Word: toxin
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Handy Package. Much more suitable for warfare,, the bacteriologists think, are the bacteria of various relatively obscure diseases: botulism, Weil's disease, anthrax, pneumonic plague. Botulinus toxin, for example, is by far the most potent of gastrointestinal poisons: it kills, within a few days, 60 to 70% of the people it infects. Rosebury & Kabat think that by aerial dissemination to enemy water supplies, whole populations could be infected before protective measures could be taken...
...discoverers' initials) is derived from Schizatrypanum cruzi, a South American trypanosome that has an affinity for cancer cells. When injected into cancerous mice, it gradually dissolves their tumors, but also kills the mice. Roskin & Klyueva developed a toxin from killed trypanosomes that dissolved cancer cells but was harmless to healthy cells. The cancer-destroying element, they concluded, was not the trypanosome itself but a toxin which it secreted. The toxin has proved safe for human patients...
Following up this lead, the two Russian researchers tried other toxins. Two-diphtheria and tetanus-seemed to work. Tested on cancerous mice, tetanus toxin checked or reduced tumors in half the cases. Diphtheria toxin did even better: out of 65 mice with cancers, it cured 39, stopped tumor growth in 19. Unlike KR, the toxins have still to be tested on humans. U.S. researchers, fascinated but uncertain, are pursuing experiments along similar lines...
Another triumph: production and isolation in pure crystalline form of the most deadly biological poison known to man, the toxin secreted by Clostridium botulinum, type A, bacteria which sometimes grow in home-canned vegetables...
...hand a new toxoid which is designed to fight tetanus without causing the serious reactions which often arise. If the serum is taken in advance and again after an injury, much time may be saved in administering it to allergic people, who otherwise could only be given the ordinary toxin very slowly and with considerable danger. Naturally this discovery can play an important role in bomb-threatened regions, where many injuries might require immediate attention. But under ordinary circumstances it also can accomplish much, since an estimated forty per cent of all people have reactions to anti-tetanus injections...