Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live At Daybreak

America Strikes Back: Maryland Company Makes Only Commercially Available Field Test for Anthrax

Aired October 19, 2001 - 08:34   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We are going to turn our attention now to anthrax anxiety. If you are worried about whether you have been exposed, there is a home test that could be helpful. A Maryland company called Tetracore makes only commercially available field test for anthrax.

And our own Jeanne Meserve put this product to the test in the last hour. She joins us now live from Gaithersburg, Maryland with the results.

Do you have them right now, Jeanne?

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Paula, we are going to get them for you. Let me explain, this not a home test. This is a field test used by hazmat teams. Right now, we want to put one of the test groups that we did last hour in a machine here, which is going to read here. We're just going to read it. Tom, why don't you go ahead and put it right in. This is going to take us a couple of minutes to do, so while that's running, we will talk here to Dr. Bill Nelson, head of Tetracore.

Why does it require this machine? You told us last hour you could read it, like you would a home-pregnancy test.

DR. WILLIAM NELSON, COFOUNDER, TETRACORE INC.: You can. If you were a hazmat responder, and it was the middle of night, and you were responding, you were in a class-a suit, could get fogged up and things like that. Rather than have that individual have to try to make a call on one of these, you are looking at it, trying to make sure this gives you an objective reading, so you can put it in there, push it in, and in two minutes, you can get a reading out that gives you an objective data. It not only gives you a positive or negative reading, it gives some values on it. It has a printout. And at the same time, it's going to write it to this chip that we've put in this device.

MESERVE: And that chip does what?

NELSON: It's this little device. It's a radio frequency identification tag, so each one is independent and serialized, so if you had to use this in court for evidence and stuff like that, you could identify this as the one that you ran at that time. And so what happens this tells the machine what test it is, the machine reads the test, and the writes back to this independently what that result was, so when it comes out of there, you have an independent piece of evidence in your hand.

MESERVE: Now, how reliable are these? Do you get false positives? Do you get false negatives?

NELSON: Any test you are going to get false positives and false negatives, just like doing any test that is a screening assay, but what this is designed to do, is it is designed to give a first responder an opportunity to understand if the situation he's dealing with is real. If there was enough anthrax there to be a danger immediately, you would get a positive on this. Occasionally, you could you get a false positive, if -- but we haven't been able to find anything that would do that at this point.

MESERVE: So, this isn't the be all and end all? This isn't the end of the testing?

NELSON: No, it isn't. It really should go to a laboratory. That's the real answer that they need to get. You are going to always run into a situation where something could look like it.

There is our result.

MESERVE: We are getting a result. Let's look at the machine. It's giving us a little printout here, coming up slowly. Test anthrax, now this says positive. But you and I aren't really sitting here dealing with anthrax.

NELSON: No, we have made a material, a synthetic material, that you can put in there to make it go positive, so that you could test this, so that if somebody wanted to demonstrate it like this or other things, it will always go positive for them.

MESERVE: Will this give you information, for instance, about the strain of anthrax that you are dealing with?

NELSON: No, it's just going to tell you it is anthrax, and...

MESERVE: And what about how finely milled it is. We have heard a lot of discussion about that. Does that make a difference to the test results?

NELSON: It probably would actually give you a better result, because if it is finally milled, it's going to be a very potent -- the more anthrax that is there, the stronger the positive will be.

MESERVE: And we have to leave there it for this hour. Dr. Nelson, thanks so much. Paula, you did mention home test kits. Next hour, we are going to talk about that. Back to you, for the moment.

ZAHN: And Jeanne, just very quickly, are those test kits available for at-home use yet?

MESERVE: No, they are not. And you will find in an hour's time that Dr. Nelson will voice his opinion that they shouldn't be either.

ZAHN: OK, good to exercise caution here. Thanks so much. Jeanne Meserve, see you in the next hour.

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