Talk:Anthrax

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"The name anthrax originates from the Greek word anthrax meaning coal, and is used because of black blood oozing from a victim's orifices."

I thought it was from the black skin lesions. Anyone have a definite source on this? Vicki Rosenzweig

The WHO at http://www.who.int/emc/diseases/anthrax/faqanthrax.html agrees with you. AxelBoldt

"For inhalation cases, antibiotic treatment is not very effective if initiated more than 24 hours after infection, after symptoms appear." Is it just me, or is this unclear? Does this mean after one inhales the anthrax spores, or after the symptoms start to appear? Sorry if it's just me :) -Frazzydee 23:12, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Would anyone object if this were moved to Anthrax? It seems silly to have the former as a redirect to this rather clumsy title. -- Hadal 16:43, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • Yes, this obviously needed to be done, so I took care of it. Fawcett5 04:02, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Question:

Does Anthrax have an odor?.

[edit] Answering my own question

No It doesn't, not a distinguishing one anyway. This is also true for taste and colour.

[edit] Disease?

if anyone has more information about the symptoms of anthrax it would be helpful. this article focuses alot on the biowarefare side of anthrax, but it could use some more information pertaining to the disease.

[edit] Removed reference

I removed the following from the reference section. Clicking on the link led to a page stating that the author had requested the page be removed.

* Sheldon Campbell, Anthrax in a BioWar environment

[edit] Kid's report

I just removed this from the end of the article, and pasted it here in case any of it might be useful information to add properly. - Brian Kendig 13:14, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

This is an article written by a kid and hopefully it is all true but it may come in handy.

1,411 Words Michael Kendall 8-3 Anthrax

       Anthrax, a disease that has been used in biological warfare before, and very recently, in 2001, is much more than a weapon, but a very deadly disease that has many different forms.

