By Simon Grey, on November 23rd, 2011
Pay close attention to this chart:
This is a problem. As a libertarian, I generally view regulation as pointless, needlessly expensive, counterproductive, and anti-liberty. As such, I oppose a good portion of government interference in the economy. However, committing fraud is not simply a matter of failing to comply with ticky-tack regulation. Fundamentally, it is a violation of property rights. As shown by the chart above, the current vitriol directed at the banks is wholly deserved since every major bank in the united states has committed fraud (i.e. violated property rights) multiple times each.
Merriam-Webster defines fraud thusly: deceit, trickery; specifically : intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right.
In essence, fraud is attempting to lay claim to the property of another under false pretenses. If you are selling a house and offer $50,000 for it but only pay $25,000, then my attempt to claim your property is fraudulent because I lied about what I would give in exchange for your house. Your decision to sell your house to me was made in the belief that I would pay you $50,000 for it. If I take title of the house without following through on my promise, then I have essentially cheated you out of your house.
Now, if the government must exist, then it is reasonable to expect the government to defend and enforce property rights. This means that the government should prosecute murder, theft, rape, and other crimes wherein one violates another’s property rights. This should also include fraud.
Fraud may not be coercive in the manner that, say, theft is, but fraud is no different than theft in that one takes something that does not belong to one’s self, in violation of the terms of the exchange. As such, fraud is most definitely a crime the government should wholeheartedly prosecute.
All the major banks have committed massive amounts of fraud. Every last one of them. Sometimes this has consisted of foreclosing on homes that were not even collateral for any loan. Sometimes this has consisted of knowingly lying about the quality of financial instruments. There are a variety of ways in which fraud has been perpetrated by the major banks, and I refer you to The Market Ticker (run a search for “bank fraud’)for a much more comprehensive view on the matter. Essentially, the banks have stolen from a large number of people and therefore deserve to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They have violated the property rights of far too many people, and they need to be jailed.
The assertion that the banksters deserve jail is not predicated on the complaint that banks have ignored trivial regulations; it is predicated on the fact that they have stolen from people. As such, it is not “socialistic” or “anti-market” to demand the prosecution of banksters. In fact, it is just the opposite. It is pro-market to demand that the government prosecute fraud and thereby uphold property rights. The time has come to stop the looting and start the prosecuting.
By Simon Grey, on November 21st, 2011
The other side of all this, which I’m surprised the article doesn’t mention, is that lower costs mean that addicts find it easier to pay for their habit. They’re less likely to resort to theft and mugging, and so on. It’s also noteworthy that crack probably only emerged as a way to get more “bang for the buck” out of cocaine while trafficking was harder.
Here’s an interesting question for proponents of the drug war: assuming that demand for drugs remains stable, what do you suppose will happen if you reduce the supply of drugs? Answer: the price will rise.Here’s another interesting question: if violence increases directly with rising drug prices, what will happen when the prolonged war on drugs succeeds in reducing supply without reducing demand? Answer: violence will increase.
It’s easy to say that drug use is immoral, and it’s easy to say that drugs have negative effects on society. However, knowing that the drug war is going to ratchet up the violence, and impose significant negative externalities on society, is it really so rational to say that the drug war is worth it?
By Simon Grey, on September 22nd, 2011
Aside from these lies, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. The major difference between Social Security and Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme is his was illegal. Three Nobel laureate economists have testified that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Dr. Paul Samuelson called it “the greatest Ponzi game ever contrived.” Dr. Milton Friedman said it was “the biggest Ponzi scheme on earth.” Dr. Paul Krugman predicted that “the Ponzi game will soon be over.”
The media and government need to take a hint here. When two Nobel-prize-winning Keynesians say that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, it’s safe that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.(Because if there’s anyone who knows Ponzi schemes, it’s going to be a Keynesian.)Incidentally, I was also ahead of the game in demonstrating that Social Security is a lie, at least in terms of guaranteed benefits. While I only focused on Flemming v. Nestor, it is important to also look at Helvering V. Davis: Another lie in the Social Security pamphlet is: “Beginning November 24, 1936, the United States government will set up a Social Security account for you. … The checks will come to you as a right.” Therefore, Americans were sold on the belief that Social Security is like a retirement account and money placed in it is our property. The fact of the matter is you have no property right whatsoever to your Social Security “contributions.”
