Shiga-boom Shiga-boom

Shiga toxin-producing (Stx) O104:H4 killer E.coli strain:

Blame Japan

“A private biotechnology company used their DNA scanning algorithms to determine that E.coli O104 has genomic signatures specific [to]..previously found..strains of the 1996 outbreak in Sakai City, Japan… 103 pieces among the nearly one million genome fragments of the E.coli O104 are also present in phages of enterohemorrhagic E.coli isolated in 1996 in Japan… Orion Integrated Biosciences Inc. has developed this capability to scan unknown DNA fragments and point to their most likely source. The company is funded by the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and the National Institutes of Health to apply this technology for biodefense purposes.” http://www.orionbiosciences.com/news/ORION-PR-June-05-11.pdf

…back in 1996…

“The Japanese..learned the hard way, 15 years ago, when that health-conscious society was gripped by what may be history’s worst outbreak of E.coli O157:H7. The epidemic sickened thousands, most of them children, and killed at least 12. It also showed critical weaknesses in Japan’s public health system –problems that the government spent years trying to correct. Up to that time, E.coli O157:H7 was virtually unknown in Japan… That all changed in mid-July when health officials in Sakai City, a major port city with a population near a million, received reports… Within a week, thousands were ill, hundreds hospitalized, some with hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), requiring kidney dialysis. And some were dying… Meanwhile, the epidemic seemed to be expanding… It was terrible timing. A few years earlier, Japan’s booming economy collapsed. Then, in 1995, an earthquake flattened the city of Kobe, not far from Sakai City. A few months later, terrorists [Aum Shinrikyo ‘yoga’ cult] released deadly sarin gas… Eventually the outbreak sickened at least 9,441 people…” http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/01/sprouts-and-historys-worst-outbreak/ A study paper published in 2002 reports the number of infection cases as 17,877: http://aac.asm.org/cgi/content/full/46/11/3478

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But there’s always more to the story. Food Safety News missed reporting on the more unique features of Japan’s 1996 outbreak, which was documented as 22 separate outbreaks between May and October (there were a total of 7 E.coli outbreaks in the previous five years): “In July..a large outbreak of exclusively Stx-1 producingE.coli 0118:H2 occurred in a junior highschool in Komatsu city. This appears to be the first report in the world of clinical infection caused by this organism… 241 [students and staff] were symptomatic… Although Stx-producing E.coli was not isolated from the samples of food and water, it was isolated from a dipper… No subjects developed infection at 11 other schools that had served the same..foods… the source of the primary infection was not identified..” One month after that another type of E.coli, O26:H11, that also anomalously produced only the Stx-1 variant of shiga-toxin (again a world’s first), caused a small outbreak. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/103/1/e2.full

Evidently, something very unusual was going on.

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Stx1 is now a promising treatment for breast cancer: [2009] “The high specificity and apoptosis-inducing properties of verotoxin-1 indicates that the toxin potentially may be used for treatment of  Gb3-expressing breast cancer….Gb3 expression was detected in the vascular endothelial cells of..tumor specimens…” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2650710/ >>>Gb3 is the glycolipid cell-surface receptor for Stx.

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    What does not seem to have been recorded in the huge wave of Japan’s pathogenic E.coli that year was the presence of O104 E.coli.  The earliest mention of an outbreak of an O104 strain anywhere that turns up in the literature happened in Montana:  “During February-March 1994…Eleven confirmed and seven suspected case-patients were identified..” with a “rare serotype E.coli O104:H21 that produced Shiga-like toxin II” (Stx2-like, or SLTII) http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/wk/mm4427.pdf

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News from June 23 put the E.coli toll in Germany at 3,533; 39 deaths, 810 cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and 2, 684 less acute cases. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/23/news/la-heb-ecoli-strain-pathogen-20110623; a same day report notes 5 confirmed cases in the U.S. of a “matching strain” and one suspected case resulting in death. The five were recent visitors to Germany: http://www.ecoliblog.com/e-coli-outbreaks/german-e-coli-outbreak-linked-to-massachusetts-michigan-wisconsin-north-carolina-and-arizona/ [updated June 30 to over 4,200 cases, 50 deaths, 898 HUS]

Something in the air?

“There seems to be little or no published work on the inhalation toxicity of Shiga toxin. However, there are often indirect effects on the lungs when the toxin is taken in as a food contaminant.” http://www.cbwinfo.com/Biological/Toxins/Verotox.html; “E.coli can grow in the air, using oxygen as a terminal electron acceptor..” http://www.ecoliblog.com/e-coli-watch/what-is-e-coli-1/

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 “Ricin and Shiga toxin share a unique mode of action, causing irreversible damage to host ribosomal RNA. Our understanding of how these bioterror agents cause tissue damage is incomplete… the mechanism(s) by which these signal transduction pathways are stimulated will be assessed using Shiga toxin mutants and isolated Shiga toxin subunits.” [grant award to Tufts Medical Center by U.S. Dept of HHS] http://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm?projectnumber=5R01AI059509-04

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   Food and water are always the assumed vectors for E.coli contamination but if lung ‘effects’ from ingestion of the more toxic (HUS-causing) particle, Stx2, are indistinguishable from inhaled Shiga toxin then the Lords of the Air could whip up another perfect storm and blame it on ‘behavior’. The data on Stx (shiga-toxin) inhalation is currently similar to, and perhaps less than, the knowledge-ceiling of anthrax before the post 9-11 attack, given that no aerosol attack of Stx2 has ever happened before. At least no registered terror groups have ever launched a shiga toxin attack, but in case they do…well, the establishment looks almost prepared. Real time experience with countermeasures afforded by this new opportunity should be a good lesson, after all, the outbreak is erupting under the watchful eye of major defense contractors.

