Microbiologist Mark Wheelis, an expert on biowarfare control, presented a bad-news, good-news scenario last week to faculty and staff members, students and others concerned about the threat of anthrax.

The threat is real, with the potential for far worse attacks than the recent spate of anthrax-tainted letters, Wheelis told about 100 people who crowded into 1022 Life Sciences Addition.

However, he said the chances of dying of anthrax are about as unlikely as getting struck by lightning. "You’re certainly in more danger driving to the airport or driving to work for that matter."

He encouraged people to remain calm. "I would say the amount of fear and anxiety is way out of proportion to what’s happened. Each individual faces a very, very low risk."

Wheelis, who has spent 12 years studying bioweapons control, said the recent anthrax attacks haven’t led to any changes in his own lifestyle, other than fielding numerous requests for media interviews.

"I’m not worried about myself or my family," he said. "I haven’t bought a gas mask. I’m not stockpiling Cipro," an antibiotic used to treat anthrax.

Tom Rost, associate dean of the Division of Biological Sciences who arranged for Wheelis’ Oct. 24 talk, said he thought it would be helpful for members of the campus community to get accurate information on anthrax from an internationally recognized authority.

One staffer who attended said he wasn’t particularly worried about anthrax but wanted to be better informed. "It helped me not to develop a lot of anxiety," said Gary Willet, a computer resource specialist for the Division of Biological Sciences dean’s office.

"If I have any anxiety about something, it’s probably because I don’t understand it. If I have good information about it, I’m more comfortable."

Wheelis said anthrax, a disease that occurs naturally in grazing animals, is relatively easy to grow, making it "far and away the most likely [organism] to be used by a terrorist organization. "Pretty much anyone with a degree in microbiology could grow spores," he said.

However, he said developing the most deadly inhalational forms would require biocontainment facilities and a team of people with doctoral-level training in a variety of fields. Two other countries, besides the United States, are known to have developed weapons-grade anthrax–Iraq and the former Soviet Union.

Analyses of the anthrax-tainted letters should have enabled the government by now to identify the likely source and determine how dangerous the spores are, Wheelis said.

He said that if anthrax on the letter sent to Sen. Tom Daschle was "weapons-grade," as a number of sources have indicted, then the method of delivery was relatively crude. "This is a very unsophisticated way of disseminating finely powdered anthrax spores."

He said that suggests that the person or people behind the attacks did not manufacture the anthrax.

Wheelis said the use of anthrax-tainted letters makes it possible to determine who has been exposed and to get them immediate treatment, greatly improving their chances of recovery.

If treatment begins soon after exposure, chances of surviving are good, Wheelis said. However, if treatment starts after symptoms arise, more than half the cases end in death. Left untreated, inhalational anthrax is fatal more than 80 percent of the time.

Two other forms of anthrax–cutaneous and gastrointestinal–are far less deadly. Most people who get cutaneous anthrax, from exposure to a scrape or cut on their skin, recover on their own. It is fatal in 15 percent of untreated cases and less than 1 percent of treated cases.

Gastrointestinal anthrax, from ingesting the spores, is virtually unheard of in this country. Wheelis said it occurs in places like Siberia where there’s an active black market in meat or lax regulation of meat safety.

Kathleen Holder is communications manager for the Division of Biological Sciences.