Charlie,
You're right on the money. That's why I'd like someone like an editor at
Science Magazine to go over the details in the internal documents that my
friend based his article on. If this narrative is substantiated, it may be so
serious as to warrant international pressure on all countries engaging in this
sort of research and of course a no-holds-barred congressional investigation of
what is going on at UT. They need to blow the lid off such reckless practices
and the cover-ups before the cap comes off another test tube at high RPMs and
some frankenvirus actually makes it out of the lab. - Phil
PS - aren't phages those viruses Russians used against infectious bacteria?
On 08:58, Geilfuss Charles wrote:
>
>Phil, I wondered about this story as well. First off, if it is true
>it is pretty damned scary. I cannot imagine intentionally making
>avian flu virus *more* capable of infecting human cells without a
>very good reason. I also find it very scary that it was being done
>outside of a Class 4 lab (CDC, Fort Detreich (sic)). The risk/
>consequences are unimaginable. Hubris is a dangerous thing. The
>other thing that bothered me was the description of the accident.
>Before medical school I worked in a Biochemistry Lab at MUSC doing
>bacterial gene mapping using phage viruses. The centrifuges we used
>came in two varieties: the cheap ones (mere $1000's) and the
>Ultra-centrifuges (mere $1000's for the rotor alone). The cheap
>ones, if unbalanced, would dance around and make a lot of noise, but
>did not generate enough G's (few 100's) to break the tubes or caps.
>The ultra-centrifuges were a different beast. They had dedicated
>tubes and were designed to be idiot proof. Nothing but the correct
>tube would fit. All spun loads had to be balanced to within a few
>micrograms. The rotor spun in a chamber that is evacuated to a small
>fraction of 1 Torr to prevent the tubes from burning by air
>friction, and the G forces they generated were unimaginable (100,000
>was not unusual). There was no room for error so the machines are
>designed to auto-shut-off if it was the least out of balance. Now
>that was a lot of years ago; so there may be other types of machines
>out there that perform differently. I would like this story more
>widely reported which I suppose is the whole point.
>
>Charlie
==
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