Bacillus anthracis

Your last caller was thinking of a spore-forming bacterium, not a spore itself.

It's an infectious disease of warm-blooded animals caused by a spore-forming bacterium known as Bacillus anthracis, especially transmissible to man by the handling of infected products as hair and characterized by external ulcerating nodules by lesions in the lungs.

That's just Webster's ninth new collegiate dictionary.

I mean, if that helps.

the air.

Yes, good evening, uh, Mr. Cooper.

Uh, yes, definitely, uh, bacillus anthracis, uh, bacterial disease with an incubation period, uh, long enough to rule out, uh, quickie antibiotic therapy.

Uh, when the symptoms appear, you're pretty much 80% likely to die.

I actually first learned about this incident When I was in grad school studying biosecurity and bioterrorism and all that stuff, one of my professors had actually participated in the epidemiological follow-up investigation that disproved a lot of Russia's horse shit claims.

So this anthrax leak occurred on April 2nd, 1979, and it occurred as a result of an accidental release of bacillus anthracis.

The spores took place at a military microbiology facility, the most Soviet Russia-sounding name ever, for a secret military microbiology facility.

It was called Military Compound 19.

So this was the Ruski's attempt at giving some anthrax to old Uncle Sam.

And they chose anthrax for a reason.

Anthrax is a top-tier biological weapon caused by the Bacillus anthracis bacterium.

This is a particularly nasty pathogen because it is tough.

Difficult, but Most gram-positive rods are spore-forming.

We talk about bacillus cereus, bacillus anthracis, all the clostridia, clostridium perfringens, tetany, botulinum, difficile.

Then the non-spore-forming, listeria, and crinobacterium diphtheriae, which we have here.

So listeria would be motile, but diphtheria is non-motile, immotile.

And then for also the Clostridia, Bacillus, fuck my saying.

For the Clostridia would be C. difficile, tetany, and botulinum.

Okay, so Clostridium perfringens is immotile, and Bacillus anthracis, immotile.

Regardless, wrong fucking answer.

In its October 2011 report, NBSB considered whether to conduct pre-event research to gather safety and immunogenicity, degree of immune response, data about AVA with children, or whether instead to gather such data post-event.

In conducting its analysis, NBSB accepted, quote, the U.S. government's threat analysis and recognized that the dissemination of Bacillus anthracis spores is a threat to the U.S. population, including its large proportion of children, end quote.

NBSB also explicitly stated that, "...administering AVA to children would present more than a minor increase over minimal risk," due specifically to the lack of data about AVA with children.

NBSB ultimately recommended that the U.S. government conduct a pre-event study to test the safety and immunogenicity of AVA with children before an anthrax attack occurs, but noted that any pre-event AVA study should proceed only following a thorough review of the ethical considerations involved.

available data.

The safety, immunogenicity, the capability of a vaccine to stimulate a specific immune response, and dosing of AVA been evaluated in both animal studies and adult human studies.

Based on available data, AVA is approved by FDA, quote, for the active immunization for the prevention of disease caused by bacillus anthracis in persons 18 through 65 years of age whose occupation or other activities place them at high risk of exposure, end quote.

AVA has been distributed widely to adults.

It's the perfect bioweapon.

Caused by Bacillus anthracis, a bacteria commonly found in soil across the world, anthrax is the disease nightmares are made of.

Its spores can survive hostile environments for centuries at a time.

Able to infect anyone who touches, ingests, or breathes in even a tiny amount, its fatality rate can be over 90%.

But that doesn't mean there haven't been many close calls.

Across the decades, everyone from the Nazis to the British to Japanese doomsday cults have experimented with anthrax weapons, in some cases coming close to making them a terrifying reality.

Of all the microscopic killers in nature , perhaps none is quite so flat-out creepy as Bacillus anthracis.

A rod-shaped bacteria that comes in three strains, anthracis exists naturally in soil from the Americas to Africa to Eurasia.

[chuckles] So the germ theory states that specific viruses or bacteria cause specific diseases.

This was pretty much firmly established in the sort of mid to late 1800s when it was found that, uh, Bacillus anthracis was the cause of anthrax.

This was very clear, very specific vi- that viruses cause, uh, these diseases.

Um, he believes that the, the, in the so-called terrain theory, which is to say that if you're well-nourished and, you know, you have ad- you've adequate nutrition, you eat well, you exercise, that you're never gonna be felled by a, or hurt by a serious infection.