anthrax

anthrax A desease caused by the bacillus anthracis, which most commonly occurs in warm-blooded animals and the soil on which they tread. In sufficient quantities its spores can be lethal to humans. As it is easily reproduced in biological laboratories, it has found a military use as a weapon of biological warfare. Exactly one week after the September 11 attacks on the US, a letter was posted in Trenton, NJ, containing lethal spores of anthrax. In the following weeks, a series of letters were posted, one of them to the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle. None of the addressees were affected, but a number of postal workers were slow to receive attention, and died from exposure to the spores. The attacks heightened a sense of insecurity and vulnerability in a society still in shock from the September 11 attacks, even though the two incidents were almost certainly unrelated.