Anthrax historical perspective

Overview
Anthrax is one of the oldest recorded diseases of grazing animals such as sheep and cattle and is believed to be the Sixth Plague mentioned in the Book of Exodus in the Bible. Anthrax is also mentioned by Greek and Roman authors such as Homer (in The Iliad), Virgil(Georgics), and Hippocrates. Anthrax can also infect humans, usually as the result of coming into contact with infected animal hides, fur, wool, leather or contaminated soil. Anthrax ("siberian ulcer" ) is now fairly rare (a few to no cases per year in the developed world) in humans although it still occasionally occurs in ruminants, such as cattle, sheep, goats, camels, wild buffalo, and antelopes.

Bacillus anthracis bacteria spores are soil-borne and because of their long lifetime they are still present globally and at animal burial sites of anthrax killed animals for many decades. Before the last century anthrax infections  were  a source of many thousands of dead animals and thousands  of people dying  each year in Europe, Asia and North America. French scientist Louis Pasteur developed the first effective vaccine for anthrax in 1881. Thanks to over a century of animal vaccination programs, sterilization of raw animal  waste materials  and anthrax eradication  programs in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Europe and parts of Africa and Asia anthrax infection is now rare in domestic animals with normally only a few dozen cases reported every year. Anthrax is even rarer in dogs and cats where there is only one documented case in the USA in the last 15 years. Anthrax outbreaks do occur in a few wild animal populations with some regularity.  The disease is more common in developing countries without widespread veterinary or human public health programs.

There are 89 known strains of anthrax, the most widely recognized being the virulent Ames strain used in the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States. The Ames strain is extremely dangerous, though not quite as virulent as the Vollum strain which was successfully developed as a biological weapon during the Second World War, but never used. The Vollum (also incorrectly referred to as Vellum) strain was isolated in 1935 from a cow in Oxfordshire, UK. This is the same strain that was used during the Gruinard bioweapons trials. A variation of Vollum known as "Vollum 1B" was used during the 1960s in the US and UK bioweapon programs. Vollum 1B was isolated from William A. Boyles, a 46 year old USAMRIID scientist who died in 1951 after being accidentally infected with the Vollum strain. The Sterne strain, named after a South African researcher, is an attenuated strain used as a vaccine.

Discovery
Robert Koch, a German physician and scientist, first identified the bacteria which caused the anthrax disease in 1877. His pioneering work in the late nineteenth century was one of the first demonstrations that diseases could be caused by microbes. In a groundbreaking series of experiments he uncovered the life cycle and means of transmission of anthrax. His experiments not only helped create an understanding of anthrax, but also helped elucidate the role of microbes in causing illness at a time when debates were still held over spontaneous generation versus cell theory. Koch went on to study the mechanisms of other diseases and was awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the bacteria causing tuberculosis. Koch is today recognized as one of history's most important biologists and a founder of modern bacteriology.

First vaccination
In May 1881, Louis Pasteur performed a public experiment to demonstrate his concept of vaccination. He prepared two groups of 25 sheep, one goat and several cows. The animals of one group were all injected with a self-prepared anti-anthrax vaccine twice, with an interval of 15 days. The animals of the other group were left unvaccinated. Thirty days after the first injection, both groups were injected with a culture of live anthrax bacteria. All the animals in the non-vaccinated group died, whilst all of the animals in the vaccinated group survived.

After mastering his method of vaccination, Pasteur applied this concept to rabies. He went on to develop vaccines against small pox, cholera, and swine erysipelas.

Biological warfare
Anthrax spores can and have been used as a biological warfare weapon. There is a long history of bioweapons research in this area. For example, in 1942 British bioweapons trials severely contaminated Gruinard Island in Scotland with anthrax spores of the Vollum-14578 strain, thereby rendering it uninhabitable for the following 48 years. The Gruinard trials involved testing the effectiveness of a submunition of an "N-bomb"—a biological weapon. Additionally, five million "cattle cakes" impregnated with anthrax were prepared and stored in Porton Down for attacks on Germany by the Royal Air Force as an anti-livestock weapon. However neither the cakes nor the bomb were ever used.

