Magic Johnson

Johnson was ranked #5 in SLAM Magazine's Top 75 NBA Players of all time in 2003. The book explains that ricin is a poison. Johnson also works as an NBA studio analyst for TNT. One of these is a sticker reading "With all-natural ricin!". Johnson is believed to have earned significantly more money from post-basketball ventures than from his playing days and endorsement deals. The Penn and Teller book How To Play With Your Food (ISBN 0679743111) includes a "gimmicks envelope" of small objects related to the tricks inside the book. More recently, his interests have expanded from a shortlived 1998 talk show "The Magic Hour", to ownership of several Starbucks franchises, again primarily in urban locations. Ricin was mentioned in the "call me the prankster" comic at toothpaste for dinner.

The chain is now a part of Loews Theatres, but is operated as a separate entity. Ricin was used as the poison of choice of the murderer in the 1962 comedy film Kill or Cure. His post-basketball business ventures include Magic Johnson Theatres, a nationwide chain of movie theaters whose complexes are primarily in urban locations. Ricin was the poison used in the Agatha Christie Tommy and Tuppence whodunnit The House of Lurking Death in a 1929 collection of short stories called Partners in Crime. Profits from the book were donated to the Magic Johnson Foundation for the prevention, education, research and care in the battle against AIDS. Several Senate office buildings were closed as a precaution. Johnson and a team of ghostwriters produced a book which was published by Random House in 1992. There were no signs that anyone who was near the contaminated area developed any medical problems.

The public announcement by a prominent and popular athlete shocked the nation into awareness about the AIDS epidemic and helped put the virus into the public eye. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office. Outside of basketball, Johnson is probably most famous for his November 7, 1991, public announcement that he had contracted HIV and would be immediately retiring from basketball. This information was not made public until February 3, 2004, when preliminary tests showed the presence of ricin in an office mailroom of U.S. Assuming every assist creates 2 points, Magic created 54.85 points per 48 minutes, compared to Michael Jordan's 50.98 or Wilt Chamberlain's 40.82. Investigators said it was low potency and was not considered a health risk. Magic is - statistically seen - probably the greatest offensive producer ever. The letter contained a fine powdery substance that later tested positive for ricin.

His stature, paired with his talent, allowed him to play virtually every position from center to point guard. The letter containing it was intercepted at a mail handling facility off the grounds of the White House, and it never reached its intended destination. He revolutionised the concept of the "oversized point guard", able to post up and outmuscle his much smaller opposition. in November of 2003. At 6' 9", a size normally reserved for power forwards, Johnson was also easily one of the largest point guards ever to play on NBA level. Ricin was detected in the mail at the White House in Washington, D.C. He is widely considered to be one of the most exciting playmakers of the NBA, maybe the best of all time. All others accused in connection with the Wood Green flat were acquitted on all counts.

His unselfish playmaking and dazzling no-look passes on the fast break ushered in the "Showtime" era of Laker basketball, which dominated the eighties. He was also jailed for life following a conviction for murdering the Special Branch policeman who went to arrest him. Johnson possessed stellar point guard talent. In April 2005 31-year-old Kamel Bourgass was jailed for 17 years after being convicted of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance "by the use of poisons and explosives to cause disruption, fear or injury". . Secretary of State Colin Powell presented those arrested as the "UK Poison Cell" of a global terrorist network in making the case for military intervention in Iraq to the UN Security Council [7]. Johnson went on to lead the Lakers to championships in 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1988. On February 5, 2003, U.S.

Scoring a game-high 42 points and grabbing a game-high 15 rebounds, he led the Lakers to the NBA crown, stunning Julius Erving, the Philadelphia 76ers, and a national television audience who came to understand the moniker "Magic". A number of men who were apparently living at the mosque were arrested. Filling in for the injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic started the game at center and eventually played every position on the floor in a dominating performance. On January 20, 2003 Finsbury Park mosque was raided by police, apparently as part of the investigation into the alleged discovery of ricin in Wood Green. The greatest game of Johnson's career arguably came in his rookie season: May 16, 1980, in Game 6 of the NBA Finals at Philadelphia. A Special Branch policeman, DC Stephen Oake, was fatally stabbed during the arrests, and three other officers were also injured, one seriously. Although he and Bird eventually became the best of friends off the court, they revived the heated Lakers-Celtics Rivalry and drew millions of new fans to the NBA. Three more suspects were arrested in Manchester in England in connection with the investigation of the alleged ricin found in London, following a raid carried out pursuant to an investigation into immigration issues.

