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American Morning

'Paging Dr. Gupta'

Aired February 03, 2004 - 08:45   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Medical perspective now on the deadly poison that may have turned up in a Senate office building. Just what is ricin, and what are the chances it can spread to the general population?
Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us with answers.

Good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

Well, we're hearing a lot of Ricin. We heard about this before. It was actually the second time now in about a year that it's actually been spread through the mail.

It's a poison. It's not a bacteria. It's not a virus. We talk a lot about those. It's a poison that can be a powdery, white substance. It's twice as venomous as cobra venom, just to give you an idea of how potent this particular thing is. And it can be inhaled, it can be ingested or it can be injected. These are the three different routes that it can actually you get into your system.

And essentially it's a poison, toxin not an infectious agent.

GUPTA: So does that mean if it's a poison, you know, manufactured then, that it's more deadly than anthrax, less deadly than anthrax?

GUPTA: That's a good question. And it's not so much manufactured. It's sort of the remnants, the mash, they call it, from castor bean oil production. When they make that, there's this remnant left over which is this castor bean production. There are some similarities and differences to anthrax. You think about a powdery white substance. That can describe either anthrax or ricin, either one of those.

Unlikely to be person-to-person transmission. Important point, both of those. Anthrax can be -- it's a bacteria, so anthrax in some cases can be treated with antibiotics.

Ricin cannot be treated. There is no vaccine for this sort of thing. In terms of overall, in terms of how potent it is, if you inject it, it's very potent. The tip of a needle can actually -- they talked about somebody actually killing someone with an umbrella. This is years ago, that someone actually stabbed someone with the tip of an umbrella, and it killed them. If you inhale it, it's much harder. You need a lot more of the inhaled version, because it's not easy to aerosolize like anthrax.

GUPTA: What are the symptoms if someone is poisoned by ricin? What does it look like?

GUPTA: Well, it depends on whether or not it's been inhaled, ingested, eaten or injected, different symptoms for each of them.

First of all, if you ingest it, diarrhea and vomiting, first, abdominal pain. Subsequently, you get organ failure, circulatory failure.

Now if you talk about some of the other symptoms, for example, if you have an inhalation, you get fever, cough first, then difficulty breathing, nausea, fluid in the lungs, organ failure.

And finally, if you actually inject it, that's probably the most potent. You get a lot of tissue death at the injection site, internal bleeding.

All the folks can die from this within a few days, or a couple of days. That's sort of the critical part here.

GUPTA: They talked about, in the Senate office building, the people who had been exposed to ricin they were sort of decontaminated. What do you mean by that? How do you protect people who potentially may have been exposed?

GUPTA: Well, there's really not much you can do to be perfectly honest. First thing you want to do is just basically rid of body of any excess ricin that might be sitting around. If some of it is still sitting around your nose, for example, you decontaminate that.

There's no antidote per se. If someone started to develop symptoms, they probably have to come in to the hospital, be put on a breathing machine and start to be given fluids to try and prevent death in this case. There is no specific treatment necessarily.

You can see the list of things that needs to be done if somebody is actually diagnosed with ricin exposure.

The good news here is, though, that because it was a powdery white substance, unless it's a highly volatile form of the substance, it's unlikely that it's actually have gotten into the air and really infected anybody.

O'BRIEN: A little bit of good news there, and I'm sure, psychologically though, it's much more scary than it seems like you're saying it actually can be in real practice.

GUPTA: A real poison, yes.

GUPTA: Right. Dr. Sanjay. Thanks, Sanjay, as always.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired February 3, 2004 - 08:45   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Medical perspective now on the deadly poison that may have turned up in a Senate office building. Just what is ricin, and what are the chances it can spread to the general population?
Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us with answers.

Good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

Well, we're hearing a lot of Ricin. We heard about this before. It was actually the second time now in about a year that it's actually been spread through the mail.

It's a poison. It's not a bacteria. It's not a virus. We talk a lot about those. It's a poison that can be a powdery, white substance. It's twice as venomous as cobra venom, just to give you an idea of how potent this particular thing is. And it can be inhaled, it can be ingested or it can be injected. These are the three different routes that it can actually you get into your system.

And essentially it's a poison, toxin not an infectious agent.

GUPTA: So does that mean if it's a poison, you know, manufactured then, that it's more deadly than anthrax, less deadly than anthrax?

GUPTA: That's a good question. And it's not so much manufactured. It's sort of the remnants, the mash, they call it, from castor bean oil production. When they make that, there's this remnant left over which is this castor bean production. There are some similarities and differences to anthrax. You think about a powdery white substance. That can describe either anthrax or ricin, either one of those.

Unlikely to be person-to-person transmission. Important point, both of those. Anthrax can be -- it's a bacteria, so anthrax in some cases can be treated with antibiotics.

Ricin cannot be treated. There is no vaccine for this sort of thing. In terms of overall, in terms of how potent it is, if you inject it, it's very potent. The tip of a needle can actually -- they talked about somebody actually killing someone with an umbrella. This is years ago, that someone actually stabbed someone with the tip of an umbrella, and it killed them. If you inhale it, it's much harder. You need a lot more of the inhaled version, because it's not easy to aerosolize like anthrax.

GUPTA: What are the symptoms if someone is poisoned by ricin? What does it look like?

GUPTA: Well, it depends on whether or not it's been inhaled, ingested, eaten or injected, different symptoms for each of them.

First of all, if you ingest it, diarrhea and vomiting, first, abdominal pain. Subsequently, you get organ failure, circulatory failure.

Now if you talk about some of the other symptoms, for example, if you have an inhalation, you get fever, cough first, then difficulty breathing, nausea, fluid in the lungs, organ failure.

And finally, if you actually inject it, that's probably the most potent. You get a lot of tissue death at the injection site, internal bleeding.

All the folks can die from this within a few days, or a couple of days. That's sort of the critical part here.

GUPTA: They talked about, in the Senate office building, the people who had been exposed to ricin they were sort of decontaminated. What do you mean by that? How do you protect people who potentially may have been exposed?

GUPTA: Well, there's really not much you can do to be perfectly honest. First thing you want to do is just basically rid of body of any excess ricin that might be sitting around. If some of it is still sitting around your nose, for example, you decontaminate that.

There's no antidote per se. If someone started to develop symptoms, they probably have to come in to the hospital, be put on a breathing machine and start to be given fluids to try and prevent death in this case. There is no specific treatment necessarily.

You can see the list of things that needs to be done if somebody is actually diagnosed with ricin exposure.

The good news here is, though, that because it was a powdery white substance, unless it's a highly volatile form of the substance, it's unlikely that it's actually have gotten into the air and really infected anybody.

O'BRIEN: A little bit of good news there, and I'm sure, psychologically though, it's much more scary than it seems like you're saying it actually can be in real practice.

GUPTA: A real poison, yes.

GUPTA: Right. Dr. Sanjay. Thanks, Sanjay, as always.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com