Word: poisons
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...pause in U.S. bombing in order to be able to deliver food to millions of vulnerable Afghanis before the snows make roads impassable. The U.S. and Britain have blamed the Taliban for impeding food distribution and Admiral Stufflebeem even warned Wednesday that the Taliban was planning to poison U.S. food aid packages and blame any resultant deaths on the donors. But as in the debate over Iraq sanctions, claims that the regime on the ground is the real author of its people's misery are likely to be trumped by heart-rending images of starving refugees and "collateral damaged" children...
...others began thinking hard about the biology of anthrax and how doctors might deal with an outbreak. When Bacillus anthracis emerges from inhaled spores, they knew, it grows and multiplies and starts secreting a powerful toxin that chews through tissue and enters the bloodstream. From there the poison spreads throughout the body to attack internal organs. Lymph nodes, meanwhile, clogged with immune-system cells that have been summoned to fight the invader, begin to press on the organs and interfere with their functioning...
This suggested, says Walker, that doctors must find better ways to drain lymph from around the organs, in order to relieve the pressure. And they need to develop an antitoxin, since even when antibiotics kill off the bacteria, the poison that the bug has emitted can still kill the patient. There is also an anthrax vaccine, made exclusively for the U.S. government by a private manufacturer named BioPort in Lansing, Mich. But in 1999 the FDA asked the company to stop shipment of its vaccine until BioPort instituted better quality-control measures. The company expects to begin shipping vaccines again...
...crisis in the Persian Gulf entered its fourth week ... the region seemed poised on the brink of war, a prospect made all the more horrible by fear that chemical weapons might be unleashed not only against troops but also against hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians. The use of poison gas would be contrary to conventions ratified by virtually every nation in the world (including Iraq). Yet as American and Egyptian troops tried on their chemical-warfare suits ... and as civilians as far away as Tel Aviv clamored for similar protective gear, it was impossible to forget that Saddam Hussein...
...rather get a case of cutaneous anthrax (the kind most people have been diagnosed with) than come in contact with poison ivy or break an arm, neither of which can be cured (easily and cheaply, I might add) with infection fighting medicine and both of which are probably a lot more painful than anthrax...