The main support for the Bush administration spin that the US weapons inspectors found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a vial of live botulinum found in the refrigerator of an Iraqi scientist who put it there following Iraqi government orders. Takes courage or rather it shows, in Iraq, it was safer to have botulinum in your refrigerator than say no to Saddam.

I should have realised how silly this claim was. I know that you have to boil anything you can to avoid botulism. I should have realised that to get live botulinum one basically has to can something without boiling it and wait. The bacterium is quite common. It becomes dangerous when something it can grow on is stored in the absence of oxygen. A vial of botulinum appears to be nothing special.


I blush to admit that, in spite of a masters degree in microbiology, I considered live botulinum more serious than botulinus toxin. I note that newspapers are vague on the distinction. I was surprised to read that a vile of toxin was found in the refrigerator in Iraq. I decided to count toxin vs live bacteria in news reports (the first I checked contradicted itself)

Then I got to this link

which does seem quite unsympathetic to Bush
then to a competent microbiologist

David Kay should check with the FDA
"The organism and its spores are widely distributed in nature. They occur in both cultivated and forest soils, bottom sediments of streams, lakes, and coastal waters, and in the intestinal tracts of fish and mammals, and in the gills and viscera of crabs and other shellfish."

and the CDC

"What kind of germ is Clostridium botulinum?

Clostridium botulinum is the name of a group of bacteria commonly found in soil."