You say, “Williams, you’re wrong! We have a right to Social Security payments.” In a U.S. Supreme Court case, Helvering v. Davis (1937), the court held that Social Security is not an insurance program, saying, “The proceeds of both (employee and employer) taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like internal revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way.” In a later Supreme Court case, Flemming v. Nestor (1960), the court said, “To engraft upon the Social Security system a concept of ‘accrued property rights’ would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever-changing conditions which it demands.” [Emphasis added.]
Of course, Social Security is not technically a Ponzi scheme because one is not forced to pay taxes contribute to a true Ponzi scheme: It’s true that Ponzi engaged in fraud; his victims never would have “invested” with him, had he accurately explained the business model. Libertarians therefore agree with everybody else that Charles Ponzi was a criminal and would have to face legal consequences in any just legal order.
However, so far as we know Ponzi never threatened anybody. He didn’t tell struggling young workers, “Give me 15 percent of your paycheck every week, so that I can make you a fantastic return — or else I’ll send goons to kidnap you.”
In this respect, Social Security isn’t a Ponzi scheme after all. It’s more analogous to mobsters shaking down people for protection money, because otherwise “bad things could happen.”
 Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts
By Simon Grey, on April 1st, 2011
The opponents rely on a litany of horribles. The Violence Policy Center in Washington claims that since May 2007, individuals licensed to carry guns killed 286 private citizens and 11 law enforcement officers and committed 18 mass shootings. This gory record, it asserts, destroys the myth that permit holders are generally law-abiding folks who behave responsibly.
In fact, VPC’s own data, when inspected closely, doesn’t dent the case for gun rights. Over the past four years, there have been more than 60,000 homicides in the United States. The slayings carried out by permit holders amount to fewer than one of every 200 murders. For every licensee who killed someone, there are more than 20,000 who didn’t.
Nor does the evidence indicate that allowing people to carry pistols causes crime. Many of the shootings done by permit holders took place in their homes—where you don’t need a concealed-carry license to keep a gun.
Some of the killings weren’t even done with firearms: Among the cases cited by the VPC is a 2008 strangling in Florida, allegedly by a man who was licensed to carry. How can strangulation be blamed on a concealed weapon permit? If a fisherman kills someone, do we ban fishing rods?
Often, notes Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, the murders were premeditated or committed during the course of other serious crimes. In those cases, the license was irrelevant—unless you assume that someone willing to break the laws against murder or rape would not be willing to break another law by packing a sidearm.
What is extremely rare is a homicide committed by a permit holder in a public place in a fit of anger. Reviewing an earlier two-year database compiled by VPC, Kleck found only five cases “where possession of a carry permit may have contributed to the occurrence of the killing.” Such episodes are not quite flying pigs, but almost.
Leftists are primarily concerned with population control, but it would be politically suicidal to forthrightly admit this. Therefore, they are reduced to making utilitarian arguments against gun ownership and concealed carry permits, and this story highlights several flaws in the leftist anti-gun argument.
The biggest problem is the analytical filters. As noted in the linked article, it is absurd to suggest that concealed carry permits play a causal role in strangulations or home shootings. While there may be a correlative role, it is insane to even suggest that depriving people of concealed carry permits would have prevented these killings from happening. The problem, in this case, is motive, not irrelevant means.
In addition to failing to account for causation, the leftists make quite a hullabaloo over absolute numbers instead of relative numbers. Two measures are key: The percentage of murders that occurred because concealed carry permits were used to commit the crime and the percentage of concealed carry permit holders that commit crimes where concealed carry was integral to carrying out the crime.
