Talk:Ken Alibek
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[edit] Verification
This article requires attention to ensure that no content was lost because of these edits. Note that those edits removed the one reference that this article cited. Uncle G 15:15, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
It is said the information is based partly on the "author's personal knowledge of subject." Does this statement refer to Anderson's work? The publisher of Anderson's work is Center for Advanced Defense Studies[1]. Is this verifiable? All online information sources, in turn, are based on the Wikipedia article.Fconaway 05:21, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Anderson's work WAS NOT published by Center for Advanced Defense Studies. It was published by UMI Dissertation Services. Her dissertation is categorized as UMI #3231331.
In reference to the "personal knowledge" question - Anderson included biographies on William C. Patrick III and Kenneth Alibek in her dissertation. Both gentlemen were members of her dissertation committee and reviewed the biographies written about them before granting permission for Dr. Anderson to publish them. The Wikipedia article was taken verbatim (with Dr. Anderson's permission) from her dissertation.
[edit] Impressions on Article
I would like to submit what I feel is a more appropriate article about Dr. Alibek. Having worked closely with Dr. Alibek over the last two years, I am familiar with his personal background, his work at AFG Biosolutions, his professorship at George Mason University, and his current position as CEO and President of MaxWell Biocorporation, a U.S.-based, privately held medical and pharmaceutical company created to serve significant unmet medical needs in emerging healthcare markets in the former Soviet Union. Disclaimer: I work for Dr. Alibek. This draft is not yet complete and requires further referencing, which I will provide. I am submitting it to the Wikipedia community due to what I feel is an inappropriate tone and bias evident in the current entry. My apologies for any formatting errors, as I am new to Wikipedia editing and am still learning.
At the beginning, I need to make three key points. First, Kenneth Alibek is a medical doctor and deserves the title of "Doctor" or "Dr." before his surname, as per standard usage. Referring to him by his surname without his medical title is gratuitously insulting. Second, since his former military rank of Colonel in the Soviet military has long been defunct (along with the Soviet military itself), it is not appropriate to refer to him by that title now. Finally, Dr. Alibek legally changed his name to "Kenneth Alibek" after arriving in the United States; while he often uses the shorter, informal nickname "Ken", "Kenneth" is his full legal first name, as used in his Congressional appearances and testimony, for example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mithrilmax (talk • contribs) 13:09, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Kenneth Alibek
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kenneth Alibek, M.D., Ph.D., Sc.D. (Russian: Канатжан Алибеков; Kazakh: Қанатжан Әлібеков) is a noted American specialist in microbiology, immunology and biotechnology, medical doctor, public health expert and consultant, author, professor, entrepreneur, Chief Executive Officer of AFG Biosolutions Inc. (USA) and President and Chief Executive Officer of MaxWell Biocorporation, LLC (USA). A widely recognized biodefence specialist, Dr. Alibek actively participated in designing a biodefense strategy for the U.S. government, and has repeatedly advised Congress and the U.S. and other governments on biotechnology issues.
Kenneth (“Ken”) Alibek[2] has received honorary diplomas from governments and organizations in many countries, including the Berkeley Medal in 1994 from the U.S. Congress for his outstanding contribution to the struggle for peace. In 2001, he received an award for the largest contract in biotechnology to date concluded with the U.S. government. The “Washington ProFile” news agency has rated Kenneth Alibek as one of the most influential Americans of former Soviet origin.
Dr. Alibek[3] has taught and lectured in leading American universities, including Harvard, Princeton and Georgetown. He has lectured to students and instructors at the University of Sorbonne and the National University of Singapore. Starting in 2007, Dr. Alibek has lectured to graduate students of the Biology Department of the Shevchenko National University in Kiev, Ukraine. He has authored and co-authored more than one hundred scientific and popular articles and ten books.
Dr. Alibek was born Kanatjan Alibekov in Kauchuk, Kazakhstan. Thanks to his exceptional performance while studying military medicine at the Tomsk Medical Institute, after graduation he was selected to work for the Soviet Union’s highly secretive biological weapons program. Dr. Alibek’s formidable abilities as a scientist, manager, and organizer allowed him to rise quickly through a series of increasingly more senior research and management assignments at various Soviet production facilities and institutes, and to learn complex skill sets required for the organization and management of industrial-scale biotechnological facilities and the assembly-line production of biological products.
His continued scientific and managerial successes eventually led to Dr. Alibek’s promotion to a senior position in Moscow, where he ultimately oversaw not only the Soviet Union’s biological weapons facilities but also a significant number of civilian pharmaceutical production facilities. His advancement also gave Dr. Alibek the opportunity to voice his growing opposition to the Soviet Union’s continued secret biological weapons program.
