Jeffery, your reply coincides with a letter in today's Wall Street Journal (see below) regarding the potential danger from biological weapons. However, you seem to beleive that viral infections are present a higher risk than the author beleives. The author does not focus on primary infections from "typical" biological warfare agents (Anthax, Small Pox, etct.), where the victims come in direct contact with the infecting agent (spores, etc.). They will most likely become infected and most if not all will die. But he down plays the risk of secondary infection primarily because the victims perish to soon to become transmitters of further desease. Viral infections, on the other hand, are highly contageous, but are not normally leathal. But your message indicates that there may be some risk from viral agents. Am I interpreting the facts correctly?<br><br>I've also posted a second story from the Atlanta Journal and Constitution regarding the risk of biological agents from the CDC in the event of an attack on that facility.<br>=======================================<br> Biological Warfare: The 'Good' News -- letter to the editor<br><br>Wall Street Journal<br><br>September 20, 2001<br><br>As noted in your Sept. 18 story "Are We Prepared for the Unthinkable?" history records various incidents -- including accidents -- involving either biological or chemical warfare agents. Although bacteria and other micro-organisms can sicken or even kill an individual patient who is exposed, their ability to spread and cause "secondary" cases is limited. The reason is that if they are to survive, bacteria and viruses need living hosts to provide shelter and sustenance, and they cannot afford to kill their hosts too quickly and too often.<br><br>During the past half-century, university and government laboratories working with infectious agents that cause diseases like anthrax and bubonic plague have, unintentionally, performed what amounts to small-scale biological warfare "experiments." In other words, there were laboratory accidents in which organisms were released.<br><br>The outcomes of these incidents are revealing and somewhat reassuring. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which used to monitor these mishaps, recorded 109 laboratory-associated infections during the period 1947-1973, but not a single secondary case -- that is, infection of a patient's family member or community contact -- was reported.<br><br>The medical literature similarly reveals only a handful of people secondarily infected. In 1948-50, there were reports of six cases of Q fever (a disease caused by intracellular parasites called Rickettsia) in employees of a commercial laundry that handled linens and uniforms from a laboratory that conducted research with the agent, one case of Q fever in a visitor to a laboratory, and two cases of Q fever in household contacts of a laboratory scientist. A secondary case of a disease caused by an Ebola-like virus in the wife of a primary case was presumed to have been transmitted sexually two months after his dismissal from the hospital in 1967. Finally, three secondary cases of smallpox were reported in two laboratory-associated outbreaks in England in 1973 and 1978.<br><br>As a public health threat, most biological agents act much like the chemical sarin in the 1995 release in the Tokyo subway by terrorists, with injury limited primarily to those exposed initially. The appearance of symptoms would be more delayed for a biological agent than a chemical -- the incubation period for bubonic plague is two to seven days and that for anthrax two to three days, for example. Most bacterial infections can be treated with antibiotics, assuming that the offending organism is identified early enough and that there are enough drugs on hand.<br><br>Certain viruses, such as influenza and rhinoviruses (which cause most common colds), are highly contagious, spreading readily from one person to another (and viral infections cannot readily be treated with drugs), but their infections are seldom life-threatening.<br><br>Thus, although a future lethal epidemic caused by progressive person-to-person spread of infectious agents is unlikely, their widespread dispersion -- throughout a subway system or in the ventilating system of an office building, for example -- potentially could infect thousands of people.<br><br>The prospect of exposure to biological weapons should elicit not hysteria, but vigilance and planning. Louis Pasteur, the father of bacteriology, was correct that "chance favors only the prepared mind."<br><br>Henry I. Miller, M.D.<br> <br>(The author, a physician and molecular biologist, was an FDA official, 1979-94.)<br>=================================================<br>Offering prayers, assistant; CDC steps up security after terrorist attacks<br><br>The Atlanta Journal and Constitution <br><br>September 20, 2001 <br><br>By: Ben Smith <br><br>A commercial jet, hijacked by terrorists, plunges into laboratories next to Atlanta's Emory University and explodes, unleashing some of the world's most deadly viruses. <br><br>It's bad science fiction, say officials for the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the DeKalb County site for research laboratories that house the world's most contagious viruses. <br><br>"Anything that would destroy the buildings would destroy the viruses," said Barbara Reynolds, a spokeswoman for the CDC. "They are very delicate, and they don't survive in the open air very long. Viruses don't live outside the human body very easily." The CDC is one of only eight institutions in the world to have the highest level of containment, called "Biosafety Level 4," for storing and handling the most dangerous known microbes, such as the viruses that cause Ebola, Lassa, Marburg and Machupo fever. <br><br>But the strength of its existing security didn't stop CDC officials from taking extra steps last week immediately after three jets commandeered by terrorists slammed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, killing thousands. <br><br>Before noon after the attacks, the agency asked nonessential employees to leave the CDC's main campus on Clifton Road, while members of the agency's bioterrorism and chemical weapons teams were sent to a more secure facility elsewhere in metro Atlanta. <br><br>DeKalb police shut down traffic for nearly two hours to complete the evacuation of nonessential personnel, and Georgia state troopers were stationed in front of the facility's four entrances. <br><br>The campus has remained on "heightened security," said Reynolds, who declined to discuss any of the steps taken by the agency. <br><br>"Some (security measures) are visible and some are not," Reynolds said, adding that there are no plans to upgrade security at the CDC, the only U.S. agency not headquartered in Washington. <br><br>Before the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, the CDC conducted a comprehensive review of its security. Among the changes were tighter restrictions on people, cars and packages coming in and out of the campus. <br><br>In recent years, the institution created new federal regulations governing the transportation of dangerous germs for research, such as requiring health officials to register and track anyone who receives or sends infectious viruses, bacteria or other microbes, and forbidding anyone without adequate laboratory facilities from receiving them. <br><br>The new regulations were prompted, in part, by a rash of terrorist acts, including the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building as well as the arrest the same year of an Ohio white supremacist who allegedly obtained bubonic plague bacteria through the mail from a Maryland biotechnology company. <br><br>Meanwhile, the CDC's campus was expanded in 1998 when the agency annexed 17 acres around the facility. The razing of houses around the CDC and the expansion of the gates have created a wider buffer for the facility, which has the unintended effect of making much of the CDC's campus more remote. <br><br>Reynolds said the new buildings planned for the additional acreage will, of course, feature state-of-the art security systems. <br><br>Reynolds added that stepping up CDC security wasn't the only response the institution had made to last week's attacks. The agency tapped into supplies from the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile and had several truckloads of supplies sent to New York, including medicine, bandages, IV equipment and ventilators. <br><br><br><br>Willie Vannerson<br>McHenry, IL