ANTHRAX: THE LITTLE BUGGER THAT COULD

On September 18, 2001, exactly one week after the fall of the World Trade Center, the United States of America came to the grips of another scare, this time from an entity so small it can never be seen without the aid of a microscope. It came in the form of a deadly bacteria strain known as anthrax.

What is anthrax? As stated above, anthrax is a strain of bacteria commonly found in ruminant animals. It is not contagious and rarely infects humans; it cannot be passed on from human to human. However, if a human is exposed to the bacteria, either through inhalation, ingestion or skin exposure, the infection can prove fatal. The mortality rate of humans to the anthrax bacteria is 100%.

What happened on September 18 was that five letters containing a grade of anthrax bacteria was mailed to five media outfits, namely ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, the New York Post and the National Enquirer. The anthrax bacteria contained in these letters was of a coarse, brown and granular form, which looks a little like a sample of Purina Dog Food. Robert Stevens, a reporter for the Sun, which belongs to the same media network as the National Enquirer, namely American Media, Inc., died from the exposure to the anthrax bacteria.

A few weeks after that, another two letters were sent, one to Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota and to Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Both senators are from the Democrat party, and the anthrax bacteria these letters contained were of a higher grade than in the ones sent to the media.

What do these two sets of anthrax letters have in common, despite the difference in the fineness in quality? The letters were postmarked from New Jersey, and the strains of anthrax were traced to have originated from the Ames strain, a strain of anthrax that is being studied by the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, located in Fort Detrick, Maryland. The Federal Bureau of Investigations theorized that whoever sent the anthrax letters could have been a lone agent, who may have cultured the anthrax bacteria in a hidden, makeshift laboratory using cheap or improvised equipment. There was a dispute as to whether the anthrax bacteria had a coating of silica and aluminum, which would make it more able to get aerosolized, thereby making the anthrax bacteria a true biological weapon.

To date, the perpetrator behind these infamous anthrax attacks of 2001 is yet at large. But the attacks, just like the fall of the Twin Towers, had widespread effects in the United States. For one, many buildings used by the government were closed down in order to decontaminate them from the anthrax bacteria. This measure alone cost the United States government and the private agencies involved millions of dollars.

It also prompted the United States government to increase funding for research focused on biological warfare. There are some agents who have even gone so far to claim that the possibility of using anthrax as a biological weapon is one of the factors that pushed the US government to declare war on Iraq. It definitely made many states in the US to adopt more strenuous measures in prosecuting criminal hoaxes.

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