第1期:认识细菌(1)

A note said the anonymous package contained deadly bacterial anthrax. Toxic material teams were called out.

People who'd handled the package were decontaminated and rushed to hospitals. Authorities took no chances.

A couple hundred pounds of anthrax could kill up to three million people. This time in this day it was a false alarm.

This is what they were worried about. Saddam Hussein spent as much as 100 million dollars developing Iraq's biological weapons.

By the time Iraq invaded Kuwait Hussein had cultures of anthrax and enough poison from the bacterium that causes botulism to kill every person on the planet.

During the Persian Gulf War, part of the supply had been deployed in missiles and Iraqi commanders had authorization to fire. Then the war was over.

The United Nations destroyed the facilities where the toxin was made. Even without the germs of war, people are frightened by the diseases caused by bacterial.

Pneumonia, Salmonella, meningitis all caused by bacteria and passed among us every day. Infectious disease is the greatest cause of illness and death in human history.

It is now the third highest cause of death in the United States. Bacteria can make us deathly sick and often kill us.

And just when we develop medicines to kill the germs, they do what they do best mutate to resist our medicines. We are destined to always live with microorganisms.