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Anthrax Island

ogopogo3

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Not sure how well-known this story is in the UK, but I read this today in a book called Mysteries of the Human Body, and it was news to me:

Anthrax is one of the oldest and most destructive diseases known to humankind. Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes the fatal blood infextion, can live for many years in marshy soil, resistant to heat, cold, drought, and even disinfectants. Pastured animals such as cattle and sheep are particularly susceptible to anthrax because they eat the grasses growing in the contaminated ground. The malady, however, is not just the disease of grazing animals; it spreads readily from an infected carcass or hide to a human body, with the same fatal effects.
Because of its resilience and virulence, anthrax has been one of the biological agents explored for possible use as a deadly weapon. During World War II, the British government began secret experiments with anthrax spores on tiny Gruinard Island, located three miles off the Scottish coast. In 1941, the island's small population was evacuated and replaced with tethered sheep. Anthrax canisters were exploded, and the dying sheep closely observed. Afterward, researchers destroyed the infected carcasses in order to preclude an accidental epidemic.
Unfortunately, anthrax was not through with Gruinard Island. In 1943, the year that the tests were completed, an anthrax epidemic struck the Scottish mainland. It was presumed that spores from Gruinard Island could have washed or blown ashore, and news of the outbreak was suppressed as a matter of security.
Quietly and quickly, experimenters went back to their infected island, and they began burning the heather, hoping thereby to destroy the anthrax once and for all. Subsequent testing revealed, however, that the hardy spores had percolated down into the soil, where they continued to flourish. By then appropriately known as Anthrax Island to the locals, the rocky isle was declared off-limits.
Every few years, scientists returned to Gruinard to test the soil, hoping to reopen the island. As recently as the 1970s, they found three acres still rich in anthrax. Detoxification efforts continued, and in 1987, animals were allowed to return. When none came down with anthrax, the following year--more than forty-five years after the anthrax-weapons experiment--the island was approved for human rehabitation.

Anyone else wondering about the implications here?

How many people are living there now? Guinea pigs, anyone?
 
I'd guess that most people in the UK know about Anthrax island, although it's news to me that they are letting people back on there.

A bloke in my office could move there, he's always going on about the time he got Anthrax! He was in the army and it was something to do with being immunised during the Gulf war.
 
I remember a TV news program some years ago, which mentioned that it had been approved for habitation, and that the government were trying to sell it off.
Presumably nobody bought it, so it's still deserted (I think).
 
I think that they discovered that the contamination was actually restricted to a few smallish patches on the island, and hence decontamination was "relatively" straightforward. I'm not sure how comfortable I would be with the idea of living there, though. ;)
 
Nice Beach

It crops up in one of Thomas Harris's books, and perhaps the movie too. I keep wanting to think it's Hannibal -- they offer Lector a "nice beach" and so on, and it turns out to be on Anthrax Island.

There is also Plum Island, of course, a real plum of a place...
 
Some more information here

I wonder what was learned from this experiment, apart from that it kills sheep and stays around for a long time (both of which we already knew...)

Jane.
 
Re: Nice Beach

FraterLibre said:
It crops up in one of Thomas Harris's books, and perhaps the movie too. I keep wanting to think it's Hannibal -- they offer Lector a "nice beach" and so on, and it turns out to be on Anthrax Island.

There is also Plum Island, of course, a real plum of a place...

Anthrax Island is also in the film version of Silence Of The Lambs, and is Plum Island Animal Disease Research Centre rather than Gruinard Island .

As Dr Lecter said, "Sounds Charming."
 
when I see stuff like this it just re-enforces my belief that man will kill itself off before a big astroid does him in /just crap!!
 
Mythopoeika said:
I remember a TV news program some years ago, which mentioned that it had been approved for habitation, and that the government were trying to sell it off.
Presumably nobody bought it, so it's still deserted (I think).

So far as I recall, Gruinard reverted to it's original pre-war owners after it was declared safe. Being good Scottish landowners they aren't looking for new crofters however, but are using it for those wooly vermin commonly known as sheep.

(I don't like sheep. They're boring, they're stupid and they're complacent, and they taste it too.)
 
Just to creep you out a bit more...

Apparently now some fairly reputable scientists are beginning to agree with the historians that some (if not all) of the episodes of Black Death in during the fourteenth century (three outbreaks) were actually a combination of bubonic plague (in all three varieties, bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic) and "cattle murrain" or anthrax. (As per the descriptions in surviving documents and what is currently know about anthrax in both cattle and humans.