Don’t miss this: http://thirteenthmonkey.blogspot.com/2011/06/ecoli-human-to-human-transmission.html

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The new O104 strain is “not new” according to the CDC and “There is no reason to think that this strain was modified intentionally… The combination of Shiga toxin and enteroaggregative features has been seen before; 1) in E.coli O104 identified in Europe and Asia in the last decade, and 2) in a different strain of E.coli that caused a small outbreak in Europe in the 1990s. While this combination is uncommon, it is not new.” http://www.cdc.gov/nczved/divisions/dfbmd/diseases/ecoli_o157h7/index.html#difference

   How new does new have to be? Toxic E.coli is new and became a reportable pathogen in 1982. Speculation about its emergence suggests it may have appeared in the 1950s. Looking at the volume of studies and papers on toxic E.coli generated at Harvard, for example, proves just how new the science is. There is nothing before 1997 and presumably no public funding either. Students and staff just don’t work on ‘unimportant’ diseases. http://connects.catalyst.harvard.edu/profiles/profile/concept/Escherichia+coli+O157

To wit : [2001] “Shiga toxin-producing E.coli (STEC) such as E.coli O157:H7 are important emerging pathogens in the United States… The genes encoding these potent toxins are present on viral particles known as bacteriophages… treating them with certain antibiotics leads to an increase in toxin expression. The antibiotics also lead to increased movement of the viruses…” http://www.reeis.usda.gov/web/crisprojectpages/192539.html; that’s called a bacterial “SOS” response, and a warning not to self-medicate with antibiotics –read the Colloidal Silver post too;  natural garlic ‘allicin’ has shown to be effective against shiga toxin bacteria.

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Current CDC estimates for Stx-producing E.coli infections in the U.S. stand at 186,000 cases annually http://www.marlerblog.com/lawyer-oped/non-o157-e-coli-in-beef—how-does-fsis-justify-it/; up from approx. 110,000 annually a decade ago.

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Where did  Shiga toxin come from?

   It was first isolated from an E.coli-like bacterium in 1896 Japan, and named Shigella for its discoverer, Kiyoshi Shiga. Four types of Shigella bacteria, all causes of dysentery (Shigellosis), have been characterized: Shigella dysenteriae, Shigella flexneri, Shigella boydii and Shigella sonnei, the most complex of which is Shigella flexneri, isolated by Simon Flexner c.1900 in the Philippines. Among the four types, S.flexneri toxin induced neurological damage and most often led to kidney failure and death. Flexner soon became the founding director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (RIMR) in New York. http://polioforever.wordpress.com/the-rockefeller-institute/

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The shiga toxin that is spreading in E.coli nowadays is carried by the lambda** phage, a viral particle and the most particularly interesting-to-science component of E.coli bacteria that has opened the secrets of genetic transference. Lambda phage was discovered by Esther Zimmer Lederberg, the wife of Joshua Lederberg, in 1950. http://www.estherlederberg.com/LambdaP.html

**”Lambda..is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet…related to..the Cyrillic letter ‘El’..  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda

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 …”If the devil were to work overtime in a plot to confound scientists in their quest for a causative agent to a serious disease of unknown origin, it is doubtful whether he could have come up with anything better than the phage…”

http://drbroxmeyer.netfirms.com/001pdfBIRDFLUEDITORIALPUBLISHED.pdf; quoted in the ‘bacteriophage’ pages of the INFLUENZA Special section https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/bacteriophage-ii/

 Head I        Head II

Joshua Lederberg, a Rockefeller University president and National Science administrator, is cited in this blog as the editor of a collected genetics publication about mutation: https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/mutation/ ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Lederberg  In 1946, Joshua Lederberg codiscovered bacterial conjugation, the process credited to transferring Shiga toxins to E.coli.  He was also the principal coordinator of the first “artificial intelligence” project applied to chemobiology – the mid-60s DENDRAL super-computer at Stanford which set the groundwork for current Nano-Cogno-Bio-Information systems that plot “beyond conception” formulas for artificial life creation. Lederberg styled himself as an exobiologist. http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/BB/Views/Exhibit/narrative/ai.html

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“From 1979 to the present, Lederberg has been a Trustee of the Sackler Medical School at Tel-Aviv University, and, since 1990, has been a Beverly Sackler Foundation Scholar at Rockefeller University. In 1994, he headed the Defense Department Task Force on Persian Gulf War Health Effects, “which concludes that there is insufficient epidemiological evidence for a coherent Gulf War
Syndrome.” http://www.smokershistory.com/Lederber.htm

“..as chairman of the..Task Force on Persian Gulf War Health Effects.. Lederberg was also on the board of directors of the American Type Culture Collection, or ATCC…[that] made 70 government-approved shipments of anthrax..to Iraqi scientists..” http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/lederber.html

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“Bacteriophage lambda has been used as a host vector for [the] generation of genomic..libraries for quite some time; ..generated primarily because of the phage particles’ ability to efficiency infect bacteria in vitro [lab dish]. Some research workers prefer to use the original lambda as a vector while others..like to propagate the gene fragments in a cosmid vector.” http://www.biocompare.com/Articles/ProductReview/867/Packagene-Lambda-DNA-Packaging-System-From-Promega.html

   The link below is a patent that promises a lambda vector system that can deliver recombinant DNA into the mitochondria of mammalian cells http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7741112.html; the lambda “taxi” can be virtually stripped of its own genetic material and used to import any select package of genes to almost any cell of choice, including genes that code for specific “receptors” to a range of viruses. These techniques offer the treatment paradigm of “virotherapy”, where viruses deliver genetic ‘correction’ to targeted cells.

