Skip to comments.

Posted on 10/04/2001 9:48:05 PM PDT by NautiNurse

Floridian contracts deadly anthrax

Rare case thought to be isolated

BY LESLEY CLARK, MANNY GARCIA AND DAVID KIDWELL lclark@herald.com

A 63-year-old Palm Beach County man was critically ill in a Lake Worth hospital late Thursday with an inhaled form of anthrax, an extremely obscure and deadly strain of a rare disease that some nations are believed to store for use as a weapon.

With the nation on alert for the threat of biological attacks, federal officials Thursday quickly moved to play down any link between terrorists and the first diagnosed case of anthrax in Florida in 27 years, but nevertheless said there would be ``a very intense investigation'' of the case.

The patient, Robert Stevens, is a photo editor at The Sun, a tabloid published in Boca Raton. It was unclear late Thursday how Stevens contracted the typically animal-borne disease, and a team of state and federal epidemiologists was tracing his steps.

U.S. Health Secretary Tommy Thompson took to a lectern at the White House to stress there was no indication of terrorism.

``This is an isolated case and it's not contagious,'' Thompson said, just hours after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the diagnosis. He added there is ``no evidence [that] terrorism'' was involved.

``There's no need for people to fear they are at risk, whether in Florida or North Carolina or elsewhere,'' said CDC Director Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan. ``There is absolutely no need for panic.''

But Koplan said a deliberate release of the germ by terrorists is one of several possibilities being looked at. ``We have that on the list,'' he said.

Stevens' family told health and law enforcement investigators that they had recently traveled to North Carolina to visit a daughter in Charlotte. Stevens and his wife then drove to Duke University in Durham to visit the daughter's boyfriend.

Federal sources said investigators from the CDC, county and state health agencies and the FBI are tracking Stevens' every movement in North Carolina and Florida from the time he left work on Sept. 26 until he landed in the hospital.

``We need to recreate his life for the last seven days,'' an investigator said. ``Check out every place he visited, walked through.''

State health officials said it's likely Stevens contracted the deadly disease in Florida, based on its incubation period, which ranges from six to 45 days.

``We are quite certain that the illness was contracted in this area where the gentleman resided, not from his travels,'' said Dr. Steve Wiersma, an epidemiologist with the Florida Department of Health.

Anthrax infection typically comes from contact with infected animals, or animal products, including waste and skin. Most commonly, it is contracted by handling the spores.

Only 18 inhalation cases in the United States were documented in the 20th Century, the most recent in 1976, and the strain is usually fatal. State health officials said ``preliminary findings'' indicate Stevens inhaled the deadly bacteria.

``What concerns me is that it has occurred in a part of the United States where this disease does not occur in livestock,'' said Martin Hugh-Jones, an epidemiologist who coordinates the World Health Organization Working Group on Anthrax Research and Control.

Stevens had a garden, but Hugh-Jones said that was an unlikely place to contract pulmonary anthrax.

``You don't get aerosols from soil. You get them from animal wool or animal hair or dirty nasty guys [terrorists] who are damn lucky,'' Hugh-Jones said. ``If this is a bioterrorist event, he's been damn lucky to get one person.''

Hugh-Jones said there have been anthrax cases in gardeners who used bone meal in their soil, and the bone meal had been processed from an infected animal. In those cases, he said, ``they get skin lesions, not pulmonary anthrax.''

He said it might be possible to inhale enough anthrax in aerosol form if one were exposed to infected animal wool or hair as it was being removed from a bale and processed. He added that wool mills have strict federal standards for protecting workers.

With Gov. Jeb Bush traveling to promote a program to help Floridians out of work because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan called for caution.

CALM APPROACH

``We're going to stress a calm and reasoned approach to this particular event,'' Brogan said. ``There is no reason to believe at this juncture that this is anything other than the manifestation of a rare and obviously very serious illness.''

Officials at JFK Memorial Hospital in Lake Worth said Stevens was admitted at about 2 a.m. Tuesday, after arriving with family at the emergency room. He was unable to speak, but family members told physicians he was confused, had a high fever and was vomiting, said Dr. Larry Bush, an infectious disease specialist at JFK.

Fluid from a spinal tap was initially diagnosed as bacillus, which is usually a sign of meningitis. Bacillus is fairly rare, so Bush said he sent the results to a state lab, which then sent the material to the CDC in Atlanta, which confirmed anthrax Thursday afternoon.

The disease is fatal if untreated. Hospital officials said Stevens was receiving penicillin and is on a respirator. He is heavily sedated, but the doctor declined to describe him as comatose. The man's family was said to be with him in the hospital's critical care unit.

In the United States, a single case of anthrax has been confirmed each year on average over the past 10 years, according to a report by Dr. Arthur M. Friedlander, chief of the Bacteriology Division in the U.S. Army Medical Corps.

LAST FLORIDA CASE

The last case in Florida was in 1974, Brogan said. According to news stories at the time, a 22-year-old woman stationed at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville developed the characteristic anthrax blisters after purchasing bongo drums in Haiti. Goat skins used to make the drums were found to be contaminated with anthrax spores. The woman recovered.

The bacteria is most deadly when spread by air, making it one of the most feared methods of biological attack. But such cases are rare. In 1979 in Sverdlovsk, Russia, anthrax spores accidentally released from a military research facility reportedly killed dozens of people.

Thompson said the most recent previous U.S. case of anthrax was earlier this year in Texas. But that case was not pulmonary anthrax -- an especially lethal and rare form of the disease which settles in the lungs.

The last known pulmonary anthrax case in the United States occurred in 1976, when a California weaver and yarn shop operator died. Health officials attributed the death to inhaling dust long-term from contaminated wool.

The U.S. Consumer Safety Commission traced the likely source of the disease to hand-spun goat and camel-hair wool imported from Pakistan. The importer was notified, and the product was removed from shelves nationwide.

GOOD NEIGHBOR

Stevens and his family live in a modest neighborhood in Palm Beach County. Neighbors said he was often spotted bicycle riding and they described him as a fun-loving guy known to break into a song and dance a little jig when the mood struck him.

He gardens and shares the proceeds with neighbors, several said.

``Bob is just the neighbor of neighbors,'' said Debbie Redmond, who watched the house for the family when they left for North Carolina. ``He helps out everybody. He mows your lawn if it looks like it needs it. He and his wife nurse sick animals back to health. They'd watch your dog if you went out of town. He's just a wonderful guy.''

His home is within a mile of the Palm Beach County Park Airport in Lantana. That's the same airfield where Mohamed Atta, one of the suspected hijackers who slammed jetliners into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, rented a plane on four separate occasions in August, according to Marian Smith, owner of Palm Beach Flight Training.

The neighborhood is also less than 10 miles from the Delray Beach Racquet Club apartment at 755 Dotterel Rd., where several of the hijackers lived. Herald staff writers Lisa Arthur, William Yardley, Larry Lebowitz and Herald researcher Elisabeth Donovan contributed to this story, which was supplemented with Herald wire services.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.