Calif. Vaccine Researchers Exposed to Anthrax

Anthrax vaccine researchers at a hospital near San Francisco have been exposed to the potentially lethal bacterium and are being treated with antibiotics, a hospital spokeswoman said on Thursday.

Anthrax vaccine researchers at a hospital near San Francisco have been exposed to the potentially lethal bacterium and are being treated with antibiotics, a hospital spokeswoman said on Thursday. The five researchers have not shown signs of infection, said Bev Mikalonis, a spokeswoman for Children’s Hospital in Oakland, California. The hospital believes they were exposed because of a shipping error at the laboratory that supplied the anthrax, but is unclear how they acquired a live version of the bacterium instead of the dead version they ordered, said Mikalonis. The researchers had assumed they were handling a dead version in liquid form during experiments on mice. After mice injected with the anthrax began to die on Monday, California officials were contacted to investigate and they confirmed the mice had been injected with a live version. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s bioterrorism unit has removed the anthrax from the hospital’s vaccine research institute, and the Centers for Disease Control is investigating the incident, Mikalonis said. (Source: Reuters Health, June 2004)