Mystery Death Of Top Microbiologist
2-15-02

DETECTIVES were last night trying to unravel the circumstances in which a leading university research scientist was found dead at his blood-spattered and apparently ransacked home.
The body of Ian Langford, 40, a senior Fellow at the University of East Anglia’s Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, was discovered on Monday night by police and ambulancemen. The body was naked from the waist down and partly wedged under a chair. It is understood that doors to the terraced house were locked.
A post-mortem examination failed to establish how Dr Langford, who lived alone in the house in Norwich, died.
Dr Langford began working at the university in 1993 after gaining his PhD in childhood leukaemia and infection following a first-class honours degree in environmental sciences. He worked most recently as a senior researcher assessing risk to the environment.
Professor Kerry Turner, director of the centre, said: “We are all very shocked by this appalling news. Ian was without doubt one of Europe’s leading experts on environmental risk, specialising in links between human health and environmental risk. He was known for his work on the effects on health of bathing water and air pollution, for example. He was one of the most brilliant colleagues I have ever had.”

Also

The head of microbiology sub-faculty of Russian State Medical University (former Second Moscow Medical Institute), V.Korshunov has been murdered.
The body of the killed professor with cranial injury was found on Friday, at 8.15 (Moscow time) in the entrance of the house in Academician Bakulev Street, in Southwest Administrative District, where the 56-year-old scientist lived.
It was already third death of a scientist within this January, Russian Academy of Science lost two scientists with world name – academician I.Glebov (who died as a result of a bandit attack in St Petersburg) and Corresponding Member of the Academy of Science A.Brushlinski (who was killed in Moscow).

Source: Pravda

Original Post:

Dead Microbiologists:

On Novemeber 12th, Dr. Benito Que, cell biologist working on infectious diseases like HIV
was found dead outside of his lab at the Miami Medical School.
Police say his death was possibly the result of a mugging. The Miami Herald reported that:
"The incident, whatever it may have been, occurred on Monday afternoon as the scientist left his job at University of Miami's School of
Medicine. He headed for his car, a white Ford Explorer parked on Northwest 10th Avenue. The word among his friends is that four men
armed with a baseball bat attacked him at his car."

On November 16th, Dr. Don C Wiley, one of the U.S. foremost infectious disease researchers was declared missing.
His rental car was found with a full tank of gas and the keys in the ignition. His disappearance made to look like a suicide.
According to colleagues and Dr. Wiley's family, the Harvard Scientist associated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute would NEVER
commit suicide. Associates who attended the St. Jude's Children Research Advisory Dinner with Dr. Wiley, just hours before he disappeared,
said that he was in good spirits and NOT depressed. He was last seen at a banquet at the Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis the night
he vanished. Those who saw him last say he showed no signs of a man contemplating his own death.
CNN Report on missing scientist - 11/29/01
Wiley left the hotel around midnight. The bridge where his car was found is only a five-minute drive away and in the wrong direction
from where he was staying, leaving authorities with a four-hour, unexplained gap until his vehicle was found. Now Memphis police are
exploring several theories involving suicide, robbery and murder.
"We began this investigation as a missing person investigation," said Walter Crews of the Memphis Police Department.
"From there it went to a more criminal bent."
Dr. Wiley was an expert on how the human immune system fights off infections and
had recently investigated such dangerous viruses as AIDS, Ebola, herpes and influenza.
UPDATE 12/21/01
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (Reuters) - The body of a Harvard scientist missing for more than a month since his rental car
was left parked on a bridge over the Mississippi River has been found downstream, police said on Friday.
Workers at a hydroelectric plant in Louisiana found the body of Don Wiley on Thursday, about 300 miles south
of where the molecular biologist was last seen on Nov. 18 at a medical meeting in Memphis, Tennessee.