    For a long time, antibiotics served as “tracers” in recombination studies by inducing resistance in the objects of study which could thrive and be isolated from cultures that were otherwise poisoned by an antibiotic– thus, not only do cellular entities accumulate antibiotic resistance as a type of mutation, but so do their interchangeable parts,  compounding their antibiotic-resistance profiles. For example, a citation from a Finnish study covering infections reported 1990 to 2000 notes E.coli “sensitivity to 12 antimicrobial agents.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/PMC88246 .  State-of-the-art recombination genetics is readily taking up “marker” protein genes like the green fluorescent protein (gfp) from jellyfish, ostensibly as a safer alternative and infinitely fascinating as another paradigm in transgenetics. Still, antibiotics are very useful genetic expression ‘promoters’ and continue to be used in bioengineering.

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The toxin-making parts of lambda-bearing genomes have all been isolated and described but scientists have yet to realize the fullness of biochemical conditions that cause the toxin genes to turn on and ‘express’. They do know that “the bacteriophage life cycle is the dominant, if not the only, important factor involved in stx2 expression.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/PMC95105   Why would (some) scientists want to turn on the deadly shiga toxin-producing mechanism of the genes? There are reasons far beyond the call of medicine. Genetic engineers have very sophisticated needs in their search for knowledge and limited technologies and resources with which to explore them. I imagine there’s nothing quite as effective as handing a major public health threat over to a technically advanced society in order to get some help. The shiga toxin components of genes have enormously useful properties in the genetics industry.

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   Here’s a thought about weaponeering: “The [Stx] protein is robust, stable, relatively easy to manufacture and has been the subject of intense research over many years…This [body of] information..may also be used to develop novel variants of greater effectiveness. The protein does not act through the skin, and effective protection can probably be obtained with a gas mask with activated charcoal filters.” http://www.cbwinfo.com/Biological/Toxins/Verotox.html

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                                                                     CHANGE AGENTS

E.coli research has been a long-standing field of study. ..”The bacterium Escherichia coli is truly the workhorse of biology. Originally isolated in 1922 from a diphtheria patient, the strain of E.coli [completely and recently] sequenced  was used in 1945 in the discovery of spontaneous gene transfer. The strain, known as K-12, was universally adopted for fundamental work in biochemistry, genetics and physiology…E.coli is not the first bacterial genome to be sequenced, but with more than 4.6 million bases, it is the largest and possibly most important… The K-12 strain of E.coli is not pathogenic but closely related strains are toxic.” http://accessexcellence.org/WN/SUA11/ecoli997.php .  Mentioned earlier in “Transgenic Round-up”, recombinant DNA techniques were perfected by the 1970s with E.coli. See the work of Paul Berg and Maxine Singer.

   In the last decade E.coli research has opened a biotechnology platform for wholly new ‘life’ creations with artificial amino acids:

[2001] “Expanding the Genetic Code of Escherichia coli” [from the Scripps Research Institute laboratory of Peter Schultz and Salk Institute fellow Lei Wang] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/292/5516/498.abstract

“..We have evolved [a bioactive agent]..that makes possible the in vivo incorporation of [an artificial synthetic amino acid] into proteins in Escherichia coli… This unnatural amino acid was incorporated with high translational efficiency and fidelity.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.gov/pmc/articles/PMC123203/

“Augmenting proteins with unnatural amino acids could make existing proteins more potent in their actions, or even endow them with entirely new properties that might be useful for industry or medicine. Dr. Schultz’s [E.coli] bacteria, for example, look and act entirely like normal creatures until they are placed in contact with a certain sort of poison. Then, because they are producing an unnatural protein, they survive while all the others die.” http://www.economist.com/node/987697?story_id=987697

“..multiple unnatural amino acids can be added to the genetic code of a single modified organism.”  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/05/040512040149.htm

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   Raising the ‘possibilities of meaning’ in E.coli outbreaks occurring after 2004, when the ‘new amino’ insertion techniques became a commodious reality, deserve special attention. Two considerations come to mind; that the E.coli are stealthily vectoring artificial genes and the shiga toxin subunits are installing genetic controls: one vector with multi-use potential. It will take months and years for published study material on the current outbreak strain to make it into the public sphere, even then, the likelihood that new amino acids are factored into standard tests is slim-to-none. For the time being, only the upper echelon labs will have the capacity to identify the rogue material. General researchers fully understand that mutant strains present unknowns which can remain unknown or evade definition for years. If such a probability exists at present, it’s a secret experiment that will bear fruit for its instigators who have in their labs a description of ideal-sounding binary bioweapons. The close structural relationship and gene-swapping properties of E.coli and related “homologous” phage is a biological SureThing, spreading naturally wherever it is
introduced (albeit slowly unless unnaturally assisted).  Stx-producing enterohemorrhagic E.coli (STEC) is also a sure thing– sure to drive victims to seek emergency medical care. There’s going to be lots of samples, lots of DNA, and probable new toxic mutants.

