Boil, boil, toil, and trouble....

[AirHostess]

It depends how you are exposed as far as the fatality rate goes, but it is a bacteria and can be treated with antibiotics.

Here is some info from the CDC:
http://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/anthrax/faq/signs.asp

Looking on my antibiotic leaflet I discovered that they treat smallpox, bubonic plague and anthrax!

[Shengirl]

If anyone wants a lot of good information about smallpox and anthrax - particularly in regards to germ warfare - I recommend the book Demons in the Freezer by Richard Preston. He's the guy who wrote The Hot Zone, the reason I started looking at careers in disease in the first place.

By the way, though ciprofloxacin is what the goverment used at first when the anthrax mailings started, it's not necessarily the best thing to take. Tetracyclin is the more common antibiotic to use against it, and it has far fewer side effects. The government was just worried that it was a version of anthrax engineered to be resistant to ciprofloxacin. At least, I think it's tetracyclin...maybe it was something else. I don't feel like fishing through my antibiotics textbook just now.

[earl colby pottinger]

Check out

http://familydoctor.org/online/famdo...mptom/545.html is a good list of the range of simple skin infections/damage you may be seeing.