Anthrax:  Chilean Letter Tests Positive

A letter in Chile tested positive for anthrax Thursday, making it the first confirmed tainted letter outside the United States.  Meanwhile, no clues have yet been found in the investigation into the latest death from inhalation anthrax (see GSN, Nov. 21), according to various reports.

A letter sent from Switzerland to a pediatrician in Santiago, Chile, tested positive for anthrax spores, Chilean and U.S. officials said Thursday.  While the letter was postmarked in Zurich, its return address was from Florida, according to officials.  The pediatrician and 12 others that were nearby when the envelope was opened tested negative for anthrax but were put on preventive treatment, the Chilean Health Ministry said (Associated Press/Washington Post, Nov. 23).

No Clues Yet in Connecticut

Anthrax testing conducted in a number of locations in Connecticut have all come back negative, according to officials.  Tests on more than 90 samples at two postal centers near the home of Ottilie Lundgren, who died last week from inhalation anthrax, all came back negative, Governor John Rowland said Friday.  “You can probably rule out the mail coming from either Seymour or Wallingford [the two postal facilities], because those tests have proved negative,” Rowland said. “But again, this is not a perfect science, and perhaps there’s other venues that need to be investigated” (Paul Zielbauer, New York Times, Nov. 23).

Tests on 10 soil samples taken from around Lundgren’s home and a neighborhood restaurant also came back negative, according to the Washington Post.  This weakened a theory that Lundgren might have been infected with anthrax naturally, such as from the buried remains of dead cows, the Post reported. 

Investigators nevertheless remained optimistic that they would find the cause of Lundgren’s anthrax infection because she rarely left home alone, said Connecticut Public Health Commissioner Joxel Garcia.  Investigators should be able to track Lundgren’s movements and extensively test anything she came into contact with, even Halloween trick-or-treaters, Garcia said (Dale Russakoff, Washington Post, Nov. 26).

Officials are treating Lundgren’s death as a crime, even though the source of the anthrax is unknown.  “There’s no question that this is a homicide,” Rowland said.  “Clearly, I don’t think that a 94-year-old resident of Oxford was a target, but there’s got to be some kind of accidental discharge of anthrax.”

Officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said testing has shown that the anthrax that killed Lundgren was the same strain that was used in other recent anthrax incidents.  It was unknown yet whether Lundgren’s death was the end of the series of incidents, or the beginning of a new wave, officials said.

FBI and CDC officials said that no possible source of exposure was being ruled out.  “We’ll look at every possible cause of exposure,” said CDC Director Jeffrey Koplan.  “We’ve made a list of every possible route that we can think of, of how anthrax might have been acquired by a 94-year-old woman who lives largely at home, and things that enter the home are certainly a prime suspect, and given recent history, mail is one of them” (Paul Zielbauer, New York Times, Nov. 22).

Investigators Attempt to Track Anthrax

Knowing who had access to the Ames strain of anthrax might give clues as to who has been responsible for the recent U.S. anthrax incidents, according to investigators.

The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) has been one of the main distributors of the strain to researchers around the world.  While it was once thought that the Ames strain was accessible to thousand of scientists, it’s now believed that it traveled among a small number of labs, the Associated Press reported. It may be impossible, however, to know the precise number of scientists who had access to the Ames strain, since differences between anthrax strains are often small and labeling of strains was haphazard until the advent of genetic mapping, experts said. 

It is fairly easy to get anthrax cultures from USAMRIID, said Martin Hugh-Jones, an anthrax expert at Louisiana State University.  “They kept the stuff there, and if you need a culture, you called up Art,” Hugh-Jones said. “Art” is USAMRIID senior research scientist Col. Arthur Friedlander (Associated Press, Nov. 26).

Iraqi biological warfare scientists also attempted to obtain the Ames strain, according to experts.  In 1998, Iraqi scientists sent an order to the British biodefense institute at Porton Down for samples of the Ames strain, as well as two other anthrax strains, according to the Washington Post.  The order was turned down, however, because British scientists believed that strains were to be used in developing biological weapons, the Post reported.

