Hi friends. I was just perusing the newspaper and recent online reports about the current "swine flu epidemic". I thought you might be interested in this timeline.

Report Sounds Alarm Over Bioterror
by Joby Warrick, Washington Post, 11-30-08
Bipartisan Study Finds Insufficient Laboratory Safeguards, Loose Regulation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/29/AR2008112901921.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Dangerous pathogens may have vanished from Army lab
Bend (OR) Bulletin, April 23, 2009
(Attibuted to the Washington Post but not found on W. Post online)
(it costs $8 to look at Bend Bulletin online)

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Deseases in Frederick, Md., is under investigation by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command for the possible disappearance of some of its stock of deadly pathogens, an Army spokesman said.
The Frederick News-Post reported Wednesday that since at least February, agents have been trying to discover what happened to pathogens that my have gone missing from 1987 to 2008….
The investigation seems to center around missing samples of Venezuelan equine encephalities, a mosquito-born virus which usually causes a mild flu-like ilness but can also cause brain inflammation and death…(emphasis added, "equine" as in horse)
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=89333

Toxin Blamed in Death of 21 Polo Horses
Fox News, 4-20-09
WELLINGTON, Fla. - The sudden death of 21 polo horses in Florida may have been caused by a toxin that has yet to be identified by tests and could have been in the animals' feed, vitamins or supplements, veterinarians said Monday.
The horses from the Venezuelan-owned team Lechuza Caracas sickened just before a tournament Sunday, collapsing and dying on the scene or while being treated at vet clinics or transported, officials said…http://www.myfoxal.com/dpp/news/dpg_Polo_Horse_Death_fc_200904202423715

Swine Flu outbreak in Mexico
BBC reports from Mexico, 4-27-09
Readers in the areas affected by the swine flu outbreak have been sending their accounts to the BBC since the first cases were reported.
The virus - which has so far claimed more than 100 lives in Mexico - has spread, with the first European case confirmed in Spain.
Governments around the world are attempting to prevent it spreading further, amid reports of further infections in the US and Canada…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/8018428.stm

CDC says too late to contain U.S. flu outbreak
Reuters, April 24 2009
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/24443479.htm

Mexico says swine flu deaths now at 149
USA Today, 4-27-09
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-04-27-mexico-death-toll_N.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

(Al Gore’s) Venture capital firm set to reap rewards on swine flu (along with Donald Rumsfeld)
Reuters, 4-26-09
http://uk.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUKN2445216420090424?sp=true
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/al-gores-venture-capital-firm-set-to-reap-rewards-on-swine-flu/

No One Asked Questions
(attributed to the Washington Post, 2-19-02)
Scientists Recount U.S. Biodefense Labs' Security Lapses
By Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/EPI/bioter/nooneaskedques.html
(UCLA Dept of Public Health)

Former Army scientist Richard Crosland kept scrupulous notes about the frozen crystals he kept in his lab, and for good reason: The crystals contained botulinum toxin, a biological poison so deadly a single gram could kill a million people.
For 11 years, Crosland carefully logged each shipment of toxin he received and accounted for every molecule, thinking somebody would want to know. But no one asked -- not once during his career as an Army biodefense researcher, and not when he left the job in 1997, hauling away boxes of personal effects that no one checked.
"No one asked questions," Crosland said of his time at U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the Pentagon's top biodefense research center at Fort Detrick, Md. "You could literally walk out with anything."…cont.
"It blew me away," said one microbiologist who worked at the lab in the 1980s and early 1990s. "I could have lifted vials of anything and they never would have been missed. There was nothing to stop me."…
But, according to former USAMRIID scientists, until recently lab workers could have walked away with live microbes without being challenged. In interviews, the scientists said the lab failed to exercise stringent inventory controls over the pathogens and toxins used by scientists -- a practice that would be considered standard at private labs working with less dangerous material, they said…
Scientists were working "covertly" on unauthorized projects, technicians were being asked to come in on weekends for off-the-books assignments and "quite a bit of stuff was unaccounted for," Lt. Col. Michael Langford is quoted as telling investigators in a transcribed interview…

U.S. Responding as if Swine Flu will be Pandemic (!) (Emphasis added)
Associated Press, 4-27-09
WASHINGTON – Confirming at least 40 cases of swine flu in the U.S., the Obama administration said Monday it was responding aggressively as if the outbreak would spread into a full pandemic. Officials urged Americans against most travel to Mexico as the virus that began there spread to the United States and beyond. President Barack Obama urged calm, saying there was reason for concern but not yet "a cause for alarm."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090427/ap_on_he_me/med_swine_flu