Word: anthrax
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...been rising since 9/11," says Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at Scotland's St. Andrews University. Terrorists, he notes, are "looking for low-tech ways of making maximum mayhem." Substances like ricin - what Ranstorp calls "weapons of mass disruption" - fit the bill. As with the post-Sept. 11 anthrax attacks in the U.S., a small number of deaths can trigger a huge reaction. "Alert, not alarm," was the police message to the public and the health authorities. Although there is no vaccine or antidote for ricin poisoning, the substance is not suitable for killing on a mass scale...
Imagine this scenario: terrorists release an airborne, antibiotic-resistant strain of anthrax in a major European capital. Without vaccines or antitoxins to reduce fatalities, the public is largely unprotected. But the government quickly dispenses a new nasal spray that puts people's immune systems into overdrive, protecting them not only against anthrax but a whole range of pathogens, including many of the deadly bioterrorist agents that governments believe are most likely to be used. It sounds farfetched, but last week's ricin arrests in London show that the possibility of a bioterror attack is not fantasy. British Prime Minister Tony...
...investigation into allegations that it underpaid rebates for pharmaceutical products under Medicaid, the U.S. health plan for the poor. A further Bayer headache is the imminent expiration in the U.S. of the patent on another Bayer best seller, the antibiotic Cipro, the drug of choice during the panic over anthrax, which boosted sales to j1.9 billion. The company hopes a new once-a-day Cipro version will help maintain sales against generic competition from companies like Ratiopharm in Germany. Bayer had long insisted that it needed a drug unit to help offset market cycles in its chemical and pesticide units...
...work of UNMOVIC and the inspectors have not reported finding any signs of prohibited weapons activity. The Council's response to an incomplete declaration may well be simply to urge UNMOVIC to seek answers to specific unanswered questions, such as where, when and how Iraq supposedly destroyed its massive anthrax stocks...
Last fall, anthrax occupied most of our bioterror nightmares. This year, our anxiety has refocused on an even more frightening biological threat, one that researchers once believed had been eliminated from the planet: Smallpox. Friday afternoon, President Bush announced that for the first time in 20 years, the U.S. will begin vaccinating members of the military and "first responders," including firefighters and emergency medical workers. What is smallpox, how dangerous is it - and should we all be vaccinated...