Dubious studies

Dubious Study

Originally published July 31, 2009

Some months ago, we editorialized our hope that the FBI-commissioned National Academy of Sciences study on the anthrax mailings case would clarify the guilt or innocence of former Fort Detrick microbiologist Bruce Ivins.

Local lawyer and peace activist Barry Kissin took us to task for the editorial, saying, in effect, that the NAS study would not speak to Ivins' culpability, even though, as Kissin said, the FBI "has done its best to pretend that it is the science in Amerithrax that largely establishes Ivins' guilt."

Two quotes in News-Post reporter Adam Behsudi's Sunday story on Ivins and the NAS study speak volumes on this subject. The first is from Gerard Andrews, director from 2000 to 2003 of the bacteriology division at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases -- and Ivins' supervisor for about five years.

Relating to the anthrax flask -- to which Ivins had access -- that the FBI asserts was the origin of the strain used in the fatal mailings, Andrews says: "It very likely came from that flask, but who cares, hundreds of people had access, if not more. Dozens of labs were sent that sample."

And from Jeff Adamovicz, who headed up the division after Andrews left: "The FBI knows full well the distribution of that strain. They've been focused on USAMRIID since day one."

The FBI's case against Ivins is almost wholly circumstantial. It includes his strained behavior while under suspicion and surveillance by the FBI, which he was aware of before apparently committing suicide in July 2008.

While the NAS study may well validate the scientific protocols used by the FBI in its investigation, that would not prove Ivins' guilt. That point cannot be too strongly made.

However, another avenue of discovery has been proposed. In March, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., introduced the Anthrax Investigation Act in Congress. The bill would establish a national commission akin to the one created to study the 2001 terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, this bill remains stalled in Congress.

Ivins' family and those of the victims of the anthrax mailings -- and indeed, all those who worked with Ivins at USAMRIID -- need and deserve to have this case solved.

Even if Congress does create this commission, however, Ivins' guilt or innocence may never be proved. Still, it would be only fair and fitting that the FBI's characterization of him as the only viable suspect be re-examined in earnest. If there are a number of other facilities and individuals who cannot be excluded from consideration as the source of the anthrax used in the fatal mailings, that fact should be a major part of any conclusion about this case.

We urge our congressional representatives to support this legislation. The mailings took place in Holt's district, so he has a personal reason to be involved. But the accused man and the laboratory where he worked should also make it a personal issue for Maryland's congressional delegation.

Local filmmaker works on anthrax documentary

Photo by Graham Cullen

Salyer McLaughlin helped produce the National Geographic Channel special "Hunting The Anthrax Killer," which centers on Bruce Ivins, the man the FBI believes is responsible for the anthrax mailings of 2001.

Originally published July 31, 2009
By Ron Cassie News-Post Staff

A year after the apparent suicide of Frederick scientist Bruce Ivins, a TV documentary explores the FBI's case against the man the agency blames for the 2001 anthrax mail attacks that killed five people.

"Hunting the Anthrax Killer," showing at 10 p.m. today on the National Geographic Channel, casts doubt on the investigation and the science that led FBI agents to Ivins. The one-hour documentary includes interviews with Ivins' former supervisor at Fort Detrick, Jeff Adamovicz; U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J.; Claire M. Fraser-Liggett, director of the Institute for Genome Sciences and professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School in Baltimore; Joseph Michael, one of the scientists employed by the FBI to investigate the case; Ayaad Assaad, a former Fort Detrick scientist briefly investigated before being exonerated; Scott Shane, New York Times journalist; and Paul Kemp, Ivins' attorney.

Frederick filmmaker Salyer McLaughlin served as a production consultant on the project and shot some of the footage of the 2008 Capitol Hill hearings surrounding the investigation, including Sens. Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy expressing their doubts about the strength of the FBI's case against Ivins. McLaughlin filmed Frederick and Fort Detrick for the documentary, served as the project's still photographer and helped produce the re-created events.

McLaughlin and his wife, Rhonda, own I.D. Films, a locally based digital media production company. The couple said they began researching the case after attending Ivins' funeral last year. Rhonda McLaughlin described Ivins as an acquaintance and family friend.

"Because of that (connection to Ivins), we had a stronger interest in investigating the case," Salyer McLaughlin said. "As well, it happened in our backyard and it's an important story to tell as a filmmaker."

McLaughlin originally teamed with the A&E channel to do a story on the Ivins investigation, but that project was terminated, he said. McLaughlin wasn't pleased with the direction of the A&E project, which he described as more sensationalized and personality-driven.

"National Geographic is more science-oriented, and that's what we wanted to focus on," he said. "We'd heard National Geographic was working on a similar project at that same time, and after the relationship with A&E ended we gave them a call and took everything we had to them."

"Hunting the Anthrax Killer" is produced and directed by Tria Thalman.