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“Physicians know not to prescribe antibiotics for O157 infections because the sudden killing of the bacteria can release HUS[hemolytic uremic syndrome]-inducing and potentially deadly amounts of Shiga toxin… that fact could have created one major problem in the early development of the [May 2011] outbreak: It is likely that German hospitals were only screening the first enterohemorrhagic E.coli symptoms for O157 and not O104, which no one would have suspected… ‘In this case, [said Jorge Giron], because it wasn’t O157, the physicians might have thought it was okay to give antibiotics, not knowing that O104 would produce the Shiga toxin… This potential misunderstanding over antibiotics might at least partially explain the high rate of HUS among the ill’ ” http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/4763/o104h4-may-change-how-we-deal-with-e-coli >>It might because somehow the unprecedented rate of HUS needs explaining. Previous toxic E.coli outbreaks have produced a rate of HUS around 3-6%, now trending upwards to 10%.  But just as likely to happen only moreso among skilled physicians who know they don’t have O157 on their hands is to give no antibiotics and allow the normally self-limiting infection to run its course– this is especially plausible with adult patients who subsequently made up the majority cases of HUS.  The 1996 Komatsu Japan Stx1 school outbreak (non-O157), linked above, is an example of infected patients receiving no antibiotics (approx. half) and resolving their infections equally well and sometimes better. Mr. Giron’s suggestion just doesn’t fly. The more I look at the German “Egyptian sprout” outbreak, the stranger it gets in comparison to other documented outbreaks. I’m considering the cofactor with radioactive fallout based on past anthrax episodes as an opportune moment-in-time, so I’ve set up a link with microbe-hunting results and I’m adding in the accumulating news.

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“Hemolytic uremic syndrome is a severe, life-threatening complication of an E.coli..infection that was first described in 1955… The Shiga toxin triggers a complex cascade of changes in the blood..and there is disruption of the inherent clot-breaking mechanisms… About ten percent of individuals with [toxic] E.coli..infections (mostly young children) goes on to develop Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome.” http://www.marlerblog.com/legal-cases/three-suffering-kidney-failure-hus-from-alabama-e-coli-poisoning/; “The principle organ affected in STEC-mediated HUS is the kidney… The severity of renal injury varies in degree from urinary abnormalities such as hematuria and proteinuria to acute renal failure… The second most important organ affected in the disease is the brain… more serious cerebral complications, including seizures, cortical blindness, and thrombotic strokes, occur in 5 to 10% of patients… A similar percentage of patients may develop life-threatening cardiopulmonary sequelae, including adult [acute] respiratory distress syndrome [ARDS], congestive heart failure and myocarditis. The occurrance of neurological and cardiovascular complications is associated with more severe STEC-induced HUS and a higher risk of mortality during the acute illness. Other organs that are frequently involved in STEC-induced HUS are the endocrine and exocrine pancreas, liver, gall bladder, gastrointestinal tract, and skin. It is evident that STEC-induced HUS is a systemic illness potentially affecting every organ throughout the body.” http://cmr.asm.org/cgi/content/full/17/4/926

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“…the outbreak originating in Germany shows 87% of those hit by the disease were women over the age of 20… the German outbreak..displayed ‘several intriguing microbiological characteristics’ and ‘several novel epidemiological and clinical features’..[that] ‘differed remarkably’ from previously described STEC/VTEC infections… Among the ‘completely unexpected’ features was the development of severe neurological symptoms in half of patients within 3 to 10 days of being admitted to hospital..” http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/kfojidqlsney/rss2/

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                                                No treatment for humans — vaccines for cows

More information about Shiga toxin E. coli, Alexion* Pharmaceuticals Inc. (et.al.) and the bioweapon potential of Stx is here  http://citizen2009.wordpress.com/e-coli/ (page in progress) and keep this in mind:

“Biotechnology now allows us to genetically engineer animals so that they produce proteins that are human pharmaceuticals. For certain drugs that are difficult to produce using existing methods or are needed in large quantities, production in GE animals offers the most efficient and practical solution. In the case of fighting infectious diseases, GE animal-made antibodies can be produced from animals that have had the human antibody genes transferred to them. These animals can then be vaccinated against human diseases and antibodies can be collected from their blood and used for treating diseases in humans. For example, antibodies can treat infections that are resistant to antibiotics.” http://www.bio.org/foodag/animals/GE_An_Pharm_0908.pdf

“On March 13, 2009, the USDA granted a conditional license for a new tool in the battle against foodborne illness –a vaccine for cows to prevent infection with E.coli bacteria… Cattle themselves do not experience illness from the bacteria. ” http://www.dmaonline.org/CE/food_protection/2009_05.shtml

>>>cattle immunity to STEC  no longer seems to be true –another significant round of ‘firsts’ in 1996 involves cattle infections.

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   Alexion Antibody Technologies was invited to give Congress a very exclusive pitch for Project BioShield funds in 2003, before approval of the program, and now the German health authorities have approved of Alexion running clinical drug trials on the latest E.coli victims. Alexion is giving away an ultra-expensive drug in exchange for access to patients.

