Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Anthrax

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

In 2001, the United States was under a biological attack from strange spores in mailed envelopes. This is a lot of people's first introduction to anthrax, a bacteria often associated with both domestic and wild animals. But what is anthrax, how is it spread, and where did it come from? To clarify, this episode is about the disease, not the metal band.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, talk is about books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's busted out. We were shot through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Wow. I think they feel like. Hello, everybody. And welcome to Saul Bones to Marital to our Miss Guide in Medicine. I'm a co-host Justin McAroy. He was all the melody there. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy.

And I feel like you're showing off that you don't have a sore throat. Still, people are starting to get worried, worried said I read on the blogs before I like She okay? I'm really worried about I don't read that my listen two episodes in a row. You don't read the blogs. I don't I don't Are there still blogs? I don't know I? Don't know I try not to know I ran for office. I tried to avoid I don't know, I try not to know. I ran for office, I tried to avoid public commentary.

I don't even be a toy anymore. Myself as an individual. You know how many great hot takes I had about Avatar Way of Water that I just had to sit on because they weren't a TikTok and they weren't an Instagram. It was a tweet and maybe a series of great, great tweets. Which the only thing that I regret about that is then I had to hear them.

Yeah, that's true. That's the are you happy now? You know, my wife has to hear my avatar way a lot of hot things. The worst thing you've done. Yeah. No, I'm fine. I'm okay. I don't want anybody to worry.

Why do you keep telling me to worry so often and talk about how much pain you're in? You don't want me to worry. It's not true. Justin, I can't do another show. I don't. I've never said that. I've never said that. It will go away.

Whatever is wrong with me. I'm not going to think about it. Okay. Good. Yeah. The winning strategy for everyone who is in healthcare, they're not going, mm-hmm. Yes, this is what we do. We don't think about it.

That's perfect. That's exactly what that's the right response. Everybody's not in healthcare. They're going, what? Why? I understand. That's perfect. That's exactly what that's the right response. Everybody's not in healthcare. They're going, what? Why? I understand. I'm fine.

I'm getting better. I'm really, I'm fine. You said this morning, I'm not getting better. What is it? You can't give a different message to the kids, to our listener, kids. And not to me. I'm not that strong. I can't have a stiff over it.

Like I said, I either think this is the, I don't wanna get into my own personal medical. I mean, I'm not being weird about it. I just, I don't think that's very interesting. It's not fun for you listeners to have to hear my theories on why I've had a sore throat for over a week now. Just guarantee to me that by the next episode it'll be 100% better. And then nobody has to worry about it.

I can't guarantee, listen, I would have thought that a few days ago, but I've plateaued, but. Oh, man. That's not what we're here to talk about. For some reason. One of our listeners wrote an email, thank you, Mark, asking if we had covered anthrax. And I thought, well, yeah, sure, Mark,

I mean, we've been doing this show for 10 years. Certainly. Certainly at some point. And I couldn't find an episode that we did on Anthrax. It's a funny thing when you do a show as long as ours. We get a lot of emails from people who are like, how could you guys not have done a show on this? And I'm like, let me look on Google, we did do that.

Why do you not Google before you suggested episode? But then even we can't keep track of what episode we've done. No, I don't blame you, because I can't keep track either. And sometimes I go, surely we did. And then I go, oh, we didn't. Or I'm like, absolutely, I haven't. I've done that actually.

I've started to research again and then go, oh, wait, this feels really familiar. I've done this episode. So we haven't. I think we have touched on it in a variety of different episodes. There's lots of aspects to the history of the discovery of anthrax and then it's uses of bioterrorism,

weapon and things that I think we have touched upon in different episodes, but we've never just talked a whole episode about anthrax. At least I hope, as far as Google showed me. I didn't get to say there's probably like a page where I could look through every podcast we've ever done just in a list, huh? I mean, we have transcriptions for a lot of them on our website.

That would take a lot more time. That would take a lot more time. Yeah. Anyway, it's old, it's interesting. I think a lot of people hear anthrax and it's scary. The word is kind of scary. It is kind of scary. Well, depending on context, it's kind of rocking too.

