Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Mice infected with bubonic plague missing

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Mice infected with bubonic plague missing

    Text in bold reminds of any report on an accident where they say "minor injuries".
    I doubt the injured party views it as "minor".

    Mice infected with bubonic plague missing

    08:17 PM CDT on Thursday, September 15, 2005


    Associated Press


    NEWARK, N.J. - Three mice infected with the bacteria responsible for bubonic plague apparently disappeared from a laboratory about two weeks ago, and authorities launched a search though health experts said there was scant public risk.

    The mice were unaccounted-for at the Public Health Research Institute, which is on the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and conducts bioterrorism research for the federal government.

    Federal official said the mice may never be accounted for. Among other things, the rodents may have been stolen, eaten by other lab animals or just misplaced in a paperwork error.

    If the mice got outside the lab, they would have already died from the disease, state Health Commissioner Fred Jacobs said.

    The possibility of theft prompted the institute to interrogate two dozen of its employees and conduct lie detector tests, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported Thursday.

    The FBI said it was investigating. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also investigating, the newspaper reported.

    University officials did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday morning.

    The mice were injected as part of an inoculation and vaccination experiment, investigators said.

    Health officials say 10 to 20 people in the United States contract plague each year, usually through infected fleas or rodents. It can be treated with antibiotics, but about one in seven U.S. cases is fatal. Bubonic plague is not contagious, but left untreated it can transform into pneumonic plague, which can be spread from person to person.

    The incident came as federal authorities investigate possible corruption in the school's finances. The FBI is reviewing political donations and millions of dollars in no-bid contracts awarded to politically connected firms.
    Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
    "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
    He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

  • #2
    narf!

    Monkey!!!

    Comment


    • #3
      The disease is already endemic in rodents all over the world.

      Comment


      • #4
        Did you read at all? It is NOT epidemic in the United States.
        Just felt like showing your ass? Job well-done.
        Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
        "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
        He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

        Comment


        • #5
          A few people still die each year in the US because of the plague.
          I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891

          Comment


          • #6
            Yeah. That's what it said in the article I posted.
            Of course, that's prior to purposely infected rats turning up missing.
            Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
            "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
            He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by SlowwHand
              Did you read at all? It is NOT epidemic in the United States.
              Just felt like showing your ass? Job well-done.


              Can you at least try not to make this personal.
              Keep on Civin'
              RIP rah, Tony Bogey & Baron O

              Comment


              • #8
                Ok, ok. Jeez, Louise. I don't want to hurt his tender feelings.

                SOR-ry, Geronimo.
                Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
                "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
                He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by SlowwHand
                  Did you read at all? It is NOT epidemic in the United States.
                  Just felt like showing your ass? Job well-done.


                  Endemic, not epidemic. It is fleas, not rodents, that carry the disease. Only under certain conditions does the disease become a problem, and migrate from flea to rat and then from flea to people.

                  What happens is that under certain condition, the bacteria block the guts of the flea, which then begins to starve. It unleashes in the flea a desire to gorge blood, but beause the blood has nowhere to go, the flea vomits it up after consuming it, and that blood is contaminated with plague, which kills that rodent. The fleas, deprived of their normal source of food, and maddened with hunger, then bite everything trying to get blood, including people, with the same results.

                  Now hanta virus, that's transmitted from rodent to people directly, and that **** will kill you.

                  edit: spell fix
                  Last edited by chequita guevara; September 16, 2005, 12:26.
                  Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    ok. Endemic. Misread.
                    Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
                    "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
                    He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by chegitz guevara
                      Originally posted by SlowwHand
                      Did you read at all? It is NOT epidemic in the United States.
                      Just felt like showing your ass? Job well-done.


                      Endemic, not epidemic. It is fleas, not rodents, that carry the disease. Only under certain conditions does the disease become a problem, and migrate from flea to rat and then from flea to people.

                      What happens is that under certain condition, the bacteria block the guts of the flea, which then begins to starve. It unleashes in the flea a desire to gorge blood, but beause the blood has nowhere to go, the flea vomits it up after consuming it, and that blood is contaminated with plague, which kills that rodent. The fleas, deprived of their normal source of food, and maddened with hunger, then bite everything trying to get blood, including people, with the same results.

                      Now hanta virus, that's transmitted from rodent to people directly, and that **** will kill you.

                      edit: spell fix
                      the bug (yersinia pestis) lives in the flea and the rodents. It's efficient transmission depends on living in both hosts.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Let's theorize on this a moment.
                        Flea jumps on rat. Cat eats rat. Dog bites cat. Lancer eats dog.

                        Are you beginning to see the possible ramifications of this now?
                        Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
                        "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
                        He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          dog eaters deserve to die
                          Monkey!!!

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by SlowwHand
                            Let's theorize on this a moment.
                            Flea jumps on rat. Cat eats rat. Dog bites cat. Lancer eats dog.

                            Are you beginning to see the possible ramifications of this now?

                            Not really. Yersinia doesn't spread well at all from a tiny infected population. It needs a lot of time and conditions ripe for heavy infection in both host populations to build a sort of critical mass. It is vastly more likely to do so from the existing infected populations already at large. And it spreads far more efficiently (by the mechanism che described) from fleas to rodents than in the reverse direction where the fleas pick it up only when the rodent is almost dead from a septicemic (not bubonic) infection.


                            Maybe some unlucky sob will get sick and that will be the tragic end of it, a thousand times more likely the rodents die quietly somewhere in the next couple days and it ends there. Hell, they'll probably even die before they catch fleas.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by SlowwHand
                              Let's theorize on this a moment.
                              Flea jumps on rat. Cat eats rat. Dog bites cat. Lancer eats dog.
                              ...and Lancer is a victim of a drive by shooting...
                              "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow
                              "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X