It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Kampala (AFP) - A hospital technician has died of the Ebola-like Marburg virus in Kampala, the Ugandan government announced on Sunday.
Weaponization[edit]
The Soviet Union had an extensive offensive and defensive biological weapons program that included MARV.[49] At least three Soviet research institutes had MARV research programs during offensive times: the Virology Center of the Scientific-Research Institute for Microbiology in Zagorsk (today Sergiev Posad), the Scientific-Production Association "Vektor" (today the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology "Vektor") in Koltsovo, and the Irkutsk Scientific-Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East in Irkutsk. As most performed research was highly classified, it remains unclear how successful the MARV program was. However, Soviet defector Ken Alibek claimed that a weapon filled with MARV was tested at the Stepnogorsk Scientific Experimental and Production Base in Stepnogorsk, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (today Kazakhstan),[49] suggesting that the development of a MARV biological weapon had reached advanced stages. Independent confirmation for this claim is lacking. At least one laboratory accident with MARV, resulting in the death of Koltsovo researcher Nikolai Ustinov, occurred during offensive times in the Soviet Union and was first described in detail by Alibek.[49] After the end of the Soviet Union, MARV research continued in all three institutes.[citation needed]
Symptoms
By Mayo Clinic Staff
Signs and symptoms typically begin abruptly within five to 10 days of infection with Ebola or Marburg virus. Early signs and symptoms include:
Fever
Severe headache
Joint and muscle aches
Chills
Weakness
Over time, symptoms become increasingly severe and may include:
Nausea and vomiting
Diarrhea (may be bloody)
Red eyes
Raised rash
Chest pain and cough
Stomach pain
Severe weight loss
Bleeding, usually from the eyes, and bruising (people near death may bleed from other orifices, such as ears, nose and rectum)
Internal bleeding
What is Marburg hemorrhagic fever?
Marburg hemorrhagic fever (Marburg HF) is a rare, severe type of
hemorrhagic fever which affects both humans and non-human
primates. Caused by a genetically unique zoonotic (that is,
animal-borne) RNA virus of the filovirus family, its recognition led
to the creation of this virus family. The five subtypes of Ebola virus
are the only other known members of the filovirus family.
Marburg virus was first recognized in 1967, when outbreaks of
hemorrhagic fever occurred simultaneously in laboratories in
Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia
(now Serbia). A total of 31 people became ill; they included
laboratory workers as well as several medical personnel and
family members who had cared for them. There were 7 deaths
among the reported cases. The first people infected had been
exposed to African green monkeys or their tissues. In Marburg,
the monkeys had been imported for research and to prepare polio
vaccine. In addition to the 31 cases, an additional primary case
was retrospectively serologically diagnosed.
originally posted by: solarstorm
Could be either or hell it could be both! Planet depopulation protocol is underway.
Marburg Virus as a Biological Weapons Agent
Marburg virus, like Ebola, is a Category A bio-warfare agent under the Center for Disease Control's classification system. Like Ebola, the fear remains that the Marburg virus could be isolated and cultivated for bioterrorism purposes.
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union experimented with the Marburg virus in aerosol form on monkeys and determined that infection required only a few virions. Ken Alibek (formerly Kanatjan Alikbekov) who secretly immigrated to the United States in 1992 revealed information about Soviet experimentation with the Marburg virus. The former First Deputy Director of Biopreparat, the Soviet biological weapons program, Dr. Alibek reported that Soviet scientists were researching whether Marburg could be loaded into a warhead or a MIRV delivery system. A colleague, Dr. Nikolai Ustinov, died from the virus after accidentally infecting himself while injecting guinea pigs with the Marburg virus for the Soviet biological weapons program. As described by Dr. Alibek, the disease that followed was horrifying and induced hemorrhages throughout Dr. Ustinov's body including from his nose, mouth, and sweat glands. After he died, Dr. Ustinov's journal was covered in his unclotted blood from star-shaped hemorrhages beneath his skin.
From Dr. Ustinov's corpse the Soviet scientists isolated a strain of Marburg that was especially deadly in airborne form; the strain was named Variant U in Dr. Ustinov's honor. According to Dr. Alibek, as of 1991, the Soviets were ready to manufacture Marburg Variant U in large amounts to be place into MIRVs (Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles) with 10 separate targeted warheads. Once completed, such weapons were designed to be part of the Soviet strategic/operational arsenal.
