hayflick then loaded the bottles on to a tray, and carried them into an incubation room where the temperature was a cosy 36C. He laid the bottles on their sides on a wooden shelf and closed the door carefully behind him. There the cells began to divide. He already had a name for them: WI-38.

The WI-38 cells that Hayflick launched that day were used to make vaccines that have been given to more than 300 million people half of them preschool children in the US. A copycat group of cells, developed using the method that Hayflick pioneered, has been used to make an additional 6bn doses of various vaccines.

Together these vaccines have protected people the world over from the gamut of viral illnesses: rubella, rabies, chickenpox, measles, polio, hepatitis A, shingles and adenovirus a respiratory infection that flourishes in situations where people live in close quarters. (Every US military recruit more than nine million of them since 1971 is given an adenovirus vaccine made using WI-38 cells.) In the US, a vaccine made in WI-38 cells that is still given to young children has wiped out homegrown rubella. It was developed at the Wistar Institute by Hayflicks colleague Stanley Plotkin, during a rubella epidemic that swept the country in 1964 and 1965.

The WI-38 cells Hayflick launched that day made vaccines that have been given to more than 300 million people

The WI-38 cells are still in use today partly because Hayflick made such a large initial stock of them: some 800 tiny, wine-bottleshaped ampoules were frozen in the summer of 1962. When frozen, cells stop dividing, but then gamely begin replicating when they are thawed. Each glass vial that Hayflick froze contained between 1.5m and 2m cells. The cells in those vials had, on average, the capacity to divide about 40 more times. Early on, Hayflick determined that the newly derived cells in just one of his small glass lab bottles, if allowed to replicate until they died, would produce 20m tonnes of cells. In those 800 vials, he had created a supply of cells that for practical purposes was almost infinite.

In addition to their use in vaccine making, the WI-38 cells became the first normal cells available in virtually unlimited quantities to scientists probing the mysteries of cell biology. Because they were easily infected with human viruses, they became important to disease detectives tracking viruses in the 1960s, before more sophisticated technology came along. Biologists still reach for WI-38 cells when they need a normal cell to compare against a cancerous one, or to test the toxicity of new drugs. They are a workhorse of research into ageing, because they so reliably age and die in laboratory conditions. Original ampoules of WI-38 cells, and of polio vaccine made using them, are now part of the collection of the National Museum of American History.

But in the 1960s and 70s, a bitter feud broke out between Hayflick and the US government over who owned the cells.

As the importance of the WI-38 cells grew, Hayflick was only too happy to promote them. Human Cells Given Role in Vaccines, the New York Times proclaimed after the scientist spoke at a vaccine conference in 1966. The article quoted Hayflick explaining that his cells were cheaper, cleaner and safer than the animal cells then used in vaccine manufacture.

As his profile rose, Hayflick ran out of patience with Koprowski. The disconnect between his contributions and his treatment by the Wistar Institutes director had become too much to bear. Nine years after Koprowski hired him, Hayflick remained stuck as an associate member of the institute, in sharp contrast to many colleagues who had been made full members despite, to his mind, making contributions no greater than his own.

Hayflick began looking around. He applied for a position as a full professor of medical microbiology at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. His application for the job was backed by a recommendation from a senior virologist who regarded his work as reliable, trustworthy and original. He was offered the post.

As Hayflicks departure approached, there was probably only one thing that concerned Koprowski: the fate of the hundreds of ampoules of WI-38 cells that were still stored in liquid nitrogen in the Wistar Institutes basement, under Hayflicks watchful eye. Hayflicks proprietary feelings about the cells were well known he once described them as like my children.

Koprowski had designs on the cells from the beginning. Nancy Pleibel, a lab technician who worked for Hayflick, recalls that more than once Koprowski had turned up in the lab within a day or two of Hayflick leaving on a trip, smiling and asking her for an ampoule of WI-38 cells. Politely but firmly, she refused his requests, explaining that only her boss could hand out WI-38 ampoules. After a while, Koprowski stopped asking.

Minutes from meetings of the Wistar Institutes board of managers in the early and mid-60s make clear that Koprowski tried repeatedly to cash in on Hayflicks human diploid cells (defined as cells that carry the normal complement of 46 chromosomes). The institute sought payment not only from Norden, a Missouri company that was interested in using WI-38 to develop a rabies vaccine, but also from Pfizer for the use of Hayflicks cells to make a measles vaccine, and from Wyeth, another Philadelphia-based drug manufacturer that by 1965 had used the WI-38 cells to make an adenovirus vaccine to protect US army recruits during basic training.