More recently, the Rhodesian government used anthrax against cattle and humans in the period 1978–1979 during its war with black nationalists.

American military and British Army personnel are routinely vaccinated against anthrax prior to active service in places where biological attacks are considered a threat. The anthrax vaccine, produced by BioPort Corporation, contains non-living bacteria, and is approximately 93% effective in preventing infection.

Weaponized stocks of anthrax in the US were destroyed in 1971–72 after President Nixon ordered the dismantling of US biowarfare programs in 1969 and the destruction of all existing stockpiles of bioweapons. Research continues to this day in the United States on ways to counter act possible bioweapons attacks.

Soviet accident: 2 April 1979
Despite signing the 1972 agreement to end bioweapon production the government of the Soviet Union had an active bioweapons program that included the production of hundreds of tons of weapons-grade anthrax after this period. On 2 April 1979 part of the over one million people living in Sverdlovsk (now called Ekaterinburg, Russia), roughly 850 miles east of Moscow were exposed to a accidental release of anthrax from a biological weapons complex located near there. The first victim died after four days; ten victims died in eight days at the peak of the deaths and the last victim died six weeks later. In all at least 94 people were infected, of which at least 68 died. Extensive cleanup, vaccinations and extensive medical interventions managed to save about 30 of the victims. Extensive cover-ups and destruction of records by the KGB continued from 1979 till 1992 when Russian President Boris Yeltsin finally admitted this anthrax accident. A combined Russian and United States team investigated this accident in 1992 as reported by Jeanne Guillemin in 1999 ,

There was a ceramics plant directly across the street from the biological facility (compound 19), where nearly all of the night shift workers became infected and most died. Since most of these people were men, there were suspicions by Western governments that the Soviet Union had developed a gender-specific weapon (Alibek, 1999). The government blamed the outbreak on the consumption of anthrax-tainted meat and ordered the confiscation of all uninspected meat that entered the city. They also ordered that all stray dogs be shot and that people not have contact with sick animals. There was also a voluntary evacuation and anthrax vaccination program established for people from 18–55 (Meselson et al., 1994).

To support the story, Soviet medical and legal journals published articles about an outbreak in livestock that caused GI anthrax in people who consumed the meat and cutaneous anthrax in people who came into contact with the animals. All medical and public health records were confiscated by the KGB (Meselson et al., 1994). In addition to the medical problems that the outbreak caused, it also prompted Western countries to be more suspicious of a covert Soviet Bioweapons program and to increase their surveillance of suspected sites. In 1986, the American government was allowed to investigate the matter and concluded that the exposure was from aerosol anthrax from a military weapons facility (Sternbach, 2002). In 1992, President Yeltsin admitted that he was "absolutely certain" that "rumors" about the Soviet Union violating the 1972 Bioweapons Treaty were true. The Russians, like the US and UK, agreed to submit information to the UN about their bioweapons programs but the Russian report omitted known facilities and never acknowledged their weapons program (Alibek, 1999).

Preparation of biowarfare-grade anthrax
Theoretically, cultivating anthrax spores can be done with minimal special equipment and a first-year collegiatemicrobiological education. Fortunately, there are many obstacles to overcome to do this and doing this can be quite dangerous. To make large amounts of an aerosol form of anthrax suitable for biological warfare, requires extensive practical knowledge, training and highly advanced equipment.

Concentrated anthrax spores were used for bioterrorism in the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, delivered by mailing postal letters containing the spores. Only a few grams of material were used in these attacks and it is unknown if this material was produced by a single individual or by a state sponsored bioweapons program. These events also spawned innumerable anthrax hoaxes. In response, the US Postal Service sterilized some of the mail using a process of gamma  irradiation combined with the use of a unique and proprietary enzyme treatment formula supplied by Sipco Industries Ltd.

Theoretical "at home" Countermeasure
A scientific experiment performed by a high school student (later published in The Journal of Medical Toxicology) suggested that a common electric iron adjusted to the hottest setting (at least 400 degrees Fahrenheit) and used for at least 5 minutes should destroy all anthrax spores in a common envelope contaminated with anthrax.