Some of the Black Death mass graves discovered have yielded anthrax spores in nearly the same concentration as "Anthrax Island".

My source is "In the Wake of the Plague" by Norman Cantor, and a couple websites, as I could not recall the third form of bubonic plague to save my life (no pun intended).

So if you want to freak out about anthrax, just remember that man's creativity has yet to outdo nature in the lethal diseases arena.
 
Thriller

Wasn't it also anthrax that was the deadly toxin MacGuffin in Alistair MacLean's book The Satan Bug?

Was that ever filmed, by the way?
 
Satan Buggin'

Wow, James SHO-GUN Clavell as writer, John Sturges as director, and the cast, Marahis, Basehart, Asner, and Andrews.

And the review indicates it's actually pretty good, of its kind and era. So how come it doesn't crop up on AMC or TCM or other retro- movie channels? Seems a good bet, doesn't it? And it's even reasonably relevant today.

As is MacLean's book, of course.

Thanks for the website.
 
Re: Satan Buggin'

FraterLibre said:
Wow, James SHO-GUN Clavell as writer, John Sturges as director, and the cast, Marahis, Basehart, Asner, and Andrews.

And the review indicates it's actually pretty good, of its kind and era. So how come it doesn't crop up on AMC or TCM or other retro- movie channels? Seems a good bet, doesn't it? And it's even reasonably relevant today.

As is MacLean's book, of course.

Thanks for the website.

If it's the flick I'm thinking of, it was on TCM in the UK just a few weeks ago. I caught a bit of it while it was on (think I was getting ready for work or sleep or something since I didn't actually watch it), but I was kinda tickled to see Ed Asner playing the brutal thug.
 
Eyes Front & Center

I'll have to keep an eye out for it, I'd like to see it. I fondly recall the novel, having read it as a child just discovering thrillers.
 
I've had a shabby copy of THE SATAN BUG laying around for about 15 years now. I bought it for a quarter at a used bookstore but never got around to reading.

On a similar subject matter, you might want to check out the movie PANIC IN THE STREETS from 1950. It's an excellent suspense/drama about police tracking down a murderer in New York City infected with plague:

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0042832
 
Panic

Ogo - I may have seen PANIC IN THE STREETS ages ago, but certainly would like another look, yes. Kazan directs, and what a cast. Thanks. I'll see if it's rentable, along with THE SATAN BUG perhaps.

The Satan Bug, the book, is exciting and well-done, as I recall.
 
I know PANIC IN THE STREETS is definitely available on video, as I rented it from a video store a few years back. I've never seen SATAN BUG in a video store, but I just looked and both movies are for sale in VHS format at Amazon.com.
 
Plum Island Strike

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Rense.com
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Plum Island Disease Center
Workers On Strike

By Claudia Van News and Sudhin Thanawala
Staff Writers
The Hartford Courant
8-22-2