On November 23rd, Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, the foremost Soviet Biopreparat scientist who was responsible for aerosolizing
plague and was the successful developer of binary weapons known as the 'Novichok group' of weapons was found dead.
Biopreparat is a Soviet biological-weapons production facility.
Dr. Pasechnik defected from the Soviet Union in 1989 while visiting the UK where he lived until his death in November. There were NO media
reports of his death for one full week. At that time, an official from the UK intel community announced that Dr. Pasechnik had 'a stroke.'
No autopsy or futher details were forthcoming.
The New York Times Section: Foreign Desk, November 23, 2001, Friday
V. Pasechnik, 64, Is Dead; Germ Expert Who Defected By WOLFGANG SAXON
'Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, a senior Soviet biologist whose defection in 1989 alerted Western intelligence to the scope
of Moscow'sclandestine efforts to adapt germs and viruses for military use, died on Wednesday in Wiltshire, England.'
The Times was the only newspaper to provide an obituary for Dr. Pasechnik, and said:
"The defection to Britain in 1989 of Vladimir Pasechnik revealed to the West for the first time the colossal scale of the Soviet Union's
clandestine biological warfare programme. His revelations about the scale of the Soviet Union's production of such biological agents as anthrax,
plague, tularaemia and smallpox provided an inside account of one of the best kept secrets of the Cold War. After his defection he worked for
ten years at the U.K. Department of Health's Centre for Applied Microbiology Research before forming his own company, Regma Biotechnics,
to work on therapies for cancer, neurological diseases, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. In the last few weeks of his life he had put his
research on anthrax at the disposal of the Government, in the light of the threat from bioterrorism."

On November 23rd, Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, the foremost Soviet Biopreparat scientist who was responsible for aerosolizing
plague and was the successful developer of binary weapons known as the 'Novichok group' of weapons was found dead.
Biopreparat is a Soviet biological-weapons production facility.
Dr. Pasechnik defected from the Soviet Union in 1989 while visiting the UK where he lived until his death in November. There were NO media
reports of his death for one full week. At that time, an official from the UK intel community announced that Dr. Pasechnik had 'a stroke.'
No autopsy or futher details were forthcoming.
The New York Times Section: Foreign Desk, November 23, 2001, Friday
V. Pasechnik, 64, Is Dead; Germ Expert Who Defected By WOLFGANG SAXON
'Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, a senior Soviet biologist whose defection in 1989 alerted Western intelligence to the scope
of Moscow'sclandestine efforts to adapt germs and viruses for military use, died on Wednesday in Wiltshire, England.'
The Times was the only newspaper to provide an obituary for Dr. Pasechnik, and said:
"The defection to Britain in 1989 of Vladimir Pasechnik revealed to the West for the first time the colossal scale of the Soviet Union's
clandestine biological warfare programme. His revelations about the scale of the Soviet Union's production of such biological agents as anthrax,
plague, tularaemia and smallpox provided an inside account of one of the best kept secrets of the Cold War. After his defection he worked for
ten years at the U.K. Department of Health's Centre for Applied Microbiology Research before forming his own company, Regma Biotechnics,
to work on therapies for cancer, neurological diseases, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. In the last few weeks of his life he had put his
research on anthrax at the disposal of the Government, in the light of the threat from bioterrorism."

On December 10th, Dr. Robert M. Schwartz was found murdered in his secluded farmhouse in Leesberg, Virginia. Dr. Schwartz
was a well-known DNA sequencing researcher. He founded the Virginia Biotechnology Association where he worked on DNA sequencing
in his lab for 15 years.
On Wednesday, December 12th the Washington Post reported:
"A well-known biophysicist, who was one of the leading researchers on DNA sequencing analysis, was found slain in his rural Loudoun
County home after co-workers became concerned when he didn't arrive at work as expected. Robert M. Schwartz, 57, a founding member of
the Virginia Biotechnology Association, was found dead in the secluded fieldstone farmhouse southwest of Leesburg where he lived alone.
Loudoun sheriff's officials said it appeared that Schwartz had been stabbed."