He led the Lakers in scoring three times (1987, 1989, 1990) and in rebounding twice (1982, 1983). They were not convicted of any poisons related crime. In different periods of his career, he led the league in assists and steals. Six more suspects were arrested in Bournemouth in England in connection with the investigation into the alleged ricin incident in London. While not known as an exceptional scorer, Magic excelled in all other facets of the game. The analytic confusion was caused by the similarity of many plant proteins to one of the ricin components, which suggests that higher quality (better specificity and sensitivity) analytic tests for ricin are needed. Johnson earned the nickname "Magic" at Everett High School from a local sports writer, both for his flamboyant passing style and winning ways. Further analysis identified the material as ground wheat germ.

He is one of only four players to win NCAA and NBA championships in consecutive years. A little later several arrests were made in France and a bottle of something that tested positive for ricin was found. Johnson is also the only NBA rookie to win the NBA Finals MVP Award. It appears that an individual conducting amateur research on poisons was found in this raid. He also led Michigan State University to the NCAA title in 1979 against arch-rival Larry Bird's Indiana State University. Some acetone, 22 castor beans, and poor recipes for ricin and other poisons copied from the Internet were found. Playing point guard, he led the Lakers to five NBA championships (1980, 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1988), as well as four other NBA Finals appearances. However at the trial of Kamel Bourgass in 2005 it became apparent that within a few days of the raid the leader of the Biological Weapon Identification Group at the Porton Down Defence Science and Technology Laboratory had concluded that ricin was not present at Wood Green [5] [6].

Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Jr. (born August 14, 1959 in Lansing, Michigan) is a 6' 9" former American professional basketball star who played for the Los Angeles Lakers during the 1980s and early 1990s. Media reports stated that a group was suspected of intending to use the poison in an attack on the London Underground. It was widely reported in the media that traces of ricin were detected by British police in a flat in Wood Green, North London after a raid on a suspected ring of terrorists on 5 January 2003. An aerosol powder may be prepared by spray drying or air grinding the purified ricin using cold air. The final ricin precipitate is dried and then purified by floatation in carbon tetrachloride.

The precipitated ricin may be reextracted once to further purify it. After precipitation, the crude ricin cake is washed with a 16.7% solution of sodium sulfate to remove extranious nitrogenous substances. The leachate is filtered to remove insoluble matter and the crude ricin then precipitated by the addition of a 12% solution of sodium sulfate with a pH of 7.0-8.0. Ricin is initially extracted from defatted castor beans by aquous extraction at pH 3.8 to yield a leachate containing solubilized ricin.

Modern extraction plants might use membrane filtration to make highly purified ricin isolates. The extraction of ricin from castor beans is very similar to the prepartion of soy protein isolates. The patent was removed from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database sometime in 2004, but is still available online through international patent databases. Dieke, and Charlotte Karel.

Corwin, Sally H. Alderks, Alsoph H. Craig, O.H. Secretary of the Army, are Harry L.

The inventors named in US Patent 3,060,165 (granted October 23, 1962) "Preparation of Toxic Ricin", assigned to the U.S. The process for creating ricin is well-known, in part because a patent was granted for it in 1952. Ricin is actually several orders of magnitude less toxic than botulinum or tetanus toxins, but those are more difficult to obtain. The major reason it is dangerous is that there is no specific antidote, and that it is very easy to obtain (the castor bean plant is a common ornamental, and can be grown at home without any special care).

Presumably it could be sealed inside some sort of dust particle that would dissolve in water, but this would be difficult. Since it acts as an enzyme, catalyzing destruction of ribosomes, even a single oxidation is likely to render the ricin molecule harmless. Pure ricin could be dispersed through the air, however it would tend to be oxidized and rendered harmless by ozone, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants in a matter of hours. (Jan van Aken, an expert on biological weapons explained in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel that he judges it rather reassuring that Al Qaeda experimented with ricin as it suggests their inability to produce botulin or anthrax.).

Ricin denatures (ie, the protein changes structure and becomes less dangerous) much more readily than anthrax spores, which may remain lethal for decades. Ricin is easy to produce, but is not as practical nor likely to cause as high casualities as other agents. Hence, a military willing to use biological weapons and having advanced resources would rather use either of the latter instead. To put ricin used as weapon into perspective, it is worth noting that as a biological weapon or chemical weapon, ricin may be considered as not very powerful, if only in comparison with other poisons such as botulinum or anthrax.

