Comments for:

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Typhus as a biological weapon

Submitter: Naomi Baumslag | wiphn@erols.com

Georgetown University medical School

Published January 5, 2006

dear editor
I'm not sure if Dr Schuster is aware that typhus has been used and is a potential biological weapon. In 1969, the World Health Organization estimated that if 50 kg of vurulent epidemic typhus particles were aerosolized over a city with 5 million people,300,000 would be exposed ownwind from the release, in approximately 30 minutes. The result would be 125,000 illnesses and 8,000 deaths. In starved persons in unhygienic overcrowded conditions its exlosive

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Murderous Medicine

Submitter: Saul W Issroff | saul@issroff.com

Published December 9, 2005

You reveiwer, Evelyn Shuster, in an otherwise excellent overview of Prof. Naomi Baumslag's 'Murderous Medicine' seems to miss a point in her last sentence. This work is by no means an attempt to understand the complexities of Nazism in terms of a single disease, nor does it connect to 'bioterrorism'.
The author shows, in a clear and competent manner, how manifest neglect of simple hygiene measures in terms of lice control and thus of typhus was used as yet one other cost effective means of decimating Jews, Gypsies and other victims of Nazi policy and actions.
Typhus is still endemic in parts of Asia and Africa, but has fortunately not been used again as a tool for politically motivated killing.