About 70 workers at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center went on strike Wednesday.
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The workers formed a small picket line in Old Saybrook and a larger one in Orient Point on Long Island - the two sites from which boats take scientists and support staff to the island each day.
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The Plum Island lab is one of two run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study animal diseases such as foot and mouth disease and African swine fever. The island is 8 miles off the Connecticut coast.
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Spokesmen for the USDA, which has operated the Plum Island Animal Disease Center for 40 years, said there would be no impact on lab operations, particularly because the striking workers do not handle research. The strikers are employed by Maryland-based L.B. & B. Associates.
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The government said the striking employees operate the ferries, power plant, wastewater treatment facility and maintain the buildings and grounds on the government-owned island.
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Since Sept. 11, armed security has been provided by another contractor. The strikers were replaced Wednesday with temporary employees.
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"It's an inconvenience. The cafeteria was closed today; they had to bring in a plate of sandwich meats for people to eat," said Abigail Carreno of Middletown, a research associate who studies foot and mouth disease on the island.
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Carreno, who returned to Old Saybrook via boat from the island Wednesday evening, feared "the island may not be able to handle a big emergency" because some of the strikers work on the ambulance and fire crews.
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"There is no interruption in services. The workers we've placed there are responsible," Edward Brandon, L. B. & B. chief operating officer, said Wednesday night.
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He also said the temporary replacements had the necessary government clearance to work on the island, located off the northeastern tip of Long Island.
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The strike took effect as of 12:01 a.m. Wednesday when talks that had been going on for a year between the company and Local 30 of the International Union of Operating Engineers broke off.
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L. B. & B., under a contract with the USDA that is set to expire Oct.1, has supplied workers to the island for the past six years.
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Negotiations, according to the union, are deadlocked over wages, benefits and changes in working conditions. Strikers picketing in Old Saybrook, who said they have no quarrel with the USDA, say they stand to see their wages cut and their seniority and other benefits lost if the company prevails.
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"The package we proposed is better than what they have now," said Brandon. "The next move is the union's."
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_____
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Strike At Plum Island Prompts Concerns For Safety
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"However, scientists and striking workers said there was very little danger of a leak that could threaten nearby communities"
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By Marc Santora
8-24-2
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The first strike ever at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, the high-security laboratory off Long Island that conducts research on dangerous infectious animal diseases, has raised concerns among striking union members, workers still on the island and government officials about the center's ability to function safely and effectively.
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been called to the center to investigate allegations of sabotage after the water pressure on the island failed to generate sufficient power, according to workers and scientists on the island and government officials. The insufficient water pressure meant scientists could not use the necropsy rooms, which are used to examine dead animals, according to witnesses on the island. Union officials said that the problem was the result of inexperienced workers' being rushed in to replace the strikers.
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Other concerns about the center, which is on an 850-acre island about a mile and a half northeast of Orient Point on the North Fork of Long Island, include the safety of operating the facility without a trained fire department, and that the replacement workers have not been adequately screened and do not have sufficient training to handle an emergency or even keep essential parts of the island running. However, scientists and striking workers said there was very little danger of a leak that could threaten nearby communities.
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Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said yesterday that she was going to ask the appropriate Senate committee to investigate how the strike was handled and to find out the qualifications of the replacement workers. "I am concerned," she said in a telephone interview. "We don't know who these people are who are being put in as replacements."
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Mrs. Clinton also said: "We are in greater need of the kind of research that is done there than we have been at any time. I am just bewildered at why it had to get to this point."
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The concerns come at a time when debate is heating up in Washington about the role of Plum Island and whether it should be included in the Department of Homeland Security.
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The strike at the Department of Agriculture facility began on Aug. 13 at midnight, after negotiators failed to reach an agreement on wages and benefits. Plum Island employs about 200 people, both government workers and union members. The 76 striking union workers are members of the International Union of Operating Engineers and are employed by a government subcontractor, LB&B Associates, based in Columbia, Md. The workers on strike filled key roles such as operating the waste-water treatment plant and decontamination plant, and also served as boat operators and safety technicians.
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Plum Island is known to residents on Long Island's North Fork as Mystery Island and has long been the subject of speculation about the dangerous germs that are studied there. It was even mentioned in the film "Silence of the Lambs" as a place for the character Hannibal Lecter to retreat to under heavy surveillance once a year.
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Beyond the natural barrier of water, the center takes elaborate precautions to ensure that organisms do not escape from the island. While people in the labs do not wear suits with self-contained respirators, everyone who leaves the containment areas has to shower, scrubbing hair and nails and rinsing mouths. Nothing is permitted to leave the labs without being disinfected, even eyeglasses.
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The only outbreak on the island occurred in 1978, when the spread of foot and mouth disease forced officials to kill all the livestock. There has never been a leak to the mainland.
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The most serious problems on the island because of the strike appear to involve the water system. The island gets its water from a series of wells that feed a central water tower. According to witnesses on the island, at some point in the last week part of the pressure being generated was lost. Water is central to many of the activities performed on the island, especially the cleaning.
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Representative Rob Simmons of Connecticut said he was told that the F.B.I. had been called to the island, which is close to his Congressional district, to investigate.
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Witnesses on the island also confirmed that the F.B.I. was investigating allegations of sabotage.
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Jacob Bunch, a spokesman for LB&B Associates, said, "We are not going to comment on the F.B.I. investigation." The F.B.I. also had no comment, and a request to visit the island was denied by the Agriculture Department.
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Robert Borrusso, 42, has worked at the center for six years and is licensed to operate the waste-water treatment plant. He said that when he left work on the afternoon of Aug. 13, before a decision had been reached about a strike, the system was operating properly. "When I left at 3:30 the water pressure was adequate," he said.
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Mr. Borrusso said that while the well system was not overly complicated, some things are not labeled, so an operator has to know his way around. "As long as I've been there, none of the supervisors have operated this system," he said. "They were the ones operating it last week and now they have people from I don't know where operating it."
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Asked where the replacement workers were trained and how they were screened for the jobs they now fill on the island, Mr. Bunch said: "In terms of training I will tell you that people are well trained or they wouldn't be there. I am not going to get into how they are trained."
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He also would not discuss the issue of security clearances.
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An official with the engineers union in Washington said that he had been notified by the Department of Labor about a call from a replacement worker seeking help.
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"This person said they were sleeping on cots, working 12-hour shifts and not being allowed to make calls off the island," the official said. "He described their condition as being held captive."
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Ed Brandon, the chief operating officer of LB&B, said the worker was not a hostage and had already left the island. Mr. Brandon insisted everything was running smoothly.
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A government official familiar with operations at Plum Island cautioned that while questions about the ability of the center to operate effectively were legitimate given the unusual nature of a strike in such a highly sensitive location, union workers had alleged safety abuses in the past to draw attention to their case. Until 1991, all workers on Plum Island were federal employees. In 1992, many jobs were turned over to private industry.
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"A decade after that happened you still have smoldering resentment," the official said, adding that the situation exposed a bigger battle over the future of Plum Island.
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"You have a group of people striking on the island who are blissfully unaware that the whole operation may cease to exist," the official said.
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Over the past 10 to 15 years, the official said, the amount of money appropriated to keep the center running has remained about the same, while the costs have risen.
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"There are two missions on Plum Island," the official explained. "One is research and the other is diagnosis, and both of these programs have been reduced over the years." It is striking, the official said, because "there has never been a time when the government needed Plum Island more than it needs it today."
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The only other comparable germ-research labs in the country are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and a United States Army laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland.
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President Bush has proposed making the Plum Island research center part of Homeland Security. Last year, Congress appropriated $23 million to research design options for a new lab at Plum Island. However, nine months later, no design plans have been made and people familiar with the situation say that is because there is talk that the new facility, which could cost around $250 million, will not be built on Plum Island.
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Residents in the communities near Plum Island have become accustomed to their mysterious neighbor. Bob Burns, a trustee for the village of Greenport, who handles relations with the center, said there was not much anxiety in the community regarding the strike. "We assume they will be able to manage out there, whatever is going on," he said.
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Mr. Simmons said he has heard worries from people nearby. "I have gotten calls from constituents asking if it is safe," he said. "People worry about Plum Island under routine circumstances, so you can expect that they worry more when circumstances are as unusual as these."





