Anthrax...coincidence?

[David Honig]

At 11:58 AM 10/6/01 -0400, Steve Furlong wrote:
>"Dr. Evil" wrote:
>> 
>> > Center for Disease Control Investigating Second Anthrax Case
>> > By Chris Dolmetsch
>
>> FORTUNATELY, this stuff is not contagious.  Either you have it or you
>> don't.
>
>I'm not sure I believe that, or much of anything else put out regarding
>a bioagent. ("We have everything under control. Just continue to pay
>your taxes and do what we tell you and everything will be all right.")
>Are there any real doctors or vets on the list who can confirm it from
>their own knowledge? (Sorry, I don't think I want to trust the word of a
>"Dr Evil". <grin>)

Channelling TM: why don't you google the topic yourself? 

Or go to a library, since if you kick the paranoia up a notch
you can't trust the net.

In fact, Anthrax spores are much more useful than say smallpox militarily,
because Anthrax doesn't spread to your homeland.  That's the whole
point.  You have to use spores to infect, but infected people don't
make spores.  Also, once infected, you're toast quickly despite treatment.

But other background info backs this up:

* You have to know what you're doing to force the bacilli
to make spores, eg industrially.  The bacteria will do it on its
own under certain conditions, ie, its environment is getting harsh.
True for lots of bugs.

That's the knowledge that the germwar people know takes finesse,
making spores and then making a decent inhalable aerosol of the thing.  


* There *are* nasties that live in the soil and make spores.  An
archeologist told me of a debilitating lung fungus you get if you dig in the
ground a lot.  A cell biologist told of someone getting a weird
disease because they had fed human hair
to their garden bacteria (to deter animals I think).

* Similar (in a real bio sense) animals will often share
diseases -HIV in primates, anthrax in sheep and the like, etc.
Flu jumps between birds, pigs, and men.  The cowpox/smallpox
interaction has been noted here.  Rabies gets anything 
warmblooded I think.  Quite a lot of variation in species 
specificity, and a resivoir in "wild and domestic lower
vertebrates" (like hanta in mice, lyme in deer) is common.

>Do the spores reproduce only in herbivores?

Bacteria chose to make spores when the puddle is drying up.

>Well, maybe I'm just cynical from experience with the government's lying
>and concealing for our own good.
>
>SRF

Given current events, skepticism is even wiser than usual.  But
I wouldn't doubt the existing medical or bio info.

The "extra-vigilance --> extra detection" explanation is of course possible.

Still, *fantastic* timing, as has been pointed out.