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afraid. Be very afraid." That was the advertising slogan for
the 1986 science-fiction film remake, The Fly. With a "remake"
of the anthrax outbreak in Florida, this time at NBC News in New
York, that's exactly what a lot of us are doing.
Even before
the New York case, people across North America were stampeding out
of everything from subways to police stations because of anthrax
angst, set off by things as little as a lunch bag left behind on
a train. This is not good. Let's step back, take a deep breath,
and look at what we're facing.
As of this
writing, a writer for a Florida weekly tabloid has died of anthrax
exposure. Hundreds of his fellow employees were tested, of whom
at least two are positive but have no symptoms. (Usually a positive
exposure means that some anthrax spores have been found in a person's
nose hairs.)
In New York,
one NBC employee positive for anthrax exposure has mild symptoms,
while three persons investigating the case have tested positive
with no symptoms. Hundreds of other NBC employees have now been
screened and tested negative.
In Nevada,
some pornography sent to a Microsoft office from Malaysia twice
tested negative for the bacterium. On the third test it came back
positive and it's been sent to the CDC in Atlanta for further testing.
Hundreds of employees have been screened and all have been negative
for exposure.
These are terrorist
actions, but nothing has indicated any link to bin Laden's buddies,
other than that someone is taking advantage of a heightened state
of fear that began September 11. So we're left asking: Does it take
a well-organized, well-funded organization like al Qaeda to obtain
anthrax and harm people through the mail? And could this be a portent
of a massive "city-busting" anthrax release we've long
been warned of?
Here's what
you need to know: A) it doesn't take a terrorist organization to
obtain anthrax and mail it to somebody; B) it is not contagious;
C) a relatively large amount of the bacteria is required to cause
even mild illness depending on the mode of exposure; and, D) harming
a few individuals is difficult. Harming more than a few is incredibly
difficult.
Anthrax is
naturally present in soil, and small disease outbreaks occur regularly
in both North American wild animals and livestock. Hundreds of labs
across the U.S. alone stock the bacteria, and until 1997 you didn't
even need a license to order it. It can also be cultivated from
a dead animal. There are so-called "manmade" strains,
those that have been altered, but the one that killed the Florida
man was natural.
The easiest
route of infection is "cutaneous," meaning through cuts
in the skin. This accounts for about 95% of cases and includes the
initial case at NBC. The good news though is that because so few
anthrax spores can enter this way, cutaneous anthrax rarely kills.
The hardest
way to contract anthrax illness is through the air, as with the
Florida fatality. If anthrax takes hold in the lungs and is left
untreated, the death rate is about 80%. The antibiotic Cipro is
the treatment of choice, although other antibiotics such as penicillin
and erythromycin also work. If these are applied early, even pulmonary
anthrax has a high cure rate.
There is an
anthrax vaccination, but don't even think about getting it. It takes
a series of six injections spread over 18 months — plus factory
problems have so reduced the stockpile that there's not even enough
for the military, much less for civilians.
What's probably
most important about anthrax is that terrorist groups have already
been trying desperately for years to kill people with anthrax, as
well as numerous other biological weapons, to little avail.
The most notorious
such group, the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan, used graduate-level
scientists and spent millions of dollars trying to kill people with
biological weapons, including anthrax. For all their efforts, these
agents caused not one death.
The problem
is that weaponizing and disbursing anthrax is so difficult that
it's an absurd alternative to boring old explosives, points out
Amy E. Smithson of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.,
coauthor of the October 2000 report, "Ataxia:
The Chemical and Biological Terrorism Threat and the US Response."
Specifically, anthrax needs to be powderized so the particles are
small enough to lodge deep in the lungs, but not so small that when
disbursed the bacterial spores dissipate and die.
Cropdusters
are essentially worthless, says Dr. Smithson; almost all of the
spores would be killed just during disbursal. Anthrax is harmless
in drinking water. But put enough in an envelope and you might just
hurt someone.
Yet we know
it doesn't take al Qaeda to kill via the U.S. Postal Service. A
single homegrown terrorist like Ted Kaczynski will do just fine.
The "Unabomber" killed three people and injured 29, working
alone in a Montana shack with homemade explosives. Subsequently,
Timothy McVeigh blew up 168 people with nothing fancier than a truck
filled with chemical fertilizer.
Back to the
al Qaeda brand of terrorism: What about mass-scale efforts?
Dr. Smithson
writes harshly of those who warn of "10,000 — and 100,000-casualty
scenarios," those that lead to anthrax and other biological
weapons being lumped right alongside nukes as "weapons of mass
destruction."
These horrific
"what ifs" are about as useful as observing that American
stores stock enough bullets to kill every last citizen — if
we all obediently lined up for a single shot to the back of the
neck.
The only mass
deaths apparently connected with anthrax came from an accidental
release of apparently about one trillion spores at the Sverdlovsk
(now Yekatinerinburg) biological weapons compound in the former
Soviet Union in 1979. Records show that of the 1.2 million residents
of the city, only 66 perished.
Still, somebody
here is trying to kill somebody. What should we do in the face of
this new threat?
First, be rational.
Over half a billion pieces of mail are delivered in this country
each day. At this time, it appears three or four actually contained
enough anthrax to be detectable, though in only one case enough
to kill.
Second, instead
of rushing to the doctor to get Cipro, get a flu shot. Why are we
panicking over a single anthrax death even as 20,000 of us die annually
because we refuse to get flu vaccinations?
Finally, remember
that we're in this war for the long haul.
We must maintain
a heightened state of alertness, but without giving the terrorists
exactly what they seek by allowing them to, well, terrorize us.
Ironically, not long ago I
found myself writing about the widespread yet groundless fears
that the anthrax vaccine was horribly dangerous. Now people are
desperately clamoring to receive those very injections.
There's never
a good time for hysteria. But this may be the worst time of all.
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