*The nuclear power company UniStar bought Alexion Pharmaceuticals’ property in 2007; http://maryland.realestaterama.com/2007/12/19/unistar-properties-defies-slow-real-estate-market-with-purchase-of-311-million-bioscience-facility-ID041.html; does the relationship get cozier? “Arch Chemicals” also shares the site. There must be some advantage in having “the world’s largest owner and operator of nuclear energy facilities” as a landlord. http://unistarnuclear.com/; UniStar was taken over in 2010 by Electricite de France (EdF). “Both EdF and Areva are backed by the French state.” http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/C_EdF_takes_control_of_Unistar_2710101.html

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[Feb 2011] Alexion Chairman Max Link sold 47,367 shares, valued at $95 per share… “he retains 92,898 shares… Dr. Link has been the company chairman since December 2002..[and was] formerly CEO of Corange, the parent company of Boehringer Mannheim Therapeutics..[also] formerly the Chairman and CEO of Sandoz Pharma, Ltd.”…”Ann M. Veneman was appointed to Alexion’s Board..previously she served as Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)”..[from 2005-2010, after resigning her GWBush appointment as Secretary of Agriculture]
http://newyork.citybizlist.com/18/2011/2/25/Chairman-Max-Link-Sells-4.5M-in-Alexion-Shares–cbl.aspx;

Dr. Max Link also became Chairman of Protein Design Labs Inc.[Fremont,CA] in 2004, when the developer of antibody drugs accrued major revenues from products like Avastin (licensed to Roche subsidiary Genentech): “Avastin is a recombinant humanized monoclonal IgG1 antibody..of mouse origin..produced in a Chinese hamster ovary..” approved in 2004 for colorectal cancer treatment. http://www.discoverymedicine.com/Benjamin-Yang/2009/06/17/drug-profile-avastin

 “Ms. Veneman’s training and experience as a corporate lawyer for agribusiness do not qualify her for the substantial task of leading the agency most responsible for the rights of children worldwide. There is no evidence in her tenure as U.S. secretary of agriculture, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, or deputy undersecretary for international affairs of the USDA of her interest in the world’s children or their health and well-being.” http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ann_Veneman

   In addition to Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Veneman joined the Board of Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage producer: “Veneman took the post despite pleas from nutrition advocates who urged her not to lend her imprimatur to the company’s marketing of breast milk substitutes” http://www.newsok.com/ex-unicef-head-joins-nestle-board-despite-protests/article/feed/250068?custom_click=pod_headline_europe; the best preventive to Stx-producing E.coli in children is, naturally, breast milk. In Europe and the U.S., 1971 marked an all-time-low in breast-feeding when only 1% of new mothers chose to persist in natural feeding past their ‘hospital stay’. The successful War on Milk rages on…

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                                                                Deadlier Threshold for Stx

Researchers recently learned that Stx genes multiply exponentially faster than their E.coli hosts:

 [2007] “Demonstration of the ability of [ Stx phage] to form multiple lysogens has two potentially serious impacts. First, multiple integrated prophages will drive the evolution of bacterial pathogens as novel Stx-phages emerge following intracellular mutation/recombination events. Second, multiple copies of the Stx gene may lead to an increase in toxin production and consequently increased virulence…. there is considerable scope for Stx integration directed by as yet uncharacterized factors… Clearly, the occurence of multiple lysogens in a single host [cell] is likely to enhance the evolution and dissemination of bacteriophage-encoded genes throughout bacterial populations, with particular applied relevance for Stx-phages responsible for increasing the pathogenic potential of Escherichia coli hosts.”  http://mic.sgmjournals.org/content/153/12/4098.full

SHIGA-BOOM!

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E.coli cleans up nuclear waste: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/e-coli-can-be-used-to-clean-up-nuclear-waste.php

Mysterious Meltdowns

http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/reactorlid.jpg

“…reactor 4 appears to have been blown to pieces as seen in this classified photo The yellow dome which should be sitting on top of reactor 4 can be clearly seen on the wrong side of the containment building. This type of destruction is is indicative of hard weaponry in use; a hydrogen air mix will not do that. Reactors are not made out of tinfoil. On top of this, there was no potential for
an explosion at reactor 4 at all, it had been defueled. SO WHAT, PRAY TELL, BLEW
IT APART? That’s the dirty question no one is asking – how did that happen?”http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/fukushima.html

–just to clear something up, the yellow lid was not blown sideways into place. I expect, if it is a reactor lid,  it’s in its normal position for defueling from other pictures I’ve seen of this reactor type.  There has to be a limit on how much sabotage could have occurred at Fukushima given the major psy-op taking place which must include the radiation releases. At the moment I don’t have any good information about that, just a word: perception.

There are some people finding cause to celebrate:

Message from Barbara Marx Hubbard

“Dearly Beloved Conscious Evolutionaries,

   “As we suffer through the mounting crises in Japan, Libya, the Middle East, and the whole world, it is vital that we place the crises in the context of evolutionary drivers toward what is being born through us. For example, members of the Goi Peace Foundation in Japan sent out a letter to many of us saying that they have decided to invite visionaries, scientists, artists and environmentalists from all over the world to help build a New City that represents a New Civilization. As you know, we have known that ‘Our Crisis is a Birth’. Now I feel the hour of birth is near… I am really thrilled to invite you to enroll in my Agents of Conscious Evolution Training (ACE).. or those who want to embody the principles and practices of conscious evolution and to help form global teams to catalyze the Birth Day celebration on December 22, 2012. Never before..could such an opportunity be offered to us.” http://www.barbaramarxhubbard.com/site/blog/?m=201103

