More money for bio-defense work why this much?

The Bush Administrations goal to increase bio-defense work takes an expensive turn in for a Kansas City based company Midwest Research Institute, they will send about 15 employees to Fort Detrick, Maryland to work in the new bio-defense labs under construction. The 1972 International BWTC that Congress aproved and President Nixon signed, banned the development of biological weapons, but does allow work for defense protections, since 2001 the Bush Administration has invested billions into "defense" related bio-defense projects. The majority of the work is being done in the same places that bio-weapons development took place during the Cold War.

The amount of money is troubling, I understand research, I was one of the human medical volunteers that was used in the chemical weapons and drug research at Edgewood Arsenals Cold War program that ran from 1955 thru 1975, when Congress learned of the human experimentation and the LSD experiments and public outcry over the experiments became to hot, the Army voluntarily stopped the tests in 1975 and in 1976 President Ford signed laws that banned future government agency involvement with human experimentation.

They still have the experimental data from WW2 Germany and Cold War American experiments they still analyze today, many of the experiments were done in double blind studies, so the research data is relevant to new studies. You have to create new materials in order to learn how to defend against it, I just object to the amount of funding going towards this objective, there are many other issues, that need funding for the American public, and the potential for abuse is tremendous with "classified projects" like these, our nation does not have a very good track record over the past 100 years in this area.

President Bill Clinton apologized for the federal governments role in the Tuskeegee Syphlis Experiments, the nuclear weapons tests, the chemical weapons and drug experiments, the CIAs MKULTRA program, and the Operation Whitecoat experiments conducted at Fort Detrick from 1952 thru 1972. To this date the Veterans Administration refuses to address the substance exposures openly and honestly from the nuclear tests, Operation SHAD, Project 112, nor the Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick experiments.

I am in contact with 14 other "test vets" or "med vols" that are all disabled and the VA refuses to even acknowledge the medical problems related to the experiments, they just "ignore" the issues. It took me from October 2002 until October 2005 to even get the Veterans Administrations Regional Office to put the words Edgewood Arsenal, chemical weapons and drug experiments on a piece of paper related to my claims for compensation. This took Senator Larry Craig's involvement and only when they got caught in mis-statements to his office and myself, and I could prove it with Army documents, and when confronted by Senator Craig's office did the VA respond with a letter addressing the issue, they then quickly claimed I had agreed to a settlement or a "Let's Make a Deal" letter and they granted me a 100% for PTSD and closed my claims file without ever addressing my COPD, cardiovascular, skin abnormalities, GERD, and other gastrointestinal issues all of which can be linked to toxic exposures.

I don't have much trust in the federal governments capabilities of "safe" work on dangerous projects. They tend to ignore or lie when confronted with evidence.

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2007/12/17/daily25.html

MRI will get $15M of $257M federal contractWednesday, December 19, 2007 - 1:35 PM CSTKansas City Business Journalhttp://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2007/12/17/daily25.htmlMidwest Research Institute is part of a team awarded a 10-year contract from the National Institutes of Health to support management and operation of a National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases research lab. Kansas City-based MRI's portion of the contract is worth about $15 million, spokeswoman Linda Cook said Wednesday. The contract includes options for additional biosafety-related work for MRI that could earn it several million dollars in additional revenue, she said. The overall contract is potentially worth $257 million. The Battelle Memorial Institute is the lead organization on the team that won the contract. The team also includes Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, Charles River Laboratories, Tunnell Consulting and the Washington Technology Group. The team will fulfill the contract at the High Containment Integrated Research Facility, under construction at Fort Detrick's National Interagency Biodefense Campus in Frederick, Md. The lab is scheduled to open in the fall of 2008 and will be staffed with 119 scientists, researchers and technicians when fully functional. MRI's Jerry Jennings, principal adviser for science, was appointed high containment coordinator for the project. He has more than 25 years of experience and has had senior-level assignments involving federal policy issues related to biodefense, infectious disease research, the development of medical countermeasures against threat agents, program management and laboratory facility operations, MRI said in a release. About a dozen additional MRI staff will be chosen to work at the lab, Cook said. Work performed at the lab will help develop knowledge crucial to development of preventive and therapeutic strategies for improved medical outcomes in patient care and public health, MRI said. The Integrated Research Facility is being developed to carry out biodefense research needed to understand the clinical disease processes that correlate with the severity of microbial-induced disease. The core mission is to use hospital tools such as endoscopy, cardiac telemetry monitors and various imaging technologies to systematically evaluate pathogenic processes, MRI said.

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