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The Plum Island property is about to be sold off by the government ...

Plum Island lies just off the tip of Long Island, not far from the Hamptons. It sports miles of unblemished shoreline, hundreds of acres of undeveloped forest, a lighthouse — and the federal government is planning to put all of it on the auction block.

But before you go putting your bid down, you should probably know: Many of the current residents have foot-and-mouth disease. And their neighbors on the mainland like it that way. ...

Full Story: http://www.npr.org/2015/09/05/43759...h-disease?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=science
 
I remember a family trip to the Highlands when I was a kid. My Dad drove us past the island and explained it. I was fascinated and chilled. Still am. Very eerie place.
 
I remember a family trip to the Highlands when I was a kid. My Dad drove us past the island and explained it. I was fascinated and chilled. Still am. Very eerie place.
I remember something similar, although I don't find it particularly creepy. In my head, I find it hard to distinguish Gruinard and the Isle of Ewe, but then they are very similar, and not too far apart!

Not sure about the comments on page 1 about Gruinard being 3 miles from the Scottish mainland - just to further worry anyone who's scared of wind-blown spores, the distance is no more than about 400m at the closest point!
 
Interesting article about Gruinard Island and the activists who drew attention to the contamination.

For decades, Gruinard Island off the north west coast of Scotland was too dangerous to allow public access.

It was known as "Anthrax Island" after it was contaminated during World War Two by scientists carrying out germ warfare experiments. Anthrax is a lethal bacteria, especially when inhaled, and it proves fatal in almost all cases, even with medical treatment.

The secret wartime experiments left the tiny island uninhabitable for decades - until in 1981 a group known as the Dark Harvest commandos launched a move to focus attention on the deadly contamination.

It began with a letter to the Glasgow Herald newspaper, which said: "By the time you read this the campaign will have started in earnest.
"The first delivery will have been made - and where better to send the seeds of death than to the place from whence they came?"

That place was the Porton Down biological research centre in Wiltshire, the top secret Ministry of Defence laboratory. The facility was searched and nothing was found. So they searched again and found a bucket of soil near the perimeter. ...

The Mystery of Anthrax Island will be shown at 22:00 on Tuesday 1 March on BBC Scotland and on the iplayer.

.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-60483849
 
I think a delegation of farmers should be sent there to test it.
Apparently they have tested it by putting sheep there after removing tons of soil (where did that end up?), and covering the area in formaldehyde (known to cause cancer and leukemia).
 
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