[meteorite-list] Mars life concerns

From: MexicoDoug_at_aol.com <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Jul 18 18:47:49 2005
Message-ID: <ae.767208db.300d8b8f_at_aol.com>

Ron Baalke wrote:

>Jaffe wrote to the Planetary Society that according to a report from
>somebody on his staff who had witnessed the biological test which
>gave positive results, a "breach of sterile procedure" took place at
>just the right time to produce a false positive result.
 
Hello Ron, List,
 
Ron, I apologise in advance for having a stron opinion about the content of
your message. Please understand I appreciate your contribution and in no way
transfer skepticism from the account you have provided to you. It is great
that you have bothered to bring this up...let's check the merits:
 
According to "a report from sombody on his staff"? I certainly hope this is
your recollection, and not the manner in which the Surveyor # Project
Scientist actually reported it. If so, that would be plain shoddiness. Let's
assume there is more to the story which sounds more like gossip, not science,
still. And, if I may ask, who was responsible for sterilizing the probe when it
was sent to the moon in the first place. Jaffe or the "somebody on his
staff" have something to do with it?
 
This doesn't sound like the same quarantine procedures NASA boasted about -
which were pressured upon them by Atlanta (my assumption, I think is fair),
where even the astronauts were off limits for days or weeks. For such an
important question, -whether life could survive on the Moon- it has a very
bungled answer, the way you present it. As you point out Ron, the material was
removed from quarantine after the actual tests were done. By NASA or CDC I
wonder? By Jaffe or the CDC analyst or the "someone on Jaffe staff"? While your
off-the-record-comments may draw into question the results of this
particular experiment, of course there is plenty of time to send microbes into space
under controlled conditions and check out their survivability.
 
What immediately strikes me as odd from this unofficial version, if we were
to accept it, is that only one species of microbe was found, nearly 100
individuals of it. Given the competition for habitat on unclean lab benches that
get sat on, coughed on, etc., whatever, in the Center for Disease control of
Atlanta during such sensitive testing, why would not a single other viable
species be found? Sorry, but the "coverup" you suggest (and it is a coverup)
from "somebody on his staff", makes interpretation even more bizzarre than a
moon trip. Where's Sherlock Holmes when we need him in NASA-CDC? Of course
what you suggest is not impossible. But there is definitely more solid
scientific evidence in support it than does the Nakhla dog story, wouldn't you
think? As I have pointed out the NASA folks in charge of sterilizing the mission
were perhaps a little blue-faced by the testing done by an independent
authority like the CDC who we suppose knows how to deal with its mission better
than NASA does? I understand and appreciate why you relay this, and my
skeptical thoughts are not with you, but rather the apparently old can of worms this
was (Which I had no idea about conspiracy theories). The Apollo Commander
Pete Conrad certainly wasn't privy to it, either. Figures that 20 years later
the guy who was on the mission shown to have sent bacteria to the moon would
not have documented this important question for NASA which he apparently had
no first hand knowledge, but rather rely on a letter to the Planetary
Society and all we know is gossip from somebody on his staff. Where's that report
and what's the problem with getting a copy? Maybe we need to ask the CDC
their version? It was an important question, not a routine blood test!!!
 
Thanks, Doug
 
Received on Mon 18 Jul 2005 06:47:43 PM PDT