An Old Biological Weapon – Anemia Of Horse Virus

The French veterinary surgeon, Lignee, first described Infectious Anemia of Horse in 1843. In 1904, the French physician Carre and Vallee confirmed that the disease was infectious, incurable, and transferred in feed either through blood or urine.

At the end of 1905, German veterinary surgeons started research into Infectious Anemia of Horses at the instigation of the Prussian government. The official reason for this scientific venture, namely, anxiety over dozen horses in the administrative district of Trier becoming infected every year, sounds far from convincing.

Knowledge at that time on symptoms of illness, agents, and the transmission of Infectious Anemia differs hardly from the publicly available knowledge up to the end of the 60's. The cause of the disease was made up to have been a heat-sensitive.

And for avoiding infection, it was recommended that those objects be disinfected were to undergo 30 minutes heating up to 56° C. There symptoms similar to other horse's diseases, meaning that the anemia was not immediately recognizable in a lot of cases.

The "secondary diseases were such as to regard the primary Infectious Anemia which occurred simultaneously, as unconnected or even to overlook it." This statement appeared during the early 30's.

Accordingly, the anemia virus of horses was not specifically determined regarding its effects on the organism of the horse. There was no clinical picture which could exclusively be attributed to Infectious Anemia of horses.

Not even the reduction in red blood corpuscles was worthy of consideration as would have been expected based on the designation 'anemia.' There is no specific clinical picture for an HIV-infection either, but it is characterized by the clinical picture of Aids disease which was grafted on.