I mean, it's like a cool word Like a band to right. Yeah, that's a band. How is that not part of your research? I figured the second half of the episode is about anthrax the band. I am a scientist Well music is is there's a lot of I am not a rock and roller Are you about to tell me something about anthrax, the band before? I'm out there on the road, hun. They're getting it done. January 17th, they're going to be in Boise. Get out there. Do you know where the word comes from? You have the band anthrax. I'm looking right at it. The word anthrax. They're not coming to us, Virginia, or Ohio. So okay. It's a reference to coal. I'm a Greek anthracis. It's for coal because the skin lesions, when you get the cutaneous form, the skin form

of it, the things that appear on your skin are really black. You get these big, black, escars, but anyway, there's these big, black, like sort of scabby lesions and they look like coal. So, the hypocrite is called it anthrax, because coal, anthrax is there. I feel like as a West Virginia, you should have known that. So, it's caused by a gram-positive,

rata bacteria, best cellus anthracis. And it forms the thing about anthrax, and I think the reason that we talk about it as like a, I don't want to say a good bioterism agent like this is not a morality. I mean, good, you know what I mean? I'm using effective. There's maybe a word effective would be a word. It forms an endospore.

So it's got like the spore coat around it that protects it. So it can like lie dormant for a really long time. It can survive for a really long time. It can survive for a long time before like in the right conditions, it comes back to life and causes an infection and then causes harm. So because it has that spore form,

it makes it a useful agent if you're trying to like put something in a powder, for instance. I'm really sorry. The cat is trying to pull the heath-hoots off the thing. It's very distracting. I'm sorry, everyone about her cat. Well, that hurt. She's in charge.

The spores can live, usually in dirt or on animals, honestly, most of the time. We'll talk about where people have contracted anthrax from touching and becoming in contact with animals. They can be out in the dirt. You can, there's different ways. You can like have the spores into your body and the different ways that they enter your body causes different kinds of disease. I feel like it's useful to sort of go over what anthrax is as a disease because chances

are you've never seen it. Chances are you don't know somebody who's had anthrax. Yeah, that's accurate. It's 100% right. So, you can get it by either inhaling it. So, the little spores are very tiny, so you can breathe them in. You can eat contaminated animal products, and you can get a gastrointestinal form, a GI form of it. So, you can ingest it, or you can get it through like an open wound. So, and you're thinking about people

who are handling animals or handling animal coats or hides or whatever, and might have like a cutter or a break in the skin or something like that. So there's the different sort of ways you can come in contacts with the anthrax. Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna sound stupid for a second. So help me out, okay.

I think because I grew up in a time period and we're gonna get to this where a notable and quote unquote anthrax attack is kind of what brought anthrax onto my radar, like a lot of other people. And I think I'm unclear as to what, like there was a lot of discussion about it being like, like a powder at that time.

That was in like envelopes. Is it like a thing, like a microscopic bug that we're passing back and forth to each other, like COVID or the cold of the flu, or is it like a substance that makes you sick like asbestos or other toxins? You were playing with the cat, so you missed this part? I wasn't playing with the cat. I was trying to keep the cat from destroying our record. It is a bacteria.

You're right. I understand. A gram positive rod. The psilocynthrasis. Yes. So it is a germ. Okay. It is not a substance. It's not as best as it is a germ. It's a, you know, living organism. But you cannot pass it back and forth to each other. That is not the way we get panthrax. You get it from coming in contact each other. That is not the way we get anthrax. You get it from coming in contact with the spores out in the environment, and then you catch it from that. You get it. You become infected, but it is not contagious.

If I have it, I'm not going to give you anthrax. Got it. So, and like I said, the reason it works well on a powder is it's a microorganism. We can't see it. Like, I can't have a pile of anthrax here on the table and you see it. But because it has that endospor form that's very hearty and survives well for long periods of time, you can put it in a powder or something.