Koprowskis attempts to turn a profit with the WI-38 cells were far from successful. By 1965, the board of managers had appointed a special committee of lawyers and scientists to deal with problems in selling the Hayflick cells to industry. The only backing that the institute landed, according to budget documents from 1965 to 1967, was $5,000 in each of those years from Norden.

Today it seems incredible that an institution like the Wistar, full of eminent scientists, was so at sea when it came to profiting from unique and desirable cells produced under its roof. But in that era living things, such as the WI-38 cells, could not be patented. It would take a landmark supreme court decision in 1980 to change that.

However, what could be patented was a method of using the cells to produce a novel vaccine. Koprowski had already applied, back in 1964, for such a patent for another, improved rabies vaccine that he was developing using the WI-38 cells. Soon the Wistar Institute would apply for a patent on a method of making a rubella vaccine with the WI-38s, devised by another of its scientists, Stanley Plotkin.

If and when the rabies and rubella vaccine patents were granted, Koprowski would need access to at least some of the original ampoules of WI-38 frozen in the Wistar Institute basement. Vaccine companies would want original ampoules full of the youngest cells, which could be expanded into a nearly endless supply.

By the autumn of 1967, Hayflick vaguely suspected that Koprowski intended the WI-38 cells to serve something more than the good of mankind. Hayflick believed that his boss hoped to turn any vaccines made with the cells into sources of cash, boosting the Wistar Institutes income and freeing him from fundraising duties that he detested and considered beneath him.

Hayflicks instincts were right. As 1967 drew to a close, a financial vice was tightening on Koprowski. While the Wistar Institute had remained solvent, it had never been flush with funds, especially after Koprowski blew through $271,506 to fund major renovations that were completed in 1959. By the mid-60s, his struggle to find cash not tied to specific grants was becoming desperate. Badly needed repairs to the roof and the air conditioning system were deferred.

In the autumn of 1967, when officials at the NIHs National Cancer Institute (NCI) learned that Hayflick would be moving to Stanford, they decided to take the production, storage, study and distribution to researchers of human diploid cells out of his hands. The NCI had been paying the Wistar Institute hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hayflick to produce and distribute the cells since 1962, shortly after his paper announcing his human diploid cell strains to the world had sent demand soaring. The agencys contract with the Wistar Institute had specified that the government would take ownership of the cells when the contract was terminated. Now, NIH officials set 1 January 1968 as the end date. The timing seemed right, and not only because of Hayflicks impending move. The sense at the NCI was that the demand for the WI-38 cells had been sated. Those scientists who wanted them, it seemed, had them by now, more than five years after Hayflick had first produced them. They were being used widely and had already been cited in scores of papers.

On 18 January 1968, several men travelled to the Wistar Institute to sort out the physical disposition of the WI-38 cells now that the contract had ended. Koprowski summoned Hayflick to meet with them. Also present were senior scientists from the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC). This independent, nonprofit organisation was the countrys highest-profile cell bank, and was often where biologists turned when they needed a particular type of cell for an experiment. According to records, the assembled men agreed that all but 20 of the roughly 375 remaining original ampoules of WI-38 cells would be transferred to the ATCC, which would maintain them, deeply frozen, on behalf of the NIH. Hayflick would be permitted to take 10 ampoules with him to Stanford, and the Wistar Institute would also be allowed to keep 10.

The group also decided that any use of the 355 original ampoules being transferred to the ATCC they were precious because the WI-38 cell populations in them had divided only eight times, and so could be expanded into untold billions of cells for vaccine making should be totally arrested. By this, they meant that there was to be no more thawing of the ampoules, no more planting of these young cells into lab bottles, and no more splitting of those bottles over and over to generate multitudes of cells at higher doubling levels for scientists to use. Scientists could use the older cells that were already in circulation. The remaining 355 original ampoules needed to be kept safely frozen at the ATCC until such time as companies began winning US licences to make WI-38based vaccines.

