Amerithrax by Robert Graysmith Read Free Book Online

concerned a Manhattan office building deliberately contaminated with “anthrax” by ter- rorists. One NYPD officer was asked what he would do in the event of such a situation. “Bring in the tank,” he said. “The tank?” asked Dr. Perkins. “It’s a show of force,” the
    cop replied. “So I had been educated about this,” Perkins said later, “but investigation was easier before the FBI was really involved. Before Public Health was in charge. Now it was a criminal investigation. At that point I decided to chemoprophylax [treat with antibiotics] people who had worked in the building.”
    The risk, according to other experts, was minimal. An official statement was issued to remind citizens that anthrax was not contagious. In Boca Raton, anyone even remotely connected with AMI’s supermarket tabloid the Sun was im- plored to come in and be tested. Spores can take up to sixty days before beginning to germinate and the CDC might still be in time to save lives. At seven o’clock that Sunday eve- ning, Dr. Malecki ordered the evacuation and sealing of the tabloid building.
    On Monday, October 8, television cameras captured long lines stretching in front of a white annex building—the county Health Department in Delray Beach. Seven hundred plus AMI employees and a horde of recent visitors to the contaminated building had answered Perkins’s call. Physi- cians swabbed the nostrils of anyone who had been exposed to the work site for even one hour since August 1. At least two weeks passed between the time officials believe anthrax entered AMI and the office was shut down. During that span 350 employees continued to work in a hot building. Jani- torial crews vacuumed and cleaned each of those days. After the building had been closed, the air conditioner had kept running to prevent heat and humidity from damaging AMI property. All this activity might have disturbed the spores and spread them.
    One thousand seventy-five nasal swabs were taken from employees and cultured in dark red agar, sheep’s blood in jelly. Anthrax spores thrive in any type of blood nutrient. The swabs were expected to pick up any spores trapped in nose hairs and mucus. Sometimes an exposed person might have a negative nasal swab, but there was no test to tell who might develop anthrax in the near future.
    A preliminary test would show results within twelve to twenty-four hours. In the “quick test” antibodies bind to anthrax antigens on the spore surface. The lab would con-
    firm evidence of B. anthracis DNA in pleural fluid and blood by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The most defin- itive test, the gold standard, was to let the spores germinate over time and form a characteristic glassy, gray colony, on which technicians could perform a genetic test. They used the definitive test on Ernie Blanco.
    As a preventive measure Dr. Perkins put all of the over one thousand employees and visitors on ciprofloxacin anti- biotics, giving each patient two weeks’ worth of Cipro pills and refills for prescriptions. Ciprofloxacin, a whitish, lozenge-shaped pill, was considered an effective and pow- erful antibiotic cure for all known forms of anthrax. Cipro sometimes causes serious diarrhea and other side effects. It also kills normal bacteria in the gut, leaving only resistant germs. To be really effective, Perkins’s patients would have to take the antibiotic for the next two months.
    In the meanwhile, public anxiety escalated as fast as the tension between Dr. Perkins and the FBI. “I felt lives were on the line,” Dr. Perkins told the press. “The FBI believed some criminal was killing people and their only objective was to nab him.” The FBI took the lead, assuming control over the AMI building in the Arvida Park of Commerce, their crime scene, and making it a command center. What the feds really wanted to learn was if the bacterium was part of a second attack by the now-dead terrorists. However, so far they’d been unable to find any traces of