So far, no proof has been found that Iraq was able to obtain the Ames strain of anthrax from another supplier, U.S. officials and former U.N. weapons inspectors said.  Iraq’s efforts to do so, however, could mean that Iraq could have connections to the recent U.S. anthrax incidents, according to the Post. 

“We know that Iraq was very keen on obtaining that specific strain as well as others, and they were contacting many countries of the world,” said Richard Spertzel, former head of the U.N. biological weapons inspection teams in Iraq.  “The effort with which they [pursued] Porton Down would suggest that if they thought someone else had it, they would press for it.  But we simply don’t know” (Colum Lynch, Washington Post, Nov. 25).

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BWC:  Work Begins on Final Declaration

Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention have begun discussing the treaty article-by-article and working to organize articles and ideas for a final declaration at the Fifth Review Conference, Hungarian Ambassador and conference President Tibor Toth said last week.  He added that the Drafting Committee planned to take over drafting the final declaration in the middle of this week.

Many states have expressed regret at the failure to agree on a verification protocol to the convention, Toth said. Some states pushed for a legally binding document based on a multilateral framework.  The United States, which had earlier rejected the draft protocol, had proposed alternative measures to strengthen the convention (see GSN, Nov. 21).  States were considering the U.S. proposals, but many continued to disagree on appropriate methods and measures to enforce the convention, Toth said.

Toth emphasized the need for treaty parties to reconfirm their support for the convention and go beyond rhetoric to implementation.  U.S. struggles to respond to recent anthrax incidents (see GSN, today) showed the importance of states working together to combat threats posed by biological weapons, Toth said, adding that states could create international response teams that could be dispatched within 24 hours.  States should cooperate to provide the necessary medicines and vaccines (see GSN, Nov. 14) to respond to biological warfare, he said.

Several speakers at the conference suggested that treaty parties meet more frequently to respond to rapid developments, Toth said, but meetings between the review conferences every five years had often failed to increase implementation.

The conference, which opened in Geneva on Nov. 19, is scheduled to conclude Dec. 7 (U.N. release, Nov. 22).

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NGO Response: Nuclear Threat Initiative Gives Priority to BW

The Nuclear Threat Initiative, founded by media figure Ted Turner and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, has decided to increase its efforts to fight biological terrorism and germ warfare, according to yesterday’s New York Times. The foundation plans to spend about one-third of its estimated $50 million in annual grants on anti-bioterrorism and biological weapon programs. The NTI board approved almost $5 million in initial grants in October.

The foundation, which opened in January 2001, already had programs dedicated to countering biological and chemical weapons threats.  Foundation directors decided to shift more priority to combating biological weapon threats after the recent deaths in the United States of five people from anthrax, foundation executives said last week. 

“Reducing the threat of biological weapons has always been our primary mission, but the events of Sept. 11 have led to new opportunities to address preparedness and consequence management,” said Margaret Hamburg, head of the foundation's biological programs.

The largest program planned so far to combat bioterrorism includes $2.4 million to help employ former Soviet biological weapon scientists in peaceful activities, which would supplement similar U.S. programs.  The planned programs include working with former Soviet scientists to develop a brucellosis vaccine, financing a study of how Russia's Vector laboratory—where Soviet scientists once developed biological weapons—could convert into a vaccine production facility, establishing partnerships between U.S. drug companies and former Soviet scientists, supporting dialogue between U.S. and Russian scientists and helping the World Health Organization establish a fund to assist rapid medical response to suspicious disease outbreaks.  Foundation representatives also said NTI had provided $650,000 in grants to help the U.S. drug industry develop standards to prevent misuse of biotechnology and would provide $400,000 to help the National Academy of Sciences draft such standards (Judith Miller, New York Times, Nov. 25).

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group, Inc.]

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