February 18, 2000

A Couple's Epidemiological Sleuthing Finds the Truth Behind an Outbreak of Anthrax

By PETER MONAGHAN

Things were terrifying enough when, during the cold war, the threat of nuclear annihilation haunted human consciousness.

Now the specter of biological warfare claims equal attention.

One signal event in the history of biological-weapons development was the sudden, mystery-shrouded outbreak of anthrax in the Soviet Union in 1979. "There is nothing else in history like it," says Jeanne Guillemin, a professor of sociology at Boston College and author of a

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