Word: toxin
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Biological agents could be a different problem. Iraq is believed to possess some of them, including typhoid, cholera and botulin toxin. In open air, most of those die within hours. So does anthrax, an infectious, spore-forming bacterium that Saddam is also believed to possess. But if spores of anthrax penetrate the ground, they can survive in a dormant state for decades, waiting for new victims...
Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences Matthew S. Meselson received the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award for determining the origins of "yellow rain," a mysterious toxin that Laotian anti-communist rebels said caused serious illness in many villages...
Delaney then asked a group of doctors to design a protocol, or test model, based on an FDA trial for a similar drug called Ricin Toxin. Delaney says several FDA and National Institutes of Health officials in Washington were told of Project Inform's proposed trial, which was planned for patients in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. "At no time did anyone tell us to stop," he says. An FDA spokesman in Washington claims officials did not hear about the clandestine trials until well after they began...
Using declassified documents filed by a U.S. team sent to Southeast Asia to investigate the allegations, the article says that experts were unable to find proof of biochemical warfare. Alleged witnesses recanted reports of the yellow rain, and the team found that the supposed symptoms caused by the toxin -- vomiting, skin irritation and dizziness -- were more likely the effects of smoke inhalation and battle fatigue. Moreover, the authors say, private examination of the yellowish substance on leaf samples determined the "poison" was composed almost entirely of pollen. The suspected source of the yellow rain: swarms of honeybees that dropped...
When the race started in 1977, celebrating the men and dogs who brought life-saving anti-toxin from Anchorage to dipheria-stricken Nome Alaska in 1925, the winner took 21 days to finish. "Everybody says, 'It will never be done in 10 days.' I have shaved off 31 hours [from the previous record]. I think I can shave off two more," Butcher says...