WHAT IF THIS IS BIO-TERROR, NOT SIMPLE EBOLA?
On the Sean Hannity Radio Show a caller named “Mike” who claimed to be a scientist and CEO of a large corporation during which he claimed that the government is in fact lying and that the disease currently causing problems in Dallas, TX and throughout West Africa is not Ebola but in fact the Marburg Virus (listen at this link towards the 24:50 mark).
The caller was indeed verified by Hannity’s staff so the conversation was quite disturbing not just because of his conclusions, but the other drastic paths his information could lead anyone with a brain into concluding.
The Soviet Union had an extensive biological warfare division and unfortunately for the United States, much of what was created by their labs might be intact or worse, in the hands of other nations or powers more willing to use these weapons to achieve their goals of weakening the U.S. and its allies. The PBS science program, NOVA, did a story on the BioWarriors back in November of 2001.
This extract from the transcripts of Nova Online from the program is beyond chilling:
Horrors of the Soviet program NOVA:
What happened to the Soviet program in 1972? They signed the same international treaty the U.S. signed, ostensibly banning offensive BW research, didn’t they? Patrick:
In 1972, just as they signed the Biological Convention, the Soviet Union expanded their program. Since they didn’t have the United States to follow, they went out on their own. And at that point they started concentrating on lethal agents.
They weaponized anthrax. They weaponized smallpox. They weaponized Yersinia pestis or plague. They weaponized Marburg virus. They grew it to high concentrations in guinea pigs. Now, it takes a lot of guinea pigs to produce the amount of dry powder they had on hand when supposedly their program came to an end.
They produced a very, very effective, scary product with Marburg virus.
NOVA: Why is that so scary?
Patrick: Because Marburg virus is lethal. It only takes one to two virus particles to cause an infection of the respiratory tract. There is no vaccine. And once you contract the disease, there is only one way to go, and that’s death. So it is very scary.
Journal of the American Medical Association report by Luciana Borio, MD issued on May 8, 2002 (PDF here). HISTORY AND POTENTIAL AS BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
Hemorrhagic fever viruses have been weaponized by the former Soviet Union, Russia, and the United States. There are reports that yellow fever may have been weaponized by North Korea. The former Soviet Union and Russia produced large quantities of Marburg, Ebola, Lassa, and New World arenaviruses (specifically, Junin and Machupo) until 1992.
Soviet Union researchers quantified the aerosol infectivity of Marburg virus for monkeys, determining that no more than a few virions are required to cause infection. Yellow fever and Rift Valley fever viruses were developed as weapons by the US offensive biological weapons program prior to its termination in 1969.
The Japanese terrorist cult Aum Shinrikyo unsuccessfully attempted to obtain Ebola virus as part of an effort to create biological weapons. Several studies have demonstrated successful infection of nonhuman primates by aerosol preparations of Ebola, Marburg, Lassa, and New World arena-viruses.
Arguments asserting that the absence of effective antiviral therapy and vaccines would make these viruses too dangerous to develop as weapons are not supported by the historical record.
In 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) classified the HFVs as category A bioweapon agents, based on the potential to cause widespread illness and death, ease of dissemination or person-to-person transmission, potential for major public health impact, and requirement of special action for public health preparedness.
2 posted on 10/4/2014 1:23:31 PM by wtd
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]
....
