He said that was about as close to the truth that was published.
Also the researcher at USAMRIID who received the sample had kept the wrapping label in the filing cabinet. It had an Ames, Iowa return address label and an Ames, Iowa postmark.
It is true, however, that USAMRIID, thought that the sample had originated in Ames or at least in Iowa. That was mistakenly reported down through the ages and that is why it is called Ames. When in reality I think it is genotype 62 according to Keim. There were other things inappropriately called Ames thought the years because Ames Iowa had a facility to test anthrax. That was the purpose of the whole building that I used to drive me on my way home. The truth is that the original sample came from Texas out of a Beefmaster heifer that died under the windmill. It was sent to College Station Texas diagnostic lab and from there was sent to Ames, Iowa. Now the question was, why did College Station send it to Ames, Iowa? It had already been diagnosed as anthrax and in those days anthrax was just anthrax. I am assuming here that the people who work on anthrax all sort of know each other and it was professional courtesy to give them a samplel of a new isolate for their COLLECTION.
They never sent it to Ames, Iowa. They sent it ONLY to USAMRIID.
In late 1980, Dr. Gregory B. Knudson, a biologist working at the Army's biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., was searching for new anthrax strains to use in tests of the military's vaccine. In December 1980, he wrote Texas A&M to see if they had any new anthrax strains. They didn't have anything at the time, but in early 1981, they received a sample of anthrax that had been extracted from a cow that had recently died. So, Texas A&M forwarded a portion of that sample to Ft. Detrick.
However, because Texas A&M frequently sent such samples to the USDA in Iowa, they had postage-paid labels from the USDA and they used one of the USDA labels, simply pasting the Ft. Detrick address over the USDA address. (It was evidently a way of saving a few dollars for Texas A&M.) And, when the sample arrived at Ft. Detrick, Dr. Knudson called it "The Ames Strain" because the mailing label indicated the sample had come from Ames, Iowa.
The Ames strain never went to Iowa - much less to ISU.