Word: toxin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Michael Doyle, director of the center for food safety at the University of Georgia, says terrorists could lace such imports with not only botulism toxin but also other pathogens, including E. coli O157:H7, salmonella, dysentery, cyclospora and hepatitis. As if to underscore the point, investigators last week identified salmonella in two of several plastic vials of undisclosed substances included in a packet of papers sent to former President Clinton's office in Harlem, though the bacteria apparently grew naturally through fermentation and caused no harm. Still, the concerns of Thompson and his colleagues are understandable. Even without any diabolical...
...preparing new forms of terrorism. In May 1997, an Algerian extremist in London was arrested in possession of a scientific work on botulism. During the 1998 dismantling of a militant Islamist network in Belgium, police found on one of the leaders a document detailing the military applications of botulism toxin in aerosol form. The bin Laden operatives arrested in Brussels after Sept. 11 were known associates of some of those apprehended in the 1998 raid...
...with the evidence of an unprecedented 77 infections and 64 deaths, Walker and the 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...
...estimated several hundred metric tons of the raw materials required to make sarin and mustard gas. After years of denying that it even had a biological-weapons program, Iraq admitted in 1995 that it had produced 8,500 liters of concentrated anthrax and 19,000 liters of undiluted botulinum toxin. UNSCOM destroyed most of those supplies, but officials believe that Iraq hid four times as much anthrax and twice as much botulinum as was discovered. Iraq still has the best biological expertise in the region--thanks in part to the efforts of Rihab Taha, 48, a British-educated biochemist known...
Upon inhalation of at least 8,000 to 10,000 spores, the bacteria is transported to lymph nodes and then to the blood. It produces a toxin that causes massive cell death. This form of the disease begins with symptoms similar to a common cold...