No. of Recommendations: 2
The point I'm making is that not everyone who violates animal import control laws has to be one of either: i) hapless innocent who has violated it by inadvertence; or ii) bioterrorist. So that if I point out, "huh, no indication these people at UM were bioterrorists" that does not mean that they have to be hapless innocents. They might have been deliberately violating the animal control laws - just not for terrorism.Which again is an exercise in splitting hairs. I suppose there's a good reason for importing roundworms:
sciencedaily.com: Crop damage: Researchers advance effort to manage parasitic roundwormsRoundworms that feed on plants cause approximately $100 billion in annual global crop damage. Now researchers have made a patent-pending discovery that certain enzymes in roundworms, called nematodes, behave differently than the same enzymes in humans, with amino acids potentially playing a key role....but those reasons don't seem very obvious.
It seems more likely that there's a not-so-nice reason for bringing them over. As I said this isn't the first time we've caught people tied to Michigan importing things they shouldn't be importing.
Again, these folks were all actual biological researchers who were scholars at a research university doing biological research.That's exactly right.
Which means they knew damn well what they were doing. You understanding this factoid promotes the Up to No Good hypothesis, yes?
The simplest explanation is probably the most plausible one - these guys genuinely wanted the roundworms so they could do research on them, and it was easier (they thought) to just smuggle them in rather than follow proper channels (if proper channels exist). Not that they intended to commit any kind of bioterrorism or use them as a bioweapon.I'm going to let General Mattis answer for me:
YouTube: Generation Kill: General Mattis (estunum)
