Introduction to High Tech Terror

One of the perplexing problems faced by first line defenders against a bioterrorist attack is the incubation period between exposure and manifestation of symptoms.  Thus victims exposed to an organism at one locality may move to another area, even another country, before they seek medical assistance.  As a result, the physician who sees a patient may look upon his case as an isolated incident and be unaware of the multitude of individuals who present to different emergency rooms with similar symptoms.

Certain conditions listed below should raise suspicion for a biological attack.

1. A patient presents with an illness that is not endemic to the local area.

2. Many patients develop the same disease.

3. Many patients develop the same infectious disease in a short segment of time.

4. Patients are infected by an organism with unusual resistance to antibiotics.

5. A “point-source outbreak” of infectious disease occurs in which the victims appear to have contracted the disease from the same geographic location.

6. The organism appears to have spread by an aerosol.

7. A disease exhibits a higher morbidity and mortality than would be normally expected.

8. The disease is restricted to patients in a localized area.

9. Dead birds or animals appear in the area in which patients contract the disease.

10. Patients develop a vector-borne disease in a region that does not contain the vector.

11. Patients with a well-known disease have an unusual clinical course.

12. An endemic disease rapidly appears at an atypical time of year.