Central to the doubts cast on Ivins' guilt is the number of other people, about 100, who the investigators acknowledge had access to the same anthrax strain.

The film also highlights Adamovicz's claims that Ivins did not have the time or access to create the dry weaponized version of the mailed anthrax -- which he said would take 35 weeks of lab work to convert.

The documentary includes examples of mistakes the FBI has acknowledged in the investigation, such as originally focusing on scientist Steven Hatfill.

In the end, the film seemed to posit that the FBI blamed Ivins more because of his history of personal troubles than any airtight scientific evidence.

"Hunting the Anthrax Killer" does not speculate on who might have sent the deadly letters, other than to say that many scientists at several U.S. labs worked with the same strain.

McLaughlin said he is developing a feature film based on the 2003 book "The Killer Strain" by Marilyn W. Thompson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist at The Washington Post.

Anthrax case: Seeking an ending

A year after Bruce Ivins’ death, case remains open and questions persist Originally published July 27, 2009 By Adam Behsudi News-Post Staff "> File Photo The government's case against Bruce Ivins remains open after officials last August declared the Fort Detrick scientist and leading anthrax researcher at the post's U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases the sole suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks. For Mary Morris, there is a difference between closure and something that's finished. Eight years ago her husband, Thomas Morris Jr., died after breathing anthrax spores from contaminated mail at the Brentwood Postal Facility in Washington. A year ago she attended a meeting at FBI headquarters, where Director Robert Mueller told Morris that her husband's killer had been identified. "I've been thinking a lot about that word closure," she said. "I don't think that's the right definition for me." The government's case against Bruce Ivins remains open after officials last August declared the Fort Detrick scientist and leading anthrax researcher at the post's U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases the sole suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and injured 17. Ivins, 62, died from an apparent acetaminophen overdose July 29, 2008. Shortly after his death, the FBI presented a case against Ivins based largely on circumstantial evidence. "In my mind it's over and done with," Morris said. "I know one thing for sure: My husband is not coming back, Mr. Ivins is not coming back, and we have to settle for the outcome." But vital questions still persist as doubters wait to learn how the FBI concluded that Ivins, who by many accounts was a hardworking researcher and an affable man who was active with his family, church and community, was responsible for the attacks that paralyzed the country shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Answers to those questions and a better view of how the FBI proceeded with its investigation could be forthcoming. "We expect (the case) to be closed very shortly," said Dean Boyd, a Department of Justice spokesman. "I'm not prepared at this time to give you an exact date." For Ivins' family and former colleagues who have maintained his innocence, a closed case will mean the FBI is putting faith in circumstantial evidence and a scientific fact-finding process that brought investigators to a flask of anthrax spores under Ivins' control, but accessible to more than 100 people. "We don't convict beakers in this country," said Rockville attorney Paul Kemp, who represents the Ivins family. "We prosecute, convict or acquit human beings." He said no lawsuits have been filed by the family, but legal action is conceivable. "They're still angry, and they are upset, and they want to maintain their privacy," he said. A year of questions In the past year, the FBI has released little additional information about Ivins' alleged role in the anthrax mailings. In early August, Department of Justice officials unveiled search warrants and other documents establishing Ivins as their primary suspect. Ivins, who was described by one colleague as having a fragile personality, may have been extremely distressed by an FBI inquiry. He swallowed enough Tylenol to poison himself before any charges were filed. The last year of his life had been punctuated by mental instability as reported by police and a counselor, and alienation from his workplace of 21 years. He had lost his lab access. In November 2007, as a result of an FBI search, Ivins was denied entry to the highest-level containment labs where the most dangerous pathogens are handled. In March 2008, he lost access to all labs after not immediately reporting a spill of anthrax spores. Sixteen days before he overdosed, Ivins was escorted from Fort Detrick by Frederick police and taken to the hospital for a psychological evaluation. He was barred from the post after that. Ivins' mental health counselor, Jean Duley, filed a peace order against the scientist. Duley said she was fearful Ivins would hurt her and others. "I think it would change anybody's behavior if there was a federal agent car sitting outside your house 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Gerard Andrews, a former colleague of Ivins. Also in the past year bureau scientists also in the past year had discussed the scientific process they used to genetically match the anthrax found in the letters sent to news agencies and Senate offices to the flask of RMR-1029, a batch of anthrax under Ivins' control. The same scientific methods will become the subject of an FBI-requested study by the National Academy of Sciences set to begin later this summer. The $880,000, 18-month review will be funded by the FBI. The project will look at genetic studies used to identify the source of the anthrax found in the letters, how and where the anthrax spores were grown, how the spores and bacterial DNA were collected and what role cross-contamination may have played. The academy, in its own statement, said it will not consider the value