NYT: After a Shower of Anthrax, an Illness and a Mystery

[DeepModem Mom]

After a Shower of Anthrax, an Illness and a Mystery
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: June 7, 2005


ANNAPOLIS, Md. - During the anthrax mail attacks in 2001, Bill Paliscak, a gung-ho, hockey-playing postal investigator who had missed 3 days of work in 11 years, removed a filthy filter above a mail-sorting machine to preserve it as evidence. Anthrax-laden dust showered down on him.

Four days later he began to feel feverish. Soon he was in intensive care. After spending the next three years in and out of the hospital, Mr. Paliscak, 41, now needs a wheelchair to move about, sleeps with a breathing device to get enough oxygen and takes dozens of pills a day.

His medical bills total more than $800,000, and he has been living in a motel here for more than a year because he cannot reach the shower on the second floor of his home.

Yet Mr. Paliscak (pronounced PAL-uh-sack) remains a medical puzzle. Blood tests never detected the bacteria that cause anthrax or the antibodies the immune system should produce in response. As a result, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention never classified his disease with the 11 confirmed cases of inhalational anthrax, 5 of them fatal.

Mr. Paliscak's nondiagnosis ultimately has had little practical effect, because the Department of Labor agreed in 2002 that his illness was work-related, permitting workers' compensation to cover his medical bills and provide support of about $1,000 a week.....One key to the mystery may be the paucity of data on the inhalational form of anthrax. "Historically, there haven't been a lot of survivors to study," said Dr. Philip S. Brachman, who studied five cases at a New Hampshire mill in 1957....(I)n the first days after the letter to Senator Tom Daschle was discovered in October 2001, the drive to act outpaced officials' understanding of the exotic bug. As Mr. Paliscak gathered evidence around Delivery Bar Code Sorter No. 17, an anthrax hot spot, he wore only a hardware-store dust mask for protection....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/07/health/07anth.html?pagewanted=all

[Blue Diadem]

1. That poor man. Makes me wonder how many others

there are that haven't been included in the official count.

[bluedeminredstate]

2. Amazing so few people would have access

to that particular batch that made its way to news rooms and Capitol Hill, yet the case is stalled. I haven't heard Bush mention it in years!
This poor man. He's younger than me by a couple years but lives the life of an elderly man.
This should be an outrage and I don't know why it isn't!!!

:mad:

[daleo]

3. Yes, the mysterious anthrax attack

That happened just days after September 11, and apparently originated from within the U.S., and had no connection to Ossama Bin Laden. Just another coincidence, I guess.

[bobbieinok]

6. think none of the admin went to any of the postal workers' funerals

did Clinton go to some??

[Supersedeas]

9. and it quickly got on the Corporate Media back burner with the drum beat

to Iraq and all.

Odd, how those Dem Senators were targets, ain't it now.

[Sabriel]

4. Yeessssss. Another memory hole story

Whatever happened to that little anthrax scare, anyway? It all went bye-bye, apparently, leaving us all feeling safer.

[Cha]

5. That is really sad!

Just imagine..Poor thing.

[teryang]

7. "The case is still unsolved"

"...I'd like to be well enough when we catch this guy to put the handcuffs on him," Mr. Paliscak said."

Amazing how there is no political pressure to find out who the people behind this plot are. It's a mystery. Riiiiiight!

A direct attack on the Congress of the United States, engineered as part of a political coup, and the FBI, "Homeland Security" and the National Director of "Intelligence" haven't got a clue. What's fishy about that?

Interesting that the same company that produces mobile biowarfare containment units also sabotaged national media exit polling during the 2002 elections.

[stickdog]

8. From 10/30/2001

[bobthedrummer]

10. On September 10th, 2001 Sec. of HHS Tommy Thompson hired Jerome

Hauer (a biological warfare expert) from SAIC. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, but before of any hint of the possibility of biological attacks, Hauer and Thompson promoted the use of Cipro within the administration.

While this US Postal Service employee and others were in anthrax HOT ZONES, Tommy Thompson made a deal for 300 million doses of Cipro with the I.G. Farben fathered Bayer.

Tommy Thompson is a good friend of the American eugenicist and co-author of "The Bell Curve" Charles Murray.

Jerome Hauer is in charge of US public biological defense.

:tinfoilhat: