Anthrax "matches US bioweapon strain" Anthrax spores now spreading terror in America closely match a strain developed as a US bioweapon in the 1960s. According to the evidence, it is not the same type as the one mass-produced for weapons by either Iraq or the former Soviet Union. The FBI has confirmed that the anthrax sent to Florida, NBC, and Senator Tom Daschle were all the same strain, Ames. This was the name given to a strain isolated by the US Department of Agriculture's veterinary laboratory in Ames, Iowa, in the 1930s and which still strikes cattle in western America. But it also has a more sinister connotation, according to a special report in the magazine New Scientist. Experts analysing the anthrax used in the US attacks are comparing its DNA with a library of strains collected from all over the world. The name Ames was given to one of the strains in this collection, which came from a freezer sample at the British biodefence establishment at Porton Down, Wiltshire, in the 1980s. Porton Down had acquired it from the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Maryland, the magazine says. Those who compiled the library said it was the same strain the US used for anthrax weapons. The programme ended in 1969 and the mass-produced anthrax was destroyed, but samples were kept both by the US and its allies. One expert interviewed by the magazine, Martin Hugh-Jones, of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, said the Ames strain was "a challenge to any vaccine". When laboratory animals immunised with a vaccine now being given to thousands of American troops were exposed to the anthrax, many still died from it. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/ � Copyright Press Association Ltd 2001, all rights reserved.