Halfway around the world on December 14th, a skilled microbiologist was killed at the Commonwealth Scientific
and Industrial Research Organisation's (CSIRO) animal diseases facility in Geelong, Australia.
This is the same facility that the journal Nature announced in January this year:
"Australian scientists, Dr Ron Jackson and Dr Ian Ramshaw, accidentally created an astonishingly virulent strain of mousepox, a cousin
of smallpox, among laboratory mice. They realised that if similar genetic manipulation was carried out on smallpox, an unstoppable
killer could be unleashed."
Herald Sun THU 13 DEC 2001 -Microbiologist dies in laboratory airlock
'A MARRIED father of two has been identified as the scientist who suffocated in a puzzling accident at a laboratory in Geelong.
Microbiologist Set Van Nguyen, 44, was found dead in an airlock chamber at the CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Laboratory ...'
He had logged 15 years' experience with this unit. Victoria Police said "Set Van Nguyen, 44, appeared to have died after entering an
airlock into a storage laboratory filled with nitrogen. His body was found when his wife became worried after he failed to return from work.
He was killed after entering a low temperature storage area where biological samples were kept. He did not know the room was full of
deadly gas which had leaked from a liquid nitrogen cooling system. Unable to breathe, Mr. Nguyen collapsed and died."

From original artcle: Anthrax, deadly strains of smallpox and flu...It's only a question of time
I believe there a cabal exists in the US and that this group is responsible for the anthrax hoax mailings of 1998 and the recent, deadly anthrax
mailings of 2001. This cabal consists of some members from the highest levels of Government, the Military and the Biotech Industry. There
appears to be a clandestine plan to develop a virulent infectious disease and quite possibly a 21st century version of the 1918 Spainish
flu or other virus.
This pathogen is going to be genetically-altered to only infect a certain group of people. I believe that Dr. Wiley's research of immunity factors
of viruses, bacterias and mycoplasmas will be used to create a pathogen that will NOT infect (will leave untouched) a designated genetic type.
This portion of the genetic target weapon was no doubt developed with research from Dr. Schwartz. In essence, a doomsday bioweapon
can be released with a guarantee that the genetic code of certain individuals, and the virus itself, will protect these individuals from infection.
If an unaltered pathogen were released, such as a virulent strain of Ebola or other level 4 bioweapon, those who release it would also fall
victim to it. A type of MAD, mutually assured destruction, has thus far prevented the release of Level 4 pathogens. However, if there
was a bioweapon that would NOT kill those who release it, then we would see a worldwide pandemic with a protected group left
unaffected by the pandemic or "plague."
Timeline Of Incriminating Evidence.
http://www.worldmessenger.20m.com/messengertimeline.html

Testing via Mosquito Vector in Punta Gorda, Florida
A report from The New England Journal of Medicine reveals that one of the first outbreaks of chronic fatigue syndrome was in Punta Gorda, Florida, back in 1957.10 It was a strange coincidence that a week before these people came down with chronic fatigue syndrome, there was a huge influx of mosquitoes.
The National Institutes of Health claimed that the mosquitoes came from a forest fire 30 miles away. The truth is that those mosquitoes were infected in Canada by Dr Guilford B. Reed at Queen's University. They were bred in Belleville, Ontario, and taken down to Punta Gorda and released there.
Within a week, the first five cases ever of chronic fatigue syndrome were reported to the local clinic in Punta Gorda. The cases kept coming until finally 450 people were ill with the disease.

