Historical Use of Anthrax
The first anthrax bomb of the West was dropped onto Gruinard Island in 1942. The test was conducted by a British team while American officials observed (Mangold & Goldberg, 2000). The test provided disturbing results about how badly an anthrax weapon could contaminate a targeted area. It took half a century to finally clean up the anthrax contamination but the tests proved that anthrax could be produced, weaponized and transported quite a distance to inflict damage to a target location (Mangold & Goldberg, 2000).
The Soviet Union had an immense “secret” biological warfare development program where plenty of attention was devoted to anthrax due to its survivability and resistant properties. An incident that sparked …show more content…
This was an alarming event during my lifetime. I remember learning about how we should we warry of unmarked mail and the importance of feeling the envelope for suspicious materials before opening it. Although the attack was alarming, preventative measures were taken and research was conducted to prepare the nation for another attack. After the 2001 anthrax attack, approximately 10,000 people received antimicrobial prophylaxis and we had no resultant disease (Adalja et al., 2015). The United States has since been investing more in prevention, surveillance, and preparation for potential bioterrorism attacks and additional funding was authorized since 2002 to help the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Environmental Protection Agency (Grundmann, 2014). This lead to the development of programs such as Laboratory Response Network, Hospital Preparedness Program, and BioWatch (Grundmann, 2014). With these programs in place and other epidemiological surveillance systems in place, detection is more readily available but early detection is still crucial. All of this stemmed from the anthrax attack in 2001 and technology and research will only keep improving to minimize the effects of a biological
The first anthrax bomb of the West was dropped onto Gruinard Island in 1942. The test was conducted by a British team while American officials observed (Mangold & Goldberg, 2000). The test provided disturbing results about how badly an anthrax weapon could contaminate a targeted area. It took half a century to finally clean up the anthrax contamination but the tests proved that anthrax could be produced, weaponized and transported quite a distance to inflict damage to a target location (Mangold & Goldberg, 2000).
The Soviet Union had an immense “secret” biological warfare development program where plenty of attention was devoted to anthrax due to its survivability and resistant properties. An incident that sparked …show more content…
This was an alarming event during my lifetime. I remember learning about how we should we warry of unmarked mail and the importance of feeling the envelope for suspicious materials before opening it. Although the attack was alarming, preventative measures were taken and research was conducted to prepare the nation for another attack. After the 2001 anthrax attack, approximately 10,000 people received antimicrobial prophylaxis and we had no resultant disease (Adalja et al., 2015). The United States has since been investing more in prevention, surveillance, and preparation for potential bioterrorism attacks and additional funding was authorized since 2002 to help the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Environmental Protection Agency (Grundmann, 2014). This lead to the development of programs such as Laboratory Response Network, Hospital Preparedness Program, and BioWatch (Grundmann, 2014). With these programs in place and other epidemiological surveillance systems in place, detection is more readily available but early detection is still crucial. All of this stemmed from the anthrax attack in 2001 and technology and research will only keep improving to minimize the effects of a biological