Word: spore
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...calls, officials from all federal agencies involved in the investigation--including the FBI, the Secret Service, U.S. Capitol Police, the Postal Inspection Service and the CDC--learned from Fort Detrick scientists what turned out to be the key facts: the Daschle letter contained "highly virulent" anthrax with a high "spore concentration," according to a participant in the briefings. And it was "aerosolized." The word "weaponized" was not used, but it didn't need to be, this official says. It was understood that these anthrax spores would hang...
...doctor has ever written a prescription as sweeping as the one the Centers for Disease Control penned to head off the anthrax attack: 10 to 60 days of Cipro, a powerful antibiotic in the arsenal of modern medicine, for anyone who might have come anywhere near a spore. Nearly 20,000 Americans are already taking Cipro, and the number was shooting up--by the hundreds or even thousands--every time another anthrax "hot spot" was discovered...
...MAKES YOU SICK Once inside the body, anthrax bacteria emerge from their dormant spore phase and begin to reproduce and spew out toxins, which poison tissues and cause organs to fail. Inhaling spores is most likely to result in death because the germs burrow into lung tissue, where they come in close contact with lymph vessels. These serve as the body's liquid highway, transporting nutrients, debris--and bacterial toxins--throughout the body...
...Tucker:Anthrax is a bacterium, but when it?s exposed to air, it forms a spore resembling a seed. The spore is very rugged, and very persistent. If it?s introduced into the soil in that spore form, it can live for years, even decades. That?s the form it would probably be take if it were used as a biological weapon - spores introduced into the air via some delivery method...
Serendipity intervenes: in the London summer of 1928, an open window in a hospital lab lets in a spore that settles on a staphylococcus-culture dish left unwashed. A mold grows and contaminates the staphylococcus. The lab user returns. Because he's bacteriologist Alexander Fleming, and because his lab has not been cleaned, penicillin is discovered...