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To: TomB
The clumping of spores is important, but there is no way to quantitate how many spores one inhales based on the presence or absence of spores in the nostril. Undoubtedly, had the Ruskies looked, they would have probably found lots of people with anthrax spores or bacteria in the nose after their accident, and probably many if not most would not have come down with anthrax having inhaled on average a less than lethal spore burden. But no way to tell who without not treating everyone and just watching.

BTW, Scott Ritter said yesterday on Fox that the spores they found on the keyboard were clumped and bigger than the optimum 5 micron minimum, therefore this indicated a non weaponized anthrax strain. Doesn't follow...we have no idea how long those spores were there, and they were exposed to oils from the hands on the keyboard, light etc. This environmental degradation could have caused clumping of the spores. We don't know what condition spores were in initially. What they look like now is irrelevent.

Someone told me that they typed the strain to a lab type from Iowa. May or may not be true, and even if it is, the strain could have started in Iowa but been tinkered with overseas. They did say the strain was sensitive to Penicillin, but did not give the Minimum Bacteriacidal Concentration(MBC) so that data may be misleading. If it is sensitive to Penicillin, it is not as likely to have come from a Soviet Bioweapons Program.

According to what I have read by Ken Abilek, a Russian Biowarrior defector, all of their mass produced anthrax strains for weapons were engineered to be resistant to Penicillin and Tetracycline. I have seen nowhere that they have said the strain is actually sensitive to Cipro, but I guess it is, since that's what they are giving.

138 posted on 10/10/2001 6:28:38 PM PDT by Jesse
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To: Jesse
The clumping of spores is important, but there is no way to quantitate how many spores one inhales based on the presence or absence of spores in the nostril.

It is an impossibility for someone to have inhaled 10,000 spores of anthrax, and only have ONE (as the first patient showed) show in the nasal mucosa.

146 posted on 10/10/2001 6:34:19 PM PDT by TomB
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