I still remember that when I was in a veterinary microbiology class 30 some years ago. My teacher brought in a bottle of dry spores one day and tried to reculture them after they had been preserved at room temperature for more than 12 years. Two days later, plenty of white, ball shaped bacterial colonies had grown on the bacterial plate. After dyeing the bacterial colonies, we could observe chained blue bacteria through a microscope. Those were anthrax bacteria that are currently threatening lives in the US. The strength of anthrax bacteria is obvious, as the spores did not die over 12 years. In fact, such spores can survive in some soils for more than 50 years, and they cannot be killed by regular boiling procedure.
Anthrax is an infectious disease of both humans and other warm-blooded animals, especially of cattle and sheep, transmitted through respiratory tract or esophagus infection.
The disease can be transmitted to humans in three ways: Through skin wounds (cutaneous anthrax), through ingestion of contaminated meat (intestinal anthrax) and through inhalation of anthrax spores into human lungs (inhalation anthrax).
The disease is not transmittable from one human being to another.
Anthrax usually takes place in backward nations where environmental sanitation is bad, such as African and some Asian countries.
Veterinarians in a Taiwan agriculture delegation sent to Ethiopia witnessed massive infections and deaths in a village after the villagers ate dead cattle infected with anthrax. Such incidents rarely occurred afterwards because of the assistance provided by our veterinarians there.
According to senior veterinarians, soon after Taiwan was taken over by the ROC in 1945, some residents in the Taoyuan area died after eating dead cattle infected with anthrax. No anthrax case has been reported in the nation since then -- until a horse in a horse farm in Peitou was found infected with the disease last year.
Also, anthrax cases seldom occur in US animal husbandry, and it is even less possible for office workers in big cities to be infected with the disease. Thus, the anthrax cases reported in the US this time are indeed man-made and may be related to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Anthrax is the most suitable and powerful pathogenic bacteria for use as a biochemical weapon, as it is highly infectious and pathogenic to humans and livestock. Such bacteria is considered very stable, and it can be easily mass-produced, preserved and transported.
On April 2, 1979, an Anthrax epidemic suddenly broke out among residents in the city of Sverdlovsk, now Ekaterinburg -- which is about 1380km to the east of Moscow. Sixty-four of the 94 victims infected with the disease died. Although the former Soviet government attributed the deaths to intestinal anthrax caused by ingestion of contaminated meat, the Carter administration in the US believed that the case was unusual and might be related to the research and manufacture of biochemical weapons.
Later in 1992 and 1993, biologists from the West formed a team to investigate the Sverdlovsk case. Although all evidence had already been eliminated, they discovered that the reported victims were actually concentrated around the same wind direction. Most of the domestic animals raised along the direction was also infected and died. After a deeper investigation, the biologists then found out that the anthrax outbreak was due to a leakage from a biological weapons facility located upwind, where workers at the facility forgot to replace a damaged filter. According to the biologists, thousands of residents might have been killed if the wind was blowing in the opposite direction toward Moscow at that time.
Facing the increasing threat of biochemical warfare, the US required anthrax vaccination for all personnel involved in the Gulf War. More than two million people, including many in the US National Guard, have been vaccinated against anthrax over the past seven years. However, some have refused to be vaccinated because of the controversy over the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine. The anthrax vaccine -- solely manufactured under contract by the Michigan Biologic Products Institute -- has been licensed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and has been in use since 1970. According to safety reports, only 0.02 percent to 0.2 percent of those who had the vaccination suffered from side effects, such as pain, inflammation and itches. Most of them were able to recover from these symptoms in a short time.
Nevertheless, chronic, long-term side effects are still debated because there is a necessity for medical treatments for such side effects. As for its effectiveness, experts believed that the vaccine is able to prevent "cutaneous anthrax," but its ability to prevent "inhalation anthrax" is still questionable.
Anthrax vaccines for humans are made of extractions from shattered anthrax bacteria. The vaccines for livestock are made of live anthrax spores with the toxicity reduced. Although the vaccine for livestock is more effective than those for humans, neither the safety nor the side effects of such vaccines are strictly regulated. That is why I strongly opposed vaccinating horses using imported live anthrax spores vaccines when a horse in Peitou was infected with anthrax last year.
As the development of biotechnology continues, the power of bioweapons is becoming more and more frightening. If someone intentionally embeds "anti-antibiotics" in the thalluses of anthrax bacteria in order for the bacteria to develop drug resistance against the antibiotics, people infected with such bacteria will be cureless.
Right before the Gulf War, coincidentally, the US government approved the introduction of effective anti-anthrax antibiotics -- such as ciprofloxacin and doxycycline -- to the market. However, it is unknown whether or not US approval did result from the appearance of new bioweapons.
Nevertheless, using such vaccines for prevention is not much help in the case of bioweapons containing mixed germs, or bioweapons mixed with chemical weapons that may damage our immune system.
Lai Shiow-suey is a professor of the Department of Veterinary Medicine, National Taiwan University.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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