Page 35 - Bioterrorism

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This indicates that, in the opinion of medical experts, there was a risk that the staff of Avir had
contracted bird flu, and, unknowingly, acted as carriers of a pandemic virus into the population of
a densely built up Vienna city district and in wintertime.

The material was only discovered when staff working for BioTest (in Konarovice in the Czech
Republic), tested the vaccination on ferrets, who then died.

BiotTst was supposed to test anti-flu vaccination that should serve Europeans during the next flu
season, and the labels on the material sent to them from Baxter via Avir gave no indication of the
lethal contents.

The 13 BioTest staff were treated with Tamiflu and were placed in quarantine for fear they had
been contaminated with the bird flu virus, which is on the list of the possible biological weapons
and one of the most dangerous biological agents on the Earth with more than 60% death rate.

Subsequently the same problem of Baxter contaminated vaccine material was found in the
laboratories in Slovenia, Austria and Germany, who had received the material from Baxter.

First, the company Baxter evoked the 'trade secret" and refused to explain how exactly how a
Level 3 biological warfare pathogen found its way into H3N2 material, regardless whether or not
this experimental vaccine material was 'intended' for eventual use in humans or not.

Baxter representatives have said that the material sent to the Czech republic, Austria, Slovenia and
Germany was in fact a pure H5N1 sent by accident - maybe to mask the previous assumption,
that it was in fact an ordinary flu vaccine, which was contaminated. It is still not clear whether it
was in fact the pure H5N1 or contaminated vaccine.

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The Austrian Health Minister Alois Stöger confirmed on May 20 2009 that the 72 kilograms of
contaminated vaccine material has been destroyed, but no information has been released as to the
genetic sequences of the contaminated material or what Clade was Baxter's H5N1 vaccine from,
whether from Clade 1? Clade 2? Clade 3? Other?

Therefore, it is not possible to know whether H5N1 resembles the strains circulating in waterfowl.

Was the contaminated H5N1 strain genetically engineered? If so, by whom? Does the NS protein
in Baxter's H5N1 material contain polymorphisms which suppress human interferon production?
Was Baxter's H5N1 a full set of influenza genes? Or was it just the hemaglutanin and
neuraminidase? Did Baxter's H5N1 contain a poly-basic cleavage site on the Hemaglutanin
surface protein? Why were the samples of experimental vaccine material not irradiated?

Coinfection of H5N1 and H3N2 would not produce simple reassortment but a complex in vivo
recombination of many competing strains in the infected host.

Furthermore the complex coinfection of H5N1 and H3N2 in a human would produce natural
selection pressure for maximum virulence.

The book "Evolutionary Dynamics" suggest that viral coinfection selects for both maximum
virulence and infectivity.

How close the world came to a pandemic is underlined by the reaction of Panasonic Japan.

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On February 9 – on the very same day as 18 employees of Avir were given preventative
treatment for the bird flu in the Otto Wagner Hospital in Vienna – AFP reported that Panasonic