Ready or Not — Preparedness for Bioterrorism

Glanders is a zoonotic disease of horses and related equids that was eliminated from the United States in 1934. The etiologic agent, Burkholderia mallei, has occasionally caused severe infection in humans after the transmission of small aerosolized particles from infected animals, and B. mallei was used for biologic warfare, directed against the horses of the Allied armed forces, during World War I. Before the case reported by Srinivasan et al. in this issue of the Journal, 1 the last infections in humans in the United States occurred in 1945 among laboratory personnel working on a biologic-weapons program at Camp Detrick, Maryland. . . .