ANTHRAX - Many possible sources

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Wednesday October 10 9:21 PM ET

Many Possible Sources of Anthrax

By MATT CRENSON, AP National Writer

The anthrax bacteria that killed an editor at a Florida tabloid last week could have come from countless places, including hundreds of laboratories worldwide.

Most of those labs either develop vaccines and treatments against the disease, or serve as general repositories for bacteria and viruses. A few rogue labs probably do biological weapons research as well.

Until a few years ago, none of the laboratories have faced serious restrictions on who has access to anthrax and other potential biological weapons. Since 1997, however, the United States have put restrictions on who can possess anthrax or order it from the handful of biological suppliers that provide microbes to laboratories.

The anthrax in laboratories today originated from animals that died of the disease or soil contaminated by the bacteria. To collect anthrax, scientists would visit a farm with a livestock outbreak of the disease and take a small piece of tissue from an animal that had died from it.

Back in the lab, the researchers would then isolate the anthrax bacteria from the tissue and keep the microorganisms alive in a liquid culture. For decades, that one sample can spawn subsequent generations of the same anthrax strain.

So far, there is no manmade bacteria. But scientists are working on genetically modifying bacteria, and in some germ warfare labs they have developed strains that are exceptionally deadly or resistant to antibiotics. Fortunately, the strain in Florida does not appear to have been modified.

Hundreds of different anthrax strains are known. Federal investigators say they have not yet pinpointed the one that killed Robert Stevens, a photo editor for The Sun newspaper in Boca Raton, Fla., and found its way into the nasal passages of two co-workers. But it appears to be related to a strain collected in Iowa by researchers during the 1950s.

Until the 1997 rules were put in place in the United States, laboratories everywhere traded anthrax bacteria as freely as kids trade baseball cards. The practice was necessary so scientists could confirm one another's findings, standardize their methods and test treatments against a variety of strains. But now U.S. labs must be certified to handle anthrax and cannot send their holdings to unauthorized recipients.

``There are really stringent controls now,'' said Cheryl Loeb, a research associate at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Even so, she said it would be fairly easy for terrorists to obtain anthrax either by stealing it from a U.S. lab or by getting it from a country where standards are more relaxed.

``You can hide it in any little thing,'' said Greg Evans, director of the Center for the Study of Bioterrorism and Emerging Infections at St. Louis University. ``It's also reportedly available on black markets outside of this country.''

Investigators hope that identifying the particular anthrax strain used in Florida will tell them something about where it came from.

About 10 strains are commonly used in about a dozen U.S. laboratories, said Theresa Koehler, an anthrax geneticist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

``We have the technology to really learn a lot about the strain that caused the death of this individual and to find the perpetrator,'' Koehler said.

But other experts considered the task much more difficult, because many strains can be obtained from dozens or hundreds of sources.

``Trying to one-to-one match the perpetrator of the attack with a specific agent with a specific delivery technique is going to be difficult,'' said Michael Powers, a research associate at the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2001


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