And because it can be inhaled, if you have a very light powder that you have also put a vial of this microorganism at you that you inhale the powder and in the powder of the spores. Got it. Right. I'm with you now. Thanks for clarifying. Yeah. Or like drop it from a plane that way. Whoa. We'll get there. Dang. You're a ratchet of the tension. It's like a bomb. The same across me. Well, so this leads to different forms of anthrax. Like I said, there's the skin form or cutaneous form.

It causes these blisters that then you get swelling and then the classic lesions. And if you look at pictures, they're like these big black, like I said, they're escars, they're like thick black skin lesions. They, and then like they can also ray, they can be anywhere on the face, neck, arm, wherever you come in contact with the bacteria, right? And I mean, this is, yes, this is all treatable by the way now in the early days of May and

thrice was. It's all treatable now, but there's still, it's still a big deal, right? It's still a very dangerous disease to get, any of the forms. The form where you inhale it can make you really sick. It obviously, it affects your lungs. At that point, You get pneumonia-like symptoms and you can get pretty sick from inhaling the spores. There's like I said, the GI form, which is less common, but you get like diarrhea, it can be bloody diarrhea, and vomiting, and stomach aches, and you know, you can get very sick from ingesting it. And there's also a newer form, and by newer,

I mean like in the last decade or so. So newer in the sense of anthrax, which has been around since ancient times, where you can actually get it from injection. So we have found some cases in people who use injection drugs, where, and it's similar to like the skin form, except you're actually end up injecting the bacteria into the vessel. So it's a more invasive and quicker spreading cutaneous form. Does that make sense? Yes.

And each of these are slightly different in terms of like the approach to treatment and management, how severe we expect the disease course to be and what the mortality rate is, is different for all of these different things. For most people, you develop it within a week of exposure, although it can take up to 60 days that does allow for a little bit of a prophylaxis period. So like, if you've been exposed,

for sure, absolutely to anthrax. And we know this, which would be hard to know, right? But like, in a bioterrorism incident, we know we can give you an antibiotic to take for 60 days to try to prevent this exposure from turning into infection. Does that make sense? That kind of lead time is helpful sometimes. Like I said, it's been mentioned since ancient times. I thought this was interesting. Some historians think that it is the fifth biblical plague. The one where all the livestock died. May have been anthrax. Although I was reading about that and there was like, there are these like historical arguments that's like, no, it was probably actually this or it could have been anthrax. Although I was reading about that and there were these historical arguments

that was like, no, it was probably actually this or it could have been this. I don't know. I don't have a scientific opinion on that. It may have been anthrax that killed all that livestock. There you go. There were scattered descriptions throughout ancient China, ancient Greece, ancient Rome,

and of course Egypt. We see the first real clinical, like the things we know are anthrax. I mean, obviously, hypocrite is named it, but like to actually say people are getting it, here's what it looks like, here's a clinical description. We don't really get until the 1700s from Marrette and fornier. Fornier, I saw that name and I was like, I know this name. If you're in medicine, you know the name fornie because he famously, John Alfred

fornie is his full name. There's a doctor who has a type of gangrene named after him. What an honor. Fornie is gangrene, which is of course, gangrene of the scrotum. Ah, yes. I know it well. You do. I don't. It just sounds very unpleasant. It's a bad gangrene to get. As a scrotum, it sounds like one of the worst ones you can get. It's unpleasant. It's a very serious gangrene. Where they're unpleasant gangrene.

Yes. So this has nothing, by the way, the fact that 4.0 also named scrotum gangrene after himself, well, somebody probably, he probably didn't name it after himself. Somebody else did, he was probably like, Oh, this one? Cool. That kind of gangrene? I want to be remembered forever. after himself, well, somebody probably, he probably didn't name it after himself. Somebody else did, he was probably like, that kind of gangrene.

