Robert Koch (1843–1910)
Bacillus anthracis has long played a conspicuous role in science and warfare. During the 1870s, Robert Koch demonstrated that the microbe B. anthracis caused the disease anthrax. Moreover, Koch first noted that this microbe formed spores, permitting it to survive over extended periods under hostile environmental conditions. In 1937, Japanese researchers in occupied Manchuria tested aerosolized anthrax on prisoners and Chinese nationals. During World War II, British and American military scientists evaluated the feasibility of using bombs containing a B. anthracis spore payload, but these were never deployed in combat. Inexpensive, easy to produce, readily transportable and hidden, and very highly effective at low concentrations, anthrax is a preferred biological warfare weapon.
PROTECTION AGAINST BIOTERRORISM. In the fall of 2001, anthrax spores were used as a bioterrorist tool in the United States. After being exposed to spore-contaminated letters, twenty-two cases of inhaled and skin anthrax infections were reported, with five fatalities. (Anthrax is not spread from infected persons but rather from contact with or inhalation of anthrax spores.) Faced with a potential bioterrorist attack, some 10,000 persons in the eastern United States were offered the opportunity to take antibiotic therapy to prevent potentially fatal inhalation anthrax. Ciprofloxacin (Cipro) was one of a limited number of antibiotics recommended to protect exposed individuals.
Since its introduction by Bayer AG in 1987, Cipro has been one of several hundred brand names for ciprofloxacin, a member of the quinolone (or fluoroquinolone) class of antibiotics. These drugs have enjoyed great success, both medically and financially. More than twenty quinolones have been marketed worldwide—all bearing the family name-floxacin as a suffix—although some have been withdrawn.
Quinolones were initially intended for use as backup for the treatment of respiratory and urinary tract disorders when other antibiotics failed. However, notwithstanding their high cost, their activity against a very wide array of bacteria, relatively low toxicity compared with other antibiotics, and low-dosage frequency (taken one to two times a day), has led to their indiscriminate overprescribing, resulting in the development of bacterial resistance and the quinolone’s diminished effectiveness.
SEE ALSO Tetracyclines (1948), Ampicillin (1961).
Cipro is highly effective for the treatment of anthrax (pictured), a potentially deadly infection. Because anthrax spores are easy to produce and effective at low concentrations, they are a choice bioterrorist weapon.