Shock Report: U.S. Military Misplaced Samples of Black Plague and Other Deadly Pathogens
By Mac Slavo
What could possibly go wrong when you mix deadly pathogens with inept government bureaucracy?Well don’t look now, but the DoD is out warning that the
army might have also mishandled samples of the black plague which isn’t
known to be dangerous unless you count the time it wiped out 60% of
Europe’s entire population. Here’s more from CNN:
The U.S. Department of Defense is looking into possible
mishandling of bubonic plague and equine encephalitis samples at its
laboratories, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday.
The new inquiry is part of an investigation into the mishandling
of anthrax at Department of Defense labs, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook
said.
The department hasn’t determined whether samples containing
plague bacteria and specimens of the deadly virus were shipped from its
labs, Cook said.
The latest investigation started after CDC inspectors found a
sample of the plague in a freezer outside of a containment area on
August 17 at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland, Cook
said.
Investigators are working to determine whether the sample posed
an “infectious threat,” Cook said. Army tests found it was not
infectious.
“That’s the scientific work that’s being done at this particular
time, determining exactly what happened there, and whether or not …
there was mislabeling,” he said.
Yersinia pestis, the same type of bacterium that was responsible
for the plague pandemic that wiped out 60% of the European population
between the 14th and 17th centuries, maintains a foothold in the United
States and around the globe in rodents and the fleas that live on them.
Today, the infections are treatable with antibiotics if they’re
caught early enough. Since 1970, there have been anywhere from a few to a
few dozen cases of plague every year in the United States, most of them
occurring in Western states, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
Yes, only “a few to a few dozen cases of plague” per year, but that
bubonic dearth is nothing the US military can’t fix with a few
“mislabed” samples and a FedEx account.