I want to be remembered forever. I'll touch me to it. Listen, as a practicing physician right now, in this point in history, I will tell you that if I get anything named after me, I'll be happy. I don't care what it is. I don't care how unpleasant or gross or weird. If I get anything named after me,

I'll consider it a win. I got a millipede named after me. Unless it's like doing a bad thing, unless it's like, oh, you pulled a Sydney, meaning like you misdiagnosed some, but you know what I mean? Unless it's a bad, but like if I get my name on something,

that's just, that's a big win for me. Yeah, the Macroi Millipede is named after, that's named after our family. So you get, I think that, that's, that's a big win for me. Yeah, the McHroy Millipede is named after our family. So you get that. I think that that's that's that wasn't even the name that I got like that's not even my original name. Yeah, this fair. That's not yeah, this fair name something the smearl. You just got an email from a listener who named their child after you.

That's got a count. That's a really good point. Yeah. Thank you, by the way, you know who you are. Thank you that it made me cry and it's got a count. That's a really good point. Yeah. Thank you. By the way, you know who you are. Thank you. That it made me cry and I spent a rough week and I needed that. So thank you. And good luck, little Sydney. Which is what I say every morning. As she goes off to work. In 1876, anthrax helped play a role in developing Coke's Postulates. We've talked about Robert Coke and his Postulates

before on the show. How we figured out, like, how do you prove that a certain germ causes a certain illness? Coke's Postulates. Yes. He was investigating an outbreak of an illness in farm animals. At this point, they'd already found the bacteria,

like all these previous experiments, throughout the 1800s. They'd actually seen the bacteria, like all these previous experiments throughout the 1800s. They'd actually seen the bacteria, but Coke wanted to prove it. So he took a cow that had anthrax, and he took some material from the cow spleen that had these little germs, these rods that he suspected were anthrax in it.

And he used a sliver of wood, like he got some cow spleen on a little splinter and poked a mouse with it. Oh, oh, oh. And it said like near their tail, buy its tail. I don't know if they mean, let's say buy its tail. So I don't mean like in the tail or the base of the tail or like in his butt next to his tail.

So we poke the mouse with the splinter of cow spleen. The mouse got sick. He got some material from that mouse spleen, pokes some other mice anyway. I was able to then isolate the bacteria from further spleens down the road. Lots of spleens in this story. And proved that this was the bacteria that was causing this problem and developed his postulates. All the mice got better and had families and a successful career in the arts. So they were fine too. Except they had had splinectubies.

Other than that. There's some other considerations when you don't need your splints. When you don't need it, I mean, there's some things you have to consider. When you don't have splints. They were living through. They were, they were, they were specific concerns.

But they were fine. But they didn't have splints. So after all this work from Coke, Louis Pasteur decided like, because I guess they were kind of rivals, and Pasteur was like, and I'm gonna repeat all that, just to make sure I buy it. And also, like, I'm gonna make a vaccine,

because that would, like, I'm gonna next level, I'm gonna one up you. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna, you just came up with this problem, I'm gonna fix it, and then there's no problem anymore, everybody forget about you. And he did, and he did all these studies with it. And it's interesting, he proved stuff like that

if you buried, so if an animal died of anthrax and it was buried, and then it's down in the dirt and there's anthrax spores in the animal, like in the cadaver, that those spores could be carried to the surface of the soil by earthworms? Oh, wow.

Yeah. Who then like pooped the spores back out up on the surface in that wild? To sort of like find where does anthrax live on earth? There it is. So, and then finally he did, like I said, the vaccine study where he did like a live public demonstration of giving a bunch of vaccines to sheep, and then these other sheep didn't

get vaccines, and then he infected them all with anthrax and all the ones who had the vaccine lived and all the ones who didn't have the vaccine died. Boy, they were hard up for entertainment back then, huh? I mean, a public demonstration of that does not sound particularly gripping. You do have to wait quite some time. It's not an instant thing, right? It's not like the elephant and the ACDC current.

No, no, you're gonna have to check back later, folks. I'm assuming they were like breaks, like nap times. Okay, everybody, we got a churro stand. We got rick's old fashioned lemonade. We got city heat is gonna come play show. We got massing later on the main stage and then we'll check the sheep and capy. So while everybody is waiting for these sheep to get anthrax or not. Why don't you also take a break? All right. And we gotta go to the Billy Department.

