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Anthrax News:

  • In Shift, Officials Look Into Possibility Anthrax Cases Have bin Laden Ties

    “Federal

    authorities say they are now investigating

    the possibility that followers of Osama bin Laden

    were behind the anthrax cases around the nation.

    This represents a significant shift in the thinking of

    investigators, who had earlier speculated that the

    initial case in Florida was an isolated criminal act

    unconnected with the Sept. 11 attacks.

    The shift of the investigation is based not on

    definitive proof but on circumstantial information drawn from cases diagnosed in recent days, like the

    postmarks on the letters known to contain anthrax. Each one was sent from places near where some of the

    terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks lived or visited.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

  • On the other hand, Anthrax is reportedly easy to grow and distribute by mail.

    “Growing this organism is no problem,” said Norman Cheville, dean of Iowa State University’s School of Veterinary Medicine. “It grows readily. It grows overnight.”

    Until last week, the threat of anthrax had been couched largely in terms of its use as a weapon of mass destruction–and how difficult that would be…


    Bioterrorism experts said the use of the U.S. Postal Service to transmit lethal bacteria is significant and should trigger changes in how mail is handled. Los Angeles Times

  • “The bacterium that causes anthrax is a hearty, fast-growing microbe that is relatively easy to isolate and identify from the blood and tissues of people who have fallen ill with the disease. But the bacterium can be difficult to detect at the earliest stages of exposure or infection. And some of the tests that have been drafted into use to offer speedy diagnoses during the current spate of apparent acts of bioterror were not designed for the purposes to which they are being put.” Washington Post

  • Here’s an official Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advisory on how to handle anthrax and other biological agent threats. And Experts Offer Advice on Handling Potentially Dangerous Mail NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

  • Here’s March, 2000 COngressional testimony by Dr. Stephen M. Ostroff, Associate Director for Epidemiologic Science, NCID-CDC, about the “plans for and management of the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile Program (NPSP), one component of CDC’s overall public health response to the threat of bioterrorism.” Although I’m under no illusions that the isolated psychiatric hospital south of Boston where I’m the medical director is a prime terrorist target, I’m currently investigating with my pharmacy staff what stockpiling of antibiotics we ought to do there.
  • CNN reports (toward the bottom of this roundup of anthrax-related news) that “ninety offices of Planned Parenthood and at least 80 clinics of the National Abortion Federation across the United States have received envelopes containing unidentified powdery substances and letters with threatening language, according to spokesmen for the groups. Both groups support abortion rights and provide abortions in at least some of their offices.” Although it’s not exactly what I was looking for in asking the other day for links to anything about the reactions of the right wing paramilitary movement to 9-11, one would wonder if this is the response of another faction of the rabid right.
  • I missed this one. A 46-year-old Ohio Aryan Nations member with a degree in microbiology who pleaded guilty last year to having fraudulently obtained cultures of bubonic plague via mail order (interestingly, from the same laboratory from which Saddam Hussein had reportedly ordered biological agents!) is one of two men detained by the FBI. Larry Wayne Harris has self-published a 131-page book that The Southern Poverty Law Center has called ‘a do-it-yourself manual for mass destruction through biological terrorism’. Although Harris says he is merely alerting the US to the Iraqi threat,

    in an interview with U.S. News & World Report last November, Harris said his associates in the white supremacist movement would strike at government officials with biochemical weapons, if provoked. ‘If they arrest a bunch of our guys, they get a test tube in the mail,’ he told the magazine.

    And he suggested that worse could come if the separatists? dreams are denied. ‘How many cities are you willing to lose before you back off? At what point do you say: “If these guys want to go off to the Northwest and have five states declared to be their own free and independent country, let them do it.” ‘ ABC

  • And, not surprisingly, the Boston Globe‘s investigations reveal that lax security eases access to lethal strains. “Scores of low-security labs store the deadly bacteria with little oversight.

    For decades, anthrax lab samples moved freely among researchers and universities, from Georgia to California and around the world. Hundreds of samples were traded, copied, and mailed on. Authorities kept few tabs on the transactions, and remain unable to account for many.”

  • The above is part of the answer to my curiosity about why investigators weren’t rushing to identify what strain of anthrax was used in the various attacks, whether the strains were identical, etc. Identifying the particular strain of an anthrax culture is difficult and unreliable, and doing so may not aid in a criminal investigation of the origins of an anthrax attack, as cultures of anthrax have been passed around the world freely from lab to lab.