Marx Hubbard had a years-long collaborative partnership with Jonas Salk, ‘spiritualizing’ his concepts of metabiology which carries on as a variety of organizations and projects such as the “Good Ancestor Principle” conference that includes other Salk collaborators and futurists. Vernor Vinge, recently mentioned in TIME magazine, is one of those people. http://www.upliftacademy.org/wiki/index.php?title=GAP2009

Quoting TIME: “The word singularity is borrowed from astrophysics: it refers to a point in space-time –for example, inside a black hole– at which the rules of ordinary physics do not apply. In the 1980s the science-fiction novelist Vernor Vinge attached it to Good’s intelligence-explosion scenario. At a NASA symposium in 1993, Vinge announced that ‘within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create super-human intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.” http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2048138,00.html

Feb.21, 2011, Cover “2045, The Year Man Becomes Immortal” : 2012 to 2045 is 33 years of symbolic fruition (maturity, mastery, etc). What I suppose from playing around with dates and numbers is a heavy cryptic relationship with the meltdown scenario and the Singularity expressed by the Time article, or put in other words, this is the trigger for total bioremediation which will take a full generational course of maturation to complete –a techno-generation. In principle, we’re being served an eviction notice with a grace period, perhaps, to squat in our own flesh until the robocops come.

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   Going back to the roots, atomic weapons were conceived to be the greatest global threat to humanity –the World War II  “race for the bomb” was a hoax, begun in the 1920s– forcing One Worldism through the ultimate fear of nuclear annihilation. There is virtually no limit to the number of examples that can be drawn to illustrate this reality.  Each step on the way is instructive to comprehending the means of nuclear blackmail. But the component of bioterror, and the medical programs that co-operated with nuclear proliferation, have passed us by. We conveniently believe that flu, polio, AIDS, cancers and many more diseases are viral contagions that can be blamed on social behaviors. It goes unadvertized that flu and polio (renamed and relabeled) are historic radiation illnesses and the vaccines and viruses created in their name have been the means by which the military-medical complex is altering the human genetic code. I believe that “species transformation” is the most precious goal of one-worlders on whatever level their members function, be they “right”, “left”, “libertarian”, “anti-nuclear”, “green”, “peace and justice” or any major politicized movement that involves interacting platforms. The great deception has been to steadily march us toward the same end –our own– no matter which humanitarian efforts we individually support. These are not vague notions but the relentless application of modern economics that pits states (governments and corporations) against people. When such entities are imbued with super-intelligence, or rapacious super-self-interest, they’ll be having us for breakfast as we circulate to the margins of their systems (much as they do now) only with an added peculiar quality of auto-incarceration. Sickness, or the pursuit of wellness, is a proven economic stimulus for the exchange of products and services among the entities.

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   It’s not possible to reckon the radiation threat from Fukushima due to obstructions of information, but if I had to guess on the trend, I’d say that the northern hemisphere has doubled its “background” without accounting for regional hotspots. Whole-body irradiation translates directly to immunosuppression.

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..”TEPCO Finally Admits Stabilizing Reactors by 2012 Impossible” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25058

“Fukushima escalates to worse-case possibility — Japan says that nuclear fuel in three reactors has possibly melted through the pressure vessels and accumulated in the outer containment vessels… this melt-through is far worse than a core meltdown and the worst possibility in a nuclear accident…” http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3239276.htm

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“The pressure vessel of the No. 1 reactor is now believed to have suffered damage just five hours after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, contrary to an estimation released by Tepco, which estimated the failure at 15 hours later.  Melt-downs of the fuel in the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors followed over the following days with the molten fuel collecting at the bottom of the pressur vessels before burning through and into the external steel containment vessels.” http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/06/nuclear-fuel-has-melted-through-base-of.html

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Yoichi Shimatsu: “On the first day of the Fukushima disaster, Tepco reported that reactors 1, 2 and 6 were operating at the time of the quake and tsunami, and that the other 3 reactors were empty of fuel rods for periodic maintenance… Then reactor 3 blows and burns, and without any correction to the first report, Tepco then says 1, 2 and 3 were operating and the others were down… Then reactor 4 building catches on fire… The fire is so extreme (for depleted uranium) that the reactor is damaged… Next, reactors 4 and 5 are found to be generating hydrogen gas… The presence of a gas build-up indicates that these two reactors contain fuel rods, contrary to Tepco claims. This means reactors 4 and 5 had recently conducted runs or were being prepared for operations of an undetermined (and unreported) nature.

   The other technical mystery is that Tepco engineers suggested that the electric power inside the plant was knocked out by something other than the tsunami. I have pointed to this possibility early on, that the quake and control disruptions could have made the control computers vulnerable to the Stuxnet virus.

   The other possibility to consider is that a high-power electromagnetic event (for example a sudden burst of energy from the release of ionized gases from the de-magnetized laser-plasma process) could have knocked out all electrical systems, similar to how a neutron bomb would incapacitate [a] power system. Very little of this information was recorded in..reports…” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24364

…”The bloom of irradiated seawater across the Pacific comprises another piece of the puzzle because its underground source is untraceable (or, perhaps, unmentionable)” http://newamericanmedia.org/2011/04/is-japans-elite-hiding-a-weapons-program-inside-nuclear-plants.php

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 In spite of this news, there are locals in Japan who are not leaving the evacuation zone. Soma is about 20 miles up the coast from the Daiichi plant, and at least one family is staying: “There is not a lot of petrol in the town and many people don’t have enough food, but our house has electricity and water and my grandmother grows rice and vegetables, so we are not worried… I actually think the government has said too much about the danger…” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8403538/Japan-nuclear-crisis-family-refuses-to-leave-home-despite-radiation-threat.html