In 1990, Dr. Alibek officially proposed to then-Soviet president Gorbachev the cessation of all biological weapons development and production in the USSR. After Gorbachev approved his proposal, Dr. Alibek used his position and authority to begin destruction of the Soviet biological weapons program despite serious opposition from its military supporters, while also planning to increase production of civilian pharmaceuticals and medicines allocated to the long-deprived Soviet public health sector.
Dr. Alibek was subsequently placed in charge of intensive preparations for inspections of Soviet biological facilities by a joint American and British delegation. While participating in the subsequent reciprocal Soviet inspection of American facilities in late 1991, Dr. Alibek’s growing suspicion that the USA did not have a biological warfare program was confirmed before his return to Russia (the Soviet Union had dissolved while he was in America). Soon after his return from America, Dr. Alibek resigned from both the Soviet army and his Soviet government position, and then secretly emigrated with his family to the United States in 1992, despite being forbidden to do so by the KGB.
After moving to the USA, Dr. Alibek provided the U.S. government with a detailed accounting of the former Soviet biological weapons program and has testified before the United States Congress on numerous occasions (see also Sverdlovsk anthrax leak). He has provided guidance to the intelligence, policy, national security, and medical communities, and for a time returned to the pure biomedical research that captured his interest as a medical student.
Dr. Alibek was the impetus behind the creation of the Graduate Programs in Biodefense, an innovative biodefense graduate education program at George Mason University (GMU) that drew students from across the country, and served in the program as both a Distinguished Professor of Medical Microbiology and as the Director of Education. He also developed the plans for the university’s biosafety level three (BSL3) research facility and was instrumental in obtaining $40 million dollars in federal and state government grants for construction of the facility at GMU.
However, due to substantive differences between him and GMU over the future of the Graduate Programs in Biodefense, Dr. Alibek announced in March 2006 that he would not be teaching classes beyond Spring semester and that he was resigning from George Mason University effective in late August 2006. In an agreement with his students, he volunteered his time from Spring 2006 through Spring 2007 to help them earn their doctoral degrees, despite the tremendous demands on his time placed by his concurrent leadership of AFG Biosolutions and MaxWell Biocorporation.
Dr. Alibek is currently the Chief Executive Officer at the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based AFG Biosolutions, Inc [2] where he and his scientific team continue to develop advanced solutions for antimicrobial immunity.
Motivated by the lack of affordable anti-cancer therapies available in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Dr. Alibek drew on resources available at AFG Biosolutions and elsewhere to create in 2006 a new company, MaxWell Biocorporation, in which he currently serves as CEO & President.
Based in Washington, D.C., with several fully owned subsidiaries and affiliates in the United States and in Ukraine, MaxWell Biocorporation’s main goal is the creation of a new, large-scale, high-technology, ultra-modern pharmaceutical fill-and-finish facility in Ukraine. The high quality off-patent generic pharmaceuticals produced at this site will target severe oncological, cardiological, immunological, and infectious diseases and disorders, and could literally mean the difference between life and death for millions of people in Ukraine who otherwise would have no available therapeutic options to extend and enhance the quality of their lives.
This GMP-compliant pharmaceutical production facility – the biggest and most modern in all of Ukraine and the entire former Soviet Union[4] - will serve as the flagship of a larger healthcare complex at a campus just outside the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv in the town of Boryspil. Construction of the Boryspil facility began in April 2007 and was completed in March 2008; initial production is scheduled to begin later in 2008. [edit] References 1. ^ "Interview Dr. Ken Alibek", Journal of Homeland Security (September 18, 2000) 2. ^ AFG Biosolutions
[edit] Literature
• Alibek, K. and S. Handelman. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World - Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran it. 1999. Delta (2000) ISBN 0-385-33496-6 [1] • Anderson, D. Lessons Learned from the Former Soviet Biological Warfare Program. 2006. UMI Dissertation Services, UMI NO. 3231331 --Mithrilmax (talk) 23:26, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
- Changes are welcome so long as they do not violate the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, Wikipedia:Manual of Style, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view or other writing rules. For example: like all encyclopedias we do not keep mentioning someone's title; it has nothing to do with "respect", rather with the style of clinical observation that is present in encyclopedias (or, for another example, news). --Bobak (talk) 23:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
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- I notice that a section called "Criticism" (which had citations from major news organizations) has been completely removed by Mithrilmax... (And this in an article that was already tagged as too "POV"...) Does anyone find this inappropriate? Bushido123 (talk) 21:06, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
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- I agree. I have reinstated the deleted section. Dogwood1 (talk) 17:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
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