Even Hannibal Lecter Wouldn't Go There OR Not This Pig!
Categories: In the News , Health & Nutrition
Plum Island is usually described as "porkchop shaped," which is ironic, because Plum Island porkchops could be even more unhealthy than salmon from China. Indeed, the main thing Plum Island has in common with a sanitary modern slaughterhouse is that the animals that go in don't come out alive.
Except that sometimes they do--or might--and the consequences could be bad, since, as everyone who has watched The Silence of the Lambs knows, Plum Island is home to the United States's Animal Disease Control Center. Michael Christopher Carroll's Lab 257 tells the story of the Island, focusing on decades of inept management, which led to serious maintenance and safety problems on the island, which is just a few miles from Connecticut and Long Island.
Even if the maintenance problems went away--and apparently things are better since the Office of Homeland Security took over from the USDA--you really can't stop wild birds and fish from flying or swimming to or from the island. Even deer can swim that far. What if a deer swam over and got infected with FMD (foot-and-mouth disease), or swam back to the mainland and passed along something unpleasant like camel pox, which apparently can mutate into a pox even worse than smallpox?
Many people believe that Lyme Disease originated from an accident at Plum Island. There have been incidents where birds dropped out of the sky (dead) for no apparent reason.
As I write this (January 19, 2008), I am unable to link to the official Plum Island Web site, which I have perused at length before.
Coincidence? Plum Island has captured the imaginations of many, including many whose Web sites are devoted to conspiracy theories, and it's hard to know for sure what's going on out there.
The library owns a weirdly prescient (terrorism, anthrax) 1997 thriller, Plum Island, by Nelson DeMille, as well as government documents discussing the island's future. The consensus does seem to be that Plum Island, because of its proximity to hugely populated areas and deteriorating infrastructure, is perhaps not the best place to study virulent animal diseases, although Hillary Clinton, (whom I otherwise endorse, by the way), does not agree.
