[meteorite-list] Mars life concerns

[MexicoDoug 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