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Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning
- bigdict 6y agoPublish or perish.
- bt1a 6y agoDoes anyone have a link to the full text?
- andyxor 6y agohttps://sci-hub.do/https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32644-1/fulltext https://sci-hub.do/https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet...
- jsheard 6y agohttps://sci-hub.se/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32644-1 https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32644-1
- Clewza313 6y agoDamn, this is worth a read. Among many other things, the day after poisoning his body temperature was 34 deg C (!) and heart rate only 44 bpm. The poor guy was on a ventilator for 24 days, and would almost certainly have died if not mechanically ventilated within 2 hours. It's downright astonishing that he recovered as well as he did. How many people would willingly return to the lion's den where this happened to them?
- CyanBird 6y ago> It's downright astonishing that he recovered as well as he did. Given the poor track record of what intelligence agencies have tagged as "deadliest poison ever" I am not particularly surprised, neither is MoonOfAlabama in that regard https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/a-curious-timestamp-in-the-new-novichok-evidence.html https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/a-curious-timestamp-in...
- thrwway34 6y agoGuys, can you be a little bit less obvious in promoting your loon conspiracy site?
- sl1ck731 6y agoPresumably the folks behind this would know that he was being transferred to Germany. I wonder why they would not have prevented it through some bureaucracy? Is it common for critically ill Russians to be transferred to Germany? Just seems like something that would have to go through a lot of channels to get done, but I have no experience in healthcare.
- kamranjon 6y agoIf you watch Navalny's video on this he explains that they likely assumed it was out if his body after 2 days and is why he was allowed to be airlifted out.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nikivi 6y agoThe things happening in Russia before the protest on Saturday is dystopian. Police take into custody anyone who is trying to promote it, schools are suddenly open and students are being scared by threats of disqualification if they go outside on that day. I hope this dictatorship ends soon. I wouldn’t want to live in a country where nearly all your taxes get spent on building a palace and enforcing more police and military. If anyone is curious on what’s happening, I made a Twitter list. Most tweets are in Russian though. https://twitter.com/i/lists/1351120526220152839 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1351120526220152839 Oh yeah and some russian citizens who are members of Navalny anti corruption fond are told by government to leave their own country..
- lurker281 6y agono different than what was happening in Victoria, Australia recently regarding COVID protests, people getting arrested at home for promoting the protest on facebook etc.
- AstralStorm 6y agoAs long as third of Russia wants a Tsar (or another authoritarian strong man) some other 20% want USSR back (remember how corrupt that was too) and most of the rest is silent nothing will change there. Oppression was standard in both of these setups.
- gdy 6y ago"I wouldn’t want to live in a country where nearly all your taxes get spent on building a palace and enforcing more police and military." I wouldn't want to have UKOS returned to the owners who got it dirt-cheap during 'privatization' in 90s and taxes on the extraction of natural resources reduced to the pre-Putin level. This one thing -- raising taxes on the wealth generated from selling natural resources -- pays a hundred times for Putin's palace. As for our military, I'd rather have it strong, why wouldn't you?
- hvis 6y agoThat extracted wealth should flow back into the country and translate into well-being of your citizens. Not just continue lining the pockets of the president's closest friends. I'd rather have our military strong on the borders of our country and outside of it. Instead of having that military power used to strong-arm Russian citizens (and yes, the opposition is among them).
- Clewza313 6y agoBit of an aside, but it's odd how convention forces the journal to pretend the patient is anonymous ("a 44-year-old man") despite all the other details making it blatantly obviously that it's Navalny. Of course, from a strictly medical point of view the name is irrelevant, but the context does matter: for example, the chronology of exactly how & when he was poisoned is still not entirely clear.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- inoffensivename 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?t=24&v=gO3Y_IlPyXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=24&v=gO3Y_IlPyXc
- tyingq 6y agoPolonium, Dioxin, Novichok. I wonder what they use when they want to be more stealthy about it.
- travisoneill1 6y agoPolonium is actually very stealthy. It's an alpha emitter which is not detectable by most equipment, and it was very nearly not detected even by the UK government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko#Poison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...
- tyingq 6y agoWell, yes and no. Like "The traces were found in passenger jets[44][45] BA875 and BA873 from Moscow to Heathrow"
- MagnumOpus 6y agoThey don't want or need to be stealthy. But when they don't want to send a message, most recently they seem to use stabbing, shooting, throwing out of high-rise windows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia#2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...
- nabla9 6y agoIf Russia would like to kill people discretely, they would could use various other venom's and poisons. Ricin, for example. Russians use Novichok or Polonium because they are signature weapons that signal everyone that Russian intelligence agencies were involved. Polonium is FSB's signature. Novichok is chemical weapon in the hands of military, so G.U. (GRU).
