TRIGGER WARNING to those who never watch broadcast TV any more.

This is a clip from BBC TV News.

I couldn’t watch it all, but it’s about “Preparing for Disease X”.

They quickly cut to scenes at “Porton Down, best known for its work on nerve agents”. I know something of the work of the former “Chemical Defence Establishment”, on the edge of Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, because I briefly *worked there as part of my undergraduate placement year (I also worked at Aldermaston, Berkshire). I knew that they did secret work but like most people, until recently, I assumed it was to counter foreign threats.

Now we know better. There have been a number of scandals relating to activities at Porton Down. I hope some people are shifting nervously upon hearing that Porton scientists, all of whom will be tied by the Official Secrets Act, are working on something related to this Disease X.

I find it chilling.

Best wishes
Mike

https://news.1rj.ru/str/DrMikeYeadon/2121

*Though my work was comparatively trivial, being one of half a dozen students who, over many years, were charged with characterising pro-drug forms of the centrally acting relaxant diazepam (better known as Valium) that was to be used as a third component of a triple treatment to counter poisoning with Novichok-like nerve agents.

The effect of these organophosphorus nerve agents is to poison the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, which your body uses to end & control nerve impulses in your autonomic nervous system. With the enzyme poisoned, your respiratory muscles are frozen and you suffocate. Their use is banned by international treaty. Nevertheless, having antidotes seems a good idea. Atropine as an antagonist of the excessive build up of the neurotransmitter that’s normally broken down by the enzyme that’s poisoned by the nerve agent is a good start. Then a drug called Pralidoxime, that competes against the O-P agent for the target enzyme, with the advantage that it spontaneously falls away, regenerating the enzyme. These two were available in liquid, injectable form, and exposed personnel would use the preloaded syringe in their kit. But the last component, a single dose of diazepam, had to be taken as a tablet, meaning you had to take your gas mask off to take it, seemed daft. Over several years, a soluble “pro-drug” form had been identified and they wanted to understand why it worked, what was the enzyme in plasma that converted it to the active drug in the body. I did one piece of that research. It was closely related to the kind of thing I was fascinated by and motivated me to join the pharmaceutical industry.

👉 https://news.1rj.ru/str/DrMikeYeadon