Marburg Variant U

[Guest The_0ld_Man]

I have read "Biohazard" and actually have emailed Dr. Alibek here in the states with some questions about his work at the Biopreperat. It is even more scary what is being done now with regard to not only toxins/virus's such as Ebola, but also genes themselves.

One of Dr. Alibek's collegues, Dr. Sergei Popov has achieved much more at a facility called "Vector"

  There was said to be a Russian biowar project  

which melded corona virus and a virus particle that could induce auto-immune disorder, such as MS. Will try to find the name of that project again. The point is that if they were doing it a decade ago, anyone might be doing it now.

Kids in first-year college programs are doing gene splicing these days, and lots of information is out there. Here is the first reference to the MS-induction found today:

Sergei Popov, former Soviet Bioweaponeer, who defected to Britian in 1992, designed organisms to trigger autoimmune responses while still at Vector in the Fmr. Soviet Union. The aim was to trick the body's defenses into self-destruction, as happens slowly in such diseases as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis or more suddenly in cases of anaphylactic shock..."Sometimes just small, very tiny quantities of foreign substances are enough," he said, to make the immune response "quite devastating." (His team modified Legionella, the Legionnaires' disease agent, by adding genes coding for fragments of myelin protein, to induce multiple sclerosis, and tested it on guinea pigs.) After the Legionella microbe and its mild aftermath came and went, and all signs of infection were gone, the metabolic reaction to the myelin fragments began a second, more pronounced wave of sickness. The guinea pigs first suffered brain damage and paralysis, then died, with the mortality rate close to 100 percent....With normal Legionella, many thousands of bacteria are required to sicken lab animals. But the recombinant Legionella was active with only a few cells. [Alibek said] "We all recognized the implications....A new class of weapons had been found. For the first time, we would be capable of producing weapons based on chemical substances produced naturally by the human body. They could damage the nervous system, alter moods, trigger psychological changes, and even kill."

  Imagine now that Vector and Biopreperat are unprotected, the scientists once treated well are poor, and are vulnerable (have been since the collapse of the soviet state) to selling those secrets and samples to the highest bidder?

Regards,

The_0ld_Man

[Guest MSandt]

Sounds pretty scary stuff. But (to go back to Marbug and MM) when you think about the SARS epidemic and how it was handled, it sounds pretty much like the Marburg outbreak at the end of Season 2. I know some fans found the downgrading of the outbreak at the beginning of Season 3 fairly implausible, but it does match the story of SARS. That's a real-life example of how effective containment practices can minimise what could otherwise have been a devastating epidemic.

Well it's a bit odd to compare SARS to Marburg outbreak. SARS has a mortality rate less than 10% - Marburg Variant PrP had a mortality rate of 100% (no cure for Marburg virus and particularly no cure for prion diseases). Think of Malaria - it infects half billion people a year but kills only a few millions - Its mortality rate isn't even 5%. Think if you could genetically modify (which could be a bit difficult - Malaria is caused by a parasite - neither by a virus nor a bacterium) Malaria disease to make it kill even 50% of those who get infected. The whole SARS outbreak would have been handled completely differently if it had been deadlier.

Within five years, anything up to half of the population of Europe had died from the plague.

Well it was a bit hard to count these things back then. Victims were of course burnt etc. so it's a bit hard to estimate the real number. Most have estimated that plague killed about 1/3 of Europe's population and it reappeared numerously after its best years. It must have been pretty scary back then - There were dead people on the streets everywhere (just like in 'The Stand')  and entire villages were found dead.

Also, in these modern times, has it been identified as one of the virus's we now know as Ebola or something equally devastating?

Ebola is less dangerous than plague. Ebola has higher mortality rate (70-90%) but plague spreads better. But of course it could evolve and become airborne. But of course there's a vaccine for plague.

[Guest The_0ld_Man]

Actually,

     Ebola has been known to be airbourne. Ebola Zaire is by touch..Marburg was by aerosol as well as another form that (may also have been marburg) infected the monkeys in Reston VA (ala outbreak the film) happened.

     The team from USAMRID found that monkeys in seperate pens were dying due to the air systems being connected between cells/rooms.

Cheers,

T_0_M

[Guest MSandt]

Ebola has been known to be airbourne. Ebola Zaire is by touch..Marburg was by aerosol

Natural strains of both diseases are spread via body fluids, blood etc. but neither is airborne (excluding genetically altered laboratory strains).

as well as another form that (may also have been marburg) infected the monkeys in Reston VA (ala outbreak the film) happened.

Ebola Reston is airborne but it has no effect on humans. It can infect humans but it can't make them sick. It's deadly only among animals.

[Guest The_0ld_Man]

Actually,

       Ebola Reston can make human's sick with flu like symptoms. Some of the USAMRID men came down with it..It is just not lethal.

Regards,

T_0_M

[Guest se7en]

......okay guys,i think we get the gist here!

                                            ~se7en