…”radiation leaks at the Fukushima nuclear power plant have forced 80,000 people  living within a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius of the facility to leave their  homes” http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2011-05-21-japan-earthquake-research_n.htm?csp=34news&amp&amp&amp

August 2011: Disturbing updates from the AP newswire say the Japanese government said far too little. A school in Namie, 6 miles from the Daiichi plant, was used as an evacuation center during an intentional release at Fukushima, prior to the explosions. No one warned the 8,000 residents of Namie that TEPCO was venting; “transcripts indicate.. communication breakdowns… The evacuees at shelters.. were not told to move further away until March 16, five days into the crisis… Health officials say they have no plans to prioritize radiation tests of those who were at the school… Most of Namie..has since been declared too dangerous for habitation.”  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/08/08/international/i215717D64.DTL

Thousands of people within the evacuation zones were exposed to lethal doses of radioactivity for days on end. Where are those people today?

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“Physician and Epidemiologist Say 35% Spike in Infant Mortality in Northwest Cities Since Meltdown Might be the Result of Fallout from Fukushima… eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID,  Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age: 4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 – 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week) [and] 10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 – 125 deaths (avg. 12.50 per week)…” The CDC additionally informs a rate increase from the approx. 7 deaths per 1000, its 2001 figure, as “All years from 2002 to 2007 were higher than the 2001 rate.” http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/06/physician-and-epidemiologist-say-35.html

The mortality rate covering ‘4 weeks to March 19’, obviously doesn’t include Fukushima fallout. Local radioactive environments, which could have been spiking independently, may be getting lost-in-the-stream following March 19:

Idaho, 50 radiation sites: http://www.prop1.org/prop1/radiated/id0rept.htm

Washington, 65 radiation sites: http://www.prop1.org/prop1/radiated/wa0rept.htm

Oregon, 14 radiation sites: http://www.prop1.org/prop1/radiated/or0rept.htm

California, 163 radiation sites:http://www.prop1.org/prop1/radiated/ca0rept.htm

1999-2001, rate of fetal-infant mortality deaths in the Bay Area:

“Alameda had the highest fetal-infant mortaliy rate of 9.1 per 1000 births (still and live)”

“San Francisco was near the regional mean of 7.7 [infant deaths per 1000 births]

“African Americans..[had] a fetal-infant mortality rate of 16.2 per 1000 –twice as high as all other race categories. The CDC has found similar statistics nationwide..”

http://articles.sfgate.com/2006-03-05/other-article/17286101_1_stillborn-baby-child-care-ultrasound/12

Ten year (1992-2001) infant mortality survey, California counties, showing a trending decrease to a low of avg. 7 deaths per 1000. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/news/infant/countystats?fips=CA025

2002, Seattle and King County infant mortality:

“…all time low rate of 4.5 deaths per 1000…dropped 56 percent since it peaked 20 years ago [10 per 1000]. For the first time, in 2002 Seattle’s infant mortality rate dropped below..the rest of the county… Washington State as a whole reported 5.2 deaths per 1000 births. All of these were well below the United States average of  7 deaths per 1000 births.”…but, “African-Americans [rate of 9.16] and American Indian/Alaska Native mothers reported significantly more ‘stressful life events’..[‘associated with adverse health outcomes’ such as]..racism,..changed residence, had bills they couldn’t pay, lost their job or became homeless, for example.” http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002064782_mortality16m.html

Washington State has not maintained its infant survival. In 2008, the state Nurses Association championed a plea for awareness: “Our pubic health system is at a crisis point…We simply cannot afford any more cuts to..health funding… Washington’s..health system is in jeopardy due to [lack of] funding..[and] deterioration..[i.e] Increased..vaccine preventable disease…Increased rates of communicable disease…increased newborn and infant mortality… the system is grossly inadequate…” http://www.wsna.org/Topics/Public-Health/

   The gutting of public health funding also became acute for state laboratories begining in 2005 as Bird Flu fear and preparedness became a major issue. The systematic unfunding of state health departments is part of the Pandemic Unfolding/GEIS articles in this blog. In 2007 it was widely reported that life expectancy (which includes infant death) in the U.S. dropped from 11th place in the world to 42. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/12/AR2007081200113.html

  We can’t rule out local-regional radiation effects until (if, when, if ever) there’s a lot more information. The medical establishment on the whole is geared to disregard radiation damage and there’s no indication of changing its tune.  A traditional indicator of fallout, monitored since the 1950s, is the accumulation in dairy milk. http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/04/11/japan-nuclear-radiation-hawaii-milk-2033-percent-federal-drinking-water-limits-16130/ ; http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/14/dairy-farmers-fight-radiation-with-boron.aspx

Listen to Dr. Chris Busby describe his Chernobyl data, including the correspondence of infant mortality (due to mostly radiation-induced heart defects) and the environmental concentration of radionuclides in milk : http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/50835

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“The nuclear crisis in Japan has laid bare an ever-growing problem for the United States –the enormous amounts of still-hot radioactive waste accumulating at..nuclear reactors… the nation has no place to permanently store the material… Three-quarters of the waste sits in water-filled cooling pools like those at the Fukushima Dai-ichi..complex… The rest of the..fuel..has been put into dry cask storage… While the U.S. Department of Energy previously reported figures on overall spent fuel storage, it no longer has updated information available… kept confidential for security reasons.” http://apnews.excite.com/article/2011023/D9M4KNKG1.html