Anthrax has been in existent for a very long time, but it was first shown as a disease in 1877, by Robert Koch who grew anthrax in a pure culture. He also demonstrated anthrax’s ability to produce endospores. Anthrax is endemic in only certain parts of the world, South America, Central America, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. It is really in agricultural areas, and undeveloped regions. The first major documented outbreak of anthrax took place in the 1300’s in Germany, then there was another outbreak of anthrax in the 1600’s in Russia. Bacillus anthracis was described in 1850 by a French parasitologist named Davaine. He recognized the repeated epidemics in Europe and Asia. Because anthrax travels in spores, it could kill of a farm of animals, then the farm would be abandoned. The spores can stay affective for many decades. Then, more than seventy years later a farmer would plow the field, forgetting that it was a grave site of animals killed by anthrax. The spores would then kill the new animals repeating the epidemic. This cycle could repeat many times. Anthrax was the first ever bacteria to be shown to cause a disease, which turned out to be a fatal disease. It was proved to be the first bacteria to cause a disease in 1877 by Robert Koch. In May of 1881, Louis Pasteur performed a public demonstration showing his vaccine he had made for anthrax, showing it on sheep. The vaccine worked. There are a few ways to get anthrax, one is to have contact with and infected animal, or an animal product from an infected animal. You can also get anthrax from inhaling anthrax spores, swallowing spores, or if the spores infect a sore or cut in your skin. If unopened skin gets in contact with anthrax spores all you have to do is wash the spores off with soap and water. There are 89 different strains of anthrax that humans no about, in other words there are 89 different known types of anthrax that humans have discovered. The disease is caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. The three main forms of anthrax that humans can get are called inhalational, cutaneous, and gastrointestinal or intestinal. Inhalational is caused by breathing in spores. Cutaneous is caused by the spores infecting a humans skin. Gastrointestinal or intestinal anthrax is caused by swallowing the spores, or eating meat that contains spores or is infected with anthrax. If you get inhalational or pulmonary anthrax the first symptom will probably be getting the common cold. After a few days the cold will probably progress into severe breathing problems and shock. Inhalational anthrax is usually deadly. So if a common cold turns into a severe condition it could be anthrax, although it would be very rare. The mortality rate for inhalational anthrax or pulmonary anthrax is nearly 100%. A lethal case would result from inhaling 10,000-20,000 spores. This form of anthrax is also known as Woolsorters’ disease. It is also known as Woolsorters’ disease because when sorting wool it is the most common way to get anthrax. If you get cutaneous (skin) anthrax the first sign would be a raised, itchy bump that looks like a bug bite. Within 1 or 2 days the bump will turn into a vesicle, and then an ulcer that doesn’t hurt. The middle of the ulcer has a black necrotic, or dead area. Most cases of anthrax in humans are cutaneous anthrax and only about 20% of the cases are fatal, and when treated it is rarely fatal. Gastrointestinal or intestinal anthrax is a form of anthrax that is in a human’s intestines or stomach. Some symptoms are nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, and fever. After those symptoms it causes vomiting blood, and sever bloody diarrhea. You get gastrointestinal or intestinal anthrax by eating infected food. Everything goes by very rapidly and if untreated it is usually fatal. The treatment for someone who has inhalational anthrax is usually not very effective. It is usually very effective only if it is initiated in less that a day since the encounter with anthrax and before any symptoms appear. The antibiotic is called antibiotic prophylaxis, and it is very crucial to save lives in cases of inhalational anthrax. Other treatments for anthrax infections contain large amounts of antibiotics including: penicillin, ciprofloxacin, erythromycin, doxycycline, and vancomycin. Anthrax can be prevented in a few ways. A simple way is to try to avoid contact with herds of animals and with livestock. You should also try to avoid eating undercooked meat, and meat that hasn’t been properly cooked and slaughtered. It is also possible to prevent anthrax by vaccinating animals. The anthrax vaccine has been cleared for use on humans, too. It is reportedly 93% successful. Recently there have been many attempts to form new drugs against anthrax. The antibiotics people are trying to form would not only attack the bacillus bacteria, it would also attack the toxic protein that anthrax releases into the bloodstream of an infected person. Anthrax infections mostly take place in just herbivores, mostly in cattle, chickens, sheep, goats, antelopes, and camels. People, who spend lots of time with chickens, have been known to get anthrax from an infected chicken. When anthrax is inside of an animal’s body it can’t make new spores, because there is no oxygen, which it need to form more spores. The spores can survive very harsh winters, surviving many decades. Animals usually get anthrax by eating spores, or organisms that are infected with a form of anthrax, inhaling spores, or if spores get in contact with a cut or an opening in the skin. Anthrax is not known to be able to spread from person to person. The reason that anthrax is very known in the world is because it has been used in biological warfare. In 1979, some anthrax spores were accidentally released from a military facility in the Soviet Union. It caused the deaths of 68 people. In the 1990’s Russia announced it would stop its biological weapons program. The most known use of anthrax as a biological weapon happened in 2001. On September 18, 2001, one week after the attacks on the World Trade Centers in New York City, it is believed that five letters were sent to NBC News, CBS News, the New York Post, and ABC News, all in New York and one letter to the National Enquirer at American Media, Inc. at West Palm Beach, in Florida. The only letters that were found were the ones sent to the New York Post and to NBC News. They were all postmarked from Trenton, N.J. There were two more anthrax letters that were also postmarked from Trenton, N.J., they were dated October 9, 2001. October 9 was three weeks after the first letters. This time they were sent to two Democratic Senators. Patrick Leahy, from Vermont, and Tom Daschle from South Dakota. The anthrax spores in these letters were more pure, and much more like powder. It was described as “weaponized” or “weapon grade” anthrax. The letter sent to Daschle was opened on October 15, by an aide, and the government mail service was shut down. The letter sent to Leahy was misdirected because of the Zip code being misread, and mailed to Sterling, Virginia. The anthrax letters infected twenty-two people. Eleven of the cases were the deadly inhalation type of anthrax. Five people died from inhalation anthrax. One person, Robert Stevens, from the letter sent to the National Enquirer at American Media, Inc. at West Palm Beach, Florida. Two mail men died, Thomas Morris Jr. and Joseph Curseen, who were employees at the Brentwood post office in Washington, D.C. There were two more deaths that died from anthrax from and unknown source. Kathy Nguyen, from New York City, and Ottilie Lundren, who was 94 years old from Oxford, Connecticut. Still they don’t know who was doing the anthrax attacks in 2001, but we do know that it was terrorists using biological warfare. B. anthracis, the first bacteria ever to cause a disease would probably have been better off never being discovered, after all the horrible things it can do, including biological warfare.

