Kathy Nguyen's anthrax - Case Closed?
Ed Lake
York Health Department appear to have closed the Kathy
Nguyen case as unsolved and unlikely to ever be solved.
The link is here (but registration is required):
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/02/health/02DISE.html
The key paragraphs are:
-------------
"When Kathy T. Nguyen died of inhalation anthrax in New
York on Oct. 31, the police and medical investigators were
quickly deployed to find the source of the spores that had
infected her. They interviewed 232 co-workers, 27
neighbors and 35 acquaintances in an effort to reconstruct
her final two months. They searched her apartment and
swabbed surfaces there and in her workplace and the subway
stations she used. They vacuumed her clothes in search of
spores. They used her subway fare card to trace her path
around the city, studied her phone records and inspected
her usual laundry, post office and grocery store.
"They never found a single spore or any other clue to how
Ms. Nguyen became infected.
"Describing the investigation at a medical meeting last
week in Atlanta, Dr. Timothy Holtz, a preventive medicine
fellow at the New York City Health Department, concluded
with a slide that said, 'We will likely never know.'"
-------------
As you can see from the text above, they never even
bothered to look in the most likely places. They were
apparently on the wrong track from the start and never
bothered to take a step back and look at the whole
situation. If they had, they would have realized they
were on the wrong track. Check this page for details:
http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/nguyen.html
J
contamination in Trenton.
The name is actually Linda and she was exposed in her office. Confirmation
date was 10/29/01
She falls into the same category as Nguyen and Lundgren, i.e. not near a
targeted mail recipient and not a Post Office visitor. Her case differs in
that it was cutaneous and that they found Anthrax where she was known to be.
See:
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/howcasesunfolded.html
Ed Lake <det...@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:3CAB3B8F...@newsguy.com...
Ed Lake
Okay, I corrected the information about Linda Burch. Thanks.
However, I don't agree that she falls into the same category as Kathy Nguyen.
Nguyen is in a category all by herself: "Unknown anthrax source". The CDC
assumed she was contaminated by a letter mailed on October 9, and that's all
they have investigated - getting nowhere.
I wouldn't mind if they considered and then rejected the idea that she was
contaminated by anthrax thrown into the trash from the September 18 mailing,
but, as far as I can tell, that idea has never even occurred to them.
Ed
http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/
Kris Baker
Ed Lake wrote in message <3CAC711A...@newsguy.com>...
>J,
>
>Okay, I corrected the information about Linda Burch. Thanks.
>
>However, I don't agree that she falls into the same category as Kathy
Nguyen.
>Nguyen is in a category all by herself: "Unknown anthrax source". The CDC
>assumed she was contaminated by a letter mailed on October 9, and that's
all
>they have investigated - getting nowhere.
>
>I wouldn't mind if they considered and then rejected the idea that she was
>contaminated by anthrax thrown into the trash from the September 18
mailing,
>but, as far as I can tell, that idea has never even occurred to them.
>
>Ed
>http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/
Why would only *one* person be infected from a letter
thrown into the trash, especially someone who wouldn't
have had any more contact with it than the thousands
of other passerbys? (Of course, we have to assume
then, that Kathy Nguyen walked by one or more of those
anthrax-infested places in NYC at just the right time
when the trash was being thrown out.) Office trash isn't
exactly thrown out in the streets of NYC for people to walk
through.
Kris
Ed Lake
Kris,
First of all, she wasn't the only person infected by a letter thrown into the
trash. Two people at the New York Post were infected with cutaneous anthrax as
a result of hunting through the trash to find the letter that they had throw
away - before the news had broken that someone was sending anthrax through the
mail. And a police officer was contaminated with anthrax when looking through
the trash at NBC, where he found the Tom Brokaw letter which had also been
thrown out. That police officer then took the letter to a lab and contaminated
two lab technicians with it. Presumably, people at ABC and CBS also hunted for
the letters they had thrown out. All this happened at around the same time as
Kathy contracted anthrax.
Why did Kathy Nguyen get anthrax? She was elderly and more susceptible. Maybe
she happened to stand behind someone on a subway whose clothes were covered
with anthrax? Being Vietnamese, she was probably small in size, which would
put her face near people's clothes. Maybe she bumped into someone at the
hospital who was covered with anthrax? When all the employees at ABC, CBS, NBC
and the New York Post heard that their companies had received anthrax-laced
letters, didn't many of them go to hospitals in a panic? Did any of them
encounter Kathy there? Who knows?
The thing that has to be done is to look at what happened to that anthrax and
how it was disposed of, how the areas were cleaned and who cleaned them. Then
you can see if there is any intersection with Kathy Nguyen.
Kris Baker
Ed Lake wrote in message <3CACDB55...@newsguy.com>...
Ed, your list of victims/circumstances is unlike anything I can
find reported anywhere. Here's from the BBC, but it's
exactly like many others:
The victims
Five people have been killed by the attacks. All of them were infected by
the deadliest form of the disease - inhalation anthrax.
Journalist Bob Stevens died of respiratory anthrax
Bob Stevens, 63, picture editor of the Sun newspaper, died on 5 October in
Boca Raton, Florida. Anthrax spores were found on his computer keyboard
Thomas Morris Jr, 55, Washington, worked at the Brentwood office which
handled an anthrax-laced letter sent to Senator Tom Daschle
Joseph Curseen, 47, worked at the same office
Kathy Nguyen, 61, worked in a New York hospital
Ottilie Lundgren, 94, lived in a rural community in Connecticut. Her case
and that of Ms Nguyen are the only ones that have not been traces to tainted
mail
Cases of inhalation anthrax
Five people are confirmed to have contracted inhalation anthrax.
Ernesto Blanco, 73, employed in the mail room of American Media Inc, the
group which owns the Sun newspaper
Postal worker Leroy Richmond, 57
An unnamed colleague of his is also in hospital
Two female postal workers from the Trenton area in New Jersey, where some
anthrax-laced were sent from
Cases of skin anthrax
Cases of skin anthrax, a less serious form of the disease in which the
bacteria enter via a cut in the skin, have been confirmed in several New
York media offices and in New Jersey.
Claire Fletcher contracted the disease after opening a letter
Erin O'Connor, 38, assistant to NBC anchor Tom Brokaw was the first person
to test positive for anthrax in New York on 12 October
The seven-month-old son of an ABC News producer contracted the disease after
visiting the building on 28 September
Claire Fletcher, 27, assistant to CBS newsreader Dan Rather is believed to
have been infected after opening a letter
Johanna Huden, 30, assistant at New York Post is also believed to have been
exposed to anthrax after opening a letter
Post woman Teresa Heller and 35-year-old postal employee Patrick O'Donnell,
work in New Jersey's Trenton area
A woman in New Jersey became the first person to contract the disease who
does not work in the media or the postal service
Kris
Ed Lake
Kris,
It seems to be the same list, just in a different format. I got my information
from various sources, but verified it by checking the files at UCLA:
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/detect/antdetect_intro.html
I put things in order by confirmation date. Your list is in order by type of
anthrax infection. UCLA lists things in order by date reported. It's all the
same data, it's just in different order.
By putting things in order by confirmation date, I tried to show how some cases
of Sept. 18 anthrax were in the middle of the "second wave" of Oct. 9 cases.
Too many people are looking at the "second wave" as being ALL Oct. 9 cases. And
that simply is not true.