| death minister Anthrax |
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| Written by i j |
| Friday, 28 October 2011 09:41 |
It has been some time since I started a new mini-section called “ministers of death”, the idea is to write a few articles about some interesting ways of dyeing that mother nature has created for us. You can read the first one (about Smallpox) HERE, and today we talk about…
When someone talks about Anthrax the first image that comes to our minds is some of those pandemic films in which people die as if there was no tomorrow (literally). That Hollywood image makes us think about a ugly monkey that lives in the deepest area of Africa who sooner or later will bite someone and then we will be basically fucked.
The truth is that that vision is not exactly correct, although I don’t want to say that you shouldn’t be careful with ugly monkeys the fact is that Anthrax is way much closer to you than you expect.
Anthrax has been endemic in Occidental Africa, the Caribean, Middle East, Northeast of Canada, South of Siberia, Texas, central Europe, Greece, Turkey, Spain…
The name of the creature comes from the Greek word Anthrakis which basically means “coal”, that makes than in other places Anthrax receives the name related with the word “coal” in their own language, for example, in Spain coal translates as Carbón and Anthrax is known as Carbunco, in deed in Spain Antrax is a soft skin infection that usually heals on it self…
Sincerely that really doesn’t matter if you go to a hospital and state that you has been infected with anthrax people will probably freak out no matter where you are.
But… Why such a coaly name? well anthrax receives his name because in some cases (the most common one) it produces skin injuries of a color similar to the element.
Whats Anthax?
Ok, enough of silly names and let’s talk about the creature itself:
Anthrax is the name of a bacteria that in it’s natural state attacks mainly cattle, basically sheep, cows, goats and horses, unluckily for us Anthrax is always interested in making new friends and it don’t mind on infecting any warm blood animal (which includes humans, of course)
¿How does this thing looks like?
The typical Anthrax cell is about 1um (micro meters) wide for 3 to 4 um long, in it’s natural form it arranges forming square chains that receives the name of “bacillus”, that bacillus is immobile so the creature do what it does to those who are around but it doesn’t move for searching new cellular victims.
When Anthrax is expulsed of the body (by any reason) the bacillus generate a protector spore that provides protection against heat, cold, solar radiation, chemical products and let this creature live on his own for several years or decades, during that time this thing wont go anywhere but it won’t die either. This protection is usually enough for protecting the creature to most of domestic clean products but not for exhaustive cleaning techniques or fire so while being hard, is still possible to sterilize whatever objects has been used in the treatment of patients infected by Anthrax.
If Anthrax don’t move… how does this creature infect people?
Anthrax is able to stay active in corpses of death animals killed by himself but that’s not the usual way of propagation since as we will see later this animals are easily recognized.
The problem comes when those animals during their infection were walking around liberating a large amount of Anthrax by their mouths, noses and anus. The contact with oxygen turns the bacillus into it’s spore form, then falls to the ground contaminating the ground for decades and waiting for the next victim to come to them.
That makes Anthrax really difficult to exterminate, for example, while I don’t know worldwide data, I do know that in Spain during 2010 we had 50 cases of Anthrax in humans, the good new is that 20 years ago we had 100 so it seems to be decreasing over time.
That’s why in it’s natural form Anthrax usually infect people because of contact of the spores with some kind of open wound (about 80% of cases), although it could happen that anthrax infect people by inhalation (about 20%) or way much rarely by ingestion (near 0%).
Curiously in animals the most common way of infection is by ingestion when they eat grass contaminated.
In humans this illness has been considered for decades as a professional Illness of people who worked with cattle, most common infection was made by wounds although it could happen especially in people who worked with leather or wool that someone got infected by aerial means.
Remember when we said that people who worked with cattle was more or less safe of getting infected by Smallpox but that they could be infected with some more ugly creatures? Well this is what we were talking about. In fact drinking milk recently milked of a cow is a perfect way of getting a intestinal Anthrax infection, which makes Anthrax a fully supporter of naturalist groups who defend not to pasteurize milk before consuming it.
OK but… What will happen once I’m infected?
Well depending on how you get infected the Illness will evolve in a different way, the good new here is that since the bacillus can’t move it depends on blood for moving around your body so you have better chances of survival if the bacillus has problems for getting to your circulatory system (wound infection).
In the case that you get infected in a wound of you skin, the infection usually starts by producing a skin lesion with a pustule, during the first 12-36 hours the creature produces a papule, that papule soon transform itself into a vesicle, then into a pustule and finally into a necrotic ulcer which can end into the propagation of the bacillus to your blood which could turn into a septicemia until the death of the victim or just fall which means that you can consider the Illness fully healed
The pustule is usually not painful although the area around it is, in most cases the infection evolves only in it’s local form and it don’t get a chance to infect the rest of the body if that’s the case it’s not lethal in any way, if it spreads then it’s lethal in 20% of the cases (in it’s natural form).
If you get infected by aerial means then you are basically fucked, during the first day spores will get into your body and there will be no symptoms, later and until the 6th day the spores will spread using your blood until they get to your lymph nodes, then you will have dry cough with symptoms similar to common flu, that’s specially dangerous because the Illness tend to go unnoticed in this stage and extend over population. During days 6th to 8th you will notice a slightly improvement on your health which will make most people not to look for medical assistance, then on 8th day the victim will start to show respiratory problems, cyanosis (blue skin color) and sweating because of the massive multiplication of the bacillus and the increase of the toxin produced by it. Finally on the 9th day there is lack of oxygen, cellular death and heart failure. On it’s natural state this infection is lethal in 95% of the cases.
If you ingested the Bacillus, usually by ingestion of contaminated meat of an animal who was killed before showing symptoms then you will get into troubles really fast, soon the victim will have fever, then dyspnea, cyanosis, septicemia and disorientation which will evolve into septic shock, coma and death. “luckily” for you, death rate is about 60% in this infection form.
Needless to say that most dangerous forms of infection are the intestinal and the aerial ones, but that last one is more dangerous for it increased death rate and because the Illness goes unnoticed until it’s too late and until it had more than a few chances of spreading over population.
The Anthrax is such lethal because it comes surrounded by a capsule that protects itself against the action of most phagocytes while it produces a potent toxin that create edemas and cause cellular destruction. In the aerial infection, not only the lungs are destroyed by a massive thoracic edema but the toxin is quickly spread over the body by the circulatory system destroying everything on its way.
The vision of someone killed by Anthrax is quite disgusting, the corpse tend to be swollen and it decompose really fast, it usually bleeds over all it’s natural holes a black not coagulated blood. If someone finds something like this is highly advised not to open the body not even to make an autopsy by professionals but if even then that is done then you will find internal hemorrhages almost everywhere (lymph nodes, chest, thorax…). Usually the sleepen will have it’s size increased while liver and kidneys will probably be swollen.
The idea is that the toxin basically destroyed every single cell of the body causing everything to be destroyed… quite disgusting…
Mhhhhh great… What can be done against Anthrax?
Luckily for us most antibiotics are effective against Anthrax in its natural form, unluckily for us for those antibiotics to be effective they must be dispensed during the first 48 ours of infection and before the victim shows the first symptoms of infection for a period of over 60 days…
In most cases due to the development of the infection that’s at best hard to achieve.
A prevention option is the application of vaccines with alive but attenuated bacillus for trying to get a active immunity. The vaccine exists but it’s quite painful and risky so it can only be handed to healthy humans from 18 to 65 years old and it requires 3 injections over 2 weeks and 3 more at 6, 12 and 18 months, that creates an immunity of about 93% (against the natural version).
Nowadays the vaccine is created by a company names BioPort Corporation, Lansing, Michigan (EEUU) for the defense department of the United States of America, its produces in small quantities only and delivered only to military forces under Biological threat.
If some kind of animal gets infected by Anthrax the procedure is its sacrifice and the burning of it’s corpse in order to avoid future infections.
Ok and… what did we did with Anthrax?
Lets put together what we have: high death rate (specially in aerial infections), relatively fast action after the infection, high survival rate of the bacillus, tendency of remain in the area of infection, simultaneous damage to both humans and cattle, high resistance to thermal changes which makes it able to survive anywhere in the planet, high resistance to chemical products, difficult vaccination…
Exactly!!! A biological weapon!! In deed Anthrax has been the bad boy of biological warfare for decades.
The first registered use of anthrax as a biological weapon date from 1916, during the 1st world war, then Germany provided the Finland independents with Anthrax with the idea of them using it against the horses of the Russian cavalry.
Some time later, after some uses of Anthrax as a biological weapon and always under the excuse of defensive investigations several governments got into the race of biological warfare using this friend, the first to get something that could be used as a biological weapon where the British who in 1935 developed what would be called as Vollum-14578.
In 1940 with the German launching bombs against London as if it was confetti Churchill proposed the use of Anthrax against the German territory, for doing that they were planned to different kind of attacks.
In one hand they proposed to bombard with linen cakes (which cows love) around the livestock areas of German which will probably cause a massive deaths of cattle and maybe force the German authorities to evacuate the rural areas.
The other option was to launch small bombs over German cities with small charges, unable to destroy anything but able to spread the bacillus over the air.
Naturally Vollum 14578 occupied the first name in the list of biological weapons to use for that purpose and in 1942 a group of researchers of Port Down directed by DR Fildes established in a small island at 1100 meters of the Scottish coast called Gruinard with a large amount of cattle, dogs and cats with the orders of testing the effectively of an attack like that.