Testing via Mosquito Vector in Ontario
The Government of Canada had established the Dominion Parasite Laboratory in Belleville, Ontario, where it raised 100 million mosquitoes a month. These were shipped to Queen's University and certain other facilities to be infected with this crystalline disease agent. The mosquitoes were then let loose in certain communities in the middle of the night, so that the researchers could determine how many people would become ill with chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia, which was the first disease to show.
One of the communities they tested it on was the St Lawrence Seaway valley, all the way from Kingston to Cornwall, in 1984. They let out hundreds of millions of infected mosquitoes. Over 700 people in the next four or five weeks developed myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome.
Testing Carcinogens over Winnipeg, Manitoba
In 1953, the US Government asked the Canadian Government if it could test a chemical over the city of Winnipeg. It was a big city with 500,000 people, miles from anywhere. The American military sprayed this carcinogenic chemical in a 1,000%-attenuated form, which they said would be so watered down that nobody would get very sick; however, if people came to clinics with a sniffle, a sore throat or ringing in their ears, the researchers would be able to determine what percentage would have developed cancer if the chemical had been used at full strength.
We located evidence that the Americans had indeed tested this carcinogenic chemical--zinc cadmium sulphide--over Winnipeg in 1953. We wrote to the Government of Canada, explaining that we had solid evidence of the spraying and asking that we be informed as to how high up in the government the request for permission to spray had gone. We did not receive a reply.
Shortly after, the Pentagon held a press conference on May 14, 1997, where they admitted what they had done. Robert Russo, writing for the Toronto Star11 from Washington, DC, reported the Pentagon's admission that in 1953 it had obtained permission from the Canadian Government to fly over the city of Winnipeg and spray out this chemical--which sifted down on kids going to school, housewives hanging out their laundry and people going to work. US Army planes and trucks released the chemical 36 times between July and August 1953. The Pentagon got its statistics, which indicated that if the chemical released had been full strength, approximately a third of the population of Winnipeg would have developed cancers over the next five years.
One professor, Dr Hugh Fudenberg, MD, twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, wrote a magazine article stating that the Pentagon came clean on this because two researchers in Sudbury, Ontario--Don Scott and his son, Bill Scott--had been revealing this to the public. However, the legwork was done by other researchers!
The US Army actually conducted a series of simulated germ warfare tests over Winnipeg. The Pentagon lied about the tests to the mayor, saying that they were testing a chemical fog over the city, which would protect Winnipeg in the event of a nuclear attack.
A report commissioned by US Congress, chaired by Dr Rogene Henderson, lists 32 American towns and cities used as test sites as well.
BRUCELLA MYCOPLASMA AND DISEASE
AIDS
The AIDS pathogen was created out of a Brucella bacterium mutated with a visna virus; then the toxin was removed as a DNA particle called a mycoplasma. They used the same mycoplasma to develop disabling diseases like MS, Crohn's colitis, Lyme disease, etc.
In the previously mentioned US congressional document of a meeting held on June 9, 1969,12 the Pentagon delivered a report to Congress about biological weapons. The Pentagon stated: "We are continuing to develop disabling weapons." Dr MacArthur, who was in charge of the research, said: "We are developing a new lethal weapon, a synthetic biological agent that does not naturally exist, and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired."
Think about it. If you have a deficiency of acquired immunity, you have an acquired immunity deficiency. Plain as that. AIDS.
In laboratories throughout the United States and in a certain number in Canada including at the University of Alberta, the US Government provided the leadership for the development of AIDS for the purpose of population control. After the scientists had perfected it, the government sent medical teams from the Centers for Disease Control--under the direction of Dr Donald A. Henderson, their investigator into the 1957 chronic fatigue epidemic in Punta Gorda--during 1969 to 1971 to Africa and some countries such as India, Nepal and Pakistan where they thought the population was becoming too large.13 They gave them all a free vaccination against smallpox; but five years after receiving this vaccination, 60% of those inoculated were suffering from AIDS. They tried to blame it on a monkey, which is nonsense.
A professor at the University of Arkansas made the claim that while studying the tissues of a dead chimpanzee she found traces of HIV. The chimpanzee that she had tested was born in the United States 23 years earlier. It had lived its entire life in a US military laboratory where it was used as an experimental animal in the development of these diseases. When it died, its body was shipped to a storage place where it was deep-frozen and stored in case they wanted to analyse it later. Then they decided that they didn't have enough space for it, so they said, "Anybody want this dead chimpanzee?" and this researcher from Arkansas said: "Yes. Send it down to the University of Arkansas. We are happy to get anything that we can get." They shipped it down and she found HIV in it. That virus was acquired by that chimpanzee in the laboratories where it was tested.14
In the early stages of a disease, doxycycline may reverse that disease process. It is one of the tetracycline antibiotics, but it is not bactericidal; it is bacteriostatic--it stops the growth of the mycoplasma. And if the mycoplasma growth can be stopped for long enough, then the immune system takes over.
Doxycycline treatment is discussed in a paper by mycoplasma expert Professor Garth Nicholson, PhD, of the Institute for Molecular Medicine.15 Dr Nicholson is involved in a US$8-million mycoplasma research program funded by the US military and headed by Dr Charles Engel of the NIH. The program is studying Gulf War veterans, 450 of them, because there is evidence to suggest that Gulf War syndrome is another illness (or set of illnesses) caused by mycoplasma.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ Myalgic Encephalomyelitis
Chronic fatigue syndrome is more accurately called myalgic encephalomyelitis. The chronic fatigue syndrome nomenclature was given by the US National Institutes of Health because it wanted to downgrade and belittle the disease.
An MRI scan of the brain of a teenage girl with chronic fatigue syndrome displayed a great many scars or punctate lesions in the left frontal lobe area where portions of the brain had literally dissolved and been replaced by scar tissue. This caused cognitive impairment, memory impairment, etc. And what was the cause of the scarring? The mycoplasma. So there is very concrete physical evidence of these tragic diseases, even though doctors continue to say they don't know where it comes from or what they can do about it.
Testing via Mosquito Vector in New York?

