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bsimpson • yesterday at 6:21 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

I saw a post about this on Reddit this morning. Haven't looked into it further, but people were claiming that there are versions of this plague that have been modified to release other toxins. It's effectively a bioweapon: they cure you for the plague, which kills you with the poison it contained.


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A_D_E_P_T • yesterday at 6:36 PM

There are some that had been modified to release endorphins!

>"When we first heard Soviet scientists were inserting the endorphin gene [for euphoria] into plague," says Dr. Henry Heine, a former U.S. Army bacteriologist, "we were appalled. That they would purposefully engineer the Y. pestis bacteria to behave this way... to make you want to go out and socialize... this was some horrifying stuff."

> . . .

> Former assistant secretary of defense Andy Weber agrees. "I grew up thinking Reagan’s phrase ‘Evil Empire’ was an exaggeration," he tells us. "Then I learned what the Russians were doing [with biological warfare]." He pauses for effect. "It was evil."

The accounts are from Annie Jacobsen's notes in "Biological War".

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cobbzilla • yesterday at 6:48 PM

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penskymaterial • yesterday at 6:41 PM

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