Strain U. Tragedy of Dr. Ustinov
Sinister marburg
The Washington Post journalist David Hoffman in The Dead Hand book directly points to this specificity of the Vector’s work. Hoffman's documentary work was so great in the West that it even won the Pulitzer Prize. The former Soviet scientist Kanatzhan Alibekov together with Stephen Hendelman writes in the resonant book “Caution! Biological weapons". According to these authors, the NGO "Vector" was one of the most important elements of the Soviet program for the development of biological weapons, called "Biopreparation".
Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the founder of "Vector" Lev Sandakhchiev
Supervised the program to create biological weapons 15-e management of the USSR Ministry of Defense. It is worth noting that no one from Vektor’s management ever mentioned the development of biological weapons - Lev Sandakhchiev denied this possibility until the end of his days. However, in 1999, the head of the Directorate for Biological Protection of the RF Ministry of Defense Lieutenant-General Medical Service Valentin Evstigneev said in an interview with the collection “Nuclear Control” that the 15 Department of the RF Ministry of Defense (USSR) only in 1992 closed all programs for developing offensive biological weapons. According to him, all the work of 15-th control was aimed at modeling biological weapons based on intelligence from abroad. Such is the vague wording.
NPO Vector, Koltsovo
One of their areas of work for the Vector was the line of research and cultivation of the Marburg virus, which belongs to the deadly Ebola family. The name of the virus was in honor of the university city of Marburg, located near Frankfurt. It was there that in 1967, green monkeys were brought from Central Africa, from which the nursery keeper was infected with an unknown disease. He suffered for two weeks and passed away. Later, several other lab workers died using monkey kidney cells to grow the vaccine. The specificity of Marburg’s actions on a person is terrible - he provokes hemorrhages all over his body, actually dissolving a person in his own blood. Relatives of the virus (filovirus) of Marburg hemorrhagic fever (Marburg marburgvirus) are Ebola with Bundibugo, Zaire, Sudan, Tai and Reston. The names of these "creatures" were given either by the place of detection or by the name of the laboratory in which the virus was able to identify. Mortality from Marburg and others like him can in some cases reach 70%, but the average is about 45%. This puts them in the category of "emergency and emergency viruses."
Caution! Biological threat
In the Soviet Union, Marburg was tentatively in the 1977 year and immediately came under close scrutiny of scientists. Appeared in the country, of course, not naturally, but was acquired through intelligence channels, presumably in Germany. At this time, we were working with a large spectrum of hemorrhagic fever pathogens - the Crimean-Kongan virus, Junin from Argentina and the Bolivian Machupo. Directly in Koltsovo, work on Marburg was headed by Candidate of Medical Sciences Nikolai Vasilyevich Ustinov, who in 1988 conducted a series of experiments with rabbits and guinea pigs. The specifics of the experiments were in a constant increase in the concentration of the injected virus and in monitoring the reactions of dying animals. One April day, Ustinov worked with guinea pigs in a special glove box, but did not save himself from a thumb prick with a syringe needle. From the very beginning, the researcher had virtually no chance of survival - the concentration of Marburg virus that entered the blood was several times higher than any permissible norms.
Part of the industrial and laboratory premises "Vector" is now abandoned
As it turned out, there was no corresponding serum in the “Vector”, and the closest one was located in the Moscow Region Sergiev Posad at the Institute of Virology of the Moscow Region. According to any scenario, it would take at least a day, until a serum would be supplied to an infected Ustinov, and for Marburg it is an eternity.
Theories about why this state of emergency happened are different. In one case, they say that the physician did not fix the guinea pig before the virus was injected, and this led to an accidental injection. In the second version, the blame is placed on the technician who pushed Ustinov in the elbow at the moment of injection of the contents of the syringe into the skin fold of the guinea pig. The hand jerked and pierced two layers of gloves, blood appeared on the finger. According to the third version, Nikolai Vasilyevich, together with the laboratory assistant, carried out a very complicated procedure: they took blood from the guinea pig, which was infected with the Marburg virus. By negligence, the laboratory assistant pierced the animal with a needle from a syringe, and the same needle went through rubber gloves and scratched Ustinov’s hand. Then Nikolay Ustinov acted according to the instructions - he called the dispatcher, took a shower and went out to the doctors, who managed to put on protective suits. Further, the insulating box in the hospital on the territory of the Vektor complex of buildings and three weeks of torment.
Of course, Ustinov was well aware of what had happened and what fatal consequences awaited him, but when he was still injected with serum from Moscow, he could for some time believe in a favorable outcome. The chronicle of the course of the disease was documented in detail and remained in the archives of the Vector. Two days later, the unfortunate began to complain of nausea and headache - a toxic shock from the metabolites of viruses developed in the body. Directly clinical signs of hemorrhagic fever appeared on the fourth day in the form of hemorrhages under the skin and in the eyeballs. It is not known whether Ustinov received strong painkillers, but he regularly fainted for several hours. However, he was able to find the strength in himself and record his feelings during the course of the disease. This is certainly a unique case confirming the heroism of the researcher. Until now, nothing is known about the fact that these records: they are classified. After ten days, there was a period of temporary relief, the patient had vomiting and pain. But after five days the condition deteriorated sharply - the skin thinned, the bruises turned dark purple, and the blood began to leak out. Now Ustinov could not write, he was unconscious for a long time, alternating with delirium. 30 April Nikolai Vasilyevich Ustinov passed away ...
Part of the industrial and laboratory premises "Vector" is now abandoned
In the blood samples that were taken from the dying person, a new virus strain proved to be much more stable than all the others obtained in the laboratory. Specialists "Vector" identified the strain in a new line, which was given the name U - in honor of the deceased researcher. Legend from the mouth of the “defector” Kanatzhan says that already by 1989, the U strain of the Marburg virus was ready for testing as a biological weapon. Allegedly, Lev Sandakhchiev personally requested permission to conduct them at the base of the landfill site in Stepnogorsk (Kazakhstan). After the test, twelve unfortunate monkeys died within three weeks, which confirmed the success of the work. By the end of 1990, research at VECTOR actually led to the creation of biological weapons based on the Marburg virus, only minor improvements remained to achieve the necessary concentration for the duration of combat use.
But the coming era of devastation and lack of money put an end to this and other developments. However, the death of Nikolai Ustinov from a highly dangerous virus was not unique - later on, several people within the walls of Vektor put their lives and health on the altar of military biology.
Based on:
The publication "Nuclear Control". International Security. Non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Journal of the PIR Center for Political Studies (Russia). 1999. No.4.
armahema.livejournal.com
meduza.io
en.wikipedia.org
nsk.kp.ru
- Evgeny Fedorov
- armahema.livejournal.com, meduza.io, ru.wikipedia.org, nsk.kp.ru
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