Lab accidents and the DHS "desinformation war"

Cog. War

While I am occupied with both research, writing, and life, I would like to share two recent articles that are incredibly important for the “big picture”. One of them will end up connecting with my bigger piece after the Galectin-3.

For those who read most of my Substacks, my aunt is now out of the hospital and recovering.
Ironically, both articles come from The Intercept.

BENT OVER IN PAIN

Student Infected With Debilitating Virus in Undisclosed Biolab Accide

THE GRADUATE STUDENT was alone in the lab on a Saturday, handling a mouse infected with a debilitating virus, when the needle slipped. She wore two gowns, two pairs of shoe covers, a hair net, a face mask, and two pairs of gloves. Gingerly, she had pointed the needle at the mouse’s abdomen and injected the antibody. The animal was infected with a recombinant strain of Chikungunya virus, a mosquito-borne pathogen that has sparked epidemics in Africa and the Caribbean. Chikungunya can wreak havoc in other regions when the right kind of mosquito is present; in 2007 and 2017 there were outbreaks in Italy, and in 2014 the virus hit Florida, infecting 11 people who had not recently traveled abroad. In January 2016, nine months before the researcher stood in the lab that weekend, a locally acquired infection was diagnosed in Texas.Chikungunya, which means “bent over in pain” in the Makonde language, can lead to chronic arthritis, and its spread through the Americas had made studying it more urgent. The researcher’s team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, was studying the virus in the hope of discovering possible treatments or developing a vaccine. The graduate student was working in a biosafety level 3 lab, a level that often includes a completely sealed perimeter, directional airflow, and full personal protective equipment. But accidents still happened. The team’s experiments were set back when, after withdrawing the needle from the mouse’s belly, the graduate student grazed a finger on her left hand.

The needle pierced through both sets of gloves, but the student saw no blood, so she washed her hands, removed her safety equipment, and left the lab without telling anyone what had happened. Four days later, she ran a fever, and her body ached and convulsed in chills. The next morning, her skin was flecked with discolored spots. They multiplied over the course of the day, so she went to the emergency room, where the doctors kept her overnight for observation. A nurse drew her blood and sent it off to a state lab. She tested positive for Chikungunya. Only after getting sick did the student tell her supervisor about the slipped needle.

“That’s not a good situation,” said Scott Weaver, director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and an expert on Chikungunya virus. “If that person knew they had a needlestick and they were working with Chikungunya, they should have reported it immediately. And then whatever health care people saw them should have recognized that there was a very small — but not zero — risk of them transmitting the virus.”

After the student told her supervisor about the accident in September 2016, Washington University reported it to the National Institutes of Health, but until now, the event has remained out of public view. So have hundreds of other incidents in U.S. labs, including four other needle injuries at Washington University.

Key Takeaways

• The Intercept obtained over 5,500 pages of NIH documents, including 18 years of laboratory incident reports, detailing hundreds of accidents.

• Documents show that accidents happen even in highly secure BSL3 and BSL4 labs, and that in some cases they lead to infection.

• After pricking her finger with a needle, a graduate student at Washington University School of Medicine contracted the debilitating Chikungunya virus.

• The documents also reveal the infection of a researcher working with the antibiotic-resistant bacteria MRSA in a Food and Drug Administration lab.

I highly recommend my subscribers to read the entire article, because it bears a lot of weight not only from what happened in the last 3 years but in the last 50 or so. Also, if you are not aware and this isn’t talked about much outside very small circles, the first few “variants” of SARS-CoV-2 are suspected of being lab-derived escape.

To be exact Brazil, South Africa, and UK variants, since at least Brazil and UK had “laboratory accidents” in regards to the mice being used in the tests, and both countries were the first to categorize mutations before they happened, with the “new variants” soon acquiring said mutations.

Per the article, laboratory accidents and leaks are far too common and the biggest problem is not merely a lab worker infecting itself, but an accident or leaking occurring, but the type of pathogens that can potentially leak. Per the following.