In August of 2002, US officials asserted that the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam tested ricin, along with other chemical and biological agents, in northern Iraq. Despite this, more than 1 million metric tonnes of castor beans are processed each year, and approximately 5% of the total is rendered into a waste containing high concentrations of ricin toxin [4]. Under both the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, ricin is listed as a schedule 1 controlled substance. Despite ricin's extreme toxicity and utility as an agent of chemical/biological warfare, it is extremely difficult to limit the production of the toxin.

Thomas, Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life, 368-378). Earlier, Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also suffered (but survived) ricin-like symptoms after a 1971 encounter with KGB agents (D.M. He died in hospital a few days later; the pellet was discovered by chance during an autopsy and the poison linked back to the KGB. In 1978, the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by Bulgarian secret police who surreptitiously 'shot' him on a London street with a modified umbrella using compressed gas to fire a tiny pellet contaminated with ricin into his leg.

The best-known documented use of ricin as an agent of biological warfare was by the Soviet Union's KGB during the Cold War. Ricin was given the military symbol W. This conclusion was based on comparison of the final weapons rather than ricin's toxicity (LD50 <30 mg.min.m^–3). Though there were plans for mass production and several field trials with different bomblet concepts, the end conclusion was that it was no more economical than using phosgene.

During the Second World War the United States and Canada undertook studying ricin in cluster bombs. The War ended before it was weaponized. The dust cloud concept could not be adequately developed, and researchers believed the coated bullet/shrapnel concept was unethical. At that time it was being considered for use either as a toxic dust or coated bullets and shrapnel.

The United States investigated ricin for its military potential during the First World War. Use of ricin as an adjuvant has potential implications for developing mucosal vaccines. A promising approach is also to use the non-toxic B subunit as a vehicle for delivering antigens into cells thus greatly increasing their immunogenicity. Genetic modification of ricin is believed to be possible to lessen its toxicity to humans, but not to the cancer cells.

Ricin could be linked to a monoclonal antibody to target malignant cells recognized by the antibody. Ricin may have therapeutic use in the treatment of cancer. In the United states, a person caught manufacturing or possessing ricin may be sentenced up to 30 years in prison. As little as one castor bean, about 0.5 grams, may be fatal in a child.

Since 0.2 mg of purified Ricin constitutes a fatal dose, this is a considerable amount of ricin. The seed-pulp left over from pressing for castor oil contains on average about 5% by weight of ricin. Ricin is easily purified from castor-oil manufacturing waste. Since people do not get sick from eating large amounts of such products, ricin A is of extremely low toxicity if and only if the B chain is not present..

Many plants such as barley have the A chain but not the B chain. Ricin consists of two distinct protein chains (almost 30kDa each) that are linked to each other by disulfide bond:. Typically 2.5–20 raw seeds can kill an adult human; 4 a rabbit, 5 a sheep, 6 an ox, 6 a horse, 7 a pig, 11 a dog, but 80 for cocks and ducks.[3]. [2].

Although one seed contains enough ricin to kill an adult human, they may pass harmlessly through the digestive system if swallowed whole. Modern feed-making techniques break down the ricin in castor beans by heating at 140 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes, although some studies suggest that residual toxic effects may linger. Although the castor bean plant has long been noted for its toxicity, ricin was first isolated and named in 1888 by Hermann Stillmark. (See abrin).

Ingested in larger doses, ricin causes severe diarrhea and victims can die of shock. In small doses, such as the typical dose contained in a measure of castor oil, ricin causes digestive tract cramps. Long term organ damage is likely in survivors. There is no known antidote; only symptomatic and supportive treatment is available.

Ricin is poisonous if inhaled, injected, or ingested, acting as a toxin by the inhibition of protein synthesis. . It is considered to be twice as deadly as cobra venom. Ricin can be extracted from castor beans and is known to have an average lethal dose in humans of 0.2 milligrams (1/5,000th of a gram), though some sources give higher figures [1].

Its name comes from the seed's resemblance to the tick. The protein ricin (pronounced rye-sin) is a poison manufactured from the castor bean (Ricinus communis). Ricin B is important in assisting ricin A's entry into a cell by binding with a cell surface component. Ricin A is toxic to the cell by interfering with Ribosomes, responsible for protein synthesis.