The red, itchy rash appears to be more an annoyance than a serious health threat, but it has managed to temporarily close schools, worry parents and frustrate school administrators, for whom answers have been elusive.
Students in Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, Oregon and Washington state have complained about rashes on the face, arms, legs and body. For the most part, the rash goes away when the students leave school.
"For something like this to occur almost simultaneously in different parts of the country is, to my knowledge, unprecedented," said Dr. Norman Sykes, who examined about 30 suburban Philadelphia students who came down with the rash this month.
In the Quakertown Community School District, where nearly 170 students at all nine schools were confirmed to have the rash, an environmental company collected air and water samples and examined carpets, floor mats, vacuum bags and clothing, but all tested negative for contaminants.
"We may never know what this thing is," said Quakertown Superintendent Jim Scanlon.
Most school systems have ruled out an environmental cause, but not the Peninsula School District in Gig Harbor, Wash., where more than 50 students and teachers complained about a rash.
Test results showed an abnormally high level of dust, dandruff and skin particles — probably caused by an overactive ventilation system that took too much moisture out of the air.
"People are very concerned about their children," said Peninsula Superintendent Jim Coolican. "We say its not a long-term problem, but people say, `How do you know? How do you know it won't be a problem for my child 10 years from now?"'
Sykes, a dermatologist and professor at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, suspects the culprit in Quakertown is either a mutation of the childhood illness known as fifth disease or a virus not yet known to science.
Fifth disease, so-called because it was once considered one of the five main childhood illnesses, produces a low fever and cold-like symptoms, followed by a rash that creates a "slapped cheek" appearance and a lacy red rash on the trunk, arms and legs.
Though Sykes' patients had those same symptoms, a blood test turned up no evidence of the virus that causes the disease. Sykes then performed a more sophisticated test and found DNA evidence of fifth disease virus. But nine other students tested negative for fifth disease.
The rash surfaced in November at Marsteller Middle School in Prince William County, Va. A cause was never determined, although officials also suspected a virus.
Dr. Suzanne Jenkins, an epidemiologist with the Virginia Department of Health, suspects a type of virus that lives in the gastrointestinal tract. The virus could have been spread through coughing and sneezing or by students who didn't wash their hands after using the bathroom, she said.
State and federal health investigators failed to isolate any of the known viruses, making Jenkins believe the virus has yet to be identified.
"We only know a tiny, tiny percentage, certainly less than 10 percent, of the organisms that are in and on our bodies," said infectious-disease expert Madeline Drexler, author of "Secret Agents: The Menace of Emerging Infections."
Scanlon, the Quakertown superintendent, believes some of the rashes might have been caused by psychosomatic "hysteria." And some rashes were not rashes at all — high school students rubbed themselves with sandpaper in a futile attempt to get the school shut down, he said.
"We sat there itching and then it got all red and bumpy and then it started stinging. I put a paper towel on it so it wouldn't burn that much," said 8-year-old Samantha Makl, who went to the hospital on the first day of the Quakertown outbreak.
Quakertown parent Keith Ruppel said the rashes are distracting his two children from their school work.
"I really wish they could find the cause," said the father of a 10-year-old boy and 12-year-old girl. "But you can't keep them out of school."

