Mirth wrote:
jones wrote:
This analogy doesn't work because the formula for sulphuric acid is public knowledge. Also as stated in Murray's article the whole point of this new class of nerve agents was that anybody with a standard chemical lab would be able to produce it
My point (and maybe Klaus has more insight on this) is that you can design tests without having a detailed understanding of the formula in question. Does that translate to this case? I have no idea. Does Porton Down have enough knowledge to specifically trace it back to the lab that it was synthesize in? Or is that even possible? Again, all valid questions and points that both Corbyn and the French have made. But, based on the article above, I'm not convinced by Murray's chemistry knowledge to completely rule out those possibilities. Of course, nor do I have enough to contradict him so there you go.
I have no idea how they do it unfortunately. I'd imagine it's easy to identify the basic compound itself since all nerve agents function roughly the same way, by attaching themselves to proteins. From what I've read about the sarin gas in Syria that's how they were collecting evidence of those attacks: just normal blood samples. I'm not sure how you tell different kinds of nerve gas apart though, but I'm sure it's possible and probably easy when you have entire government facilities devoted to the study of things like this.
I've spent the day reading about Novichok, and I think Murray is getting another thing wrong. The idea that the gas could be "made at bench level" probably refers to how it's designed as two less dangerous chemicals that are mixed before use. It doesn't mean the chemicals themselves can be cooked up in any place with a fume hood.
Like I said I'm a big fan of Murray, but I think he's doing the same thing the newspapers are doing, only in the opposite direction, by exaggerating too much to make it look like there's no valid connection to Russia. If they know how to test for Novichok and it was Novichok that was used, then the two alternatives probably are what has been reported: either it's a government attack or the government has lost control over the compound and someone who used to work there whisked away a few canisters while the Soviet Union was falling apart.
Either scenario falls under Russia's responsibility in my opinion. They're not behaving like a nation eager to resolve this situation when they send Vassily Nebenzia to the UN to lie and proclaim that Russia have never produced or researched or manufactured novichok and in fact don't even know what novichok is.
