Carlyle Group Invests in Bioweapons?

A recent speech by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney posted on the ThugLifeArmy.com website makes some interesting allegations concerning the Carlyle Group and their connection to supposed bioweapons research companies. In it the Congresswoman states:

"Finally, I can’t leave this discussion without mentioning the Bush family portfolio and the fact that Carlyle is currently investing in bioweapons labs, satellite communications, and the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us against. Just dial Carlyle when the next disaster strikes."

A quick browse of Carlyle's holdings by industry doesn't reveal any in the "biowarfare" sector, so a quick google for "Carlyle Group" + "bioweapons" leads me to the company DynPort, a subsidiary of DynCorp. This company produces vaccines and runs biodefense labs. That is, they don't make weapons - they do things like develop bacteria that eat nasty chemicals like sarin gas.

The more interesting holding by far is the aerosol company Sprayway which they bought in 1998. Nice, covert, automatic aerosol deployment capabilities are the hallmark of any decent bioweapons project and if Carlyle Group was primarily a biotech company I might be concerned, but they own a fuckton of other companies too. While the possibility to develop bioweapons is there I doubt Carlyle is activily developing them, seeing as they are a financial company and not a weapons manufacturer.

What's the C. Diff ?

From MSNBC:

"First came stomach cramps, which left Christina Shultz doubled over and weeping in pain. Then came nausea and fatigue -- so overwhelming she couldn't get out of bed for days. Just when she thought things couldn't get worse, the nastiest diarrhea of her life hit -- repeatedly forcing her into the hospital.

Doctors finally discovered that the 35-year-old Hilliard, Ohio, woman had an intestinal bug that used to be found almost exclusively among older, sicker patients in hospitals and was usually easily cured with a dose of antibiotics. But after months of treatment, Shultz is still incapacitated.

"It's been a nightmare," said Shultz, a mother of two young children. "I just want my life back."

Shultz is one of a growing number of young, otherwise healthy Americans who are being stricken by the bacterial infection known as Clostridium difficile -- or C. diff -- which appears to be spreading rapidly around the country and causing unusually severe, sometimes fatal illness.

That is raising alarm among health officials, who are concerned that many cases may be misdiagnosed and are puzzled as to what is causing the microbe to become so much more common and dangerous.

"It's a new phenomenon. It's just emerging," said L. Clifford McDonald of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "We're very concerned. We know it's happening, but we're really not sure why it's happening or where this is going."

"There are no national statistics, but the number of infections in hospitals appears to have doubled from 2000 to 2003 and there may be as many as 500,000 cases each year, McDonald said. Other estimates put the number in the millions.

The emerging problem first gained attention when unusually large and serious outbreaks began turning up in other countries. In Canada, for example, Quebec health officials reported last year that perhaps 200 patients died in an outbreak involving at least 10 hospitals. Similar outbreaks were reported in England and the Netherlands.

After the CDC began receiving reports of severe cases among hospital patients in the United States -- and in people who had never, or just briefly, been hospitalized -- it launched an investigation.

In the Dec. 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the CDC reported that an analysis of 187 C. diff samples found that the unusually dangerous strain that caused the Quebec cases was also involved in outbreaks at eight health care facilities in Georgia, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon and Pennsylvania.

"This strain has somehow been able to get into hospitals widely distributed across the United States," said Dale N. Gerding of Loyola University in Chicago, who helped conduct the analysis. "We're not sure how."

A SuperStrain look to the future!

Wow! It's 2006, finally!!! January is here, which means the peak and drop-off of flu season, and H5N1 packs up and goes home for another 9 months. Well, caught completely with our pants down I think we did pretty good, as a globe. Next year we have more of the same to look forward to, but we'll also have some fairly good vaccines, bird cull programs, and tamiflu deployment operations in place.

While no doubt some sociopaths are slightly disappointed by the lack of viral carnage this winter, well - uh, screw you. Over 300,000 Pakistanis are dead from the earthquake and subsequent deaths due to exposure, hypothermia and illness brought on by malnutrition and freezing weather conditions because the homeless never got off the streets, the dead never got picked up off the streets, the medics never came, and the shelters were never built. Yes, there was a slight gesture of support from the international community, it did nothing, and downtown Kashmir is still rotting. (And hey, if that's not mast-fodd for you socios then I don't know what is!)

Anyway, I think it's befitting to take a look at the year to come with the highly-trained SuperStrain eye. Bioweapons councils, Dr. Germ's ghostwritten book, possibly a 1918 Spanish Flu/2005 H5N1 Recombo-pack and subsequent vaccine? I mean, don't get me wrong - I'm just a paranoid kid, but if I were heading up a Bioweapons program I'd want to do that straight away. There's probably already several strains in existence, it's only a matter of time before some gets put on the market... the black (plague) market, of course.

And of course, no Jan 1st blog-post would be complete without a look back into the year past! Instead of obsessing on all the really terrible things that happened, i'll obsess on the inane: the International Response to the Threat of a Global Influenza Epidemic (that's it's official name).

