The Black Death and Plague.
Plague in Biological warfare. Epidemiologist of plague following use as a biological weapon. Present day incidents of suspected attempted attacks using plague Larry Wayne Harris and Levitt American white supremacist bio terrorists? Al-Quaida
General on Bubonic Plague & the Black Death. Signs and symptoms of Bubonic Plague. Pathophysiology of Bubonic Plague. Treatment of Bubonic plague Laboratory Testing for Bubonic Plague
Pneumonic plague Pathology and transmission Symptoms Prognosis and treatment Present Day Occurrences of Pneumonic Plague.
Bubonic plague
Bubonic plague is a zoonotic disease, circulating mainly among small rodents and their fleas, and is one of three types of infections caused by Yersinia pestis (formerly known as Pasteurella pestis), which belongs to the family Enterobacteriaceae. Without treatment, the bubonic plague kills about two out of three infected humans within 4 days.
The term bubonic plague is derived from the Greek word bubo, meaning "swollen gland." Swollen lymph nodes (buboes) especially occur in the armpit and groin in persons suffering from bubonic plague. Bubonic plague was often used synonymously for plague, but it does in fact refer specifically to an infection that enters through the skin and travels through the lymphatics, as is often seen in flea-borne infections. The first recorded epidemic ravaged the Byzantine Empire during the sixth century, and was named the Plague of Justinian after emperor Justitinian.
Bubonic plague — along with the septicemic plague and the pneumonic plague is generally believed to be the cause of the Black Death that swept through Europe in the 14th century and killed an estimated 75 million people, or 30-60% of the European population. Because the plague killed so many of the working population, wages rose and some historians have seen this as a turning point in European economic development. Justinian I, who was infected but survived through extensive treatment. The Black Death originated in or near China and spread by way of the Silk Road or by ship. Carried by the fleas on rats, it spread along trade routes and reached the Crimea in 1347.
The most famous symptom of bubonic plague is painful, swollen lymph glands, called buboes. These are commonly found in the armpits, groin or neck. Due to its bite-based form of infection, the bubonic plague is often the first step of a progressive series of illnesses. Bubonic plague symptoms appear suddenly, usually 2–5 days after exposure to the bacteria. Symptoms include:
ChillsGeneral ill feeling (malaise)
High fever (39 °Celsius; 102 °Fahrenheit)
Muscle Cramps
Seizures
Smooth, painful lymph gland swelling called a bubo, commonly found in the groin, but may occur in the armpits or neck, most often at the site of the initial infection (bite or scratch)
Pain may occur in the area before the swelling appears
Skin color changes to a pink hue in some extreme cases
Bleeding out of the cochlea will begin after 12 hours of infection.
Other symptoms include heavy breathing, continuous blood vomiting, aching limbs, coughing, and extreme pain. The pain is usually caused by the decay or decomposure of the skin while the person is still alive. Additional symptoms include extreme fatigue, gastrointestinal problems, lenticulae (black dots scattered throughout the body), delirium and coma.
Two other types of Y. pestis plague are pneumonic and septicemic. Pneumonic plague, unlike the bubonic or septicemic, induces coughing and is very infectious, allowing to it be spread person-to-person.
Bubonic plague is an infection of the lymphatic system, usually resulting from the bite of an infected flea, Xenopsylla cheopis (the rat flea). The fleas are often found on rodents such as rats and mice, and seek out other prey when their rodent hosts die. The bacteria form aggregates in the gut of infected fleas and this results in the flea regurgitating ingested blood, which is now infected, into the bite site of a rodent or human host. Once established, bacteria rapidly spread to the lymph nodes and multiply. Y. pestis bacilli can resist phagocytosis and even reproduce inside phagocytes and kill them. As the disease progresses, the lymph nodes can hemorrhage and become swollen and necrotic. Bubonic plague can progress to lethal septicemic plague in some cases. The plague is also known to spread to the lungs and become the disease known as the pneumonic plague. This form of the disease is highly communicable as the bacteria can be transmitted in droplets emitted when coughing or sneezing, as well as physical contact with victims of the plague or flea-bearing rodents that carry the plague.
Several classes of antibiotics are effective in treating bubonic plague. These include aminoglycosides such as streptomycin and gentamicin, tetracyclines (especially doxycycline), and the fluoroquinolone ciprofloxacin. Mortality associated with treated cases of bubonic plague is about 1-15%, compared to a mortality rate of 50-90% in untreated cases.
People potentially infected with the plague need immediate treatment and should be given antibiotics within 24 hours of the first symptoms to prevent death. Other treatments include oxygen, intravenous fluids, and respiratory support. People who have had contact with anyone infected by pneumonic plague are given prophylactic antibiotics.