[edit] Removed section

Today I removed a very large chunk of the page, which had been added about 12 hours earlier. It looked suspicious so I Googled it: sure enough, not only was it somewhat inappropriate, but it was a direct copyvio from this site. – ClockworkSoul 13:27, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Updated details on weapon program

Added some details on the US history on weaponizing anthrax. Far from complete, but conveys the point. --Reid Kirby 13:37S-09JL06.


If everything was destroyed in 1969 then where did the supplies for Iraq come from? Was Nixon ignored by some group - or was he lying to the public? Wasn't anthrax discontinued because it makes a very poor weapon?

Anthrax made up a small portion of the US stockpile by 1969, and was destroyed as scheduled. It was never standardized because its lethal dose was extracted from animal data without certainty, and laboratory/plant expereince did not favor a reputation as an effective agent.

Iraq obtained their seed stock of anthrax from public sources. Not only is anthrax readily available from natural out breaks with cattle, but it is also available to researchers (even internationally) through microbial collection establisments. Iraq also constructed plants to mass produce the biological from the seed stock quantities into high capacity.

--Reid Kirby 17:00S - 16FE2007

[edit] Do Not Boil

I'm going to try to find a copy of my old NBCD lesson plans: I remember that anthrax is one of those bacteria not destroyed by boiling; as a matter of fact, if anthrax is introducede to a water supply, boiling the water increases its lethalness: it becomes an aerosol and is inhaled rather than ingested. I'll try to find the reference, but if anyone can beat me to the punch, I won't cry. --SigPig 03:31, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Four episodes of Anthrax use 1918-2000

I've read about four episodes of Anthrax use (in 1918, in 1952-53, 1981 and 2000), before the 2001 anthrax letters. Even thou I can't find back to these articles now. I remember them fairly well thou.

1918 The first one was at the very end of WW1 in 1918, when the german army sent a spy via Sweden into Finnmark, Norway to conduct a gruesome experiment. To poison several thousand rheindeers with anthrax spores. Partly because they feared that UK or Russia could use them as transport if invading Norway, but mostly as to find out what damage anthrax could make if introduced to a far-away, unprepared location and authorities actions against such an disase. The spy, Baron Otto von ??? was arrested in Kautokeino, Finnmark and the anthrax was then stored at a storage room in Oslo. More than 70 years later the ampulles was checked and the anthrax was still alive. Previously secret, this story was sent on norwegian TV a few years back on the programme Schrödingers Katt so I guess it must be true.

1952-1953 During the last year of the Korea war, USA was bombing North Korea like hell and is said to have used bacteriological weapons such as anthrax. I read a newspaper article about this by some former communist here in Norway. Not sure this is true, but worth checking out nevertheless.

1981 The world's first terrorist attack with bacteriological weapons was conducted in Blackpool, England in 1981. Anthrax-contaminated soil dug up at the scottish isle of the WW2 experiments had been collected in a trashbag and put in front of some party conference (Tory?). It had a warning note attatched to it that it was containing anthrax and routinely checked. And it was confirmed that it did so. Not much, :but it did. A group called Dark Harvest Command took responibility. Police suspect either ultra-extreme enviromentalists or the scene around Adam Busby, an extreme scottish nationalist which started a small-scale terror wave the following year calling themselves Scottish National Liberation Army, to be behind.

2000 SNLA brags also to be behind the false anthrax treats against british interests in USA and Canada in late 2000, one year before the world famous letters was sent around in USA.

It should also be noted that rightwing extremists was possibly behind the amateurish 2001 anthrax letters. Trying to capitalise on fear of islam, immigration etc., provoke tougher immigration laws etc. This is at least the main theory. Al-Quada is not though to be behind, as they would have approached the tast 100 times more professional and 100 times more deadly.