Where to put the mounting U.S. rad waste is a problem that’s been held off since 1957 when deep underground entombment was first proposed. Over the past year, the final motions to nix the repository at Yucca Mountain were concluded just a few months before the Daiichi meltdowns. The decision was rife with machinations: “The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission witheld and manipulated information in an effort to stop work on..Yucca Mountain in Nevada, according to an internal investigation… The report ‘paints an embarassing picture of a bully whose use of deceit and manipulation is ruining the integrity of a..regulatory agency’… Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid..vowed to do everything in his power to kill [the Yucca Mtn project]. President Barack Obama..has moved consistently to kill it since taking office in 2009. [Gregory] Jaczko, who has chaired the NRC since May 2009, worked as a science adviser to Reid before joining the NRC in 2005.” http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700143128/NRC-chief-hid-information-IG-says.html?s_cid=rss-5

Harry Reid: “I stand with Israel and America stands with Israel because the values that have cast our histories are one and the same. And our futures will be intertwined even more than our history has been.” http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/144467

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June 14, 2011 — Italy — “More than 94% of voters opposed the government’s plan to resume nuclear power generation… The high turnout showed ‘a will on the part of citizens to participate in decisions about our future that cannot be ignored,’ Mr. Berlusconi said… Anti-nuclear campaigners say Japan’s Fukushima disaster in March helped sway public opinion against nuclear power, which Italians rejected in a referemdum soon after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster… Germany and Switzerland have both recently announced that they will phase out nuclear power in the coming decades, while in other countries, like Britain and France, support remains strong. Italians were also asked..[to vote] on whether government ministers could be exempted from court cases… Mr. Berlusconi..is currently facing four separate trials. The special immunity granted to him by parliament has recently been struck down in the courts, and Mr. Berlusconi has agreed to attend court when not engaged on important business. But he has missed several hearings and did so again on Monday meeting Israeli Prime Minister..Netanyahu instead.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13741105

“Germany’s atomic exit has been the biggest move, so far. It..announced that all of its nuclear power plants will be phased out by 2022.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13732050; “Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen announced the decision by the centre-right coalition..in the early hours of Monday morning [May  30], describing it as ‘irreversible’… Germany has 17 nuclear reactors on its territory, eight of which are currently off the electricity grid. Seven..are the country’s oldest… But it also means that [Germany] will have to find 22 percent of its electricity needs..from another source… Monday’s decision is effectively a return to the timetable set by the previous Social Democrat–Green coalition government a decade ago.” http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/10554/germany-announces-end-to-nuclear-power-by-2022

— noticing the disempowerment of the old WWII Axis powers? Is this conservation of what has previously been gained?

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“Decomissioning Reactors: A Growth Industry” http://www.ccnr.org/decommission.html

“Tepco’s Reactors May Take 30 Years, $12 Billion to Scrap” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-30/tokyo-electric-s-damaged-reactors-may-take-30-years

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“According to the EPA website, the agency reviews RadNet data before making it public. ‘Radiation emergency response experts can request access to a restricted RadNet data site, where all RadNet data is housed before being released for public access.’ ” http://www.wayoutwestnews.com/2011/03/18/infinitesimal-increase-in-bay-area-radiation-detected-in-epas-publically-available-data/

Volunteers who log and blog about radiation in northern California ask “why is there a spike registered in San Francisco around March 2?”…”my blue cobalt cloud was 3/26 and no data is on radnet for that day in Sacramento or S.F.”…”The EPA did say in a press release at some point that the monitors are taken offline when they read levels that are considered more than background radiation”…”The EPA stations for Fresno and Bakersfield have been notorious for wild swings”  http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/3586?page=1

“…there are no sensors along the coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles… ‘The fundamental concern is that we’re being offered bland assurances that everything is ok but much of the monitoring system was broken,’ [Daniel]Hirsch said.” [i.e.San Diego monitor was nonfunctional since November 2010] http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/03/25/gaps-in-california-radiation-monitoring-revealed/

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June 6 —  At this moment, there’s a “Level 4 emergency“due to flooding and fire at the Fort Calhoun, Nebraska Nuclear station:  ..”the [electrical] fire resulted in the loss of cooling for the reactor’s spent fuel pool” [2 of 4 pumps failed for a period of time] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSvvmrB7qEg&feature=relmfu

NRC Emergency Classification: http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/emerg-preparedness/about-emerg-preparedness/emerg-classification.html

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“Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping…according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records… Tritium..often indicates the presence of more powerful radioactive isotopes that are..spilled at the same time…” http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_aging_nukes_part2

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“OAK RIDGE, Tenn.– Federal authorities have approved licenses allowing up to 1,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from Germany to be brought to Oak Ridge..for incineration… With German waste now permitted to enter the U.S. and come to Oak Ridge, [Don] Safer expects Tennessee to become ‘the destination for processing radioactive waste from all over the world.’ ” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/19/national/main20072417.shtml?tag=re1.channel

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“The President’s fiscal year 2011 budget request eliminates funding for the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. The Office of Nuclear Energy [ONE] will lead used fuel activities previously performed by OCRWM.” http://www.energy.gov/environment/ocrwm.htm; and, no, they don’t actually call the agency “ONE” –for a logo, they put an “NE” inside a circle inside orbits of electrons, and call themselves the Office of “NE”, being the first agency I know of to drop the “O”.