A man who died of the rare pneumonic form of anthrax on Friday now appears to have been the victim of a deliberate attack. If confirmed, the case will be the first documented and fatal attack with anthrax, long feared as a biological weapon.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has now launched a criminal investigation into the death of Robert Stevens of Lantana, Florida, after anthrax bacilli were detected on his keyboard at work, and in the nasal passages of a 73-year-old man who worked in his company’s mailroom. That man has not been confirmed as having developed clinical anthrax.

Another employee who developed pneumonia symptoms may also have anthrax. So might a man in Virginia with suspicious symptoms who recently visited the company, American Media Incorporated, publisher of supermarket tabloids The Sun and The National Enquirer.

Florida Senator Bob Graham told newspapers that, according to his briefings by top US health officials, the chance that two people in the same office would inhale anthrax spores “by anything other than human intervention was nil to none”. The bacteria on the first victim’s keyboard also seem to rule out earlier speculations that he might have inhaled spores from imported wool, or from soil contaminated by a long-dead animal.


Letter bomb

Safety-suited specialists from state and federal agencies are examining the company’s office building in Boca Raton, Florida for further contamination. The US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta wants anyone who worked in the building after 1 August to start taking antibiotics.

The anthrax spores may have been sent in the post. Since the threat of bioterrorism began getting widespread publicity in the US three years ago, dozens of offices have received envelopes containing powders alleged to be anthrax. Not one that was tested contained anthrax, raising the possibility that Stevens might have received a similar envelope but dismissed it as a hoax.

Britain, the US, the Soviet Union, Iraq and possibly others have worked on anthrax weapons. At least 64 people died in an accidental release of weaponised anthrax in Sverdlovsk, Russia in 1979. But a deliberate and successful attack is unknown – a point often cited by defence specialists who consider biological attack unlikely.

The Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan, which released nerve gas on the Tokyo underground in 1995, tried to develop anthrax weapons, but apparently never got beyond practice runs with a non-lethal strain. Allegations that South African anthrax was released in Zimbabwe during its independence struggles have never been confirmed.

Scientists in the US are analysing the anthrax that killed Stevens, and comparing it to strains from around the world, in an effort to trace the bacteria’s geographic origins. The results have not yet been announced.