As I don't have the sources in front of me, I wouldn't start to change the article. But I do hope that you could check out the information above and include the things that you can verify. Because it's not worthless information as such. Think you can double check with some of the information already on Wikipedia.

Best regards

Stein ES, Oslo

"1915 German agents in the United States injected horses, mules and cattle with anthrax on their way to European war allies during WWI. This is the first recorded use of anthrax as a weapon.
1937 Japan began a biological warfare program in Manchuria, including tests involving anthrax.
1943 The United States began developing anthrax as a biological weapon."
Source: http://www.gwu.edu/~cih/anthraxinfo/info/info_history.htm
Also, that spy is Baron Otto Karl Von Rosen.
JpKllA 22:49, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed irrevelant and unhelpful material from article

I have removed "Dude I like totally caught this once it sucked, I was sick for like a month. I got it in the mail from my friends as a joke. I eventually got over it with chicken noodle soup, sprite, and a little peptobismal." which had been added by 204.169.116.1 Hawoawo

[edit] Question (Symptoms)

Gastrointestinal infection often presents with serious gastrointestinal difficulty, vomiting of blood, severe diarrhea, acute inflammation of the intestinal tract, and loss of appetite.

I'd like to see blood spiting person with severe diarrhea who has appettite.

Now what I acctualy want to know - if I get it right there are three subtypes of anthrax (Pulmonary, Gastrointestinal and Cutaneous), can one have them all at once ? -- Xil/talk 15:14, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

–--Theoretically yes, if you somehow managed to inhale it, consume it, and expose it to a cut. JpKllA 22:45, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge Tags

After looking at the individual stubs for cutaneous anthrax and woolsorter's disease and seeing that they are minimal in content, I believe these articles should be merged & replaced with a re-direct to the main anthrax article. Does anyone else here have opinions otherwise before I try to get those ugly merge tags off the main article?2112 rush 23:56, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge: The alternate articles are very short and the main anthrax article has more information on it. Unless someone can seriously extend the other articles, they have to be merged and redirected. Ka5hmirTalk To Me! 11:45, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coments

I never knew that anthrax orgiionated from sheep goats etc. all i knew b4 was that it was used as terrorist weapon. it's not even contagious! LOL

[edit] inconsistency?

This page says "[Anthrax] was the first bacterium ever to be shown to cause disease, by Robert Koch in 1877.", while the entry for leprosy says "Mycobacterium leprae, the causative agent of leprosy, was discovered by G. H. Armauer Hansen in Norway in 1873, making it the first bacterium to be identified as causing disease in man." I don't think these can both be right... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.12.17.131 (talk) 03:49, 9 April 2007 (UTC).

  • I have removed the statement and posted a citation tag. A medical history expert with access to good records is needed to resolve this one. Pedro |  Talk  07:29, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New image

I've uploaded a color-enhanced version of the anthrax image already in the article. I think it gives a clearer image, so if you want to switch it out, feel free. I've uploaded it to Commons anyway at Image:Anthrax color enhanced micrograph.jpg. Consequentially 03:15, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Production Mass

An inquiry regarding this statement:

Despite signing the 1972 agreement to end bioweapon production the government of the Soviet Union had an active bioweapons program that included the production of hundreds of tons of weapons-grade anthrax after this period

Could someone clarify - does "hundreds of tons" here mean hundreds of tons of munitions, or of the bacteria itself? Now that I write it my question seems some-what stupid, but a little clarification could go a long way here. I imagine the mass stated here should mean the mass of the munitions capable of delivering anthrax - can someone please clarify? ABVS1936 06:33, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] vandalism

I'm just a random anonymous, so I didn't want to edit anything, but just so you know, next to the picture of the lesion someone added something about "girly bits" and castration that I suspect isn't medically correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.242.209.67 (talk) 20:15, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hand on an iron?

...a common electric iron adjusted to the hottest setting (at least 400 degrees Fahrenheit) and used for at least 5 minutes should destroy all anthrax spores in a common envelope and on skin contaminated with anthrax.

