Can Anthrax Be Controlled?

coolphysco1010 writes "Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin discovered why lung, but not skin, anthrax infections are lethal. Neutrophils, a form of white blood cells, play a key role in anthrax infections. This discovery might now pave the way towards the development of new therapies for the fatal lung form of anthrax."

Comments

What of other bacteria?

[lostraven]

How many other bacteria affect humans in similar methods where inhalation is deadlier than skin contact? Just curious if the same premise of narrowing down why one exposure is less lethal than another could be applied to other bacteria.

Re:Grim Reaper will control it

[Tontoman]

The Anthrax attack after 9/11 is one of the oddest unsolved mysteries. Seems as if it would have been a slam-dunk given the clues. Here is one blogger's recent conclusion: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/

. . .laid out in detail my analysis of the way the anthrax letter-writer wrote R's and P's. Looking at the examples, it seems almost certain that the writer was a child in the first weeks of first grade.

Re:Great news!

[gkhan1]

When it comes to anthrax, it's really not about the death-count is it? Anthrax is the perfect scare weapon, remember back when people were getting the letters containing the stuff? As you say, almost no one died, but people were freaked out up the wazoo! Even here, in the cold north of Scandinavia, people started evacuating buildings every time someone got a letter with flour in it.

And that's what terrorism is all about isn't it? Terrorism was never about killing as many as possible, that goal is futile for terrorist organizations. No, terrorism is all about Terror, and there are few better ways to freak people out if they think that the mail can kill them.

If a letter containing just some dust can kill you, who of us is really safe?

what about asbestos

[Douglas Simmons]

Asbestos. Good stuff to keep heat under control or act as an insulant in general, bad stuff to bump some lines with. One very common application of asbestos was to use it in car brakes. Do we still do that? Have we figured out a way to keep that "controlled" as it does have important features?

Regarding skin contact, I have no trouble believing that about anthrax. Ever get some asbestos on your skin? Nasty itchy shit. It'll screw up your whole weekend.

Essentially what I'm trying to say here is avoid dermal contact with both substances. The jury's still out on Teflon.

Re:Great news!

[demachina]

Me personally I'd really like to know how Anthrax from a U.S. lab got mailed around the U.S. right after 9/11 with a weak attempt to make it look like it was done by Islamic terrorists. It is amazing that after engaging in character assassination of one suspect who was never charged this investigation appears to have disappeared in to a black hole.

It would seem to suggest our biggest danger from Anthrax is not Saddam or Bin Laden, but the U.S. government.

The only two solutions to the case seem to be:

- A lone right wing wacko working in a U.S. lab with access to deadly bio weapons, who may still be there, which is really scary, especially if you don't know what other agents this person has access to, small pox for example.

- There are people in power in Washington who perpetrated this despicable attack to pump up the frenzy for invading Iraq over WMD's. These maybe being the same people who manipulated Judith Miller in to terrorizing the nation with books and articles about WMD's in general and in Iraq in particular.

The choice of targets in particular screams out Republican nut case who, while engaged in this sick enterprise, couldn't resist targeting the liberal media and two Democrats in Congress they most hated, Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle.