Health

How Virulent is This Anthrax?

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 31, 2002 / 8:43 AM EST / CBS

The question still vexing public health officials is just how virulent is the strain of anthrax linked to so many different illnesses.

So far, investigators believe the spores found in New York, Washington, and Florida all came from the same batch--a batch first thought to be manufactured specifically to be inhaled.

Daschle said, "We were told it was a very strong form of anthrax, a very potent form clearly produced by someone who knew what he or she was doing."

But then just 4 days later, the government announced the bacteria was not all that special.

Tom Ridge, director of the Office of Homeland Security, said, "The tests show that these strains have not, quote, unquote, been weaponized."

So how did so many different people come in contact with the same anthrax and yet be affected so differently?

Dr. Anthony Fauci from the NIH, said, "I think the confusion is that people say, well, this type of an envelope should only give cutaneous, or this one should only give inhalation. Not so--the microbe is the same. It just depends on the circumstances of how that person is exposed, and the amount and size of the spore to which they were exposed."

What the latest infection suggests is that whatever strain is out there, crude or not, it is small enough to be inhaled, which makes it that much more dangerous.

So what does that do to the investigation? Some say, it may narrow it.

Dr. Steven Ostroff, from the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], said, "We're seeing all of these at the same time with the same strain of the bug. That would at least suggest to me that they're all coming from the same place."

But experts disagree on where that place is.

Bioterrorism expert Richard Spertzel said, "It does mean that someone, at a minimum, is providing expert hands-on advice as to how to do it. There is no reason for people in the United States, or frankly for anywhere else, to be making this quality of material."

If there is any comfort in all of this, the two most recent cases of inhaled anthrax are, so far, responding well to antibiotics, and while that is no less scary, it shows that if caught early, even the most dangerous exposure to this strain of the bacteria is survivable.