The type of anthrax currently making the rounds of New York media outlets is contracted by touching the spores. "We have never ruled out any scenario, and to the extent that there are leads that come up, whether it be to individuals or methods of manufacturing or what have you, we pursue them," Mueller said.The work will be performed at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, where scientists have made tiny quantities of dangerous anthrax powder for many years to test detection equipment and decontamination procedures for U.S. troops."Are we making progress? How hard is it to make ricin?
If the attack were not detected by one of the monitoring systems in place in the United States, it might go unnoticed until doctors begin to see unusual patterns of illness among sick people showing up at emergency rooms. No, because we don't have the person or persons responsible identified and charges being brought against them," Mueller said.Matthew S. Meselson, a Harvard University biologist who has examined electron microscope photographs of the mailed anthrax for the FBI, said the powder appeared to be pure spores, but did contain some clumps, probably because of exposure to humidity. Often there is marked swelling around the ulcer.Of reported cases, 30% of patients died despite aggressive medical therapy.Our publications keep professionals working across the public, private, and academic sectors informed on the most important developments and issues in health security and biosecurity.To protect people’s health from epidemics and disasters and ensure that communities are resilient to major challenges.Find an article or report by keywords:The diagnosis of naturally occurring anthrax should be considered if there are symptoms and signs consistent with the disease and a history of contact with sick animals or animal skins, or travel to an area where anthrax is endemic. Anthrax is a disease caused not by a virus, but rather by bacteria.There aren't any known cases of anthrax passing from one person to another, so it is considered to be noncontagious. It suggests that the powder could have been prepared by a single person with the right knowledge in a relatively simple clandestine lab."There's really nothing all that special about it," said one of the scientists, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified. Common hosts for anthrax include wild or domestic livestock, such as sheep, cattle, horses and goats. Mueller said Friday that the FBI still believes in its profile of the anthrax attacker as a loner with some scientific training and access to Ames anthrax, a strain identified by the Army's biodefense lab at Fort Detrick in 1981 but distributed since then to at least two dozen other labs.While experts consulted by the FBI believed early in the investigation that the anthrax might contain silica or other sophisticated additives to make it float more easily in the air, the consensus now is that no additives are present and that the anthrax was probably made using a relatively simple process, the scientists say.The conclusion that manufacturing the powder would not require spray-dryers costing tens of thousands of dollars or other elaborate machinery points away from the possibility that the anthrax was made by a state bioweapons program such as Iraq's.