Talk:Trichothecene

I believe that at least the first paragraph of this page was plagarized from http://www.romerlabs.com/mycotoxins.html. 161.253.14.157 19:00, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

It may be. I have done few changes with the aim of making the page more technical (not the first paragraph). In the coming days, we can edit the first para also along with other suitable incorporations. (Wienerish (talk) 12:31, 15 December 2009 (UTC))

Redirect?

To: anyone who knows how to make a redirect page. Perhaps a redirect page from "Diacetoxyscirpenol" would be cool. The CDC lists diacetoxyscirpenol as a "Select Agent," so some folks might be searching for it.206.190.137.34 (talk) 17:53, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Plagiarism?

In view of the near identity of most of the text on this page to that of Romerlabs, the page could well be replaced by a single link! Is this really what Wikipedia is for? I rather hope the page was written by a Romerlabs employee; otherwise, frankly, it is a cheeky copy. 149.155.96.5 (talk) 14:56, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

This page seems to have evolved over the course of several years from contributions from multiple editors. If it is identical to text found elsewhere, it is perhaps more likely that the other page is a copy of Wikipedia. ChemNerd (talk) 15:27, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Non-NPOV and poorly-sourced assertion "These American "yellow rain" allegations are now regarded as discredited, as independent analyzes of the purported agent showed it to be bee feces rich in pollen"

Under "Occurrence and Outbreaks," the following outdated and very probably non-NPOV statement occurs: "Trichothecenes including DON, T-2 toxin, and diacetoxyscirpenol are also important from the view of biological warfare [12] and controversial American allegations have described yellow rain in southeast Asia as a Soviet bioweapon containing these toxins.[13][14] These American "yellow rain" allegations are now regarded as discredited, as independent analyzes of the purported agent showed it to be bee feces rich in pollen.[15][16]"

Actually, the "bee feces" refutation of charges that trichothecenes were used in biological warfare attacks by the former Soviet Union and its military client states (including the Pathet Lao and Vietnam) depends largely on the seminal reference for the "bee feces" meme, a paper by Dr. Matthew Meselson in the early 1980s which itself has drawn scholarly and specialist press criticism. It should be pointed out that Dr. Meselson also, around this time, accepted the Soviets' explanation that the mass anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk, USSR (now Yekaterinburg, Russia) was due to contaminated beef from a packing house in the nearby town of Aramil, publishing this explanation under his own name in the scientific literature. Peter Gumbel of The Wall Street Journal investigated Meselson's and the Soviets' explanations of the Sverdlovsk outbreak and found fatalities were much higher than stated by the Soviets; further, no meat packing plant ever existed in Aramil, as Gumbel discovered when he visited the area in person. Only after The Wall Street Journal published Gumbel's report did Meselson retract his statement in the scientific literature, but in such a way that implied he and his associates made the discovery that the Sverdlovsk anthrax was a mixture of several military strains while not crediting Peter Gumbel with the investigation which provoked his second study.

Meselson's "bee feces" paper and his initial whitewashing of Soviet military complicity in the Sverdlovsk outbreak (the outbreak was eventually found to have been a leak from an anthrax pilot plant in downtown Sverdlovsk) are part of a pattern in which BW activity by the Soviets was denied by Meselson and his political and scientific colleagues in the Harvard Sussex Project - which was pivotal in getting the Biological Warfare Convention approved for signing by the USA, UK and USSR, among other states - until it could no longer be denied. If one of the initial signers of the BWC was found to have continued not only developing, but using biological weapons, then Meselson and his colleagues would be political failures, and Meselson would probably never have been considered for his Lasker Prize (which was, after all, awarded in recognition of his policy successes, not his failures). So much for "bee feces".

In his book "Yellow Rain," Sterling Seagrave, a long-time wire-service and newspaper foreign correspondent whose specialty was Southeast Asia, who researched the book from directly after the first Laotian attacks, and who, as a stern critic of the US military's chemical warfare community would be expected to denounce any deception or lack of rigor in assertions that "Yellow Rain" was simply bee feces and a naturally-occuring fusarium intoxication, concluded after years of researching the book (this long after Meselson's "Yellow Rain is bee-feces" paper was published) that whatever the US Army Chemical Corps' other dissemblings may have been, that the T2 trichothecenes found in residue in Laos were of two different families of trichothecenes employed as biotoxins by the Soviets, very probably since the early-to-mid 1960s in Yemen.

The US Defense Department's medical research community does not view the "Yellow Rain" allegations as having been discredited, either. In Chapter 34, "Trichothecene Mycotoxins," of Medical Aspects Of Chemical And Biological Warfare, F.R. SIDELL, MD, E.T. Takafuji, MD MPH, David R. Franz, DVM, PHD, eds, part of the Textbook of Military Medicine series, Office of The Surgeon General Department of the Army, United States of America, Robert W. Wannemacher, JR, PhD and Stanley L. Wiener, MD say this about "Yellow Rain": "The Yellow Rain Controversy Actual biological warfare use of trichothecenes in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan is strongly supported by the epidemiological and intelligence assessments and trichothecene assays, although reports in the open literature have discounted this contention...

...The United States government, its allies, and journalists exhaustively studied the possibility that yellow rain attacks had occurred, based on evidence such as the following: • interviews of Hmong survivors of and eyewitnesses to lethal yellow rain attacks in Laos, who provided consistent descriptions of the episodes; • interrogations of a defecting Laotian Air Force officer and North Vietnamese ground troops, who corroborated the descriptions of attacks and admitted using the chemicals; • interrogations of prisoners of war, who admitted being involved in attacks where unconventional weapons were used (ie, in Afghanistan); • laboratory confirmations of Soviet use of chemical agents, and • the presence of Soviet-manufactured chemical agents and Soviet technicians in Laos. The evidence supports the contention that trichothecene mycotoxins were used as biological warfare agents in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan by the former Soviet Union and its surrogates. The Russians have not recently denied such use but have declined to discuss the subject.

In addition to the evidence stated above, elevated levels and naturally rare mixtures of trichothecene toxins were recovered from the surfaces of plants, fragments of plastic, and rocks in areas attacked; and were detected in the blood of attack survivors and the tissues of a dead casualty...

...Some experts have claimed that yellow rain was not a biological warfare attack at all, but that the yellow residue was caused by showers and deposits of bee feces—the result of massive bee swarming and cleansing–defecation flights over some areas of Southeast Asia.

The presence of pollen in bee feces and some samples has not only added confusion but is also the supporting evidence used by the skeptics. It is important to remember that persons caught in a shower of bee feces do not get sick and die. Although bee flights have occurred before and since 1982, reports of attacks of yellow rain and death in Asia have not.

Then what explains the symptoms consistent with trichothecene effects in the casualties, and the pollen and bee feces in some of the yellow spots on vegetation in the area? Bee feces do not contain trichothecenes, yet pollen and trichothecenes without mold are found together in some samples from attack areas. The most likely explanation is that during biological warfare attacks, dispersed trichothecenes landed in pollen-containing areas."

Wikipedia's NPOV policy requires the deletion of any statement that the BW nature of the "Yellow Rain" attacks "has been discredited," and the editing of that section to state that controversy continues and that the US Army's Medical Corps states in its own medical textbooks that considerable evidence exists that the "Yellow Rain" attacks were actual military use of tricothecenes. I am changing the text to so indicate.loupgarous (talk) 14:19, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Vaccine portion...

Vaccines are not useful against small molecules like mycotoxins. This section should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.94.186.12 (talk) 17:35, 2 October 2015 (UTC)