of the scientific evidence as it relates to any specific component of the investigation, prosecution or litigation. The study will not be used to establish the guilt or innocence of any person, the academy said. Former colleagues of Ivins question the purpose of the academy's study. "It very likely came from that flask, but who cares, hundreds of people had access, if not more. Dozens of labs were sent that sample," said Andrews, former director of the bacteriology division at USAMRIID from 2000 to 2003. He supervised Ivins for about five years. Andrews, now an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming, called the academy study "essentially meaningless." "They're basically going to say the science was robust enough," he said. The science will not uncover physical evidence directly linking Ivins to the production of the powderized anthrax spores and won't explain how the FBI ruled out other people and labs who had access to the RMR-1029 spores, Andrews said. The FBI built its case on 16 points, including Ivins' mental health issues and long hours he worked in the lab before the mailings. But no direct physical evidence was recovered that would have connected Ivins to the Princeton, N.J., mailbox where the letters were dropped, no anthrax was found in his cars or home, and no eyewitnesses saw him produce, package or mail the envelopes. The FBI leaned most heavily on a scientific method never before used in a criminal investigation. More than 1,000 samples of Ames anthrax, a strain identified in the letters, were obtained from 16 government, commercial and university labs. Eight of the samples were genetically matched to the RMR-1029 spore batch. Jeff Adamovicz, head of the bacteriology division after Andrews left in 2004, said the fact that samples obtained by the FBI were voluntarily submitted weakens the case significantly. He is also certain other labs possessed RMR-1029. Dangerous pathogens, known as select agents, are regularly sent between both public and private labs that are registered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Shipments from USAMRIID are recorded on an internal form and with the CDC, Adamovicz said. "The FBI knows full well the distribution of that strain," said Adamovicz, who left USAMRIID in 2007. He said he has no evidence to suggest any specific person or entity is responsible for the attacks, but wanted the FBI to fully explain how they ruled out two sites where RMR-1029 was likely to have been produced and shipped: U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio. "They've been focused on USAMRIID since day one," he said. The Army this month released a document showing Ivins' record of RMR-1029, where he kept a log of when and the amount of spores, in liquid form, he took from the flask. The record shows the 1000 ml of spores was created in October 1997 with anthrax from Dugway Proving Ground and the USAMRIID bacteriology division. The report show Ivins accessed the strain between September 1998 and November 2003. Large portions of the document, which include entries next to the amount used, are redacted. Adamovicz, who is still unable to believe his friend and colleague was guilty, is continuing to study the government evidence. He said he was bothered by the way the Department of Defense "rolled over so easily" by neglecting to defend its own facility when Ivins was identified as the FBI's sole suspect. Current employees of USAMRIID are barred from speaking publicly about the case, a spokeswoman said. Critics have found no shortage of ways to rebut the FBI evidence and possibility that Ivins produced the deadly, weaponized anthrax spores. Russell Byrne, one of Ivins' former colleagues, is a former director of the bacteriology division. He likened the scenario to someone using their own gun to kill somebody and leaving it on their desk. He said there was no genetic evidence found in any of the USAMRIID lyophilizers, a machine that would have been required to dry the spores into a powder. The fact that three division chiefs dispute the FBI evidence should be enough to question the validity of the case, said Byrne, who left the institute in 2003. "You guys knew a lot about Bruce," Byrne said. "But you didn't know him." Finding answers Victims of the attacks hope the case is settled, but some remain skeptical. "The evidence in my own mind wasn't enough to support a conviction," said Leroy Richmond, a worker at the Brentwood postal center who was hospitalized after coming in contact with anthrax-contaminated mail. "I really have some doubts." Richmond said he still suffers from memory loss and fatigue as a result of the infection. He has since retired from the Postal Service. After the 45-minute FBI presentation he and other victims and families sat for last summer, he said he was concerned at the amount of evidence that was circumstantial. "I think it will be questionable even after they say we've done all the investigation we need," Richmond said. Mary Morris, the wife of Richmond's former co-worker Thomas Morris Jr., said she was satisfied with the case. She said she does not want to find herself asking questions with no answers. "Otherwise it will drown you, it will swallow you up," she said. But at least one congressman wants answers to questions that, at the moment, have no answers. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., submitted the Anthrax Attacks Investigation Act in March. The bill aims to establish a national commission, similar to the one formed for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The letters were mailed from Holt's district. "I think the families of the victims deserve it, all of the people affected: letter carriers, the residents of central New Jersey, people in Washington deserve to have a case that is really closed," Holt said. "Not just a lot of loose ends or some surmises or some assertions." The bill remains stalled in the House Judiciary Committee. "I wish it were moving faster than it is legislatively," he said. "I think the public deserves answers." Post your comments »

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Does fraud mean career death?