Laboratory testing is required, in order to diagnose and confirm plague. Ideally, confirmation is through the identification of Y. pestis culture from a patient sample. Confirmation of infection can be done by examining serum taken during the early and late stages of infection. To quickly screen for the Y. pestis antigen in patients, rapid dipstick tests have been developed for field use.
Pneumonic plague, a severe type of lung infection, is one of three main forms of plague, all of which are caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It is more virulent and rare than bubonic plague. The difference between the versions of plague is simply the location of the infection in the body; the bubonic plague is an infection of the lymphatic system, the pneumonic plague is an infection of the respiratory system, and the septicemic plague is an infection in the blood stream.
Typically, pneumonic form is due to a secondary spread from advanced infection of an initial bubonic form. Primary pneumonic plague results from inhalation of fine infective droplets and can be transmitted from human to human without involvement of fleas or animals. Untreated pneumonic plague has a very high fatality rate.
Since 2002, the World Health Organization (WHO) has reported six plague outbreaks, though some may go unreported because they often happen in remote areas. Between 1998 and 2009, nearly 24,000 cases have been reported, including about 2,000 deaths, in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Eastern Europe. 98% of the world's cases occur in Africa.
Pneumonic plague can be caused in two ways: primary, which results from the inhalation of aerosolised plague bacteria, or secondary, when septicemic plague spreads into lung tissue from the bloodstream. Pneumonic plague is not exclusively vector-borne like bubonic plague; instead it can be spread from person to person. There have been cases of pneumonic plague resulting from the dissection or handling of contaminated animal tissue. This is one type of the formerly known Black Death. It could kill 90%–95% of a population if the victims coughed and passed on the bacteria.
The most apparent symptom of pneumonic plague is coughing, often with hemoptysis (coughing up blood). With pneumonic plague, the first signs of illness are fever, headache, weakness, and rapidly developing pneumonia with shortness of breath, chest pain, cough, and sometimes bloody or watery sputum. The pneumonia progresses for two to four days and may cause respiratory failure and shock. Patients will die without early treatment, some within 36 hours.
Initial pneumonic plague symptoms can often include:
FeverWeakness
Headache
Nausea
Rapidly developing pneumonia with:
Shortness of breathChest pain
Cough
Bloody or watery sputum (saliva and discharge from respiratory passages).
Pneumonic plague is a very aggressive infection requiring early treatment. Antibiotics must be given within 24 hours of first symptoms to reduce the risk of death,. Streptomycin, gentamicin, tetracyclines, and chloramphenicol are all effective against pneumonic plague.
Antibiotic treatment for 7 days will protect people who have had direct, close contact with infected patients. Wearing a close-fitting surgical mask also protects against infection.
The mortality rate from untreated pneumonic plague approaches 100%.
Present Day Occurrences of Pneumonic Plague.
The People's Republic of China has eradicated the pneumonic plague from most parts of the country, but still reports occasional cases in remote Western areas where the disease is carried by rats and the marmots that live across the Himalayan plateau. Outbreaks can be caused when a person eats an infected marmot or comes into contact with fleas carried by rats. A 2006 WHO report from an international meeting on plague cited a Chinese government disease expert as saying that most cases of the plague in China's northwest occur when hunters are contaminated while skinning infected animals. The expert said at the time that due to the region's remoteness, the disease killed more than half the infected people. The report also said that since the 1990s, there was a rise in plague cases in humans—from fewer than 10 in the 1980s to nearly 100 cases in 1996 and 254 in 2000. Official statistics posted on the Chinese Health Ministry's Web site showed no cases of plague in 2007 and 2008.n September 2008, two persons in east Tibet died of pneumonic plague.
A recent outbreak of the disease in China began in August 2009 in Ziketan Town located in Qinghai Province. The town was sealed off and several people died as a result of the disease. According to spokesperson Vivian Tan of the WHO office in Beijing, "In cases like this [in August 2009], we encourage the authorities to identify cases, to investigate any suspicious symptoms among close contacts, and to treat confirmed cases as soon as possible. So far, they have done exactly that. There have been sporadic cases reported around the country in the last few years so the authorities do have the experience to deal with this."
In September 2010, there were 5 reported cases of pneumonic plague in Tibet.
Peru's health minister says an outbreak of plague has killed a 14-year-old boy and infected at least 31 people in a northern coastal province.
Health Minister Oscar Ugarte says authorities are screening sugar and fish meal exports from Ascope province, located about 325 miles (520 km) northwest of Lima. Popular Chicama beach isn't far away.
Ugarte says the boy, who had Down syndrome, died of bubonic plague July 26, 2010.
He said August 1 that most of the infections are bubonic plague, with four cases of pneumonic plague. The former is transmitted by flea bites, the latter by airborne contagion. The disease is curable if treated early with antibiotics.
The first recorded plague outbreak in Peru was in 1903. The last, in 1994, killed 35 people.
