911 & The Rise of the Celebrity Scientists

We touched on this before but it’s worth another look. According to this 2011 Science article:

The anthrax mailings that petrified Americans soon after 9/11... led to an explosion of biodefense research in the United States. Nearly $19 billion has been spent—a huge increase over previous levels…(T)he number of planned or operating high-security biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs in the United States has climbed from four to 12.

In a climate of (false, as it turned out) fear of a bio-terrorism attack after 911 and the anthrax incident, Biosecurity was born as a mega-industry.

But as Dan pointed out, ask anyone: What was the origin of the anthrax incident? (thereby the origin of the bio-lab explosion and Lipkin/Daszak’s celebrity ascendancy?)

Most people won’t know. I didn’t - had to look it up - i’m still not sure. The FBI website says:

In August 2008 (seven years after the attack), Department of Justice and FBI officials announced a breakthrough in the case and released documents and information showing that charges were about to be brought against Dr. Bruce Ivins, who took his own life before those charges could be filed.
(Aside: Robert Mueller was the then-head of the FBI. The investigation appears bungling.)

Oh, so who the fuck was this Dr. Bruce E. Ivins?  Turns out he was a microbiologist expert working in a lab at Fort Detrick.

Dr. Ivins, who had helped develop an anthrax vaccine to protect American troops (a rabbit-warren in itself - lots of long-term side-effects complaints from soldiers), had spent his career waiting for a biological attack.

Until he finally got sick of waiting, decided to DIY.

Ivins's story sounds awfully similar to the non-stop fear-mongering by Daszak, Lipkin et al who can’t stop crowing that they’d been warning us for years about a zoological crossover pandemic such as Covid, and that this may not be the big pandemic that we’re all most worried about.   (So give us more money!  Which they got.)

Suddenly, at 55, (Ivins) was advising the F.B.I. and regaling friends with scary descriptions of the deadly powder, his expertise in demand.

(Imagine if he’d had Facebook and Twitter (Daszak’s favourite platform.)

An analysis of the strain narrowed it down to ... Fort Detrick. Ruling out the original suspects - Al Queda and/or Saddam Hussein. As such:

An alternative theory of a possible perpetrator took shape: the bioevangelist. An American obsessed by the bioterrorism threat — maybe a biodefense insider who might gain in pay or prestige from an attack — had decided to alert the nation.

Let’s unpack that:

W. Ian Lipkin (left) & Dr. Bruce E. Ivins