The Andromeda Strain from the film of the same name (1972) is a germ that had all the makings of a major contender in the scourge of mankind sweepstakes.  It hitched a ride to Earth on an American satellite (apparently outer space is just crawling with germs  and only the most reckless of space travellers would leave home without a jug of Pureil) and promptly wiped out an entire town in seconds by instantly turning everyone's blood into powder.  That's already impressive, but Andromeda upped the ante by mutating into a form that ate plastic and human flesh, and demonstrated a neat little trick of transforming matter to energy and vice versa like a teeny nuclear reactor.

Yes, Andromeda looked all set for a sterling career of mayhem, but along came a team of government scientists who scooted it off to a super high-tech version of the lunar lab to study it. 

And I thought it was always the visitor from space who administered the anal probes.

Actually compared to the scientists, Andromeda seems about as tame as the common cold.  Their laboratory, buried deep in the Nevada desert, is a shining testament to germ psychosis right down to the automatic nuclear self-destruct mechanism that would have made Howard Hughes smile fondly as if upon a little child.  In order to get into the lab, which seems remarkably understaffed for the planet's first line of defence against space germs,  the scientists have to go through elaborate decontamination procedures intended to eliminate all micro-organisms  from their bodies that might "contaminate" the bug they're trying to study.  Never mind that the whole exercise is pointless, as they'd have been just as contaminated as when they started the moment they sweated, I still can't figure out why they bothered to even change out of their street clothes; seeing as they spend the whole time handling Andromeda through glove boxes!

Your tax dollars at work.

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