BIOTERRORISM: THE TWO MOST PROBABLE AGENTS TO BE USED

By Manuel Cereijo

SEPTEMBER 2001

SUMMARY

I. ANTHRAX

It is highly lethal. Easy to produce in large quantities. Relatively easy to develop as a weapon. Easily spread in the air over a large area. Easily stored. Dangerous for a long time.

Anthrax is a dry powder formed of tiny particles, biodusts, that are designed to lodge in the human lung. The particles are amber or pink. The particles have a strong tendency to fly apart from one another, so that if you throw them in the air they disperse like a crowd, leaving a stadium. As they disperse, they become invisible to the human eye, normally within five seconds after the release. You can't see it, you can't smell it, you can'y taste it. You don't know it was there until days later, when you start coughing and bleeding.

A hundred kilograms of anthrax spores would, in optimal atmospheric conditions, kill up to three million people in any densely populated metropolitan area.

It is caused by the bacteria Bacillus Anthracis. People become infected by breathing anthrax spores that are released into the air. Symptoms of inhation anthrax can begin as early as 24 hours after breathing the spores. Initial symptoms include: fever, cough, weakness, shock, and death.

It is most likely to be delivered at night, because sunlight diminishes its effect.Particles from 1 to 5 microns are most efficient in causing infection, and can be present in clinically significant quantities more than 20 miles downwind.

The standard therapy for inhalation anthrax is intravenous penicillin G by continuous infusion. Recent tests with anthrax raise fears that U.S. vaccine can be defeated. Anthrax is one of the two most effective and lethal bioweapons in existence.

BEST DELIVERY METHOD: AEROSOL SPRAY BY A SMALL AIRPLANE

II. SMALLPOX

Smallpox is caused by a virus. The virus spread when an uninfected person comes in direct contact with a sick person and breath in the virus. After two weeks, the incubation period of the smallpox virus, the infected person develops high fever, muscle aches, and pain.

After about three days of fever, the person breaks out in a rash all over the body. At first it looks like red spots, and the spots gradually become blisters about the size of a pencil eraser. After about five days of rash, the fluid in the clear blisters turns to pus. The more pus spots that a person has, the more likely the person will die.

The bioweapon smallpox use the variola major virus, which kills about 45% of the people infected. Smallpox is unlike anthrax, highly contagious. Those who do not die, can be permanently blinded. Others will bear scars as long as they live.

Smallpox, unlike anthrax, because it is highly contagious, requires no concentration process.

BEST DELIVERY METHOD: Spraying the virus in concentrated crowded places, such as : airplanes, trains, shopping centers

NOTE: Cuba's CIGB development center has in storage large quantities of anthrax and smallpox virus.

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