anthrax spores, which settle in the lung and reactivate in the favorable environment of the body, causes the inhalation form. It is a rare form of the disease, but is the primary form of this disease used in biological warfare and domestic bioterrorism weapons. Symptoms usually start as a cough and fever over one to two days, but rapidly progress to respiratory failure, shock and death. Because of the difficulty in recognizing and quickly diagnosing the disease, delay in treatment of unprotected individuals has very low survival rates. Previous exposure to anthrax or the vaccine confers some degree of immunity.
             Human disease is primarily limited to those working with infected animals or individuals in third world countries exposed to infected, unvaccinated animals. Over 10,000 cases were reported in Zimbabwe from 1979 to 1985. Approximately 2000 cases occur annually worldwide. Only 224 cases of coetaneous anthrax were reported in the US in the fifty-year period ending in 1994. Even more rare, only 18 human cases of the inhalation form were reported in the US this century.
             Accidental and intentional releases of biological weaponized forms of anthrax have been reported recently. In 1979, at least 68 deaths and 79 cases due to accidental release and downwind contamination from a Soviet military biological weapons production facility in Russia. There have been at least eight intentional releases of anthrax as a domestic bioterrorism agent by the Japanese organization, Aum Shinriyko, although no deaths or infections have been reported. There have been seven alleged threats or uses of anthrax in the US in the last two months of 1998 reported to the Centers for Disease Control.
             The anthrax vaccine is an inactivated (killed), cell-free filtrate type vaccine. The vaccine stimulates immunity by triggering antibodies to one of the three toxic protein factors associated with the anthrax bacterium. This antibody stimulation ...