Vietnam sure killed a lot of birds, didn't they! For that I give them the gold star of making an interesting study for zooarchaeologists of the distant future. They'll know how many birds you guys killed, they'll know. Indonesia gets my sick-pidgeon award, for having the most lethal and ugly versions of H5N1 and doing basically nothing to try and stop it's spread. They're playing the game of "wait for China to develop a vaccine." Not a very smart move, seeing as China's response was to immunize all poultry in china. The apparent outcome of this was a few dozen ducks got shot full of some sugarwater. The real thing's coming this spring, right guys?

As for Eastern Europe, the front was a total snoozefest. Did anything even get to Hungary? Either the virus isn't very pathogenic or those handsome Turks wearing the masks did their job. Thanks, boys in blue!

And finally the US, which did everything in it's power to stop Bird Flu: by publishing a 17-page report on the threat via the DHS. Watch out world, this tiger gives very nasty papercuts! Well, do be fair, we do have our hands a little full - it is kind of hard being the world's police and the world's doctor. We're only one anthropomorphized nation-state!

Allright folks, keep stockpiling those antivirals, and keep watching the skies!!!

H5N1 Death Toll Climbs To 69

From CIDRAP:

"Dec 7, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed two more deaths from avian influenza, one in China and one in Indonesia, bringing the global total to 135 cases and 69 deaths in nearly 2 years.

Indonesia had already announced that the Nov 25 death of a 25-year-old woman from Tangerang was due to the H5N1 virus, so the WHO's announcement on Tuesday was confirmation of that diagnosis.

In addition, a 10-year-old girl from the south China province of Guangxi is hospitalized with H5N1 flu, the WHO said today. The girl developed a fever and cough on Nov 23. Health authorities are investigating to determine how she contracted the illness. Hers is the 4th human case of illness announced by China to date.

Meanwhile, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) announced yesterday that an 8-month-old baby in Indonesia has tested positive for H5N1 infection. The story cited a spokesman at the Sulianti Soroso hospital in Jakarta as saying preliminary tests were positive for exposure to the virus.

The baby boy, from North Jakarta, was ill for 5 days before being placed in isolation on Sunday, ABC said in an online story yesterday."

H-2-H Bird Flu In Thailand Too!

It appears as though a strain of H5N1 being transmitted human-to-human is surfacing in Thailand as well as Indonesia.

Enflu writes:

"The two latest confirmed cases of human bird flu in Thailand might be human-to-human transmissions, a senior health official has said.

Dr Charoen Chuchottaworn, a bird-flu expert at the Public Health Ministry’s Department of Medical Services, said doctors concluded after reviewing the history of the past two cases that both victims presented very mild symptoms of avian influenza and neither had any physical contact with chickens or birds.

One of the victims was a boy in Bangkok and the other was an 18-year-old man from Nonthaburi province, The Nation newspaper reported Friday."

Jakarta is full of Bird Flu!

It's pretty much agreed apon that Jakarta is already in an epidemic H5N1 emergency, with several new cases being reported daily and no signs of stopping. It appears as though the dreaded mutation has occured, although many are hesitant to make the claim.

This could be it...

Deadly Bacteria Resistant to Antibiotics Spreads

From CNN:

"A deadly bacterial illness commonly seen in people on antibiotics appears to be growing more common -- even in patients not taking such drugs, according to a report published Thursday in a federal health journal.

In another article in the New England Journal of Medicine, health officials said samples of the same bacterium taken from eight U.S. hospitals show it is mutating to become even more resistant to antibiotics.

"I don't want to scare people away from using antibiotics. ... But it's concerning, and we need to respond," said Dr. L. Clifford McDonald, an author of both articles and an epidemiologist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Hospitals need to be conducting surveillance and implementing control measures. And all of us need to realize the risk of antibiotic use may be increasing" as the bacteria continue to mutate, McDonald said.

The bacterium is Clostridium difficile, also known as C-diff. The germ is becoming a regular menace in hospitals and nursing homes, and last year it was blamed for 100 deaths over 18 months at a hospital in Quebec, Canada.

"What exactly has made C-diff act up right now, we don't know," McDonald said."

Thailand Bird Flu Cases May be Human-Transmitted

Latest bird-flu cases in Thailand might be human-to-human transmission:

"BANGKOK, Dec. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- The two latest confirmed cases of human bird flu in Thailand might be human-to-human transmissions, a senior health official has said.

Dr Charoen Chuchottaworn, a bird-flu expert at the Public Health Ministry's Department of Medical Services, said doctors concluded after reviewing the history of the past two cases that both victims presented very mild symptoms of avian influenza and neither had any physical contact with chickens or birds.

One of the victims was a boy in Bangkok and the other was an 18-year-old man from Nonthaburi province, The Nation newspaper reported Friday.

This left doctors no clues as to where the patients became infected with the H5N1 virus and showed that the avian influenza had moved from causing severe human infection to milder cases."