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One priority is to determine what liquid disinfectants are most effective against anthrax spores, said Dorothy Canter, an E.P.A. official. A second need is to determine the most effective environmental sampling techniques before and after cleanup measures are started to detect spores that could germinate. A third is to determine whether a ''magic bullet'' exists to clean up contaminated areas and articles, Ms. Canter said. The scientists wore protective gear and moved carefully to avoid disturbing the office environment, placing 17 plates around Mr. [Tom Daschle]'s office to sample the air. The plates contained a blood agar gel that would allow anthrax spores, if any, to grow. The plates were left from 45 minutes to an hour in the sixth-floor room where the letter was opened on Oct. 15, the scientists said

DECATUR, Ga. -- About a month after anthrax spores were released from a letter in the office of Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., researchers were able to stir up spores that remained there and disperse them into the air by simulating normal activity in the office, federal scientists reported. The scientists wore protective gear and moved carefully to avoid disturbing the office environment, placing 17 plates around Daschle's office to sample the air. The plates contained a blood agar gel that would allow anthrax spores, if any, to grow. The plates were left from 45 minutes to an hour in the sixth-floor room where the letter was opened on Oct. 15, the scientists said

Mr. and Mrs. [James Quinn] and Dr. [Louis E. Samuels] all spoke of his recovery as miraculous. Mr. Quinn said a major factor was his physical therapist, Kristi Olson, whom he jokingly called a tyrant. Mr. Quinn said that Dr. Samuels had kept him informed about the course of the five other AbioCor recipients and that he prayed for them. Tom Christerson is the only other living recipient to be publicly identified, at Jewish Hospital in Louisville. Two other unidentified recipients are at the University of California at Los Angeles and the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. Two other recipients have died, Mr. Tools and an unidentified man who died at the Texas institute from complications unrelated to the artificial heart. About nine years ago, Mr. Quinn developed idiopathic cardiomyopathy, a heart muscle disease with unknown origin. He did not have the coronary artery disease that caused Mr. Tools's heart to fail. To the extent comparisons are possible, Mr. Quinn appeared more robust in his first public appearance, about a month earlier in the recovery stage than Mr. Tools's

Pointing out that there had been at least 150 operations on the wrong site or the wrong patient since 1996, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations issued its second..

Until the intentional spread of anthrax in recent months, only 18 cases of inhalation anthrax had been reported since 1950, and 227 of the skin form from 1955 to the beginning of the intentional spread this fall. Additional anthrax cases may have gone undetected over the years, but the number would be small, infectious disease experts said in interviews. The boy's physician, Dr. William Borkowsky, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at New York University, said he made a point of studying anthrax when bioterrorism became a threat in recent years. Even so, Dr. Borkowsky said he would have diagnosed the infant's lesion as a spider bite if he had not known that anthrax was present in New York City. ''The syndrome this child had had never been described in anthrax'' but had been linked to spider bites, Dr. Borkowsky said. ''The skin lesions were compatible with anthrax, but the rest of the picture was incompatible because we reviewed all published cases of anthrax dating to the 1950's and never found the particular blood problem, microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, linked to anthrax in an adult or a child.''

Muhammed Butt's death from a heart attack illustrates a central problem that is the direct consequence of a zealous backlash against terrorism--the detention of hundreds of people without justification and for prolonged periods of time. Butt is profiled, and his unjust detention for being a suspect in the anthrax attacks on America is discussed

Unless a startling finding emerges showing that Ottilie W. Lundgren, 94, of Oxford, Conn., and Kathy T. Nguyen, the 61-year-old hospital worker from the Bronx, somehow inhaled large amounts of spores with nary a trace left around their homes, the cases of these two women also puncture the notion that many spores are required to kill. Some government analysts took note of the postal threat, but the authorities said they never foresaw the widespread consequences of a real postal assault: the undermining of the operations and popularity of the postal system; the sealing of the offices of half of the Senate; and, most chillingly, the secondary spread of spores from letter to sorting machine to letter and -- in the end -- to the skin and lungs of unlikely and unintended victims. Dr. [Jeffrey P. Koplan], the director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Associated Press); Ottilie W. Lundgren, 94, the widow from Oxford, Conn., who was killed by anthrax. (Reuters); Kathy T. Nguyen, the 61-year-old hospital worker from the Bronx who died of inhalation anthrax. (Associated Press)

Unless some startling new finding emerges showing that Ottilie Lundgren and Kathy Nguyen somehow inhaled large amounts of spores with nary a trace left around their homes, the cases of these two women puncture the notion that a large number of spores is required to kill. As they review medical journals, investigators and anthrax experts are realizing that past cases foreshadowed consequences that instead took them by complete surprise. The journals present case histories in which unlikely victims were killed by the kind of long- distance contamination seen now. This evidence supported the idea that spores could disperse to unintended targets should someone spread the bacteria through the mail, said Col. Arthur M. Friedlander, a U.S. army research scientist

H.I.V. infections have doubled in Eastern Europe and Central Asia over the last year and the AIDS virus is spreading faster there than anywhere else, the United Nations said in its yearly report on worldwide..

With the agreement of Mr. Tools's wife, Carol, and a retired anesthesiologist who had been appointed as an advocate for Mr. Tools, Dr. [Robert D. Dowling] instructed engineers to override safety commands in a computer to stop the AbioCor mechanical heart. Until then, the device had beat flawlessly more than 20 million times inside Mr. Tools. Before receiving the implant, Mr. Tools was nearly bedridden from end-stage heart failure. He had lost more than 50 pounds, mostly muscle, and had difficulty even raising his head. Heart attacks had left such extensive scarring that the two main pumping chambers of his heart were failing badly, and his lungs were full of fluid. A formula used to predict survival in heart failure patients showed that statistically, Mr. Tools had an 80 percent chance of dying within 30 days. On Nov. 11, Mr. Tools suffered a major stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body and impaired his speech. The stroke was due to a blood clot that may have come from the AbioCor heart. The AbioCor was removed in an autopsy yesterday, and a detailed examination may provide clues to the origin of the stroke