Let’s say, in a hypothetical scenario, that there were ten thousand crimes in the past year, twenty thousand people had concealed carry permits, and concealed carry permits were integral part of twenty crimes. The relationship between concealed carry permits and crime would have a correlative factor of .002 and the relationship between concealed carry permit holders and crime would be .001. This means that there is a .2% chance that a given crime was committed by a concealed carry permit holder and that there is a .1% chance that concealed carry permit holder committed a crime. As can be seen, the correlation between crime and concealed carry is relatively weak in this scenario.
From what I can tell, it’s even weaker in the real world. Ohio alone issued more than 60,000 concealed carry permits in 2009. The carry rate of the population is roughly .54%. If we extrapolate this to the country in general, then approximately 1,691,000 citizens had concealed carry permits (since the data is, to say the least, incomplete during the two years of the aforementioned study, I will hold the concealed carry rate constant). Furthermore, the total murders committed during those two years are assumed to total 31,683 (I used the Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter data from the FBI’s CUS database for the years 2008 and 2009). Thus, the correlation between murder and concealed carry permits is around .000158. The correlation between concealed carry permit ownership and murder is .00000296. T
In addition, there have been plenty of people, most notably John Lott Jr., who have argued that there are plenty of benefits to having a populace that carries concealed weapons, most notably in the form of lower crime. There are plenty of people who dispute this work, of course, but it is clear that concealed carry, at the very least, does not lead to higher crime. It is therefore anti-crime or neutral.
As such, concealed carry permits offer a strong potential for upside, with minimal costs. Even if concealed carry doesn’t provide a significant reduction in crime, it is obvious that it will not contribute to it. Therefore, the utilitarian argument against concealed carry is null.
Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts
By B.P.T., on April 16th, 2009
I sometimes wonder how recent Supreme Court decisions that are seemingly non economic related affect local economies. Case in point. I live in South Louisiana where the Kennedy v Louisiana case got plenty of media air-play. In case you live in a cave, the case revolved around whether or not the execution of a child rapist was constitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately held a state may not execute a rapist for the rape of a child. (Coker v Georgia, a 1977 case, had outlawed execution for the rape of an adult woman.)
My issue is this- now that the case is decided, and other inmates won’t sit rotting on death row waiting for their multitude of appeals, habeas writs, etc. to run out, how does that compare dollar wise to putting a prisoner to death? This question could be asked for any capital crimes, (and I am not addressing the issue of capital punishment whatsoever…) but since this crime has now been declared to be a non-capital offense, it begs the question- from a tax-payer point of view, which costs more for a state?
Here’s a cost breakdown of the issue from a strictly economics viewpoint, in simple terms:
The average death penalty case costs an average of $470,000 more than non-death penalty cases, according to the Death Penalty Information center. These are costs to the prosecution and the defense, often footed almost entirely by the taxpayers. The constitution guarantees the assistance of counsel to those that cannot afford it (and let’s face it, most can’t). That means the taxpayers are ponying up for the lawyers and other court costs. This does not include additional court personnel costs of up to $70,000. An appellate defense costs upwards of another $100 grand.
OK, so assume the prisoner is convicted and sentenced to death. In addition to the cost of the case itself, is the annual cost of housing the inmate in a high security facility. The U.S. average in 2001, to house one inmate in the Federal Prison System, according to the Bureau of Justice, was nearly $23,000 per year. (As an aside, Louisiana had one of the lowest annual expenditure costs, at about $13,000.)
The website Dead Man Walking (www.deadmanwalkingupdate.org) says the average life sentence lasts 29 years. So if an inmate is sentenced to life, rather than the hassle of a capital trial, the average U.S. cost would be somewhere around $667,000, not taking inflation into account, for a life sentence. A death row inmate, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, spends an average of just over ten years on death row, with some waiting for over 20 years. That’s a cost of at least $230,000 just to house the inmate wait.
While death penalty cases make great headlines, and often seem to satisfy justice for crimes committed, these cases have the ability to totally bankrupt a small county or parish- using the simple figures above, here’s how that plays out for the average taxpayer’s pocketbook:
A death row inmate costs approximately $870,000 to try, appeal, and house, assuming he is the ‘average’ prisoner. A prisoner sentenced to life, on the other hand, costs about $667,000 in total, over $200,000 less per inmate. That’s a generous estimate- in Florida, the average cost per execution is $3.2 million dollars. The Palm Beach Post estimates that the state would save $51 million each year by doing away with the death penalty.
No matter how you feel about the death penalty itself, it is easy to see that money could better be spent in other ways than wasted on criminals- roads, child care, healthcare, education…….. definitely something to consider.
By Kris G., on February 26th, 2009
The government’s anti-terrorism ardour was endorsed again last week, as Section 76 of the new Counter Terrorism Act came into force on the 15th February. Section 76 in itself, seems to highlight the laudable extremes the government are willing to go to to ensure our safety. Although I understand that the government need something to show for the £3 Billion a year they invest in counter-terrorism, a part of me can’t help but wonder how much time and effort is spent on preventing terrorism, and what they are compromising as a result.
Although homicide has dropped in the UK since 2005, it is still very high compared to previous decades. In 2007 alone an average of over two homicides took place every day in Britain, leading to nearly one thousand deaths. In 2008, a total of 945 people were suspected of homicide. Firearms were used in 17,343 reported crimes, of which 42% were handguns and 172,989 violent offences were reported in London alone. For once I’m not going to slam the British judicial system’s lenient and ultimately devolutionary policies when it comes to crime. However, what does concern me is that in 2007 the government spent about £5.6 Billion on fighting crime and around £2 Billion on counter-terrorism, yet only one person was killed in a terrorist attack in the UK, Kafeel Ahmed, who, ironically, was one of the terrorists involved in the Glasgow International Airport Attack. In fact, since the beginning of the millennium, a grand total of 57 people have been killed as the result of terrorist attacks in the UK, compared to thousands of murders on the British streets by ‘non-terrorists’. So why is it, that when terrorism is so low (considerably lower that it was 10 years ago), the Home Office is investing more and more money in counter-terrorism, so much so that the cost is expected to rise to £3.5 Billion in 2010?
I think that most British citizens are under the impression from watching the news and reading the papers that they are under constant threat from terrorism, just from reading about the lengths the British government go to, and the amount of money they spend! And although a total of 57 deaths in nine years might justify a conservative estimate of around £10 Billion, let’s not forget the July 7th bombings which killed 56 of those 57 people.
The government would of course argue that the reason only 57 people have died as a result of terrorist attacks, is as a result of the massive investments they have made in counter-terrorism. This is something I would dearly like to believe and if it were true, would put my mind at rest when I consider what my taxes are being spent on. Unfortunately, though, a mere look at failed terrorist attacks over the past nine years proves it’s not the case.
On the 1st of June 2000, the Real IRA planted two bombs on Hammersmith Bridge set to detonate in the early hours of the morning. Funding in counter-terrorism was miniscule back then compared to the behemoth amounts thrown at it today, and the police had no knowledge of what was going to happen at all. A man named Maurice Childs found one of the bombs and hastily threw it over the bridge, it exploded, creating a 60ft column of water. The other bomb blew up a short while later, without achieving the desired effect nevertheless. Mr Childs, a hairdresser, was awarded an MBE for his courage.
On July 21st, 14 days after the 7/7 bombings, another attempt was made on London’s public transport system. At a time when you’d expect authorities to be at their most vigilant, the only thing which stopped the terrorists from blowing up trains at Shepherd’s Bush, Oval and Warren Street tube stations, and a bus on Hackney road, was shabby bomb making, not good police work. The police, having been caught off guard twice in two weeks and publicly humiliated, quickly stepped into action the following day, they accumulated their ‘intelligence’ and proceed in killing an innocent man: Jean Charles de Menezes.
On the 29th June 2007 two car bombs were discovered and deactivated in Haymarket and Cockspur Street. A year in which around £2 Billion was spent on counter-terrorism, the police had no intelligence whatsoever prior to the bombs being found. The first bomb, in Haymarket, was discovered by an ambulance crew attending a minor incident at a nightclub near where the car was parked, and the second one was transported to a pound at Park Lane for illegal parking! The staff at the pound noticed a strong smell of petrol coming from the car, and reported it to the police having heard about the first car bomb.
There have been two planned terrorists attacks publicly thwarted by the authorities, both in February 2007. The 2007 Plot to Behead a Muslim Soldier which entailed a six month investigation under codename: Operation Gamble and lead to five men being sentenced. And later that month, Police reportedly thwarted a plot to kill Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, after intercepting $330,000 from a courier at an Airport. It is suspected the money was going to be distributed around the UK based Saudi dissidents. It’s worth mentioning however, that nobody was arrested, including the courier, according to the Israel News “Detectives said there was insufficient evidence to bring charges against the cash smuggler.”
So, my question to Mrs Smith is simple: What are the billions of pounds allocated to counter-terrorism being spent on? When the police have yet to publicly foil a terrorist bombing in the UK, and a mere two innocent lives have been saved by the police (assuming the $330,000 was going to be spent on the murder of Abdullah of Saudi Arabia), and one taken away, how can the government justify such a huge ‘investment’?
Surely the real terror can be found in underpasses and subways, at train stations after dark, not from religious extremists, but hoodies with knives looking for a buck for their next fix. Real terror can be found on your high street, on your doorstep even. Isn’t this the terror we should be focusing on?
And surely, before spending billions upon billions of pounds on intelligence, equipment and training in counter-terrorism, shouldn’t we first train our government officials to stop leaving private data on trains?
By Mary Nichols, on November 6th, 2008
This year, unemployment rates among young people in the United States have been increasing to levels not seen since the early 1990s. Youth unemployment rates are usually a good indicator of the overall state of an economy, since young people typically face the greatest difficulties in finding employment in times of recession and, lacking experience, are often the first to be laid off by employers who need to cut back on labor costs. They may also lose out on job opportunities when more experienced older workers decide to defer retirement or return to the labor market, a common phenomenon in the current economic downturn.
The national unemployment rate for all workers in the U.S. has been steadily increasing over recent months, reaching 6.1% in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For 16 to 19 year-olds, however, the reported rate of unemployment is more than three times that for all workers, at 19.1% in September. Among ethnic and racial minorities youth unemployment rates are even higher, for example reaching 24.8% in July 2008 for African Americans aged between 16 and 24. The tight employment market is having a harsh impact not only on those looking for permanent, full-time employment, but on students seeking summer jobs, perhaps to help finance their education – it has recently been reported that it was harder to find jobs in summer 2008 than at any other time since the 1940s.
Setting Precedents
Previous studies have documented the serious knock-on effects that youth unemployment has on the individuals affected as well as the economy as a whole. For example, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, researchers at the Employment Policies Institute found that early unemployment was associated with lower future earnings as well as repeated spells of unemployment; this was attributed to the delays in the accumulation of employment experience and training while unemployed. The demoralizing effects of prolonged unemployment may also have adverse psychological effects on young people, including depression or low confidence which may further decrease their future likelihood of gaining employment.
For the economy and society as a whole, high unemployment rates among youth also have potentially serious consequences. Unemployment is a factor contributing to social exclusion and disruptive behavior such as crime and drug-taking, which not only increase social unrest but also the overall costs of health, law enforcement and other public services. At the same time, overall economic growth may be hampered by the under-use of a large group of recently-educated people who could potentially make a major contribution not only to overall productivity but to innovation and technological development.
So what can the government do to increase employment rates among young people in the United States, and thus maximize their contribution to the economy?
The Role of Education
International research unfortunately suggests that there are few viable ways of making a difference in the short-term, in the absence of an improved economy and more dynamic labor market. For example, a pan-European study by researchers at the European Central Bank found that direct interventions such as preferential hiring policies and greater wage flexibility have relatively little impact on improving job prospects for young people when markets are generally slow. However, the higher rates of youth employment in countries with apprenticeship systems suggests that the development of education and training programs linked specifically to labor market needs may be a promising longer-term option; there is also evidence from the literature that entrepreneurship and work-related training targeted at particular groups can help to increase employment rates. More generally, it can be hoped that policies intended to increase the academic attainment levels of all students in the United States, notably the No Child Left Behind Act, will help to improve the job prospects of young people in the longer-term, and thus maximize the contribution of this group to economic growth.
References
DeFreitas, G. (Ed.) (2008). Young Workers in the Global Economy: Job Challenges in North America, Europe and Japan. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishers.
Gomez-Salvador, R. & Leiner-Killinger, N. (2008). An Analysis of Youth Unemployment in the Euro Area. European Central Bank Occasional Paper Series No. 89, June 2008.
International Labour Office (2000). Employing Youth: Promoting employment-intensive growth. Geneva.
Kalwiji, A.S. (2004). Unemployment Experiences of Young Men: on the Road to Stable Employment? Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 66, 2, p. 205.
Mroz, T.A. & Savage, T.H. (2001). The Long-Term Effects of Youth Unemployment. Employment Policies Institute. Retrieved from http://www.epionline.org/studies/mroz_10-2001.pdf
Sum, A., McLaughlin, J., Khatiwada, I. & Palma, S. The Continued Collapse of the Nation’s Teen Job Market and the Dismal Outlook for the 2008 Summer Labor Market for Teens: Does Anybody Care? Boston, Massachusetts: Center for Labor Market Studies. Retrieved from http://www.clms.neu.edu/publication/documents/The_Continued_Collapse_of_the_Nations_Teen_Job_Market.pdf.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (2008). Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey. U.S. Department of Labor. Available online at http://www.bls.gov/cps/.
By G.L.C., on September 10th, 2008
Crime rates should drop during good economic times and rise during bad ones. So very soon if you are walking the streets of New York late at night, you may be at risk of being mugged by gangs of investment bankers, driven to acts of desperate violence by the travails of the credit markets. This seems logical at first glance – people who lose their jobs may turn instead to burglary and theft to get what they want. But there is little evidence to suggest that crime rates drop during good economic times and rise during bad ones. Crime rates rose every year between 1955 and 1972, even as the economy surged, with only a brief, mild recession in the early 1960s. A bad economy doesn’t always bring more crime. Crime rates fell about one third between 1934 and 1938 while the nation was struggling to emerge from the Great Depression and weathering another severe economic downturn in 1937 and 1938.
Declining wages for poor young males drew them to crime as crack ravaged inner cities during the economic boom of the late 1980s. Low wages and the lure of crack profits thus discouraged young men from finding honest work. Economists and criminologists who can refer to data from all 50 U.S. states to help them understand what is going on have found little indication of a strong link between economic growth and crime. They instead credit some of the sharp fall in crime in the U.S. in the 1990s to larger police forces and harsher prison sentences. More stringent laws and larger government expenditures have also played an important role in the fall in the crime rate.
The truth is that broad figures on crime conceal large differences in specific crimes, each with its own particular explanation. Crimes, broadly speaking, have been falling for a decade. Car thefts are down because cars are harder to steal. Modern televisions and other home electronic equipments tend to be either too large to steal or too cheap to bother with.
That should take the focus away from crime. The economic downturn is threatening an increase in crime, illegal immigration, and extremism, putting further strain on tight police budgets. Illegal working is forecast to increase as migrants’ opportunities for legal employment decline and businesses seek to save costs.
Economic downturn also risks increasing the appeal of far right extremism and racism. Experiencing racism can be one of the factors that can lead to people becoming terrorists.
Local police resources could come under increasing pressure. The ever increasing gas prices might leave the police forces facing financial pressures.
So if the war against crime is to be won, then more stringent laws and increased federal, state, and local spending on law enforcement are needed. In other words, crime declines not because the economy is booming but because the government passes stringent laws and spends money – larger prisons, more police, and tougher punishments.
