Is it just us, or do others have the same reaction to media stories about the mounting popularity of Botox, the toxo-cosmetic touted as death to wrinkles: People are injecting what into their faces?
Tiny, purified amounts of botulinum toxin type A is what -- in other words, tiny, purified amounts of one of the fastest-acting and most toxic pathogens known to medical science. Only anthrax comes close.
Here's what it does. It interrupts conduction between the nervous system and muscle receptors, effectively paralyzing the muscles. When this occurs on a bodywide scale, as in, say, a case of botulism food poisoning, death from suffocation can quickly follow. Bioterrorism experts recognize the potential threat, though so far only Japan's Aum Shinrikyo has tried -- unsuccessfully, in the early 1990s -- to disseminate it.