Weaponized anthrax

Guides for Emergency Response Biological Agent or Weapon Anthrax... 

The effects on public order, as well as economic and social effects, should be considered in an assessment of weaponized anthrax risk. Decontamination of the Hart... 

It clearly and knowledgeably explains the symptoms, incubation period and available treatments for each agent, providing specific details, like the definition of weaponized anthrax and the government plan for containing a smallpox ontbreak. Sidebars describe how the organisms have been used as weapons in the past. 

In 1972 the United States terminated its offensive biological warfare program and destroyed all stocks of biological weapons. It is known that Russia has weaponized anthrax because an accidental release of... 

The intestinal form of anthrax is caused by the ingestion of undercooked meat from infected animals and is very rare. This is not a likely route for weaponized anthrax. 

Historically, parenteral penicillin (2 milhon units of pen. G IV every 2 hours) has been the treatment of choice, with tetracycline or erythromycin used for those patients allergic to penicillin. However, the weaponized anthrax made by the... 

Before the United States ended its program in 1969, it had been developed an anthrax weapon. Until recently, a dried preparation of anthrax was an important part of the Soviet Union s strategic BW arsenal, and Iraq has admitted to UNSCOM inspectors in 1995 that it too had weaponized anthrax. 

As the story finally emerged, seven years after the BTWC was promulgated and four years after it was put in force— with the Soviet Union one of its key signatories—a terrible accident occurred at a Soviet BW facihty in Siberia. A filter at the Compound 19 facihty in Sverdlovsk, where weaponized anthrax was being produced in massive quantities, was accidentally removed, allowing Bacillus anthracis spores to become aerosolized, and then vented from a high-level containment facility and into the air outside. The horrified Soviet scientists, as soon as they realized what had happened, raced to replace the missing filter, but it was too late. 

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