Let's go! The medicines, the medicines, the escalate macabre for the mouth. The medicine, the medicine, the medicine, the escalate macabre for the mouth. Jake Heath, do you know what I love more than the trivia, comedy, and celebrity guests on our podcast? Go fact yourself!

No, what, Ellen? Sharing all of those things with an actual audience! Yes, well, lucky for you, Go fact yourself is back to being a live audience show. Woohoo! Yeah, we've got a free recording coming up on January 15th in Los Angeles and February 11th in Pasadena. And if you can't make it there, all of our recordings will still be available as a podcast. Twice a month, every month on MaximumFun.org.

Yeah, no excuses, so if you're not listening... You can go FACT yourself! Hey there, it's Santa Vell Gourwidge. And I'm Lera House. We host Tiny Victories, the 15 minute podcast that's about the little things. Getting into the Tiny Victory frame of mine is about recognizing minor accomplishments and fleeting joys. Isn't it a wonderful day when the first password you try actually works? When it's freezing cold outside and toasty as I all get out in my shower, my tiny victory

is that I turn off the water and get on with my day. We can't change this big dumb world but we can celebrate the tiny wins. So join us on Maximum Fun or wherever you listen to podcasts. Let's get tiny! Okay, so obviously we're doing all these experiments in the 1800s. We're learning more about anthrax about how you get it. Obviously there's this livestock vaccine that's not been invented like just for animals so far. And there are more cases of it. It starts to be known. This is a common name of it wool, sorters, disease. Wool sorters, disease. Because people who come in contact with wool

From sheep we're likely to get it because of the spores of you know So it's really connected to that like that. It's funny because that was very much what you connected anthrax to prior to the biological weapon era Which is where we get in the 1900s as I I said, it has this Indos Boer form. It's useful if that is your aim, unfortunately. There is evidence that the German army initially used it to infect livestock. Like that was sort of the first way to...

To try to wipe out food sources. Yeah, exactly, for allied nations. So you feed it to, you put it in animal feed that is getting snuck to your enemies cows So man, so cows so rotten And and so back in world were one this was being used During World War two at that by this point in World War two During World War II at this point in World War II, we really understood like the Possibility and we didn't yet have protections in place that said like you can't use biological weapons, right? Those would come later. I mean, well, you can't you're not supposed to we have rules against that if you can have rules against such things

We try to make rules against such things So during World War II, but the US and the UK experimented with anthrax as a biological weapon, meaning like they were prepared to use it. I don't have evidence that they did, but they were ready just in case to use it against the Nazis. So the US filled 5,000 bombs with anthrax. G-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g- As I said, the UK also began to test bio weapons using anthrax. Specifically, they were testing it on this small island called Grunard Island. And they basically, they would release these bombs of anthrax over the island where they

had 80 sheep to see if, you know, would the sheep get anthrax if you same idea, like, does this work. And what they found is like, one, yes, you can give, yes, the sheep got anthrax, the sheep died. So like you could, you could spread the biological weapon that way. But the other thing that they found out is that once you do that, the spores are there for a very long time. So it's like a, I mean, if you're going to do that, you're really sort of salting the earth in an area for a while at least. The island remained uninhabitable until 1986. And that was only because at that point they had to decontaminate it by soaking the island in a mixture of form out of hide and seawater. Oh my gosh. So that you could disinfect it, basically.

So it's, I don't think that you need me. I don't think my voice needs to be part of the chorus saying that biological weapons are inhumane and should never be used, obviously. But another example of why these weapons were so incredibly dangerous, they're cruel, they're inhumane, you can't control the spread of disease, although the other thing that made anthrax attractive to a lot of people who were trying to do this is exactly what I told you. I can't give it to you.

So you could target a population in a way that with some other germs, you wouldn't be able to, right? Right. It was not going to escape its confund. Right. You could accidentally end up infecting your own side. Yeah, so to speak. Now, all of this use of anthrax and devel,

like experimentation and development and the understanding that like it is possible to use germs as weapons, which I mean, we have a whole history of this. We could talk about smallpox, but there's bad anthrax. There was growing international concern that this isn't a good idea. So obviously, we took steps to ban the use of biological weapons and to put protections in place. We also destroyed a lot of stores of these germs, not all. No one destroyed all of them. Everybody's got them somewhere.

I keep a little bit. You got to keep a little bit just in case. Well, I mean, and that's the thing, right? You never know what the other people are keeping. Right. So everybody kept a little bit, but they did lead it to a destroys, to destroying a lot of these stores. And also it would lead to the creation of vaccines because all the sudden, well, we don't know what they have, but if we vaccinate our team against it, we don't have to worry about it so much. The first, like I said, the first, we had this vaccine that Pastor had used in 1937.

There was another one made, a live sport vaccine for animals that was done so well. It's still used in many countries today. Max Stern made that. The first anthrax vaccine for humans was created in the 50s. It was actually tested in a group of goat hair mill workers. They were either given the vaccine or placebo. They were followed up for a two year period, and they found that the vaccine was 92.5% effective

in preventing the skin form, the cutaneous form of anthrax, which is what you're most concerned with with people who are handling goat hair all day, right? So it was made available specifically to people working in these kind of mills after that. It was really targeted at specific occupational exposures at first. It wouldn't be until 1970 that weekend. This is always the history with vaccines. We've talked about them a lot on this show. You make your first one, but you're always trying to see like, is there a better form, is there a cleaner form?

Nowadays we have a lot of those early questions answered. We don't have to go through all the same steps that we used to, but there's always the possibility that we could refine something and make it better. If we're not doing that in medical science, we're doing something wrong. It's rare that we've reached, where have we reached the pinnacle? Podcasting. Well, I'm at medical science book. Okay, yeah. Sorry.

So they continued to develop and perfect the vaccine and the one that was released in the 70s is the one that we still have in use today. It, again, is you have not probably statistically, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have not received a vaccine against anthrax. You may have, because people in specific occupations will. Now it is more targeted for members of the military because of this long history of the use of anthrax as a biological weapon. It's also specifically people who work in certain jobs

where they come into contact with animals. Like certain veterinarians and things may have had an anthrax vaccine or animal handlers and different occupations. People who work in labs with anthrax obviously. Yeah, I would ask for that day one. But it's not a standard vaccine given to everybody in medicine, certainly. Like I have never had an anthrax vaccine.

You know, most of us have not, but there is one that is available. Okay, do I need it? No, Justin, do you have any of the jobs that I just- I'd give you vaccine. Give them, give them all to me. Yeah, I mean like- I wanna walk the world, I'm afraid.

Don't give you wrong. If vaccines were, if all vaccines were just widely available, easily, cheaply, freely, even better, freely available to everybody all the time, I would have no problem just getting all of that stuff against it, whatever. Just why not?

Just in case. Whatever you got. Just in case. I mean, I think the issue is more the supply, like because so much stuff is profit driven, especially for some of these vaccines, there are only so many. And so from a health justice standpoint, I am not at risk of anthrax, at least that I know, at least high risk. And so it would not make sense for me to utilize that limited resource. Now in a perfect world, it would not be a limited resource.

But anyway, so in 2001, this is what you had referenced at the beginning of the show. There was an attack of bioterrorism weapon using anthrax in the United States following the attacks of September 11th. That was very scary. It was Amerithrax is what it was dubbed. That was the code name of the FBI investigation. Did you know that? No, that's not very good. There were letters like a company that comes to your house and fixes your windshield.a Thrax is what the FBI called it There were letters that were laced with anthrax that were mailed to people all in all five

US citizens were killed As a result of these attacks 17 became sick. It was it's hard to it's hard to Biological attack in our history and it's hard to if you didn't live through it, to really appreciate how we were already in a pretty fractured state, like mentally, everyone is processing the idea that terrorism is something that like we have to be concerned about here on a wide scale. And then this attack happens. And it's something that's so innocuous. It's like open the mail and whatever. So in the, in the, it was a very, very big deal because we kind of thought, is this going to be our life for now?

Like are we just constantly going to be under threat of, you know, terrorist attacks? So. Well, and it's, and it's the, I mean, I think that's the thing, that's the other thing about biological weapons outside of how cruel getting someone sick is. The idea that you would open a piece of mail and that letter, I mean, like these letters said things like, we have this anthrax you die now. Because by the time you are reading these words, ostensibly you've already inhaled what's

inside. And that, I mean, I think the fear that you can create with that kind of weapon is so, it's just, I mean, it's horrifying to consider, it's inhumane, it's, yeah. It wasn't until 2010 that that investigation was formally concluded. It took a long time to trace the origins of the strains of anthrax and do the proper testing to figure all that out.

They brought charges against Dr. Bruce Ivens, but he died by suicide before the charges could be filed. And then the case was closed a couple years later. I will say, other than these bioterrorism episodes, there have been a couple unique ways that people can get. And these are for all of you out there who might be studying medicine. These are your board questions. A drum maker from New York City. Yes, someone who makes drums got sick while on tour with a dance troupe. As in 2006, he had just returned from Africa. He had gotten some goat skins that he was making drums out of. He had processed them to remove the hair, but he didn't use any chemicals to kill the germs. And stretching the goat skins over,

he came in contact with hair and dust particles and anthrax, particles and inhaled anthrax and got inhalation anthrax, particles, and inhaled anthrax and got inhalation anthrax from making these drums. So if there is a drum maker who gets sick on a board question, think anthrax. I had one of those questions once on one of the many exams I've taken.

There was another woman who got sick in 2009 while attending a drumming circle, got anthrax. Somebody hates these drums, guys. We gotta stay out of drumming circles, okay? Be smart out there. And like I said, the newest form, the thing that I had a personal interest in kind of keeping track of is in 2010 in Germany they started to see.

It's for her Batman-style wall of monitors that she uses to keep tabs. In 2010, they saw an outbreak of, well, not an outbreak. I shouldn't say outbreak, because it's not contagious, right? They saw multiple cases of a newer form of anthrax injection based anthrax, meaning that something in the materials that you're using to inject a substance has become contaminated with anthrax, and then when you inject it, you know, contract the disease, which would be possible if you didn't have clean materials when you were injecting. So that is, I found some scattered case reports on that, but I thought that was an interesting

thing to, I specifically tend to take care of people who use injection drugs, so that is, that is of interest to me. So that is the history of anthrax. I guess. Bio-terrorism is bad. Bio-weapons are bad. Okay. I mean, you heard it here first, folks.

There's not a lot of room for equivocation there. Bio-weapons are bad. Before, you know, I had to, I did a military tropical medicine course when I was doing my residency. I'm not in the military, I'm a civilian, but I was able to access it through my residency program, through my global health track. And there was a specifically-

We lived in inside Terry Chase for a month. It was wild. The place. But specifically, there was one lecture on bioterism and bio-weapons and that kind of thing. And they had to, like, I remember they came up to me the day before and they were like, we just wanted to let you know you will be allowed to attend the lecture tomorrow.

We checked you out. I was like, wait, what? Yeah, yeah. Wait, what, what did you do? Which is, in totally makes sense, no problem with that, but I didn't know anybody was doing any checking on me to make sure I could attend the lecture. Or I was checking.

So I did attend the lecture specifically on bioterrorism, and I have learned from it, and I hope I've helped pass that knowledge on to you. Was it classified though? No. Okay good. That's for educational purposes. Thanks so much for listening to podcast. Thanks to the taxpayers for using their song medicines as the intro and our program. Hey, I saw something. Did you know we have a book? It's called the Saw Buns book. It was illustrated by a Sydney sibling Taylor and It's very good. You can get wherever there's books. The newest version has the paperback

has like stuff about quarantine and open, things like that. That is gonna do it for us for this week until next time. My name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. As always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! supported.