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Read other letters about this article
"borrowed from a bioweapons lab that fall freeze-drying equipment that allows scientists to quickly convert wet germ cultures into dry spores" and that "the drying device, known as a lyopholizer, could help investigators explain how he might have been able to send letters containing deadly anthrax spores to U.S. senators and news organizations." The article further claims that "the device was not commonly used by researchers at the Army's sprawling biodefense complex at Fort Detrick, Md."
The phrase quickly convert wet germ cultures into dry spores is absolutely false. The wet germ cultures contains multiple components, the feeder cells to the anthrax bacilli, the anthrax bacilli, and the anthrax spores. These components must be separated with large centrifuges, which are not mentioned. The isolated spores would would have to be dried and milled. All of this would have to have been done in a "Level 3" containment facility. It could not have been done in a normal home.
Was his wife and family inoculated against anthrax as Ivins presumably was? If Ivins made anthrax at home, everyone around who was not inoculated would have been susceptible to infection.