- dilyevsky 6y agoRicin is easily screened for. Novichok not so much until recently. Who knows how many people they had poisoned we don’t know about. Bellingcat research suggests that a lot. Polonium wouldn’t have been detected if not for some radiology expert who accidentally listened in on some side conversation
- Natsu 6y agoThe paper discusses this a bit: Identification of an individual organophosphorus compound is a complex and time-consuming process. [9] In fact, ascertaining the involvement of a novichok agent and its biotransformation products in this case was only achieved several days after establishing the diagnosis of cholinesterase inhibitor poisoning and did not affecttherapeutic decisions.Organophosphorus nerve agents exert the same mechanism of action as do organophosphorus pesti-cides (ie, inhibition of acetylcholinesterase) and clinical management is largely based on experience with organo-phosphorus pesticide poisonings, which still pose a major health burden in southeast Asia, with more than 100000 deaths per year. [10] Clinical diagnosis of organophosphorus poisoning should be straightforward. --- [9] John H, van der Schans MJ, Koller M, et al. Fatal sarin poisoning in Syria 2013: forensic verification within an international laboratory network. Forensic Toxicol 2018; 36: 61–71. [10] Mew EJ, Padmanathan P, Konradsen F, et al. The global burden of fatal self-poisoning with pesticides 2006–15: systematic review. J Affect Disord 2017; 219: 93–104.
- stretchcat 6y agoConsider the assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabbouh. It was intended to look like a natural death, without raising suspicions. To do this, they snuck into his hotel room, injected him with a muscle relaxant, then suffocated him. It took local authorities ten days to realize it was actually a murder. They did eventually figure it out, but I don't think it's hard to imagine intelligence agencies have done similar things before and gotten away with it. In the case of Litvinenko, authorities were pretty sure he'd been poisoned from the onset. The poisoning drew a whole lot of attention that Russia probably could have avoided if they intended to be subtle.
- kyrieeschaton 6y agoIt's odd to hold as an assumption that the Russian government is the only entity that can synthesize this molecule. It's also odd to take the word of "a laboratory of the German armed forces" as some sort of independent source in a clear political conflict.
- longtimegoogler 6y agoIt's not that odd if you consider that Germany is a democracy and Russia is a dictatorship with a history of poisoning dissenters. Read the story about this mathematician who has been sentenced to prison for 6 years in Russia. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/01/22/imprisoned-for-his-eyebrows https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/01/22/imprisoned-for-his-e... At some point, we have to use some sort of priors to evaluate the truth of claims from various sources.
- kyrieeschaton 6y agoSecurity agencies of democratic regimes (that happen to be marginally accountable to the people elected) don't have the ability to synthesize known molecules and use them for political purposes? They don't have the ability to lie under the piercing eyes of lady liberty? That's sort of what they exist for. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/04/cia-director-used-fake-skripal-incident-photos-to-manipulate-trump.html https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/04/cia-director-used-fake...
- JumpCrisscross 6y agoIf you ignore the evidence outside molecular signature yes, the “Moon of Alabama” hypothesis sounds plausible. Given the facts and circumstances, however, the conclusion becomes unavoidable.
- kyrieeschaton 6y agoThe circumstances are that an english-tweeting western-sponsored Yale World Fellow with approximately zero actual Russian support found himself "poisoned" (nonfatally, of course) in a way politically useful to the west in their ongoing project of destabilizing Russia, as diagnosed by western security services.
- wyldfire 6y agoIn case you missed it: Navalny found conclusive evidence of a cover-up for his poisoning [1] [2] [3]. But the best part is how he did it: caller ID spoof + social engineering. IMO exploiting the authoritarian nature/culture was really clever. Every time Kudryavtsev demurs about revealing more details, Navalny (as Ustinov) calls him by his full name. To me, it sounds like he's threatening him or reminding him of their relative position in the hierarchy. Each time, Kudryavtsev continues to spill the beans and give up co-conspirators. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/world/europe/russia-navalny-poisoning-putin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/world/europe/russia-naval... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibqiet6Bg38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibqiet6Bg38 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwvA49ZXnf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwvA49ZXnf8
- dimator 6y agoI'm amazed at the amateur nature of the guy on that call. If he's GRU/FSB trained, why would he trust a caller ID from base, and nothing else? Surely there's better opsec than this.
- sam_lowry_ 6y agoA fish rots from the head. These GRU/FSB boys enjoy complete immunity from prosecution, why would they stay professional if only loyalty is rewarded?
- LittlePeter 6y agoI think when you have so many FSB agents it is hard to maintain the quality. See for example here, where a bunch of FSB agent graduates decided to celebrate in the open: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/world/geliki-russia-fsb-joyride/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/world/geliki-russia-fsb-j...
- jannes 6y agoI think that specific agent was a chemist who was in charge of applying the poison (which is apparently so dangerous that experts have to do it). He likely didn’t get the full GRU/FSB training.
- waypoint100 6y agoIt's amazing that people really believe in these conspiracy theories about evil Russian government which tries to kill people with Novichok, an agent so powerful that it cant kill anyone. There are much more simple and effective ways. E.g. just hire a street thug, pretend a robbery
- jannes 6y agoDid you not see the YouTube video where one of the agents admits it on the phone and describes the process? I thought it was already established that Russia did this beyond reasonable doubt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwvA49ZXnf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwvA49ZXnf8
- waypoint100 6y agoWell if you watch that carefully, you'd see that Navalny pushing hard his version of events on that other guy, who pretty much responds mostly "I don't know much". Now imagine a situation that bellingcat picked up this poor guy, who might be nothing but part of surveillance team and carefully staged this phone record to create an impression that the guy is some sort of a hitman. In the West people might think that Navalny is a prominent opposition hero, but in reality he's known to be a some sort of "attention whore", has a limited popularity