I hope this is just unclear. Put an iron on my skin for 5 minutes? I'll take the 'thrax.--Lucent 07:21, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Hah I noticed that too. If you follow the ref it only talks about strips of paper in envelopes. It also answered the other question I had -- how did a high school student "prove" that, as he clearly couldn't've had access to anthrax spores? Turns out he used harmless bacteria from the anthrax family commonly used as surrogates for experiments like that. Fascinating! Anyway, I edited out the skin part. The rest looks legitimate to me. 155.212.229.242 (talk) 22:58, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Black Tea...

I removed the "black tea cure" section. The thing sounded ridiculous to begin with, and first thing to pop up on Google is this. Everything about this cries April's Fool, even if the date on it doesn't quite match - "Our research sought to determine if English Breakfast tea was more effective than a commercially available American medium roast coffee at killing anthrax". This is quite clearly not serious. Averell (talk) 22:39, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

This has actually been published on the university hompage, it seems. Still it appears to be really wacko. Averell (talk) 22:53, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it appears really wacko. So what? Being on the university homepage is a major reference. And nowhere serious is it reported to be a hoax. It's also mentioned on the website of the Society for Applied Microbiology. Also in New Scientist magazine[1]. It's not impossible that it's a hoax (I tend to think not), but that's not a call we can make: the references are there. Pol098 (talk) 12:58, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, I cannot really argue with that the reference is there. However, the only "real" reference should be the "Macrobiologist" article and/or the University's press releases. To me it still sounds fishy: Not only is the description bizarre, but the "Macrobiologist" seems to be a membership publication for that scientific community; it's not a paper to first publish any serious research results. Also, it appears quarterly, and the April issue would be the logical place for an April's Fools article.
However, there is also some evidence that it's not a hoax: The university published two press releases on this (both in April and May) and there is no sign of an retraction. Personally I'd like to wait to see the article itself - the previous issue of the Macrobiologist will be made available on their website soon...
In a nutshell: If you feel that this should really go into the article at this point, and if it's properly referenced, then I won't remove it again. Averell (talk) 10:52, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I've been Googling further, and everything says to me that this is legitimate. An interview with the senior author[2] gives further details; if it's a hoax, it's extremely elaborate and has been confirmed, not denied, by respectable institutions (2 universities and a professional institute) named in published material. In other words, all checkable references support the story. On the other hand, the article in "Microbiologist" (repeat mIcrobiologist) isn't publicly available yet, and it is not a peer-refereed publication.

A Google search for "baillie Gallagher anthrax tea hoax" didn't bring up anything that looked like a denial of the reports. I don't feel justified in even adding to the article "this has been thought to be a hoax", as there's no published evidence that it has (except in this discussion). In your message you thrice say "mAcrobiologist"; are you perhaps taking this as associated with the faddy idea of macrobiotic diets? mIcrobiology is a thoroughly respectable science. Pol098 (talk) 12:45, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Reading a bit between the lines makes me doubt the importance, if not the veracity, of this result. At a guess, the Welsh and US researchers after their teatime discussion whether tea or coffee was better for you put a drop of tea in a Petri dish where they were doing an experiment involving anthrax, and a drop of coffee in another, and discovered that milkless tea, but not coffee, inhibited the bacillus. However, even though the interview I quote above specifies "under very strict laboratory conditions", this doesn't prove that tea destroys anthrax SPORES, or that ingestion of tea will affect the course of an anthrax infection. Pol098 (talk) 13:16, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, that ("fun" research) seems like the most likely explanation to me. I never doubted that this Prof. Braille is a serious researcher and an expert on Anthrax. It's also not very hard to believe that black tea inhibits Anthrax under laboratory conditions, but there seems to be no claim that it actually cures the disease. (And, just for the record, the "mAcrobiology" was a genuine mistake). Still, there the comment that "you should forego the drop of milk" seems somewhat tongue-in-cheek. When the Microbiologist journal is available online we can probably check what the experiment was all about... but I'm ready to be that'll be quite close to your scenario. Averell (talk) 13:45, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History

Hello, my question is poor of information, what i realy wanna to know is about the register of the disease in Japan, a B.C period, can anyone aswer? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.32.6.28 (talk) 04:15, 7 June 2008 (UTC)