Biowar in CT and NY

[John Young]

What's underplayed about Tobiason's CD is his argument
that people have a right to know how to protect themselves
against biological attack, especially the "accidental" kind.

The Connecticut victim of anthrax lived due west of Plum
Island, which is located off the coast of Long Island, and
is a controversial laboratory which does classified research
on animal diseases. Locals have protested for years about
its activities. One favorite complaint is that wild animals on
the island get infected and then swim across Long Island
Sound to Connecticut or across an narrow inlet to the
LI mainland. Deers swim the sound; rodents, squirrels and 
rabbits swim the inlet; and birds fly everywhere up and
down the coast and inland. 

The laboratory's officials claim there is no threat to
the public, that their research only involves foot and mouth
disease. Nobody believes that for infected deer have turned
up in CT and small mammals and birds on Long Island.

I've not seen any mention of Plum Island in connection
with the anthrax case, and mammals usually are not a source
of the inhalation type, but could be transporters of the powder. 

Still, it would not be surprising that Plum has been doing 
research with a variety of animal-borne diseases for that is 
what it was set up to do several decades ago. 

Critics have questioned why the laboratory has been allowed
to continue to operate within the New York Megalopolis. But
the same is said of Brookhaven National Laboratory, located
not far away.

Biolobical scientists who have visited the facility have
reported to scientific colloquia at the American Museum 
of Natural History inManhattan that weird and scary 
stuff happens on Plum Island -- disease, germs, insects,
pests within pests within peculiar parasitical containers
waterborne, airborne and human-borne. Even military
visitors reportedly come away shaken.