Some time during his last months at the Wistar Institute, Hayflick was working in one of the tiny sterile rooms that adjoined his lab. Plotkin squeezed through the door and pulled up the only chair. The two chatted for a while, then Plotkin showed Hayflick a document. It was a letter, on Wistar-headed paper, from Koprowski, written to a senior official at Burroughs Wellcome, the British pharmaceutical company. Koprowski was offering to provide to the company ample supplies of WI-38 cells, along with the recipe for making a vaccine with the cells and the virus itself, all in exchange for royalties.

'To have the vultures descend on whatIhad struggled to give value to most people would understand why I was upset'

Hayflicks suspicions had been confirmed. He was profoundly upset. He had spent the previous decade deriving the cells and opened up a new, important field in the study of cellular ageing. He had derived enough WI-38 cells to serve vaccine makers into the distant future and worked as hard as was humanly possible to win acceptance of the cells for vaccine making. In the process of all of this, he had been ridiculed and been forced to struggle for respect and validation.

This letter signalled that not only was he not valued but that he was also being sidelined in major decision-making and likely profit-making connected to the WI-38 cells. As Hayflick said, to have the vultures descend on what I had struggled so hard to give value to and [for them to] try to take it for their benefit I think that an average person would understand why I was, to put it mildly, concerned.

On or around 1 March when, under the January agreement, the ampoules were to have been moved from the Wistar Institute to the ATCC a specially outfitted station wagon arrived from Maryland, carrying the NIH project officer, Charles Boone, and John Shannon, the ATCCs curator of cell lines. Hayflick turned them away, saying he wasnt ready to hand over the cells because he had not prepared an inventory of them.

Not long after this, Hayflick, unobserved, visited the Wistar Institutes basement. There he packed every single one of the remaining original WI-38 ampoules 375 frozen vials: the largest stock of young WI-38 cells on earth into one or more portable liquid-nitrogen refrigerators and departed the premises. He left nothing behind not even the 10 ampoules that Koprowskis institute had been promised in the January agreement.

Hayflick stored the frozen cells temporarily with a friend, a vaccinologist at the nearby Wyeth Laboratories who, from time to time, topped up the liquid nitrogen that kept the cells frozen. Hayflick says that he took the ampoules with the intention of keeping them only until the ownership of the cells could be properly sorted out. He believed that there were several potential stakeholders who might reasonably claim ownership: himself and his early collaborator at the Wistar Institute, the chromosome expert Paul Moorhead; the estate of the WI-38 foetus, by which he meant the WI-38 foetuss parents; the Wistar Institute; and, just possibly, the NIH. But he was not going to be so naive as to leave the cells in the NIHs possession while these matters were decided. If he did that, he was sure that he would never see them again.

In mid-1968, Hayflick left for his new job in California. Moving a family of seven 2,900 miles was no small undertaking. The Hayflicks split the travel. Ruth flew out to the San Francisco Bay Area with their two youngest daughters. Hayflick drove the three older children cross-country in their dark green Buick sedan. They drove west through Pittsburgh, stopped to see drag races in Joplin, Missouri, and then headed on to Arizona, where they gazed at the worlds best-preserved meteor crater and marvelled at the Grand Canyon. All along the way, some extra cargo travelled with them. Carefully strapped on the backseat beside his children was a liquid-nitrogen refrigerator stuffed with ampoules of WI-38.

Hayflicks flight with the cells would make him the target of a career-derailing investigation by the National Institutes of Health. Hayflick counter-sued eventually, in 1981, settling with the government. He was allowed to keep six original ampoules of the cells, along with $90,000 that he had earned by charging researchers and companies for them after he left the Wistar Institute. A letter from supporters published in the journal Science, described the happy outcome of Dr Hayflicks courageous, sometimes lonely, emotionally damaging and professionally destructive ordeal.

But just as the tug-of-war over ownership of the WI-38 cells peaked, profound changes occurred in attitudes and laws governing who could make money from biological inventions. In the space of a few years, biologists went from being expected to work only for their salaries and the greater good to being encouraged by universities and the government to commercialise their innovations for the benefit of the institutions, the US economy and themselves.

Although the WI-38 cells were launched long before these changes took place and 18 years before the supreme court decreed that a living entity, such as a WI-38 cell, could be patented a lot of money has been made from them. The drug company Merck, in particular, has made billions of dollars by using the WI-38 cells to make the rubella vaccine given to more than seven million American children each year. The Wistar Institute too enjoyed a handsome royalty stream from vaccines made by its scientists using the cells including a much-improved rabies vaccine that replaced sometimes dangerous injections. Cell banks today charge several hundred dollars for a tiny vial of the cells.