Posted by Alla Katsnelson

[Entry posted at 7th August 2008 08:51 PM GMT]

View comments(4) | Comment on this news story

If you're found guilty of plagiarism or scientific fraud, is your academic career as a researcher over? Not according to a study published in Science tomorrow (August 8), which contradicts a long-standing assumption by suggesting that rebuilding a career after a misconduct finding is difficult, but not impossible. "While the punishments [for misconduct] are severe, there are hopes for redemption," said Jon Merz of the University of Pennsylvania, a coauthor on the study. Merz and Barbara Redman, who has a joint appointment at Wayne State University and the University of Pennsylvania, examined the fates of researchers who, as independent investigators (as opposed to graduate students or postdocs), were found guilty of misconduct by the Office of Research Integrity, the NIH branch that polices misconduct, between 1994 and 2001. They report that 19 of the 37 scientists for whom they were able to find publication data continued to publish at least once per year. "People who were found guilty of plagiarism [as opposed to expressly fabricating or falsifying data] get less severe of a punishment, so they were more likely to continue to publish," Redman noted. Ten of the 28 scientists whose employment information they were able to trace continued to hold academic appointments after the ORI ruling. Originally, 23 out of those 28 had worked in academia. However, Merz and Redman's data, as well as interviews they conducted with the seven researchers who agreed to speak with them, indicate that recovering from the misconduct ruling was extremely difficult. Unsurprisingly, the group's average publication rate was significantly lower after the ruling, dropping from 2.1 to 1.0 publications per year. Twelve of the scientists ceased to publish completely. In interviews with Merz and Redman, researchers described extensive personal and financial hardships due to the ruling. "Some felt that they didn't know what they were doing was wrong," or otherwise disagreed with the ORI's conclusions, said Redman. Also, she noted, several would have liked to appeal the ORI's decision, but couldn't afford to do so. "We don't really know if the decision would have been different" if they had appealed, she said. "They weren't able to use the full system." The seven scientists that were willing to discuss their experiences may not be representative of scientists in the group, said Redman. "We think the seven are probably survivors," said Redman. Indeed, those researchers did say that they were able to rebuild their careers, in some cases with the help of their institutions. "We don't have data on this, but it would be my sense that some institutions are better at helping people to rehabilitate," she added. Redman and Merz acknowledge that the data are limited, but suggest they raise questions about the system's fairness and whether or not researchers are being punished too harshly. "It's not clear that the [researchers] who did the worst things necessarily got the worst punishments, or were unable to regroup," said Redman. "What to do about [misconduct] is a value question. Should people be allowed to redeem themselves?" She said that the study is too limited to warrant a change in how penalties for misconduct are meted out, but should be expanded. "It's pretty important to the scientific community and to individual scientists to find out empirically what is happening" to researchers after they are found guilty of misconduct, she said. Following up on the findings is going to be difficult, however, in part because of researchers' reluctance to discuss their alleged misconduct. Also, Redman and Merz limited the study to cases decided by 2001, in order to give publication rates time to rebound. Now, they'll need to wait a few years before conducting a follow-up study, said Redman. The results of an anonymous survey which asked researchers about incidents of misconduct they have observed, published in Nature in June, suggested that such incidents often go unreported. Merz said he wishes that survey had probed a little deeper, and had asked survey respondents to report what the outcome of those instances had been. The authors, he said, "should have asked, 'You knew about this case. So, what happened? Did the person get fired?'"

Another Scientific Fraudster

Fake credentials in nanomed leader

Posted by Edyta Zielinska

[Entry posted at 25th June 2009 03:11 PM GMT]

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Experts in nanomedicine are questioning the credentials of a researcher who has portrayed himself as an expert in the fledgling field, even starting a professional society and procuring a post as editor of the journal Nanomedicine. Indeed, an investigation of his credentials reveals that he claimed to hold a directorship of a non-existent program, co-authored only two original papers in nanomedicine (one of which, a co-author says, he contributed to only editorially), and was accused of mismanaging the professional society to the point that some board members resigned and began a new professional group. Image: Wikimedia "I think that this individual is a good example of a field that is poorly- or under-regulated," Summer Johnson, executive editor of The American Journal of Bioethics, told The Scientist. "Everyone trusted the fact that he appeared to have high quality credentials." Chiming Wei, president and founder of an organization called the American Academy of Nanomedicine (AANM), has the equivalent of a PhD from a Japanese institution and is a researcher in cardiothoracic surgery, but is not currently affiliated with any university. He started the group in 2005, when he was an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. The AANM's website lists Wei as Director of the Cardiothoracic-Renal Nanomedicine Program at Johns Hopkins, but according to the university, there is no such program. The Johns Hopkins press office was "unable to find evidence that this program exists," a university spokesperson wrote in an email. Johns Hopkins created a virtual program called the Institute for NanoBioTechnology (INBT) to support scientists working in nanomedicine in May 2006, but Wei "was not director of anything with INBT, [he was] just one of many faculty members" affiliated with the institute, Mary Spiro from Johns Hopkins' media relations department wrote in an email. "I have confirmed that, to the best of our knowledge, Wei did not apply for any grants through INBT nor did he conduct research with any of our other affiliated faculty members." Wei explained that the Cardiothoracic-Renal Nanomedicine Program was a name that he gave to his research laboratory at Johns Hopkins. He agreed that "it was not a program" at the university, but did not explain why he used that title on the webpage. Wei continued to list this directorship and his affiliation with Johns Hopkins on announcements of the AANM's 2008 annual meeting in Washington, DC, despite having left the university by June, 2007. Wei conceded that this was an error, but that title still appeared on the AANM website at the time this article was posted. There are other discrepancies in Wei's stated affiliations. In a bio on the Johns Hopkins website (which was removed after The Scientist requested clarification of Wei's affiliation with the university in mid-May), Wei listed three appointments with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minn.: postdoc, assistant professor and consultant. The Mayo Clinic had no record of Wei having been a postdoc or an assistant professor there, but confirmed he was a consultant, holding positions as a research associate and visiting clinician, between 1989 and 1996. Wei has published some academic papers about nanomedicine and nanoscience, but among the articles on PubMed, only two are original research articles. Furthermore, some of his coauthors, including those on one of the original research papers, say he did not contribute intellectually to the research. A PubMed search for "Wei, Chiming" retrieves 29 articles, 16 of which mention nanoscience or nanomedicine. (Wei provided The Scientist with a list of more than 150 publications in his name. Based on the titles, however, none except the 16 that also appear in PubMed are related to nanomedicine. The Scientist verified that at least 21 were conference abstracts rather than papers.) Most of the nanomedicine articles were published in Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine -- a journal that Wei proposed to Elsevier and subsequently co-edited, according to an Elsevier spokesperson. Just two of the 29 are primary research articles in nanomedicine. Some of his coauthors charge that Wei put his name on nanomedicine articles to which he did not contribute enough to warrant a co-authorship. According to a former AANM board member who agreed to speak with The Scientist on condition of anonymity, Wei added his own name to the list of authors on a review published in Nanomedicine despite making "no intellectual contributions" to the work. "I don't even cite them any more," said the researcher, who was first author on the review, referring to that article and another which he coauthored with Wei and a third scientist. "We really don't want to be associated with his name," he added. Wei, however, denied that that he had ever put his name on a manuscript without the permission of an author. One of the two primary research articles, on which Wei is the second of three authors, describes a nanoscale drug delivery pump. According to the study's principal investigator, T.C. Yih at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., Wei's participation in the study was "only editorial" -- Yih invited Wei to be an author after Wei provided comments on the manuscript. Wei agrees he contributed only "ideas" to the work. An Elsevier spokesperson said the publisher never checked Wei's publication record in nanomedicine before giving him the job of editing a nanomedicine journal. "Based on the discussions we didn't feel a need to read through [Wei's] papers, as he was quite knowledgeable on the subject," the Elsevier spokesperson added. Wei said he has worked on two nanomedicine research projects -- one at the University of Maryland and another at Johns Hopkins -- but never published his results. He wanted to start a nanomedicine journal to introduce physicians like himself to clinically relevant nanoscience, he explained. Wei acknowledged that he does not have expertise in chemistry or material sciences, but said his contribution was to help expose clinicians to the field who "don't know so many medical applications for nanomaterials." Indeed, "expertise" in nanomedicine can be a matter of definition, according to a senior expert in nanomedicine at a US university who requested anonymity. Nanomedicine applies not only to engineers and material scientists who develop the technology, but also to clinicians who apply it, he said, adding that since there are many cancer drugs already on the market with nanoscale properties, he would consider many oncologists nanomedicine experts. Some people get annoyed at this broad definition, he said, but "I don't think [the field] should need a passport." On review of Wei's PubMed publication record, however, he said, "I was hoping there would be some clear evidence to make me say that he was an expert. I didn't see that." Even so, he noted, there are many factors besides a publication record that might define a scientist's role or importance in a field; some researchers, for example, are more important for their organizational or administrative roles than for their primary research. "It may appear that he is not a presence in the field, but that is not sufficient to discredit him," he said. While Wei's contribution to the field may be a matter of interpretation, he also used colleagues' names without their permission on AANM documents and printed materials and ascribed roles to them within the organization which they say they did not have. On a 2007 AANM tax return, Wei listed the name of Mauro Ferrari, who is the director of the division of nanomedicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. The 2007 tax return, filed in January, 2009, lists Ferrari as one of several "directors" of the organization. "I don't know anything about this," said Ferrari. He said he had agreed to act as an honorary scientific advisor for the AANM, but never attended any board meetings. "I was not a director," he said. In a flyer publicizing the First World Congress of the International Academy of Nanomedicine, which was organized by Wei and took place on June 12-13, 2009, in Sanya, Hainan, China, at least one researcher listed as a "co-secretary general" wasn't in fact involved in the meeting. "The name was put on the flyer without my knowledge," said Harry Sauberman, the chair of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society of IEEE, a professional society of engineers which was also listed as a co-organizer of the meeting. Sauberman said that he had talked to Wei about organizing meetings in Washington, DC, in the future, but neither he nor IEEE played any role in this year's conference. In April, Johnson wrote a blog entry on bioethics.net, the blog of the The American Journal of Bioethics, citing accusations the AANM board made against Wei the previous September, at the group's annual meeting, held in Washington, DC. At that meeting, several members of the AANM board had confronted Wei, questioning his credentials and accusing him of failing to register the organization as a nonprofit and routing member dues to his personal bank account. In fact, the AANM was registered as a non-profit from the year 2005, according to the Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs in Washington, DC. However, its non-profit status was revoked in September, 2008, because Wei had failed to file its two-year report, which lists the names of current officers in charge of a non-profit company. As a result, the organization's tax-exempt status with the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was also revoked. Both non-profit status and tax-exempt status have since been reinstated, and Wei provided The Scientist with a letter from the IRS confirming tax exempt status starting in 2005. Wei also denied accusations of financial irregularity. He said the organization has a separate bank account and that he had had to cover close to $55,000 in meeting expenses out of pocket. While he paid for the 2005 conference with the help of sponsorship from Elsevier and Pfizer, he explained, those funds were unavailable in 2006, and AANM membership dues were not enough to cover the expenses. (The AANM's 2007 tax return, obtained by The Scientist, claims that sum as a "loan from officers.") The controversy over Wei's management of the organization, whether or not it was true, compelled Lajos Balogh of Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, the new editor of Nanomedicine, to leave the AANM, where he was a board member. "I certainly did not want to be associated with an organization that is financially suspicious," he said. After the 2008 confrontation, many AANM board members resigned and started a new professional group called the American Society of Nanomedicine. Wei said that he was not given the opportunity to explain or correct the accounting problems that board members raised, having only learned about them at the September 2008 meeting. "I worked hard to try to help and develop this area of research. I never tried to hurt or make troubles in this area," said Wei in an email. "I hope every one understand this." Wei is currently the president of the American Nanomedicine Institute, a for-profit company he started in 2007 that focuses on research and development of both environmental and medical nanotechnology applications, he said. But some members of the nanomedicine community dismiss Wei's good intentions. "He managed to establish a journal with a very respectable publisher. Many of us participated" in the journal and the Academy, said a nanomedicine expert who requested anonymity. "The major problem is that it's damaged the reputation of this field." Related stories: $Billions of fraud in HHS programs [16th June 2008] Does fraud mean career death? [ 7th August 2008] Flagging fraud [ 17th December 2008]