ALIBEK was raised in Alma-Ata, then the capital of Kazakhstan. Alma-Ata is in central Asia, not far from the Chinese border, on the medieval silk route. His first language was Kazakh, and he learned Russian at school. He got a medical degree at the military medical institute at Tomsk. His special interest was infectious-disease epidemiology. At some point while he was still in medical school, he was chosen to work for Biopreparat. Since it was a secret system, you didr;t really apply; you were approached and brought in. He rose fast. In 1982, at the age of thirty-one, he became the acting director of the Omutninsk bioweapons production plant, a major facility in the Kirov region of Russia. Eventually, he ended up working in Biopreparat's headquarters, a large building in Moscow the same building where Biopreparat is situated today. In early April of 1988, Ken Afibek received a telephone call in his office in Moscow. It came from his friend and colleague Lev Sandakhchiev, the director of a Biopreparat facility called Vector, a huge, isolated virology-research campus in the larch forests outside Novosibirsk, a city in western Siberia. In the late nineteen-eighties, Vector was devoted largely to the development and production of virus weapons. (Dr. Sandakhchiev denies this.) Dr. Sandakhchiev reported that there had been an accident. He was reluctant to discuss it on the telephone. "Send me the details in a cryptogram," Alibek said. Once a day for the next fourteen days, Alibek received a new cryptogram about the victim of the accident, Dr. Nikolai Ustinov. Dr. Ustinov was forty-four years old. AEbek recalls him as a fair-skinned man with light-brown hair, ethnically a Russian. He had a wife and children. Alibek thought of him as a good guy and a talented scientist, easy to talk with, receptive to new ideas. Ustinov had been doing basic military research on the Marburg virus, studying its potential as a weapon. The long-term goal was to see if it could be loaded into special biological warheads on the MIRV missaes that were aimed at the United States. (A MIRV has multiple warheads, which are directed at different targets.) At the time, the Soviet biological missile warheads were designed to be loaded with strategic /operational smaflpox virus, Black Death, and anthrax. The Marburg virus had potential for weaponization, too. Marburg is a close cousin to the Ebola virus, and is extremely lethal. Dr. Ustinov had been wearing a spacesuit in a Level 4 hot lab, injecting guinea pigs with Marburg virus. He pricked himself in the finger with a needle, and it penetrated two layers of rubber gloves. Nikolai Ustinov exited through an air lock and a chemical decon shower to Level 3, and used an emergency telephone to call his supervisor. The supervisor decided to put Ustinov into a biocontainment hospital, a twenty-bed unit with steel air-lock doors, like the doors of a submarine, where nurses and doctors wearing spacesuits could monitor him. He was not allowed to speak with his wife and children. Ustinov did not seem to be afraid of dying, but, separated from his family, he became deeply depressed. On about the fourth day, Ustinov developed a headache, and his eyes turned red. Tiny hemorrhages were occurring in them. He requested a laboratory notebook, and he began writing a diary in it, every day. He was a scientist, and he was determined to explain how he was dying. What does it feel hke to die of Marburg virus? What are the psychological effects? For a while, he maintained a small hope that he would@t die, but when his skin developed spontaneous bruises he understood what the future held. Dr. Sandakhchiev's cryptograms to Alibek were dry and factual, and didn't include the human details. Alibek would later learn that perhaps twice Ustinov had broken down and wept. Alibek was frantic to get help to Ustinov. He begged the Ministry of Defense for a special immune serum, but bureaucratic delays prevented its arrival in Siberia until it was too late. When Ustinov began to vomit blood and pass bloody black diarrhea, the doctor gave him transfusions, but as they put the blood into him it came out of his mouth and rectum. Ustinov was in prostration. They debated replacing all the blood in his body with fresh new blood-a so-called whole-body transfusion. They were afraid that that might trigger a total flooding hemorrhage, which would kifl him, so they didn't do it.
But why would your government lie? There there to protect you arent they? (Sarcasm)
originally posted by: ripcontrol
a reply to: solarstorm
Not from what the reports said.. Marburg was survivable
But keep in mind the caller on one said Ebola was airborne- but that they changed its name to Ebola
The reason i think is because otherwise it would be classified as a bio weapon
(unless I missed something.. a damn good reason for the gov. to lie)
‘The headlines are full of news about Ebola, and there’s a very valid reason for that. The illness presents in a gruesome, bloody fashion best suited for a horror movie. But while America’s attention is on a disease in which there is only ONE confirmed case in the country, there have been 538 cases of Enterovirus D68, 5 deaths, and 10 cases of paralysis.
The enterovirus is an illness that is passed on like the flu or the common cold, and there are millions of cases per year, according to CDC estimates. However, there are hundreds of strains and this one – EV-D68 – is incredibly virulent.
Last week in New Jersey, a little boy died suddenly, with no previous signs of being ill. He just went to bed and never got up. A week later, an autopsy confirmed that he had died from Enterovirus D-68. This went all but unnoticed by the media as the nation focused on the single case of Ebola in Dallas.’