anthrax (Page 2)

We’ve written that U.S. scientists are recreating the lethal Spanish Flu, that killed 20-40 million people in 1918. Now we’ve learned that scientists have also created an extremely deadly genetically-engineered form of mousepox, a relative of the smallpox virus. Although it should only be lethal for mice, geneticist Ian Ramshaw says, “I have great concern about doing this in a pox virus that can cross species?You’d hope (it) remains mouse-specific.”
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After two years of digging at Fort Detrick, Maryland, officials have uncovered 2,000 tons of hazardous waste, including over 100 vials of live bacteria and viruses, as well as anthrax, that the military says they didn’t know were there. They also found autopsied rats. This is material left over from the U.S. biological weapons program. “When Nixon shut us down, we had a deadline, we were given six weeks to clean up the post. Well you couldn’t do it. People sneaked out to the good area, and dumped it in a pit,” says Hubert Kaempf, the retired Army maintenance engineer who was in charge of cleanup.
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The mystery of the 2001 anthrax attacks on government offices and the media has pretty much been forgotten, despite the fact that most of the evidence points to an inside job by a U.S. bioweapons scientist. Now Marilyn Thompson writes in the Washington Post that new evidence has been discovered in a pond in Frederick, Md.

One way to identify the anthrax poisoner would be to test his blood, because working with the substance causes spores to get into the body. Also, the question comes up about how he could have put anthrax into envelopes without becoming ill or killing himself. Now we know the answer: he filled the envelopes under water.
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An Arizona man caught anthrax from a wool rug imported from Turkey, according to the Department of Health Services. This is cutaneous anthrax, the kind that causes skin lesions, and it?s easily cured with antibiotics. It’s the powdered kind that’s inhaled that has killed several people in terrorist attacks.

“He may have been exposed through a natural source, that being a rug from Turkey,” says health department spokesman Michael Murphy. “It’s possibly anthrax, but if it is, it would be natural exposure from an animal source from a country where anthrax is known.”
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