Another Dead Microbiologist - The Coming Plague youtubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgbMh-J2XZw

Another Dead Microbiologist - The Coming Plague  youtubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgbMh-J2XZw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Casadaban

Malcolm Casadaban (12 August 1949 – 13 September 2009) was Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology and of Microbiology at the University of Chicago.^[1] Casadaban died following an accidental laboratory exposure to an attenuated strain of Yersinia pestis, a bacterium that causes the plague.^[2].
According to a CDC report on the incident, the strain that killed Casadaban (KIM D27) had never been known to infect laboratory workers as it was an "attenuated" or weakened strain that had defective genes for iron uptake. On autopsy, Casadaban was found to have undiagnosed hereditary hemochromatosis (iron overload) which likely played in a role in his death. ^[3]
He became Assistant Professor at Chicago in 1980, and Associate Professor in 1985.
He had also been associated with Thermogen, a company he formed with two of his former graduate students in 1998, to commercialize his work with thermophilic bacteria. The company expanded to an annual revenue of about $2 million, but was sold to MediChem, in 2000; this company in turn was later purchased by DeCODE Genetics.
He had 10 scientific publications cited over 100 times.

"Plague Death" Of Scientist: Unanswered Questions

by Johanna Faust.

I would alert the perspicacious reader to the still unanswered questions, crazy hypothesis, and not-so-crazy ones.  Thus my little round of research may prove useful to another, or perhaps this is only for my own peace of mind.

Why his death is of a sudden in the news is a question I have no answer for, but am glad of it for the sake of his family, and their unanswered questions.  A detailed biography, including a technical overview of his life's work, is here. The article by Steve Zeltner, Chairman of the California Coalition for Workers Memorial Day, is the most professional piece I have seen on Indybay, and well worth the read in its entirety.  

An excerpt:

Professor Casadaban had been working on a live attenuated vaccine strain of Yersinia Pestis, a strain of plague, which was approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) safe for humans and for researchers in the lab that no one had died from it. CDC and Researchers called it a vaccine strain (live-attenuated vaccine strain) and excluded the strain from their Containment list of pathogens in 2008. Professor Casadaban had worked at the University of Chicago Department of MGCB and Committee of Virology at the University of Chicago from 1980-2009.

When the family came to Chicago for the funeral, a family member requested the Hospital autopsy team to investigate and later identified that Yersinia Pestis, its live-attenuated vaccine strain, KIM D27, had been the actual cause of death. University of Chicago is a power house of Infectious Disease Experts and is the Center of Excellence in federal Grant support for bioterrorism, ironically, nothing appeared to these experts that Yersinia Pestis and its live attenuated Strain of KIM D27can be dangerous to the lab researchers and public at large. No one from the University and the Center of Research attended him while he was sick. No one warned the University of Chicago Hospital Emergency Room doctors to treat him for the dangerous pathogen, which can be acquired from work. Furthermore, upon his death, no one from the University and its Institutions even suspected Yersinia Pestis pathogen to be the cause of death.

Once Yersinia Septicemia on the live-attenuated vaccine strain had been identified to be the cause of death, 20 people made up of the investigational team from CDC, OSHA and Chicago Public Health (CPH) as well as from University of Chicago visited the site in the investigation of his death. Still today, one year later, CDC, CPH and OSHA have not released their report to the family. OSHA issued a letter of BSL2 compliance though no specific details on their approval were substantiated in their claim.

NIH, which supported the federal research activities of Professor Casadaban and that of the Center of Excellence Grants had not even began their investigation of the case regarding serious concerns and issues relating to the health and safety conditions of the laboratories at the University and nationwide laboratories. The containment and bio-safety rules regarding pathogenic bacteria in public health and safety should be investigated, seriously evaluated and explored particularly on the eve of the death of Professor Casadaban. 

(Read more)  

More questions emerge in Newscientist's Short Sharp Science Blog.  Don't believe any source that says the cause of death is certain, I would say, not only because details of which Yersinia strain are being withheld, but also because (as I have blogged before, elsewhere), Yersinia's responsibility for the Black Death is, or should be, in question. 

Casadaban was reported to have been working with a weakened vaccine strain of Yersinia pestis, intended for the development of vaccines against plague. However, doctors are not sure the bacilli in Casadaban's blood were the cause of death, or how they got there. So what's going on?

Y. pestis has been linked to the medieval Black Death, though proof has been elusive. We do know that it kills several thousand a year by causing bubonic plague, and it is considered a potential biological weapon.

The University of Chicago has not revealed which strain the Yersinia was, but says it should have been safe....http://news.uchicago.edu/news.php?asset_id=1711

[snip]

The strain seems likely to have been EV76, which is used as a vaccine in Russia and Madagascar. It is considered unlikely to revert to the virulent strain - but even without reverting, it kills some mice immunised with it.

Worse, up to a fifth of people vaccinated with EV76 develop flu symptoms such as fever, headache, weakness and malaise, according to Rick Titball of the University of Exeter, UK, a leading Yersinia expert. Some even need hospitalisation, he says, though no deaths have ever been reported that we know of.

(Read more)

While I do not agree completely agree with another post of the same title, I agree with the general thrust, as I find that I too must ask "Who Killed Malcolm Casadaban and Why?" even as the blog which forms its context dissuades hyperlinking our respective work.

I will, however, call your attention to a similar article, if more daring: 

What's so strange, about this case, is that the 'strain' was weakened so as to not cause this. None of his friends, co-workers or family has it.