• In 2010, a machine in a University of California, Irvine lab malfunctioned while decontaminating waste from experiments with the SARS virus. The machine, called an autoclave, leaked steam and water, potentially exposing eight people to the virus, which could spark a pandemic. The risk of an outbreak was mitigated by a quirk of timing: The machine had already reached a high temperature — likely enough to kill the virus — before malfunctioning. The University of California, Irvine spokesperson Tom Vasich wrote in an email, “The incident was quickly addressed. … Released materials were contained in our BSL3 laboratory. Exposed lab workers were wearing proper personal protective gear. No transmission of the virus was detected.”

• In 2013, a researcher at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, pricked their finger while drawing blood from a chicken infected with H5N1 avian influenza. The scientist had handed a used syringe to an assistant while trying to get a better grasp of the chicken’s jugular vein. The assistant returned it needle side out, piercing through the scientist’s gloves. The researcher was prescribed Tamiflu for one week and told to immediately report a fever. Kansas State University did not respond to a request to comment.

• Between April 2013 and March 2014, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reported five mouse escapes, including one of an animal that had been infected with SARS four days earlier. In a letter to NIH, a biosafety specialist argued that the frequency of escapes was due to the “complex research taking place at our institute” rather than a failure of training, noting that several teams at the university use a breed of transgenic mouse known for its unpredictable behavior. After the SARS-infected mouse darted under lab equipment, researchers cornered it with a broom and returned it to its cage. The University of North Carolina did not respond to a request to comment.

• In 2018, a researcher at the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, contracted a MRSA infection, a condition that can become severe if left untreated, after working with the antibiotic-resistant bacteria MRSA in the lab. The researcher could not recall any mishaps that would have led to infection, a situation that experts say is common with laboratory-acquired infections. The FDA center did not respond to a request to comment.

• In early 2020, amid the shortage in respirators and masks brought on by the pandemic, a lab at Tufts University conducted low-risk experiments with the H3N2 flu virus without proper equipment. A student spilled a test tube containing a small about of virus, potentially exposing five people. None were initially wearing masks. (Two later put them on to clean up the spill.) H3N2 is a seasonal flu virus and not considered a dangerous pathogen, but in an email to Tufts, an administrator at NIH highlighted a series of omission and errors. These included the lab’s failure to provide personal protective equipment, a lack of proper safety signage, and the failure of researchers to seek appropriate medical care after being exposed to the virus. The NIH administrator also recommended that the principal investigator be retrained. Tufts declined to comment.

One of the first things we (as an anonymous group) found out in January of 2020 was the fact that there were 4 SARS-CoV leaks in a very short time span before, and after digging a little deeper, you start to find that common trend, that leaks are more common, and often obfuscated by the people who should be regulating these leaks. But I think the “train has left the station”. And the author of the article makes the point I would make.

“Your favorite tech billionaire could, with their own money, do basically whatever the hell they want with any pathogen,” said Rocco Casagrande, managing director of Gryphon Scientific, a biosafety advisory firm that has advised NIH on biosafety standards. “They could take the measles virus and intentionally try to make it vaccine-resistant and more pathogenic in their garage. If they’re doing it for legitimate research purposes in their own minds, they can do so wildly, unsafely, and no one can stop them.”

But it is a gross mistake to assume it takes a tech billionaire, or even a millionaire to do what she just described. I have written about this, and it does not take a lot of money for someone with sizable curiosity, an internet connection, and some money to actively develop anything that person wants. If the person has access to a university lab and has a few of the necessary tools in their homes, exponentially easier.

The barrier of cost right now is “high”, being roughly around 100.000 USD for the cutting edge of synthetic biology, but arguably someone with more experience, and know-how can do it for much less, without the cool cutting-edge tech.

As an addendum right before publishing it.

