Recounting the Anthrax Attacks by R. Scott Decker

Author:R. Scott Decker [Decker, R. Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2017-12-12T05:00:00+00:00

15

Consent to Search

August 2003

The second anniversary of Robert Stevens’s death approached, and we still had not uncovered any solid leads. I had flown the Sterilite box to a lab specializing in trace analysis of biological agents and spent four days watching scientists scrape mud and swab plastic, and as predicted, we found no anthrax DNA. But on the other hand, whole genome sequencing at TIGR picked up the pace. There, the scientists found that GB10’s DNA (Leahy wild type) matched GB13’s (Post wild type), and both matched the 1981 parental Ames’s DNA. TIGR began using PCR to quickly examine the DNA samples arriving from Northern Arizona. They synthesized short DNA primer fragments matching DNA sequences on each side of the changes in the A1, A2, A3, and B-morphologies. With PCR, TIGR could quickly determine the order of building blocks in a one-, two-, or three-thousand-length fragment in a matter of days, grouping variants as A or B or other, the latter then heading to the genome sequencing queue.

At CBI, Tom Reynolds confirmed the A-mutations using a PCR sequencing approach similar to that of Keim and TIGR, and he and Greg Meyers were confident that rapid screening tests could be designed. Using the TaqMan1 assay, Reynolds believed that as little as ten DNA strands might be detectable if they designed the assay correctly.

The large duplicated regions of the A-mutants’ DNA gave Reynolds options for choosing the sequence and length for both the priming and fluorescent fragments. Once the regions for fragment hybridizations had been decided, incubation conditions for the PCR—salt concentration and temperature, how long to melt, cool and reanneal—would be fine-tuned.

While CBI worked to develop A and B screening assays, I continued my search for Ames. I had compiled nearly 650 exemplars of Ames from sixteen laboratories2 around the United States, but I had not yet collected any from outside the country. Interviews at USAMRIID revealed a shipment to the United Kingdom, and records in the institute’s safety office verified Ames was sent to the laboratories of Porton Down, about one hundred miles southwest of London, equidistant from the ancient monuments of Stonehenge to the north and the city of Salisbury to the south.

The transfer made sense. Our two countries have cooperated on biological defense research since the onset of World War II. As early as 1934, information began appearing in the British press about Berlin’s interest in spreading anthrax by aircraft. The British military took the news seriously and created Biology Department Porton—its mandate: study the feasibility of bacteriological warfare, defend against it, and develop a retaliatory capability.3 The department found a home in the laboratories of the Chemical Defence Experimental Station at Porton, a small village at the edge of the Salisbury Plain chalk downlands. The British government had requisitioned seven thousand acres of rolling grassland in 1915 and established the Porton Laboratories and Porton Range following the start of the Great War, with the goal of preparing for chemical warfare with the Central Powers.4

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