By R. C. Anderson, on August 13th, 2008
Why would a scientist who had built his career on researching drugs and vaccines to protect his countrymen from anthrax purposely mail letters contaminated with anthrax to two government officials of the very country he is trying to protect? More importantly, was Bruce Ivins, a U.S. Army researcher of 35 years, the true culprit responsible for mailing the letters coated with anthrax in fall 2001 which killed five people? These questions may never be answered by Ivins since he died July 29 from an overdose of Tylenol. Seven years after these letters were mailed to two U.S. Senators among others, the FBI still has not firmly answered the question of who did it. In 2002, Steven Hatfill, an associate of Ivins, was labeled a “person of interest” by previous Attorney General John Ashcroft. Six weeks ago Hatfill won $5.8 million from the government for both associating him with the crime and the subsequent repercussions on his career.
While some wonder if Ivins was merely another innocent victim in the seven year search for a possible home-grown bioterrorist, others believe that his inability to handle the pressure and recent mental instability is anecdotal evidence of his guilt.
Where Did the Spores Come From?
Unfortunately, not all the evidence associated with Ivins has been released, but it is known that recent advances in science have allowed the FBI to run tests that would have been difficult several years ago. For example, it has been reported that the anthrax spores sent to the Senators have been sequenced. This means that researchers and authorities now know every gene and every detail of the DNA that made up the type of anthrax, or strain, sent in 2001. Since there are many different strains of anthrax, knowing which strain was sent may help authorities link Ivins to the crime if he, for example, used the same strain in his lab. Interestingly, the anthrax coating the letters was found to be a mix of two different strains, one from Ivins’ place of employment, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). Debate, however, still surrounds whether Ivins would have been able to produce the very fine powder found lacing the letters.
As the FBI works towards finding solid evidence, scientists are worried about another problem: continued funding. The episode in 2001 caused a surge of economic support for the biodefense budget. Prior to 2001, biodefense research was mainly carried out by USAMRIID and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and funded at $685 million per year. After the anthrax scare, funding for new biosafety labs across the country increased to a high of $8.2 billion in 2005 and has recently fallen to $5.4 billion each year. Richard Ebright of Rutgers University stated in the August 8 issue of Science that the reason there was such a surge in funding was because it was believed an outside force had attacked us. Now that we know it was initiated domestically, Ebright believes the “expansion was fraudulent.” He believes the increased research in biodefense has actually made the country less safe than it was before 2001. Others maintain that although the anthrax scare in 2001 was most likely made by a domestic scientist, there are still those outside U.S. borders that could initiate such an attack and we need to be ready for such an event by continued funding and research.
A Frightening Substance
Anthrax is a particularly frightening substance because of what it can do in such a short period of time. Initially, when anthrax is inhaled, it presents as a common cold. According to the CDC, victims usually have a sore throat and mild fever. This is part of the problem, when something as deadly as anthrax mimics the symptoms of something relatively harmless like the common cold, most people don’t go the hospital and don’t get help. The common cold usually lasts a few days and disappears. Unfortunately, after a matter of days, anthrax symptoms turn more deadly by producing “severe breathing problems and shock.” The CDC notes that inhaling anthrax is usually deadly; however, it is not contagious and cannot be passed from person to person. The CDC has posted on their site that in previous cases, victims did not have a runny nose, which is usually associated with the cold or flu. This is poor comfort at best. Another problem is that anthrax is essentially undetectable until it is too late. It does not have a particular color, smell or taste which would alert someone to its presence. The spores are also too small to be seen with the naked eye. The only way one might suspect anthrax contamination is by looking for a powdery substance since the anthrax spores must be mixed with a powder if they are to be used and transported.
Whether biosafety labs face a reduction in funding and more stringent requirements in order to work with such dangerous materials, the science community has been stirred up by these recent events, causing many to wonder what the future holds. The possible actions of such a scientist long held in high regard for his research has shaken the scientific community a bit and led many to wonder if he really did it, why he would do it and how the government is going to propose to prevent similar occurrences in the future.
|
|
Most Popular Posts