Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Re: Does sound like Nam all over again
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 19:09:08 -0400
To: farber () cis upenn edu Subject: Re: IP: Does sound like Nam all over again From: jacobs () genehack org (John S. J. Anderson) David Farber <dave () farber net> writes: A bit of follow-up: > American investigators probing anthrax outbreaks in Florida and New > York believe they have all the hallmarks of a terrorist attack - and > have named Iraq as prime suspect as the source of the deadly spores. I'm not sure the facts are consistent with the above hypothesis. Iraq is reported to have a fairly well developed biowar program and generally, developing antibiotic resistance in bacterial strains is not that difficult. Therefore, it seems likely that Iraq has antibiotic resistant anthrax strains. However, the anthrax strain infecting people in Florida was reported to be largely identical to the standard Ames lab strain (although I'm not sure how that was determined), and in any case it is responding to antibiotic treatment (again, according to reports in the major media). So, either Iraq doesn't have antibiotic-resistant anthrax strains, (which seems unlikely), or they elected to use antibiotic-sensitive strains first (which seems foolish *and* unlikely), or Iraq isn't behind these attacks, or at least isn't the source of the bacterial cultures. john. -- "If my son wants to be a pimp when he grows up, that's fine with me. I hope he's a good one and enjoys it and doesn't get caught. I'll support him in this. But if he wants to be a network administrator, he's out of the house and not part of my family." Steve Wozniak, http://www.woz.org
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- IP: Re: Does sound like Nam all over again David Farber (Oct 15)