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Wednesday, May 26, 2004A Russian scientist at a former Soviet biological weapons laboratory in Siberia has died after accidentally sticking herself with a needle laced with ebola, the deadly virus for which there is no vaccine or treatment, the lab's parent Russian center announced over the weekend. Scientists and officials said the accident had raised concerns about safety and secrecy at the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector, which in Soviet times specialized in turning deadly viruses into biological weapons. Vector has been a leading recipient of aid in an American program to help former Soviet scientists and labs convert to peaceful research. The lab didn't report the incident until two weeks afterwards, and they haven't been very forthcoming about the research the scientist was doing or who was funding it. Makes you wonder what they're up to. And this makes it even more worrisome: Vector is also one of two repositories of the deadly smallpox virus - the other is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States has spent millions of dollars to help convert such places to peaceful research, including an estimated $10 million at Vector. Critics of the program have opposed expanding such aid because it is hard to verify whether former Soviet scientists are using the American-supported research for peaceful purposes. But the program's defenders say it keeps scientists employed on peaceful projects and prevents them from working for anti-American states or terrorists seeking biological weapons. Maybe the heightened terror alert just has me in a state of paranoia, but the fact that the Russians have been making new friends isn't very reassuring, either. posted by Sydney on 5/26/2004 07:46:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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