Report: Anthrax may cause U.S. disaster
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SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- An anthrax attack on a city the size of New York could leave more than 100,000 dead within days, experts said Monday in a report calling for stronger government preparations against the threat.
A team headed by Lawrence Wein of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business said current plans rely too much on sensors to detect an anthrax attack and not enough on getting drugs and medical workers to an affected area fast.
The study projected what would happen if two pounds of anthrax were dropped on a city the size of New York and affected 1.5 million people. The authors said by the time the public lined up for and received medication, 123,000 would have died over a four-day period.
"There is still no substitute for getting people antibiotics and medical care as fast as possible," said Wein, who teamed up with Edward Kaplan of Yale University.
Last summer, both men, experts in modeling epidemics, issued a report saying mass vaccination would save thousands more lives in a smallpox attack.
"Our country has made great strides in the past year at preparing for a potential smallpox attack," Wein said in a statement.
"Although smallpox is a contagious disease, it is also a slower-moving disease, and as my colleagues and I showed in a study published last summer, post-attack mass vaccination would nip even a large smallpox attack in the bud," he said. "Unfortunately, controlling the consequences of an anthrax attack may be a bigger challenge."
The latest study on anthrax was published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Fears of weapons of mass destruction are especially high as a U.S.-led war against Iraq looms. Baghdad has declared it has destroyed its stocks of anthrax.
Five people, including two postal workers, died from the inhalation form of the potential germ warfare agent after receiving anthrax-tainted letters in 2001. The case has never been solved.
President Bush has called for spending nearly $6 billion over 10 years to develop new vaccines against the most likely germ weapons such as anthrax, Ebola, and plague.
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