Word: bacterium
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...like pain and fever among residents near the Connecticut community of Lyme in 1975, at least 100,000 Americans have been infected with the disease. Now endemic throughout the Northeast as well as parts of the Midwest and the West Coast, Lyme disease is caused by a corkscrew-shaped bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi. It is spread by the bite of ticks that usually live on mice and deer but also attach themselves to other warm-blooded creatures, including people. Typically, within a month of a bite, a large, bull's-eye rash shows up at the site, accompanied by chills...
...biotechnology industry came into being in the late 1970s, when the first genetically engineered biological products were created. In 1977, the California-based Genentech, Inc. reported the production of the first human protein made by a bacterium, and the potential for rapid development and novel discoveries in biotechnology became real...
GRIT YOUR TEETH Dental plaque, believe it or not, may be linked to heart disease. How? Animals injected with a bacterium found in plaque develop blood clots--a major cause of heart attacks...
After they multiplied--one bacterium can explode into a billion copies in 10 hours--technicians in gas masks and coveralls transferred them to a large production fermenter, where they bloomed into huge quantities. Iraq now admits to brewing more than 2,000 gal. of anthrax, but American experts think the true amount was three times that. A fatal dose is, says a U.S. Defense official, "smaller than a speck of dust, something you wouldn't even see." In a final step, the Iraqis refrigerated the muddy mixture; it could be loaded into a warhead shortly before launch...
...gravest international crisis of Clinton's presidency. American and U.N. officials believe Saddam blocked the Special Commission inspection teams because they were closing in on his secret stores of biological weapons, some held by the elite Republican Guard. For example, Iraq reportedly has some 900 lbs. of the anthrax bacterium, a single gram of which can kill millions. Clinton's mission is clear: get the inspectors back into Iraq. But no policy available to him--either diplomacy or war--can readily achieve that goal...