What caught my eye was the mention that they are looking into something that was in the professors biological make-up to make him susceptible to this disease. 

Was this a DNA specific attack?"

(Read more)

Well, no, attack is not the right word. And the plague is not easily transmissible in its most common form, so it probably was not, being an attenuated vaccine.  But plague is remarkably 1918-influenza-like, and the "California" or "Ukraine" version of H1N1 that surged right after Casadaban's death is remarkably plague-like.

To recap: details of which Yersinia strain are being withheld; Yersinia's responsibility for the Black Death is, or should be, in question; the strain he was working with, used in vaccines, was so weak it was not given special handling (and if it should have been, more people should be dead);  he died right before the outbreak of 'Ukrainian Flu,' that many thought resembled pneumonic plague, of 2009; this flu resembled Spanish Flu (recently exhumed) which itself resembled the Black Death enough to prompt some to consider them one and the same (e.g., "Did the 1918 flu virus cause the Black Death?" here).

And so I leave you, Gentle Reader, as my last source left me, with a link to Steve Quayle's Updated List of Dead Scientists.

Be seeing you.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19737605
Excerpt:

Microb Pathog. 2010 Jan;48(1):42-52. Epub 2009 Sep 6.

Deletion of Braun lipoprotein gene (lpp) attenuates Yersinia pestis KIM/D27 strain: role of Lpp in modulating host immune response, NF-kappaB activation and cell death.

Liu T, Agar SL, Sha J, Chopra AK.

Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Medical Research Building, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX 77555-1070, USA.

Abstract

The pathogenic species of yersiniae potently blocks immune responses in host cells by using the type III secretion apparatus and its effector proteins. In this study, we characterized potential mechanisms associated with the Braun lipoprotein (Lpp) that contributed to a further attenuation of a pigmentation locus-minus Yersinia pestis KIM/D27 mutant strain and its ability to generate immune responses in mice. The lpp gene encodes one of the major outer membrane lipoproteins that is involved in inflammatory responses and septic shock. We found that sera and splenocytes from Deltalpp mutant-immunized mice, when transferred to naïve animals, provided protection to the latter against challenge with a lethal dose of the Y. pestis parental strain. Further, the Deltalpp mutant promoted ex vivo a significantly higher interleukin (IL)-2 and interferon-gamma production from T cells of immunized mice, when compared to those from animals infected with the sub-lethal dose of the parental Y. pestis KIM/D27 strain. Likewise, murine primary macrophages infected with the mutant, when compared to those infected with the parental strain in vitro, produced significantly higher IL-12 levels. Importantly, increased nuclear factor-kappa B activation and decreased apoptosis were noted in splenocytes and primary macrophages of mice challenged with the Deltalpp mutant, when compared to those in animals infected with the parental Y. pestis KIM/D27 strain. Finally, significantly higher levels of antibodies specific for the parental Y. pestis antigens were developed in mice first immunized with the Deltalpp mutant and then challenged with the parental strain, compared to the antibody levels in animals that were immunized and then infected with the parental KIM/D27 strain. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a mechanistic basis for attenuation and immunological responses associated with deletion of the lpp gene from the Y. pestis KIM/D27 strain.

http://obambi.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/who-killed-malcolm-casadaban-and-why/
Excerpt:
Malcolm Casadaban

The strain is federally approved for lab studies. Dr. Kenneth Alexander, a UC infectious disease specialist, likened it to a “crocodile with no teeth” and called Casadaban’s death a mystery.

Casadaban’s lab on the South Side campus has been sealed off while authorities investigate.

Officials have said it’s unlikely anyone else would be infected, and a Chicago Department of Public Health spokesman said Monday the window for that happening was nearly over.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent three scientists to Chicago on Monday to help with the investigation.

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=136811.15;wap2
Excerpt:
Matt Hatter:
http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=700%3Amicrobiologist-alleges-baxter-qswine-fluq-vaccine-is-a-bioweapon&Itemid=64

Joseph Moshe (MOSSAD Microbiologist): “Swine flu vaccine is bioweapon”

Posted on Unfictional.com

Friday, August 21, 2009

Today, the MSM are not talking about this case any more. Yesterday, they wanted us to believe that Joseph Moshe was a nutcase and a terrorist, arrested for threatening to bomb the White House. Interesting detail about his arrest (the “Westwood standoff”) was that he seemed to be immune to the 5 cans of tear gas and 5 gallons of law-enforcement grade  pepper spray they pumped into his face. He very calmly remained in his car, as the video footage of his arrest shows.

Professor Moshe  had  called into a live radio show by Dr. A. True Ott, broadcast on Republic Broadcasting claiming to be a microbiologist who wanted to supply evidence to a States Attorney regarding tainted H1N1 Swine flu vaccines being produced by Baxter BioPharma Solutions. He said that Baxter’s Ukrainian lab was in fact producing a bioweapon disguised as a vaccine. He claimed that the vaccine contained an adjuvant (additive) designed to weaken the immune system, and replicated RNA from the virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic Spanish flu, causing global sickness and mass death.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/baxter-to-develop-swine-flu-vaccine-despite-bird-flu-scandal.html
Excerpt:
However, Baxter has a very recent and most disturbing connection to flu vaccines.
As reported by multiple sources last month, including the Times of India, vaccines contaminated with deadly live H5N1 avian flu virus were distributed to 18 countries last December by a lab at an Austrian branch of Baxter.
It was only by providence that the batch was first tested on ferrets in the Czech Republic, before being shipped out for injection into humans. The ferrets all died and the shocking discovery was made.