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Fear of Anthrax
Wednesday
October 10, 2001
Anthrax - the very name strikes fear in the heart of Americans. Especially since the bacteria has killed one Florida man and has been detected in another this week. Now there are reports that laboratories in Iowa, Texas, or Haiti may have created or modified the manmade strain and shipped it out to researchers at places like Northern Arizona University (NAU).
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Today “Extra” learned that investigators swarmed into a building on the campus, which houses a national anthrax repository. NAU officials won't say it, but “Extra” has learned investigators wanted to see if any strains there matched the Florida type.
Meantime the anthrax scare is creating a run on an antibiotic
called Cipro. Mike Lake is the pharmacist in charge at
Capitol Drugs in Los Angeles. He's seeing Cipro-mania.
He says, “We ran out of it on our shelves. We had to order
large quantities to keep up with the demand.”
That means people who desperately need the drug for other
medical conditions like bronchitis, may not be able to
get it. Dr. Milton Louie at Glendale Memorial Hospital
in California says that not everyone should take Cipro.
“Some people can develop nausea. We really worry about
cipro, especially in young children. They may develop
problems with their cartilage and joints.”
Even scarier, there is a vaccine, but it's made by only one company, Bioport, and they haven't shipped any for three years. Tonight on “20/20” Barbara Walters puts tough questions to BioPort president Robert Kramer. He says in the interview, “We have a significant amount of vaccine in stockpile.”
Trouble is, they can't ship any of it because BioPort can't meet FDA standards for its Michigan plant. That means we probably won't see any new vaccine until the new year, when America might need it right now.
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