Source

Just another Thursday when someone attempts to engineer monkeypox variants making it 1000x more lethal than current (non-issue) monkeypox.

And since we are talking about laboratory leaks and potential pandemics, it gives us the chance to talk about something even more important from a big-picture perspective. The following is literally the biggest story of this quarter, and the dynamics discussed will play a colossal role in the next few years. I highly advise you to take the time and read it.

Leaked Documents Outline DHS’s Plans to Police Disinformation

The Department of Homeland Security is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents — obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents — illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms.

The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board”: a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual information shared, typically out of context, with harmful intent) that allegedly threatens U.S. interests. While the board was widely ridiculed, immediately scaled back, and then shut down within a few months, other initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate — the war on terror — has been wound down.

Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.

• Though DHS shuttered its controversial Disinformation Governance Board, a strategic document reveals the underlying work is ongoing.

• DHS plans to target inaccurate information on “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

• Facebook created a special portal for DHS and government partners to report disinformation directly.

According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

“The challenge is particularly acute in marginalized communities,” the report states, “which are often the targets of false or misleading information, such as false information on voting procedures targeting people of color.”

How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech.

The inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech.

The following is the document mentioned in the article.

June 22 2022 Draft Cisa Report

1.26MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The use of subterfuge by “Intelligence” agencies outside and within the territory of the USA is nothing new, but the current scope, and the massive outreach, ignore half a dozen constitutional amendments in the process.

By using Covid-19 as a trojan horse, as many of us expected, governments and their intelligence agencies were quick into expanding their surveillance programs to “combat disinformation”, but per what you just read in the article above, it goes well above, and beyond merely “fighting” whatever they classify as disinformation.

In simpler terms, this is narrative shaping and a (not so) covert way of applying different degrees of censorship to its own population. The control of speech is very important from the perspective of both governments afraid of losing their power, to control adversarial speech and a short and quick way to influence the subconscious of huge portions of the population. Because most people consume information without a care, without a shred of critical thought, leaving many exploitable openings.

To accomplish this, the draft quadrennial review calls for DHS to “leverage advanced data analytics technology and hire and train skilled specialists to better understand how threat actors use online platforms to introduce and spread toxic narratives intended to inspire or incite violence, as well as work with NGOs and other parts of civil society to build resilience to the impacts of false information.”

Finally brought to light the fact that it is now public knowledge governments and their agencies use NGOs to undermine, infiltrated, and execute covert political operations on whatever they see fit, as a hindrance to their political efforts.
While the entire article is worth reading, this specific paragraph was the one that jumped into my eyes when I first read it. The quintessential quest Intelligence agencies, private and public have been pursuing since 2016.

Fighting memes. Here is a short introduction to why memes are so powerful. This gives me leeway to present you with the theme of a piece I have intended to write for a long while, which I will do after publishing my next Substack.

Many of the assumptions by the author here are rather superficial and won’t (in the several realities part of this publication), but the overall theme and content are within the parameters that shall be discussed.

Cognitive Warfare is the de facto next-generation battlefield, and this has been “fought” for over 7 years now. Allied with Synthetic Biology, this is the next frontier of warfare, and this is low-key what DHS is poorly attempting on trying to implement.

Among the “experts” in the field (which none of them really are, this is merely academic consensus-making) there exists a massive push to make Cognitive Warfare, mostly electronic, a gross assumption coming from the erroneous assumption because you wage this war mostly in electronic form, you must use AI and Machine Learning. I digress, but highly advise those interested in Mimetic Theory, Memetics, and Cognitive War as a concept to delve further into the subject.

I will end this Substack on the note that, given my previous professional life, and current efforts, I am 100% sure you can’t regulate synthetic biology now or in the near future, and no effort will ever be able to do anything against Cognitive War, ever. This last one I am sure enough to bet my life on it, and for…good reason…

A big thank you to all supporters here and on KoFi, and to people who share my posts, also very helpful !