Anthrax Outbreak

7^th Jan, 2010

The news broke today that a sixth person has died from an anthrax outbreak in Scotland, bringing to a total of 12 confirmed cases in the past 6 weeks.

All the confirmed cases are heroin addicts, pointing to a contaminated batch of circulating heroin, and addicts are being advised not to take any heroin for the time being until the source of the outbreak is brought under control.

That is the gist of the news story. How on Earth are addicts going to do without their fix until the faulty batch of heroin is eradicated from the supply chain?

This is why they are addicts! They can’t live without their daily fix, usually injected, of heroin. Don’t tell me they will be quite happy to take the methadone alternative until the streets are free of the anthrax laden heroin. Most addicts seem to take methadone (because it is free) as well as heroin.

Britain has a policy of treating heroin addicts with methadone liquid. This drug is given out openly in pharmacies, to addicts who daily form an orderly queue for their medication, much to the consternation of ordinary shoppers or people in picking up prescriptions.

Who is going to track down the faulty batch, when our drug agencies seem incapable of stopping the supply in the first place?

It is possibly the sixth plague, as mentioned in the Book of Exodus in the Bible.

Anthrax is the oldest recorded disease, caused by the bacterium bacillus anthracis, that occurs naturally, in low levels, in some grazing animals, cattle and sheep.

Cutaneous anthrax

It was not uncommon in the past for animal workers to become infected through the skin. A boil would form, the centre of which would turn black. Strangely enough, the infected site would be pain-free. Left untreated, around 20% of those infected this way would die from toxaemia, but with treatment is rarely fatal.

This type of infection is not passed from person to person.

Another mode of infection is gastrointestinal, having eaten anthrax infected meat. This is much more serious, resulting in vomiting of blood, severe diarrhoea, acute inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract and loss of appetite. Even with treatment, this form of infection is fatal in about 50% of cases.

Pneumonic anthrax

Anthrax inhalation is the most devastating. It presents as flu-like symptoms for several days, followed by respiratory collapse, internal bleeding and death in 95% of all cases. If treated as suspected anthrax at the outset of symptoms, the death rate with early treatment can fall to 45%.

When someone or an animal dies of anthrax, their body becomes full of spores, all of which are deadly if inhaled. That is why the body will be sealed as soon as death is confirmed and all possible modes of escape for the deadly spores sealed off.

However, if a wild animal or bird should catch it, we could reasonably expect to see a major outbreak.

It is reckoned that 100kg of anthrax spores could kill 3 million people if released on a city, and render that city uninhabitable because the anthrax spores do not die and can live for hundreds of years.

Even now, throughout the world, the disinterment, accidentally or deliberately, of long-dead animals has released deadly spores that have caused fresh infections.

A vaccine available against anthrax was developed in 1991.

Newspaper suggestions point to accidental contamination at the point of source, usually Afghanistan, where anthrax in cattle is not uncommon. Pure heroin powder is usually cut with another substance to not only weaken its strength (addicts are not used to getting pure heroin and a shot of that would likely kill them), but to bulk it out so that 5gms of heroin become 10gms when cut with talc, or other substances. I heard of an addict dying once because his heroin for cut with brick dust. It seems in Afghanistan they quite often use ground-down bones from cattle or other animals, and if that animal was infected with anthrax, then it would be passed on.

This could be a form of germ warfare. Addicts are generally considered to be a scourge on society anyway; so maybe nobody much cares one way or another. It cannot be ignored as a possibility that this act was deliberate, perhaps as an experiment.

By which government? Our own, or an enemy government?

My first thought was why not the moslem extremists who promised death to all the unbelievers? Then I remembered it is these guys who are benefitting financially from the trade. That leaves our government...

They wouldn't do a thing like that, would they? Have they done it before?

Read on...

Gruinard Island off Scotland was deliberately infected with anthrax spores by the Government scientists in 1942, in an experiment over the possible use of anthrax in germ warfare. The island remained closed to the public for 48 years. In 1986 an English company was called in to decontaminate the 520 acre island by soaking the ground with 280 tons of formaldehyde diluted with 2000 tonnes of seawater. The topsoil was also removed in sealed containers, sheep put back to graze, and in 1990 the government declared the island safe.

Interestingly enough, Dr Brian Moffat, the archaeological director of an excavation of a medieval hospital near Edinburgh, told the Glasgow Herald newspaper that his team had uncovered live anthrax spores hundreds of years old on site, and that he doubted Gruinard Island could ever be completely clear of the anthrax spores.

Dr Moffat added that he for one would not be setting foot or going for a walk on the island.

There has now been a confirmed total of 19 cases of anthrax in Scotland, with 9 fatalities, one fatality in Germany from the same strain, and one new reported case in London. All intravenous heroin users.