The result of the test was so spectacular that the researchers concluded that an attack like that not only would completely destroy German livestock but could also leave inhabitable their cities for decades (literally)
Luckily for everyone Roosvelt persuaded Churchil not to launch such attack and thanks to allied progress against Nazis in 1944, to the progress in Manhattan project and to the fear of Germany answering with an attack of similar characteristics the launch of that attack was postponed and finally canceled (although the ammunition was already produced… just in case).
With the end of the 2nd world war you can correctly assume that Anthrax was the best friend of cold war in what respect to biological warfare and it was then when the URSS created a industrial conglomerate called “Biopreparat” that… under the argument of defensive investigation, of course, included the following installations (Names are translation of the Spanish names for them so this their name might not be accurate):
- Institute vector of Virology and Biotechnology (where nowadays remains one of the 2 legal samples of Smallpox currently present in the world). - Institute of Ultrapure Biochemical compounds of San Petersburg. - Institute of applied Biochemistry of Kirov. - The old scientific and technical Institute of Microbiology of Stepnagorsk. - At least 4 factories ready for producing “something” at large scale. - Complex 19 of Sverdlovsk (now called Yekaterinburg).
That’s it… with 2 balls, and all that for what?, well officially for nothing because in theory they have never been used but it looks like they had something to do with some deaths that occurred on 2nd April of 1979 where in a small lapse of time 79 people died of what looked as an Anthrax infection produced by a small security error in a close installation.
Then the KGB was shooting to every living animal found in the area and burning their corpses for stopping the infection (in that case human didn’t count as animal but probably only because they were able to contain the infection on time).
It’s supposed that today the modern Russia have an Anthrax strain called H-4 that seems to be something like “look at me but don’t touch me and try to breath softly… just in case”).
On the other hand EEUU officially destroyed all his biological weapons on 1969 (although they still have their strain of Smallpox) since then they insist more than ever in that every related investigation is strictly for defensive purposes although they don’t allow any private company to take a look to their investigation or procedures for having a neutral opinion that could verify that statement.
It contrast with the fact that during 2001 2 senators and several journalist received postal sending infected with Anthrax, 22 people were infected of them 11 were with the aerial version of it, 5 of them died (45%) and they did in the best medical condition possible, not only they had at their disposal the best of the best of medical technology no matter what was the cost of it but lot of them started to receive the medical care just after the infection was possible and way before of showing any symptom.
That means that the lethality of such a beast under regular medical care of someone who notice the infection when the first symptoms are shown must be really outstanding, needless to say that if you lack of such care you probably would be terribly fucked.
In deed during the first days of tat crisis it was said by government that the development of such strain must have been took decades and have been performed by experts in the matter, also they stated that that beast was better than anything that the EEUU ever managed to get.
Here the infected had the terribly luck that the terrorist where a little bit… stupid… instead of trying to fake the postal sending as something credibly with some kind of “dust” they wrote inside some messages like “death to America, death to Israel, long live to Ala”… Common boy… a little bit of professionalism… if you wanted to do something big you will have time later for saying such stupid things…
(I’m wondering if after writing those lines someone from CIA or FBI will take a look to my website, if so please leave a comment… and anyway if some months later you see on TV someone saying that Islamism are Goth people with a photo of Bin Laden dressed in black with a leather corset and black eyes you know it was my fault).
Well back to the topic, in the middle of all that mess when bush was arguing that the attack was made with biological weapons against the Us by Irak people and that they were going to pee in their pants sooner than later, the FBI was investigating and forwarded to USAMRIID a sample of the bacillus so they could to identify it in an attempt to know for sure where it came from.
Bush almost suffocates (with a cookie) when the result of the investigations stated that the strain used was exactly the same than USAMRIID had in his installations (UPS!).
A deep investigation demonstrated that there were samples of the beast out of the secure area of the installations (which was inacceptable) and that were at least 2 people of (at best) doubtful reputation with free access to the bacteria:
- Someone called Steven Hatfill who was involved in an Anthrax attack in Rodesia in 1978 and that caused no damage to white people cattle and population while blasting on black people lands.
- Someone called Bruce E. Ivins, who was extremist catholic (Catholic, not Islamist). While media judged and condemned Hatfill official investigation slowly were determining Ivins as the real perpetuator of the attack, in the end he consumed to flasks of Tylenol which caused him to death 2 days later by liver failure: what in medical terms is called a shitty way of dyeing. As there already where someone to pay the party and he couldn’t complain about it, the investigation was closed with Ivins found as guilty.
In resume: Anthrax is almost in every country in the world and, although that’s something to worry about it’s hard to get infected by it and even harder that it produces some kind of epidemical problem.
What should worry us is the Anthrax that officially doesn’t exist and that out of doubt you won’t be able to find in military arsenals. That one who was never been genetically modified for creating beasts and that even if it existed is well guarded by competent people who in no way is going to use it for nothing more than defensive investigations.
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| Last Updated on Friday, 28 October 2011 09:46 |