During the long battle for ownership of the WI-38 cells, Koprowski sent a Wistar scientist across the country to collect them from Hayflicks Stanford lab. But Hayflick refused to part with them. A second emissary was more successful, returning with the 10 ampoules originally allocated to the institute. But later, while the NIH was still asserting its title to WI-38, Koprowski seems to have given up. Perhaps this was because Hayflick was now so far away. Maybe it was because, despite his propensity for it, Koprowski actually disliked direct conflict. Possibly, it was because several companies already appeared to have adequate supplies of the youngest WI-38 ampoules. On the other hand, though, it might have been because Koprowski had finally realised just how persistent, obdurate and dedicated Hayflick could be.

This is an adapted extract from The Vaccine Race by Meredith Wadman, published by Doubleday on 9 February in the UK and in the US by Viking.

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Germ warfare: the battle for the key to modern vaccines - The Guardian

Written by Patrick Dixon

Futurist Keynote Speaker: Posts, Slides, Videos - Biotechnology, Genetics, Gene Therapy, Stem Cells

Video made in 2010 - below is an archive article which contains important and relevant information as of 2011.

Biological warfare: Threat from mutant viruses, superbugs, and other organisms

The thought of catching a cold and then getting cancer is horrifying. Such a scenario has come a big step closer - A british scientist in Birmingham tried in 1995 to make new mutant superbugs out of human cancer genes and viruses closely related to strains causing common cold.

Although the research was designed to help find a cancer cure, the possibility of accidental escape was alarming. Even more worrying was the thought that a hundred similar or more dangerous experiments might be going on that we had yet to find out about.

Licences are granted every week for work that many might find distasteful, unethical, or dangerous - humanising pigs or fish with extra genes, or releasing microbes into the environment. This is work few want to talk about for fear of public reaction.

The British government admitted in mid 1998 that more than a million people were sprayed from the air in secret germ warfare tests during the 1970s. The strain used was a "harmless" e-coli bacterium together with bacillus globigii. 150 miles of coastline and land 30 miles inland was exposed.

Any human, animal, insect or plant gene can be added to any microbe.

Superbugs are the most powerful gene inventions of all. Each new strain has the potential of a biochemical factory - able to make complex substances like human insulin in a test-tube. Other strains have power to destroy. Researchers need dangerous viruses to develop vaccines and find cures, but there are risks.

The fears over safety justified are however - the same University lost control of smallpox virus in 1978. A woman died, and a catastrophe was only prevented because hospital staff had been immunised against smallpox as children. Smallpox vaccination stopped some time ago so a similar escape in ten years time could cause a huge epidemic.

Escapes of viruses have happened before - in 1973 smallpox virus was released by laboratory in London - two died. In 1985 workers at the same laboratory narrowly missed death when smallpox ampoules were found lying in a biscuit tin in a fridge - dated 1952 but still deadly. Accidents happen.

No vaccine exists against many new mutant microbes - developed with potential for use as weapons. Porton Down Biological Warfare laboratory in the UK is worried - and has made intensive efforts to prepare for germ warfare defence (see letter from Director of Porton Down - Parliamentary written answer).

There were fears of biological weapons in the first Gulf War, with repeated claims by servicemen of possible exposure. We know that germ warfare agents can have long term effects on people and environment, for example, during the Second World War an experiment was made with anthrax spores on Gruinard Island in Scotland, which became uninhabitable for fifty years.

Most mutant viruses are not infectious, harmless and perish fast after release - as we have seen with experiments using soil bugs in agriculture. But limited field trials have found that released microbes can survive in fields and lakes.

Gene changes in one country have potential to affect a whole continent, and ultimately the planet as a whole.

Medical disaster is one thing, perhaps a highly infectious version of HIV, or a new cancer epidemic. Environmental contamination is another. Microbes can travel fast in dust, in water, on car wheels, on clothing, on animals.

Already MPs in 1993 called for a Gene Charter covering ethical and safety issues. Each new headline on gene research show how current legislation is running years behind the technology.

However, there is little point in controls if scientists can get on a plane and continue risky experiments elsewhere. Nothing less than international agreement will do. In most countries of the world much more hazardous experiments are permitted than the ones banned in Britain this week.

A world summit on biotechnology is urgently needed.

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