Caso Batteriologico - Gzibordi
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By: GZ on Martedì 09 Ottobre 2001 21:22
non so niente di batteriologico,
ma hanno trovato le spore dell' amthrax (si traduce come antracite ? non lo so) che è il più noto delle cose che si usano nella guerra batteriologica
Ora: un tizio è morto e un altro grave in Florida
e a mezzo miglio dalla casa di quello che è morto gli 11 islamici del gruppo di Atta si addestravano
come fa a essere un caso visto che è l'unico caso di questo genere accaduto e che l'america è un continente assai grande ?
Proprio dove i dirottatori vivevano e si addestravano due persone avvelenate.
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Lantana, where Stevens lived, and Boca Raton, where the American Media building is located, are about 15 miles apart.
Between the cities is Delray Beach, where several of the suspects in the Sept. 11 hijackings, including suspected ringleader Mohamed Atta, lived for as long as two years. They trained at the general aviation Lantana Airport, located within a half-mile of Stevens home.
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The chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said Monday that it is a virtual certainty that "human intervention" was required to expose two Floridians to anthrax.
One of the men died on Friday, and health officials said Monday that a second employee of the same company has tested positive for exposure to the virus.
As health department officials tested hundreds of anxious employees of the publications that produce the nation's supermarket tabloids, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., the intelligence committee chairman, said he was told by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the cases of anthrax infection indicated human intervention.
He emphasized that didn't necessarily mean terrorism.
"The chance of two people coming down with this in the same office building without human intervention is between nil and zero," the senator said in a Capitol Hill briefing. He said he had just gotten off the phone with an official at the CDC.
FoxNews is reporting that a former Egyptian intern at American Media sent a suspicious e-mail before he disappeared talking of a 'surprise', and sent a letter, which arrived in the mailroom and was supposedly touched by both of the men who have been exposed to the Anthrax bacteria.
Spokespersons for the CDC did not return phone calls for comment Monday.
Adding to the concern was that several of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon lived in the area, and at least one attended a flight school less than a mile from the dead man's house.
Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters Monday that "we don't have enough information" to know whether the exposure to anthrax was caused by a deliberate acts of terrorism.
"Frankly, we are unable to make a conclusive statement about the nature of this as an attack or a terrorist attack," Ashcroft said. He said authorities were pursuing the cases with "all the dispatch and care that's appropriate," and that it could become a criminal investigation. At the moment, he said, "We don't have enough information to know whether this could be related to terrorism or not."
He also said that a single spore of anthrax was found on the dead man's computer keyboard.
Dr. John Agwunobi, secretary of health for the State of Florida, said at a press conference in West Palm Beach late Monday that while the anthrax investigation is still being treated as a public health problem, no one has ruled out that it might also involve bioterrorism or other man-made actions.
"Bioterrorism has always been in the back of our minds," said Dr. Jean Malecki, director of the Palm Beach County Health Department. However, Malecki insisted that investigators are still a long way from linking the exposures at American Media in Boca Raton to bioterrorism. Aside from the exposures discussed today, Malecki said, "We have no other cases of anthrax infection, and we have no other suspected cases."
Malecki told United Press International that "exactly identical" anthrax spores were found in tests on Robert Stevens, 63, of Lantana, Fla., the man who died from anthrax infection Friday; at Stevens' computer in his American Media office; and in a swab of the nasal passages of a mailroom employee, identified as Ernesto Blanco of Miami. The anthrax found on Stevens' computer was a single spore.
Health officials said only 18 cases of inhalation anthrax like these have been reported in the United States in the past century.
Lantana, where Stevens lived, and Boca Raton, where the American Media building is located, are about 15 miles apart. Between the cities is Delray Beach, where several of the suspects in the Sept. 11 hijackings, including suspected ringleader Mohamed Atta, lived for as long as two years. They trained at the general aviation Lantana Airport, located within a half-mile of Stevens home.
Blanco has been hospitalized for a respiratory illness unrelated to anthrax. "We have evidence that this man was exposed to anthrax, but this is very different from a case of anthrax," Malecki said. "Someone could have breathed in an anthrax spore and not come down with the disease." She noted that a large number of anthrax spores would be required to cause symptoms.
The question now, Malecki said, is to determine if the anthrax was brought into the building by Stevens or possibly Blanco or if there is some place in the building that is the source of the deadly bacteria.
When it was determined Sunday that positive cultures had been found in Blanco and in the building, health department officials assisted by the FBI sealed the three-story structure and asked the employees to report to the health department office in Delray Beach to receive preventive antibiotics. In a statement, the CDC said the antibiotics given before symptoms arose would prevent anthrax infection.
Malecki said about 500 people were offered antibiotics Monday - 300 employees of American Media and 200 others: friends, visitors or employee family members who were in the building since Aug. 1. Anthrax does not incubate for more than 60 days and anyone who contracted anthrax earlier than that would have manifested symptoms by now.
Although anthrax is not considered contagious from one person to another, health department spokesman Timothy O'Connor said that if a family member arrived at the facility with an employee, the family member was not refused antibiotics.
When American Media employees showed up to receive antibiotics and for nose swabs to be taken, they were interviewed by the FBI and health officials, said Wayne Grover, a freelance writer for the tabloids for the past 23 years who often worked in the Boca Raton building. "Among the questions we were asked," Grover told UPI, "was, 'did you visit the mailroom?' or 'did you visit the library?'"
Another employee, librarian Martha Moffett was at first believed to be infected with anthrax, although that was later ruled out. "People came up to me or called me and said, 'Congratulations, you have pneumonia,'" Moffett said Monday. She was hospitalized briefly at the same facility, John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center in Lantana, where Stevens was taken and where he died.
Malecki said nasal swabs would be taken from each employee, and blood would be drawn from the staffers at a later date. Grover said he was told the nose samples would take two to three days to analyze and, if something didn't look normal, the person would be asked for a blood sample.
"We don't know how long the building will be closed," Steve Coz, head of editorial operations for American Media, told United Press International. "We have other arrangements for publishing the papers."
Warren Newell, chairman of the Palm Beach County Board of Commissioners, said county officials were assisting American Media in finding office space to produce the tabloids and other magazines.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.
Modificato da - gzibordi on 10/9/2001 19:28:58
Modificato da - gzibordi on 10/9/2001 19:31:49