Word: aflatoxins
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...regime may have done almost all it can to uncover existing stockpiles. UNSCOM inspectors have already rid Iraq of many of its missiles, launchers and tons of chemical munitions and production equipment. They are now searching mainly for biological weapons--small, easily hidden stores of anthrax, botulinum and aflatoxin, along with growth medium to produce new supplies. U.S. inspectors have privately concluded that Saddam has at least one biological facility that may be secreted in a room no bigger than...
...even perfume atomizers. The U.N.'s specialists say that 100 lbs. of anthrax bacteria sprayed around a city of 1 million could kill 36,000 people within a week. And Saddam has produced anthrax in large amounts, along with botulinum, a poison that kills by paralyzing the victim, and aflatoxin, a carcinogen...
BIOLOGICAL These are the inspectors' biggest worry right now. Before the Gulf War the Iraqis had a secret germ-weapon program that brewed up and tested huge quantities of several lethal agents, including 8,500 liters of anthrax, 19,000 liters of botulinus and 2,500 liters of aflatoxin. (That's theoretically enough to kill everyone on earth.) They had "weaponized" them by loading them into bombs and missile warheads. Iraq claims it unilaterally destroyed all those weapons after the war, but has never offered proof. U.N. inspectors have been checking more than 80 suspected areas for clandestine storage...
...says Mark Miller, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University, "but even in the best fields, it is only 4 ft. high." And that scrawny crop could be imperiled. According to Joe Pena, also of Texas A&M, corn grown in drought-stressed conditions can develop aflatoxin, a condition that makes the ears essentially poisonous. Some of the reduced crop may have to be destroyed because it is toxic...
...protein the gene makes and 53 for the protein's molecular weight). Smokers who develop lung cancer, Harris has found, show tiny alterations in the p53 gene that differ from those in nonsmokers. They also vary from the changes found in Chinese liver-cancer patients. In the latter group, aflatoxin, a fungal contaminant of food, is the carcinogen, and it alters DNA in an exquisitely precise way, substituting in a single location a T (thymine) for a G (guanine) in DNA's four-letter chemical alphabet...