The wreckage of the World Trade Center was still smoldering when the letters began arriving at media outlets and the offices of two US senators. By the end of the anthrax attacks, five people were dead. Seventeen others were infected but survived. The first bioterror attack in American history came and went quickly, fading into the shadow of 9/11’s mass destruction of airplanes, buildings, and lives.
But Casey Chamberlain will never forget. The Quincy resident rarely discusses what happened when, as a young NBC employee, she opened one of the anthrax-laced letters. But she recently spoke to the Globe about her ordeal, saying she wants people to remember that there were two sets of terrorist victims: those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, and those infected soon after with anthrax.
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Instead, she contracted the less severe cutaneous strain, which enters the body through a cut or sore on the skin. There is no cutaneous strain. Whether you develop cutaneous anthrax or inhalational anthrax depends on route of exposure. She had just started taking Accutane, a drug prescribed for acne, and her doctor thought she was having a reaction to it. He prescribed the antibiotic Cipro. As luck would have it, that is the antibiotic of choice to treat anthrax, so Ms. Chamberlain was already receiving appropriate treatment by the time it was recognized as anthrax. But principal investigator Dr. Mary Wright says that some victims still suffer serious symptoms, chiefly fatigue and memory issues. Those symptoms may be an ongoing manifestation of the PTSD that is still affecting these victims, or it may be due to long-term use of Ciprofloxacin, or it may be a lingering after-effect of anthrax infection, as they contend. Two things need to be considered in making that determination. First, of those whose symptoms are lessening, are they also showing resolution of PTSD? Second, what observations have been made regarding those who have had to take Cipro or other antibiotics on a long-term therapeutic course? Honing in on the obvious often leads one to ignore seemingly small things that could be more significant.