- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About
30 vials that possibly contain samples of the bacteria that causes bubonic
plague were reported missing from a lab at Texas Tech University in Lubbock,
a law enforcement official said on Wednesday.
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- The official had few details but said the FBI was trying
to determine what had happened to the vials at the Texas facility about
330 miles west of Dallas.
-
- "Apparently there are about 30 missing," he
said.
-
- But the official emphasized that the plague believed
to be in the vials could not be used as a weapon of mass destruction. The
vials could possibly kill one person but not a large group of people, he
said.
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- Plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is usually
passed to people from rodents via fleas. It caused huge epidemics in the
Middle Ages -- notably the Black Death that wiped out up to a third of
the population in Europe.
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- It can take on three forms -- bubonic plague, which caused
the terrifying black swellings or buboes that gave the Black death its
name; pneumonic plague, which is far deadlier and caused when the bacteria
are inhaled, and septicemic plague, which is a rare blood infection.
-
- Plague is considered a likely bioterrorist agent because
it is so easy to prepare and use as a weapon and because it frightens people.
It is easily treated with antibiotics, but only if it is diagnosed properly.
-
- There have been some reported cases of it being used.
During World War II, a secret branch of the Japanese army is reported to
have dropped plague-infected fleas over populated areas of China, causing
outbreaks of plague.
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- The World Health Organization reports 1,000 to 3,000
cases of plague globally every year. In the United States, plague is reported
in between 10 and 15 people every year, killing a small percentage.
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- The last urban plague epidemic was in Los Angeles in
1924 and 1925, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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