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Friday, Oct. 20, 2001

The College of Veterinary Medicine said some of the destroyed bacteria specimens dated to 1928.

"After contacting appropriate authorities, these specimens were sterilized and incinerated," the university said in a statement posted on its website.

The university said the samples had been maintained for their historical interest and no research was under way on any of them.

Jim Roth, assistant dean and professor of microbiology, said the collection consisted of multiple vials of four or five strains of anthrax. There was no overall inventory, so there is no way to determine if any of the vials was missing.

"We decided they were more of a security risk now than we wanted to tolerate," Roth said. "We didn't need them that badly and decided to destroy them. We checked with the FBI and CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] to see if it was OK to destroy them. They didn't want them and didn't need them for their investigation."

Roth said the vials were kept in a locked laboratory, and there was no evidence any was missing.

The anthrax scare prompted the U.S. House of Representatives to suspend business until Tuesday. About three dozen people associated with the Senate have tested positive for anthrax exposure.

Two new cases of cutaneous anthrax, which is contracted through the skin, were announced Thursday - a Trenton, N.J., postal worker and a CBS News employee - bringing to six the number of anthrax cases, inhaled or cutaneous, confirmed in the United States.

FBI Director Robert Mueller announced a reward of as much as $1 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for sending anthrax-tainted mail.

The CDC has confirmed its analysis showed no difference between the strains of anthrax found in New York and Florida and called the grade of anthrax found in Washington "run of the mill." All strains have been found to be treatable with antibiotics.

Roth said federal investigators likely have determined the strain of anthrax involved but he has not heard whether it is related to the university's samples.

When the first anthrax case surfaced in Florida, the Miami Herald reported it had been linked to something called the "Ames strain" developed in the 1950s. A subsequent story emerged after anthrax turned up at NBC that linked that case to "a laboratory in Ames, Iowa."

The university said both stories were false.

"Scientific reports show that an 'Ames strain' originated in 1980 ... ," the university said. "A strain appears to have been shipped from the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in 1980. USAMRIID researchers designated this strain as the "Ames strain” and supplied it to several different labs in the United States.

"The National Veterinary Services Laboratories and other USDA laboratories in Ames have had outstanding and thorough security measures in place for the last decade, safety regulations that are more than adequate to deal with this level of biosecurity," the university said.

The State Hygenic Lab at the University of Iowa has vaccine-grade anthrax on hand. Iowa National Guard troops have been stationed around the facility to ensure security.

Anthrax samples are also at the Agriculture Department's National Veterinary Laboratory in Ames.

"Given they [the ISU samples] had become a security risk, we decided not to tie up highway patrol troops guarding them any more," Roth said.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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