Saturday, May 30, 2015
Two more
When the Pentagon decides to send out anthrax surprises it uses people who can't count. Today the Pentagon announced that two more labs were blessed with active anthrax spores instead of the deceased variety.
The Pentagon said Friday that the Army’s mistaken shipments of live anthrax to research laboratories were more widespread than it initially reported, prompting the Defense Department’s second-ranking official to order a thorough review.I guess this is better than killing some poor schmuck's sheep out there in Utah. But not by much.
In a statement issued Friday evening, the department said 24 laboratories in 11 states and two foreign countries — South Korea and Australia — are believed to have received suspect anthrax samples.
The broadening scope of the problem suggests more extensive flaws in procedures used by the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah to ensure that anthrax samples were made fully inert before shipping them to labs. Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work on Friday ordered a comprehensive review of laboratory procedures associated with inactivating anthrax.
Dugway, in a desolate stretch of the Utah desert, has been testing chemical weapons since it opened in 1942.
Earlier Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said suspect samples from Dugway had been sent to 18 labs in nine U.S. states and a military base in South Korea. Later, the Pentagon said the Army may have mistakenly sent live anthrax to a laboratory in Australia in 2008.
CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said the agency is testing to see which anthrax samples were live. The results are coming in slowly, she said, and the first full set of findings isn’t expected until next week.
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