You Got Mail
- From: "Greatcod" <Greatcod@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 27 Apr 2005 10:51:35 -0700
Experts: Smallpox could be sent in mail
By Steve Mitchell
Medical Correspondent
Published 4/26/2005 12:22 PM
WASHINGTON, April 26 (UPI) -- The anthrax letter attacks in 2001 are
not the first time an infectious agent has been spread through the
mail. A recent article in a scientific journal describes two outbreaks
of smallpox in 1901 that were attributed to infected letters, and
bioweapon experts said it is possible terrorists could spread the
deadly disease in this manner today.
Charles Ambrose, the author's article and a microbiologist at the
University of Kentucky School of Medicine in Lexington, noted that one
of the outbreaks was attributed to infected letters sent from the
United States to England -- a trans-Atlantic trip that at the time had
to be made by boat. This suggests the virus may be able to survive
extended periods in transit and raises the possibility of terrorists
sending an infected letter into the United States from abroad.
Ambrose's article appears in the May issue of the journal Emerging
Infectious Diseases.
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta
said it was unlikely smallpox could be transmitted through infected
letters, but other bioweapon experts thought it could be done -- if
samples of the deadly virus could be obtained in the first place.
"It would be really, really, really difficult" to infect people by
sending the smallpox virus through the mail, CDC spokesman Von Roebuck
told United Press International.
Bill Kournikakis, of Canada's Chemical Biological Defense Section in
Medicine Hat, Alberta, disagreed with that assessment.
"If smallpox were available, then it would be possible to transmit it
through the mail," he told UPI.
Kournikakis headed a study that showed anthrax could be transmitted
through the mail several months prior to the 2001 attacks.
"Smallpox was well known for its virulence, contagiousness and
stability (and) was able to survive for almost a year at room
temperature in exudates or crusts from smallpox patients," he said. "It
would most likely survive the postal system as well."
Smallpox kills about a third of those infected by the virus. Symptoms
include fever, aches and the characteristic pox or raised bumps all
over the body that form scabs and can leave disfiguring scars.
William C. Patrick, former chief of the product development for the
U.S. Army's biological warfare laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md., told
UPI he thought it was possible smallpox could be distributed via mailed
items.
"Smallpox could be sent through the mail and cause problems," said
Patrick, who has served as a consultant to the FBI and the CIA.
Patrick noted although smallpox is not as stable as anthrax, "it's more
infectious." Only about three to five individual virus particles are
needed to cause a smallpox infection, compared to 8,000-10,000 spores
of anthrax.
The bioterror experts consulted for this article said they consider the
real barrier to an attack is obtaining the virus, not the mail system.
The only known stocks of smallpox in the world reside at CDC
headquarters in Atlanta and a lab in Russia. However, some bioweapons
experts think North Korea and Iran also possess smallpox and there are
concerns Russia may have leaked samples of the deadly pathogen to
various countries.
Ambrose noted in his article there may be a second, unconventional
source of smallpox in Russia in the Sakha Republic region in northeast
Siberia -- one of the coldest inhabited regions on Earth. In 1991,
bioweapons experts went searching for smallpox victims who had become
frozen and mummified under the ice in the 19th Century.
The concern was terrorists could recover corpses, thaw them and gain
access to smallpox, but searchers found no trace of the virus.
The United States could be very susceptible to a smallpox attack. Much
of the U.S. population has not been vaccinated against smallpox --
routine vaccinations stopped in 1972 -- and it is unclear if those
vaccinated prior to that still retain immunity from the deadly disease.
President George W. Bush's plan to vaccinate healthcare workers and
first responders against smallpox appears to have all but halted. Only
a fraction of the anticipated 500,000 people targeted to be vaccinated
received the medication.
Ambrose's article also cited an outbreak in Saginaw, Mich., involving
34 people and detailed in a 1901 issue of the New York Medical Journal.
That outbreak appears to have originated in a Saginaw woman who
developed smallpox after receiving a letter from her boyfriend, a
soldier in Alaska who had written the letter while infected with the
disease himself.
The other smallpox outbreak occurred at the headquarters of the Mormon
church in Nottingham, England, Ambrose wrote. A report in the April
1901 issue of the British Medical Journal attributes that incident to
letters from Salt Lake City, where hundreds of smallpox cases had been
reported in recent months.
Dr. D.A. Henderson, professor of medicine at the Center for Biosecurity
at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said under normal
circumstances there probably was very little, if any, risk of an
infected person transmitting smallpox through the mail.
He said it was highly possible the cases described in the medical
journal articles had not been properly investigated and there could
have been other ways people became infected that did not involve
contaminated letters. When he was involved in efforts to eradicate
smallpox globally, he said, no instances were ever reported of
infections that could be traced back to infected mail items.
Henderson did say he thought it was possible terrorists could transmit
smallpox through the mail by aerosolizing the virus, similar to what
was done in the anthrax attacks, which infected 18 people and killed
five.
"They could do that, oh yeah, no question," Henderson told UPI.
He said it was less likely to happen with smallpox than with anthrax,
however, due to difficulties of obtaining the virus in the first place,
the technical knowledge required to work with it, and the dangers of
self-infection.
Henderson noted, however, officials involved in the Russian Bioweapons
program have admitted in recent years they produced very fine,
tiny-particle smallpox and conducted outdoors experiments with it in
1971. He said it is not known whether the efforts infected anyone, but
it demonstrates the feasibility of aerosolizing the deadly virus.
Henderson said if smallpox was stabilized properly, it probably could
survive a trip through the mail system, "but it wouldn't survive as
well as anthrax."
Bob Anderson, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service, said in terms of
precautionary measures to prevent biological weapons from being spread
through the mail system, the only monitoring systems in place test for
anthrax.
"The system is expandable -- meaning the equipment is capable of being
configured to test for the presence of other biohazards in the mail --
but there are no plans to do so at this time," Anderson told UPI.
The Postal Service also irradiates some federal mail to kill potential
bioweapons, but this process is used only on government mail headed for
federal agencies in the Washington area, he said.
Henderson said he did not know if irradiation would kill the smallpox
virus
.
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