On November 2, 2007, wildlife biologist Eric York died of pneumonic plague in Grand Canyon National Park. York was exposed to the bacteria while conducting a necropsy on a mountain lion carcass.
Some of the earliest instances of biological warfare were said to have been product of the plague, as armies of the 14th century were recorded catapulting diseased corpses over the walls of towns and villages in order to spread the pestilence.
Later, plague was used during the Second Sino-Japanese War as a bacteriological weapon by the Imperial Japanese Army. These weapons were provided by Shirō Ishii's units and used in experiments on humans before being used on the field. For example, in 1940, the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service bombed Ningbo with fleas carrying the bubonic plague. During the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials, the accused, such as Major General Kiyashi Kawashima, testified that, in 1941, some 40 members of Unit 731 air-dropped plague-contaminated fleas on Changde. These operations caused epidemic plague outbreaks.
The Epidemiology of plague following its use as a biological weapon would differ substantially from that of naturally occurring infection. Intentional dissemination of plague would most probably occur via an aerosol of Y pestis, a mechanism that has been shown to produce disease in nonhuman primates. A pneumonic plague outbreak would result with symptoms initially resembling those of other severe respiratory illnesses. The size of the outbreak would depend on factors including the quantity of biological agent used, characteristics of the strain, environmental conditions, and methods of aerosolization. Symptoms would begin to occur 1 to 6 days following exposure, and people would die quickly following onset of symptoms. Indications that plague had been artificially disseminated would be the occurrence of cases in locations not known to have enzootic infection, in persons without known risk factors, and in the absence of prior rodent deaths.
Present day incidents of suspected attempted attacks using .
It was reported in 2006 that an al-Quaida cell killed by the Black Death may have been developing biological weapons when it was infected and all the operatives succumbed to the infection. It was initially believed that they could have caught the disease through fleas on rats attracted by poor living conditions in their forest hideout. But there are now claims the cell was developing the disease as a weapon to use against western cities. Some experts said that the group was developing chemical and biological weapons. Dr Igor Khrupinov, a biological weapons expert at Georgia University, told The Sun: "Al-Quaida is known to experiment with biological weapons. And this group has direct communication with other cells around the world."Contagious diseases, like Ebola and anthrax, occur in northern Africa. It makes sense that people are trying to use them against Western governments." Dr Khrupinov, who was once a weapons adviser to the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, added: "Instead of using bombs, people with infectious diseases could be walking through cities."
Post graduate terrorists.
It was reported last year that up to 100
potential terrorists had attempted to become postgraduate students in Britain in
an attempt to use laboratories. Ian Kearns, from the Institute for Public Policy
Research, told the newspaper: "The biological weapons threat is not going
away. We're not ready for it."
Larry Wayne Harris and William Job Leavitt American white supremacist Bio Terrorists?
The
FBI arrested two men in 1998, including a self-professed white separatist, on
charges of developing and stockpiling a biological agent -- suspected of being
deadly anthrax -- and conspiring to use it as a weapon.
The
FBI announced the arrests of Larry Wayne Harris and William Job Leavitt Jr. at a
news conference Thursday. The men were taken into custody Wednesday evening and
were being held at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas.
"These
individuals posed a potential chemical and biological threat to our
community," said FBI Special Agent Bobby Siller. "It was suspected
that these individuals were in possession of a dangerous biological chemical,
anthrax." However, Leavitt's lawyer, Lamond Mills, said that what the FBI
actually seized was a substance the two men hoped to test and market as an
anthrax vaccine.
The
FBI was tipped off to Harris' alleged activities by a man in Las Vegas who said
Harris had told him of his ability to make biological agents, a top law
enforcement source told CNN.
Harris
on probation for buying bubonic plague
Harris,
46, a native of West Virginia who now lives in Lancaster, Ohio, has a
microbiology degree from Ohio State University. He has written extensively on
the dangers of biological warfare and how people can protect themselves with
massive doses of antibiotics.
A
behavior science expert who looked at Harris for the FBI after his previous
arrest advised agents "to take him seriously because he had this stuff
before," a source said.
"My
son is the most caring person you would ever find," said his mother, Betty
Leavitt. Describing her son as a very religious Mormon, she said he "prays
every time" there is danger of a world conflict and is "extremely
concerned about germ warfare."
Separatist
allegedly described New York attack
According
to an affidavit filed with his arrest warrant, Harris told a group last summer
of a 1995 plan to "place a 'globe' of bubonic plague toxins in a New York
City subway station, where it would be broken by a passing subway train, causing
hundreds of thousands of deaths."
He
told the group, according to the affidavit, that "the Iraqis would be
blamed for that event."
However,
Siller said that there is as of yet no indication as to "what the target
might have been or even if there was a target at this point."