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Date Released: 7/31/2006 To save the Podcast, right click the "Save this file" link below and select the "Save Target As..." option. Save This File (1MB) Download this transcript (64KB)Tularemia Script Dr. Joanne Cono, CDC There are several ways that people can get infected – being bitten by a blood-sucking insect such as a tick or deer fly, by handling meat and skins of infected animals, from food or water that has been contaminated, or by breathing in the bacteria. Cases of tularemia happen naturally in the environment. But cases have also happened in laboratory settings where the disease has been studied. Tularemia is not known to spread from person to person, but it has been studies as a biological weapon, because it could be used to contaminate food and water, and because it does not require many organisms to infect a person. As with the use of plague, the Japanese also used tularemia in their biological warfare program. General Ishii used it in experiments against the people of Manchuria before World War Two. The goal was to create ways to infect as many people as possible at one time. Historians estimate that over 200,000 Chinese were killed in germ warfare field experiments. The World Health Organization once estimated that 50 kilograms of tularemia spread through the air over a city of five million people would lead to 250,000 cases of illness. Nineteen thousand of these sick people would die. Illness from tularemia would be expected to last for several weeks. However relapses can happen during the following weeks, or even months. Dr. May Chu, CDC Tularemia was included in the United States stockpile of biological weapons in the late 1960s. Dr. Ken Alibek was a Soviet Union weapons defector who provided much information about the biological weapons programs in his country. He has indicated that his country and the United States helped similar studies trying to engineer tularemia strains that would be resistant that would be resistant to antibiotics and vaccines. The United States ended its development of such weapons in the early 1970s. Dr. Joanne Cono We’re very concerned about terrorists using tularemia. The disease agent is found not only in nature, but can also be purchased from legitimate sources for commercial, scientific research. Although tularemia may be purchased from other parts of the world where its transfer is not well regulated, access to this bacteria is under tight control in the United States.
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