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Saturday, September 12, 2015

Latest military lab concerns involve plague bacteria, deadly viruses

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's most secure laboratories may have mislabeled, improperly stored and shipped samples of potentially infectious plague bacteria, which can cause several deadly forms of disease, USA TODAY has learned.

The Centers for Disease Control and Preventionflagged the practices after inspections last month at an Army lab in Maryland, one of the Pentagon's most secure labs. That helped prompt an emergency ban on research on all bioterror pathogens at nine laboratories run by the Pentagon, which was already reeling from revelations that another Army lab in Utah had mishandled anthrax samples for 10 years.

Army Secretary John McHugh ordered the research moratorium on Sept. 2, Pentagon officials say, out of an abundance of caution.

Moreover, officials point out that continuing testing has shown the suspect samples of plague contain a weakened version, and not the fully virulent form that was of concern to lab regulators at the CDC.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well if that's all we have to worry about we're doing just fine.

Anonymous said...

To me "may have" is a potential destroyer, "News" is when something has has happened and there is proof. "May have" is speculation of maybe it did or maybe it didn't. If after all the hoopla it is found there is no truth to the matter, someone/business/service has usually been smeared for life. Most people remember the "may haves" and tend to forget the :it never happened".

Anonymous said...

First of all of the government mentioned ghis. It happened. If it didn't happen why mention anything at all??

Anonymous said...

my GOD do not let the EPA get involved!

Steve said...

Dang, that Ebola got sent to Sierra Leone instead of the flu vaccinations!

Oh, well,we'll double check that stuff next time! LOL!