MICHAEL ABBEY — PHOTORESEARCHERS



Nightmare Scenario: Untrue
Anthrax is a deadly but non-contagious soil bacteria. The nightmare scenario found in a chain email currently making its way around the Internet states:

100 grams of anthrax properly dispersed downwind over Washington, D.C., for example, could kill between 150,000 and three million people in the surrounding areas.

The reality is more benign; the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies says this scenario would actually require 100 kilograms and only those directly exposed would be infected. Hospitals would initially notice an epidemic of cold and flu-like symptoms, deteriorating into severe breathing problems and then death in those not treated with common antibiotics.

Safeguards
  • Anthrax is not contagious. It requires direct exposure, which is difficult to effect on a mass scale.

  • Anthrax is hard to produce safely. Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult built high-tech labs but failed repeatedly to grow significant quantities of active spores. The Soviet Union, which is reported to have stockpiled thousands of gallons during the Cold War, had its own production problems, resulting in one 1979 accident that killed 68 people. Iraq armed missiles with anthrax in the Gulf War, but experts have noted that Iraq's biological arsenal probably would have been militarily ineffective because it was small and inefficiently organized.

  • There's a vaccine. Special units of the U.S. military are inoculated. It's not currently available to civilians. BioPort, the company that produces the vaccine, tells callers "Every dose is being used or reserved for the American armed forces." According to reports, the U.S. government is now looking at creating a national stockpile.

  • Dr. Luciana Borio of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies says that doctor education is key, so that emergency rooms can detect anthrax outbreaks and begin antibiotic treatment. Even if individuals store Israeli-style anthrax kits or antibiotics, they should still get treated at a hospital. Gas masks are only useful if there is advance warning.

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