You’ve probably heard that the Pentagon is under fire for mishandling Anthrax spores. An investigation found live samples of the agent were likely sent to all 50 states and to 9 countries. Now, just this week, the CDC found the Pentagon labs mishandled samples of the Plague outside of designated containment areas. We hear there are also concerns about a strain of equine encephalitis that may have been mishandled too. What is going on??
First it was live anthrax, and now the Pentagon is investigating whether military laboratories also may have mishandled, mislabeled, improperly stored and possibly shipped plague and equine encephalitis bacteria.
Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said Thursday that the Defense Department and the Army have expanded the investigation of the shipment of live anthrax spores to all 50 states and several countries to include the mishandling of plague and encephalitis samples by an Army lab in Maryland.
Cook said the expanded investigation was seeking to determine “whether or not things were labeled properly” and “whether these substances were shipped to other labs” from the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered a plague sample in a freezer outside the containment area of the Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center in Maryland last month, according to USA Today.
The sample was labeled inactive, yet the CDC “is conducting additional testing” for an ultimate determination on any potential infectiousness, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said, according to Stars and Stripes. The CDC is also investigating a strain of equine encephalitis discovered at Edgewood.
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Apparently people do still die of the plague, the 4th fatality of plague in 2015 happened over the summer.
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The plague bacteria was discovered as part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s investigations of the Pentagon’s facilities that handle and store dangerous biological material: Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center and Naval Medical Research Center, all in Maryland.
The CDC investigation was launched after the Pentagon reported in May that it had sent anthrax samples to a handful of labs and states and one foreign country. That number rapidly grew worldwide as it became evident that more than half the master strains used to cull samples at its lab at Dugway were live when the lab thought they were inactive.
The Pentagon reported that live samples from Dugway were sent to 194 labs in all 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Japan, United Kingdom, South Korea, Canada, Australia, Italy, Germany, Norway and Switzerland.
Last week Army Secretary John McHugh ordered a suspension on shipments of biological agents of any kind from any DOD facility and a 10-day “immediate safety review.” No illnesses have been reported as a result of the mistakes, and no one has been held accountable for the releases. The Pentagon said it is waiting for the final report on the shipments, due in October.