The Executive Assassination Squad

Monday, July 13, 2009

Conspiracy Theories: Yeah, I Got'em

The Anthrax Letters: A Bioterrorism Expert Investigates the Attacks That Shocked America by Leonard A. Cole

After 9/11/2001, according to Bush Administrators, there were no more terrorism attacks on the US due to the vigilance of said Bush Administrators (they conveniently do not acknowledge Bush's Laissez Faire attitude preceding that 9/11 attack). But there was another terrorist attack on the US and it was after 9/11 and it used Anthrax in the US Mail to kill its victims. Bush and his Administrators attempted to lay the Anthrax blame on Saddam Hussein and Al Queda; that blame made the invasion of Iraq mandatory and took the focus off the oil in Iraq.

When it became apparent that oil was the cause of the Iraq invasion, the blame was shifted to Steven Hatfill, a bioterrorism expert employed by the US Defense Department with some false education credentials. When the Anthrax Attack blame wouldn't stick to Mr. Hatfill, the blame wafted in the air (like the Anthrax weapons grade spores) to Dr. Bruce Ivins.

The FBI claimed with both suspects that they had the Anthrax goods on each of them. The FBI didn't. Mr. Hatfill was cleared and given a $250,000 annuity from the US government for the next 20 years, because he was innocent but unemployable because of the FBI's accusations. Dr. Ivins did the FBI the favor of committing suicide instead of fighting the investigation as Mr. Hatfill had. The FBI convicted Dr. Ivins with circumstantial evidence, as they did with Mr. Hatfill. The circumstantial evidence on Dr. Ivins looks no better on him than it did on Mr. Hatfill.

And there is another thing to consider, all the FBI and US Defense department experts who claim Dr. Ivins did it, are perfectly capable of being convicted themselves of the Anthrax Attacks on that same circumstantial evidence. There are a lot of possibly guilty dogs in the Anthrax Attack fight.