How do you hype a book? First, find a scary title. Then, design a blood-red front cover that reads: "In the Rivers and Coastal Waters of America an Ancient and Deadly Organism, Reawakened by Man-Made Pollution, May Become the Ultimate Biological Threat." On the back cover, throw in a catchy quote: "Like something out of a horror movie, the cell from hell attacks its victims in gruesome ways." That's what the publisher has done for "And the Waters Turned to Blood." And since the "cell from hell" lives in North Carolina rivers, a lot of people are left wondering what to do. Head for the hills or stay here and await the attack of the "Ultimate Biological Threat"?
Fortunately, the book doesn't live up to its cover. In fact, Rodney Barker's thesis is quite simple: Something dangerous lurks in the waters of North Carolina. It is killing fish, and it has made people sick. Unfortunately, his smoothly written, but somewhat flawed book, raises as many questions as it answers. But it does make two things clear.

This is no time to panic, but it is time to be concerned.
Consequently, this is a story every North Carolinian should know.

Barker, an investigative reporter from New Mexico, opens his narrative in 1988. Fish are dying in a laboratory aquarium at NCSU's College of Veterinary Medicine, but researchers think they know the cause: a species of dinoflagellate, an ancient group of microscopic marine organisms. The most notorious dino is Gymnodium breve, which secretes a deadly toxin and is responsible for the red tides that occasionally ravage the world's coasts, killing millions of fish.
But examination shows that G. breve is not the culprit. Instead, the microscope reveals an unknown dinoflagellate. The lab director asks Dr. JoAnn Burkholder, an assistant professor of aquatic botany at the university, to help identify the mysterious dino. After examining water samples from the contaminated aquarium, Burkholder realizes she is dealing with a new species of dinoflagellate and confirms that it attacks live fish. Ominously, she finds the same deadly dino in water samples taken during a fish kill on the Pamlico River.
In 1992, Burkholder publishes her findings in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. Later, she and a colleague officially name the dino Pfiesteria piscicida - fish killer. But Burkholder's triumph has a unforeseen price. She and her lab assistant, Howard Glasgow, suffer a frightening illness, a neurological disorder that affects their short-term memories and alters their personalities.

Her illness prompts Burkholder to begin contacting people who frequent North Carolina's coastal rivers. She locates several people with symptoms resembling her own and becomes convinced that pfiesteria is a threat not only to fish but also to people. And she asks: Why pfiesteria? Why North Carolina? Why now?

In the spring of 1995, Burkholder gets a clue. The News & Observer runs an expose on North Carolina's fast-growing hog farming industry. She learns that North Carolina hogs are producing waste equivalent to that produced by 15 million people. Some of this waste - rich in nitrogen and phosphorous - runs off into rivers that are already overloaded with nutrients. Burkholder had long suspected that pfiesteria thrive in nutrient-rich waters, and the articles lead her to believe that hog waste might have unleashed the lethal dinoflagellate.
This, then, is the story Barker tells. It is, however, only part of the book. The author devotes countless pages to describing the obstacles Burkholder encounters: the jealous academics who hindered her research, the obstructionist bureaucrats and dilatory politicians who tried to cut off her funding and downplay her warnings. But that's not news; those folks are the same the world over. Pfiesteria, however, is news, and the anecdotes about bickering bureaucrats dilute the story.
The book's other weakness is more serious; it is a scientific mystery without the science. Nowhere is there a graph or a table. There are no statistics, little data and no bibliography. How then should one evaluate Barker's central thesis? How dangerous is pfiesteria to North Carolinians?
Barker's not sure; he ends the book by writing that "We still don't know whether pfiesteria will be a plague upon our waters of Old Testament proportions." Nevertheless, we can draw some conclusions.
First, as Barker makes abundantly clear, JoAnn Burkholder is a hero, and we should be grateful for the ground-breaking research she has done on pfiesteria. Second, pfiesteria exists in our coastal rivers, and it produces a toxin that kills fish and harms humans - it has already been found in the vicinity of more than 100 fish kills. Third, the waters of our rivers are hazardous to humans during pfiesteria-induced fish kills. Fourth, nutrients almost certainly increase pfiesteria activity. Finally, to reduce the threat pfiesteria poses to both humans and fish, we must cut down the nutrients we flush into our rivers, from every source - including hog waste. But, how much waste we must eliminate to be safe is not yet known.
Barker must be commended for drawing attention to the problems of our much-abused rivers and estuaries. He has not written a perfect book, but he has written an important one.
###Phillip Manning is a science and nature writer from Chapel Hill.