Graduate Level Essay and Journal

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Tokyo, Japan 1995-- a noxious gas overcomes riders on the city subway. Thousands are panicked,

hundreds injured, 12 people die. The culprit, a deadly poison called sarin has been released by a

fanatical cult on the unsuspecting masses.

Sarin is-- we call it a nerve agent, and it causes the body to, basically, drown in its own fluids.

People get sweaty. They get diarrhea, vomiting, their lungs fill up with fluids, and, generally, death from

a nerve agent is a respiratory death.

It's nasty, and it's very toxic.

Washington, DC, 2001-- the United States Senate building is rapidly evacuated. There has been an attack

on this austere chamber. The weapon this time, another lethal toxin-- highly refined anthrax spores,

sent by mail into the building.

Inhalational anthrax leads to hemorrhage, and then, ultimately, a respiratory illness that progresses to

death.

And the spores are so lethal that it's estimated it only takes maybe 25 to 50 spores of weapons-grade

anthrax to kill you.

Ukraine, 2004, in the midst of a heated campaign for president-- opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko

falls mysteriously ill after dining with the head of his country's security service. He suffers from

excruciating back pain, pancreatitis and paralysis.

Most obviously, the unknown illness ravages his face, making it almost unrecognizable. Tests done in an

Austrian clinic prove that Yushchenko had been poisoned with dioxin. A potent chemical carcinogen,

dioxin is a byproduct of herbicide manufacturing.

Dioxin exposure can also cause kidney and liver damage, even death. Although expected to survive,

Yushchenko's future is, as yet, unknown. In the 21st century, poisons still inspire fear and remain potent

weapons.

But as with these lethal examples, an invisible, gas microscopic spores, and a chemical waste product,

they seem to come in countless forms. What is it, then, that constitutes a true poison?