Mr. Cole gives a good presentation of the Anthrax Attacks, most of the still living victims were willing to speak with him, but Mr. Cole seems a little too inclined to believe all the other suspects (the experts) in the case. Mr. Cole's conclusions are a trifle naive.

As to whom I think did it? This current kerfuffle about Cheney and the CIA and the executive assassination squad makes me think that perhaps the executive assassination squads were using Anthrax to target with extreme prejudice their victims. And it all got a little out of hand, as when Cheney shot a guy in the face during a duck hunt. Remember the Ukrainian or the Belarus prime minister who was plutonium poisoned by the KBG? As we have learned lately, the CIA tortures and they may get a little more artful than assassination drones.

Posted by chatchien at 10:42 AM 0 comments

“I Want to See Dustin Hoffman Bleed Out of His Nipples”

Friday, May 15, 2009

Biodefense’s USAMRIID Problem Biohazards bring out the weird in people. Especially people from USAMRIID—the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. The quote about Dustin Hoffman comes from Tales from Development Hell (Titan Books, London: 2003), a book by David Hughes that recounts the tortured path that movie projects can take from sure-fire properties to triumph, failure, or terminal residence in the soul-sapping limbo of…development hell. One of the more entertaining chapters concerns the frantic race between Fox and Warner Brothers to make the first Ebola virus thriller. Fox had prestige and science on its side, having purchased the rights to Crisis in the Hot Zone, the lauded non-fiction account by the New Yorker’s Richard Preston of a successful effort to contain an Ebola outbreak in a monkey house in Virginia. The producers also obtained the cooperation of the key scientific protagonists in the story—scientists Nancy Jaax and Karl Johnson. Howwever, Fox’s Tiffany Ebola project, The Hot Zone, never got made. It lost out to the flashy cubic zirconia of Warner Brothers’ Outbreak, a by-the-numbers biothriller directed by Wolfgang Petersen and starring Dustin Hoffman. Hughes quotes an interview with Entertainment Weekly, in which Preston poured scorn on Outbreak: “It just wasn’t scary. You have scabs that look like Gummi bears. The blood was put on with an eyedropper. In a real [Ebola attack], the men bleed out of their nipples. I would have liked to see Hoffman bleed out of his nipples.” However, judging from Hughes’ account, Warner Brothers got the movie-making business right and Fox got it wrong. And what Fox got wrong was excessive loyalty to Preston’s book. Outbreak, an efficient and compelling science fact/fiction thriller with gory and involving scenes of an exploding epidemic, martial law, and desperate scientific detective work that saves humanity, opened in 1995 and pulled in a more than respectable $187 million at the global box office. The Hot Zone, a fictionalized docudrama that would have featured scenes of scientists earnestly centrifuging blood samples with coathangers and climaxed with the offscreen massacre of a warehouse full of monkeys, lacked the compelling narrative and dramatic core necessary to satisfy the finicky talent actually making the picture. Ridley Scott was going to direct; he had his ideas and his screenwriters. Robert Redford was going to star; he had his ideas and his screenwriter. Scott and Redford couldn’t get on the same page. And everybody was too invested in respecting Preston’s book to take the momentous and perhaps necessary step of throwing it out the window and punching up the script with some gratuitous nipple-bleeding action. So The Hot Zone never got made. But it lives on, both in development hell and in the pages of Hughes’ book. Hughes’ book also includes this interesting quote from The Hot Zone’s screenwriter, James Hart:

“I went to USAMRIID, and to a person, the biggest problem—and I want to make sure this is said right—the biggest problem they had with the Ebola outbreak at the monkey house was the fact that no human being died. If one human being had died, it would have moved their cause for prevention and preparation for these kinds of outbreaks forward in the government’s mind…So what they wished had happened—and it’s a horrible thing to say – was that a person had died of Ebola brought over here by monkeys, so it would give them the strength and ‘go juice’ to go get government funding…”[emphasis in original]

Possibly this plaintive lament has an eerie resonance for China Matter’s informed and discerning readers. Can’t pin it down? Let me help.

"I think a lot of good has come from it," he told ABCNEWS. "From a biological or a medical standpoint, we've now five people who have died, but we've put about $6 billion in our [2003] budget into defending against bioterrorism."

