You wake up early for work and say goodbye to your family. On your daily commute, you see a man drop a glass vial on the subway, but you don't think anything of it. Moments later, you become a statistic. A statistic of bioterrorism. The threat of bioterrorism, long ignored and denied, has intensified in recent years and must be publicly addressed. The biggest dangers today are anthrax and smallpox, but people aren't sure what to do while the government infiltrates to solve the problem and the media is left to its own devices to give their own exaggerated version of everything they think. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Although terrorists can use many pathogens, biological warfare experts consider anthrax and smallpox the two greatest dangers. Other infectious diseases that pose a threat include plague, tularemia, botulism and tuberculosis. However, experts say these organisms and diseases are unlikely to cause widespread illness because they are difficult to manufacture and distribute. These organisms are also less resistant than anthrax. Anthrax is caused by Bacillus anthracis and its spores. Anthrax can infect people in three different ways. Cutaneous anthrax develops when the bacteria enters your body through superficial cuts or wounds on your skin. The vast majority of anthrax infections are cutaneous. Intestinal anthrax results from eating food contaminated with anthrax bacteria. Inhalation anthrax occurs when you breathe bacterial anthrax spores into your lungs. This form of anthrax is usually fatal. The mortality rate from anthrax from inhaled sources is very high, approaching 100 percent. Mortality rates are lower for anthrax that enters your body through food or injury. Anthrax is not spread from person to person like the common cold or flu, and therefore cannot spread to large populations. However, microbiologists consider anthrax a serious danger, because its bacteria can serve as a weapon. Anthrax is easy to produce and is readily available throughout the world. The spores do not require special handling procedures, so terrorists could transport the anthrax to many points for distribution. It could be used to eliminate specific people or places. Unlike many pathogenic bacteria, the spores can survive intense heat and cold. Doctors have no experience treating anthrax on the scale of a biological attack, so it's difficult to predict exactly what might happen. Treating anthrax with antibiotics such as Cipro can be successful if anthrax is identified as the cause of the illness and people who have been exposed receive treatment promptly. Coal is just one of our biggest concerns. Another danger is smallpox. Smallpox, an infectious disease caused by the variola virus, was eradicated from the world in 1977. Three years later, the World Health Assembly recommended an end to routine vaccination, and most countries complied. Smallpox is spread from person to person when infected people sneeze, spray fine droplets of the virus into the air, or through direct contact such as kissing. Infected people can transmit the disease afterhave developed a rash, but high fever and fatigue often cause them to go to bed first. Because a virus causes smallpox, antibiotics will not treat the infection. Currently, no other drugs are known to treat smallpox. However, some early results from laboratory studies appear promising for the drug cidofovir in the fight against the smallpox virus. If you are exposed to the smallpox virus, vaccination within three days of exposure can prevent the onset of illness. Vaccination within a week of exposure to the virus can help reduce the severity of the disease. Unlike anthrax, the smallpox virus is generally considered the "worst-case" bioterrorist threat agent because it is infectious through the air and kills approximately one-third of its individuals. victims and is contagious from person to person. But terrorists would have difficulty obtaining the virus, because smallpox was eradicated from the human population thanks to a global vaccination campaign in the 1960s and 1970s, and the last reported case worldwide dates back to 1978. Samples of the smallpox virus are currently available. only exist in a few laboratories. However, in addition to the existence of two secure repositories of the virus located in the United States and Russia, circumstantial evidence suggests that there may be undeclared stocks of smallpox virus in countries of concern such as Iraq and Korea. from the North. virus, they would have to cultivate it and then find a way to spread it. The simplest method would be for suicide bombers to infect the virus themselves and spread it among crowds, but even terrorists willing to die instantly in a blaze of glory might think twice before suffering the torment and the disfigurement of smallpox. Other delivery methods would be technically difficult. Yet while the risk of a smallpox-related terrorist attack is low, it is not zero, and the dire consequences of an uncontrolled outbreak force the U.S. government to err on the side of caution. Currently, the federal government is taking two actions. reduce the country's vulnerability to smallpox: conduct tests to determine whether the approximately 7.5 million doses of smallpox vaccine currently available could be safely diluted to provide up to 75 million doses, and ramp up production of 40 million additional doses of vaccine so that they will be available by the end of next year. Even if a large quantity of smallpox vaccine were available today, it would not be desirable to vaccinate the general population prophylactically because of the risk of serious complications, particularly in those with HIV or other forms of the system. immune. deficiency. Because of the risk, most Americans living today have either never been vaccinated against smallpox or no longer have effective immunity. Until 1971, it was mandatory for American children to be vaccinated before entering school, even though the last case of smallpox in the United States was in 1949. After 1971, however, the government discontinued the systematic vaccination, after assessing the risk of spreading smallpox. being imported into the United States from a country where it was still endemic was lower than the risk of side effects associated with the smallpox vaccine, which caused occasional deaths or serious complications in people with immune system deficiencies, eczema and even in some healthy people. people. In addition, a single vaccination against smallpox does not provide protection against.