In 2011, a forensic chemist at a Boston, Massachusetts crime lab was caught forging a signature on a report. This led to an investigation, and eventually the arrest of lab worker Annie Dookhan. The investigation revealed that Dookhan had falsified thousands, and possibly tens of thousands of forensic tests.
Dookhan pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges including obstruction of justice, perjury, falsification of records and tampering with evidence. These crimes caused thousands of drug convictions to be cast into doubt, and in 2017 the Massachusetts Supreme Court dropped 21,587 drug convictions that had hinged on samples she handled.
The state forensic laboratory where she worked was shut down, and several people, including the state’s public health commissioner, lost their jobs. The fallout from this incident persists to this day, as lawyers and defendants struggle to get wrongful convictions, based on tampered and falsified crime lab evidence, dismissed.
Martin W. Healy, chief legal counsel for the Massachusetts Bar Association, was quoted by the New York Times as saying, “That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” and “The total costs could reach $100 million over the years. . . No one comprehended that this would snowball the way it has.”
Dookhan’s only apparent motive was the desire to maximize her performance and further her career.
Shortly after 9/11, mysterious threatening letters containing the potent biological warfare agent anthrax were sent to two US Senators and numerous major media offices. Five people died and 17 were made ill by the letters. The victims included postal workers and others who came into contact with the anthrax.
The investigation eventually led to the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, a heavily secured and top secret biological weapons research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The FBI eventually identified a prime suspect, microbiologist Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide as he was about to be arrested and charged. Ironically, he was considered a top US biodefense researcher who in 2003, had received the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees for helping solve technical problems in the manufacture of anthrax vaccine.
These are by no means isolated incidents. Every year, we see incompetence, avoidable accidents, scandals, corruption, criminal conduct and cover-ups in virtually every industry and in every facet of American society. There is always a story breaking about a high level administrative, executive or political scandal going on. Is there any reason to suppose that vaccine research and manufacturing is immune from these sorts of perverse infections of incompetence, corruption and criminality?
As this post is being written, a headline in the New York Times reads U.S. Bet Big on Covid Vaccine Manufacturer Even as Problems Mounted. According to the Times, Emergent BioSolutions, a contract pharmaceutical manufacturer in Baltimore, has produced about 150 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine, but none have been usable.
The article goes on to reveal a horrifying picture of millions of wasted doses, and presumably dollars, contamination of product, and audits revealing major deficiencies in multiple areas of the manufacturing process.
So far, these audits have managed to catch problems before the vaccine was released for public use. But what will happen when a dishonest, unethical or downright crazy human cog in the hugely complex vaccine manufacturing machinery is not caught in time.
Perhaps it’s time to review an old movie from 1986, titled The Fly, with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis.
Because if the Times article is even half true, it just might be time to kiss your ass goodby.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/us/covid-vaccines-emergent-biosolutions.html
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