That was David Franz, the former bioweapons commander at USAMRIID’s Fort Detrick, speaking in the aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks—which he devoted considerable effort to trying to pin on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Of course, subsequent investigations showed that the most likely source for the spores was Franz’s own lab, in which some of the world’s deadlier substances were manipulated both by dedicated scientists and an unknown number of careless technicians, racists, and psychologically unbalanced individuals, apparently including at least one person who thought that the best way to protect America was to selectively kill off a few Americans. The DoJ’s October 31, 2007 request for a search warrant on Dr. Bruce Ivins, the USAMRIID scientists who was officially tagged as the Amerithrax perpetrator after his suicide, makes for interesting reading. Hey, did you know the FBI thinks it can link a piece of Scotch tape to the roll it came from? I suppose it could be argued that the deceased Ivins was smeared as a convenient fall guy for an investigation that had dragged on inconclusively for seven years. But I don’t think that the U.S. government would be eager to build its case as the steward of the world’s most dangerous microbes by fabricating allegations that one of its key bioweapons researchers stayed on the job for years despite evidence that he was absolutely nuts--or that he took his work home to punish the perceived American enemies of his staunchly pro-life Catholic/national-security Republican worldview. According to Ivins’ own e-mails cited in the warrant, he was already undergoing psychiatric counseling in 2000 and the diagnosis pointed to a “paranoid personality disorder”.

"I wish I could control the thoughts in my mind. It's hard enough sometimes controlling my behavior. When I'm being eaten alive inside, I always try to put on a good front here at work and at home, so I don't spread the pestilence. . . .I get incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times, and there's nothing I can do until they go away, either by themselves or with drugs."

Things did not get better after 9/11.

September 26, 2001, "Of the people in my [counseling] "group," everyone but me is in the depression/sadness/flight mode for stress. I'm really the only scary one in the group. ... my reaction to the WTC/Pentagon events is far different. Of course, I don't talk about how I really feel with them - it would just make them worse. Seeing how differently I reacted than they did to the recent events makes me ratify [sic] think about myself a lot."

Ivins shared a poem with a friend in December 2001:

I'm a little dream-self, short and stout.
I'm the other half of Bruce - when he lets me out.
When I get all steamed up, I don't pout.
I push Bruce aside, them I'm Free to run about!

Hickory dickory Doc - Doc Bruce ran up the clock.
But something then happened in very strange rhythm.
His other self went and exchanged places with him.
So now, please guess who
Is conversing with you.
Hickory dickory Doc!

Bruce and this other guy, sitting by some trees,
Exchanging personalities.
It's like having two in one.
Actually it's rather fun!"

One does wonder why it took almost six years to get a warrant to search this guy’s house. Bruce Ivins sure served up the wrong kind of scary for a biodefense lab hoping to hype its budget. To date, the anthrax attacks that apparently emanated from Fort Detrick represent the only proven case of anti-American bioterrorism. In fact, one might argue that the best way to protect Americans might be to close down Fort Detrick instead of funding it. It looks like the U.S. government has done the next best thing—funneling that multi-billion dollar bioterrorism bonanza into the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ biodefense programs and resources at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while shunting the dysfunctional and demoralized USAMRIID to the sidelines. The insular culture of USAMRIID seems diametrically opposite of the mindset needed to manage biohazards in a free society. People with long memories might recall a pre-9/11 outbreak of an disease that claimed multiple human victims in the United States: the hantavirus episode that killed forty five largely Navajo inhabitants of Four Corners, New Mexico in 1993-95. New Mexico HPS hantavirus had an impressive mortality rate of 50%, Furthermore, it’s delivered just like USAMRIID’s favorite boogeyman—weapons-grade anthrax. HPS is transmitted as a microscopic and highly infectious pulmonary aerosol, albeit generated prosaically from the urine and feces of infected rodents, not engineered in military laboratories by delusional scientists with too much time on their hands. However, this lethal incident didn’t serve as USAMRIID’s ticket to the institutional and budgetary bigtime. HPS attacked anonymous victims in one of the poorest and most remote parts of the United States, not the movers and shakers in Washington or the media types who chronicled them. And it wasn’t bioterrorism. So the CDC handled it. Perhaps because hyping a biohazard is antithetical to the CDC’s basic mission of keeping the lid on and preventing public panic, its response to HPS provides an interesting contrast to USAMRIID’s near palpable PR desperation: The CDC on Four Corners:

Taking a calculated risk, researchers decided not to wear protective clothing or masks during the trapping process [to capture and identify the rodent vectors]. "We didn't want to go in wearing respirators, scaring...everybody," John Sarisky, an Indian Health Service environmental disease specialist said.

I feel utterly confident in completing the elided phrase as “scaring the shit out of everybody”. Compare and contrast with James Hart, sympathetically explaining the Hollywood/biowar synergies of the The Hot Zone gang:

All they [USAMRIID] wanted to do was scare the shit out of the public, so they’d have some more juice to go back to Congress and get more funding…

There’s an interesting contrast between how a public health organization—relying on transparency to achieve a relationship of trust with the public in order to manage an outbreak—and a bioweapons outfit—thriving on secrecy, threatened by exposure, and eager to exploit an outbreak in order to seize control of a situation and extend its budgetary and executive reach—handle a crisis.

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