Page 8 - Caster Beans News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

It. how significant does that seem to you? >> honestly, until we get the final results probably tomorrow morning, i would still not read much into it. these were tested twice in the field, first the automatic detector was set off, the field test was set off. that shows an element there and anybody can get them and be matched up. the lab tests show whether the caster beams in the match have been processed so it is actually the protein, the toxic protein, of ricin. and you have to figure out how much ricin there is, how potent it is. that is still inconclusive. until we get to tomorrow morning, ...

>> it does. and an entire country on edge. thank you very much, dana. with the very latest on that, i'm understanding there was just one person responsible, that person now arrested from the hometown of senator wicker's, tupelo, mississippi, arrested for sending those ricin-laden letters. i want to bring in dr. sanjay gupta, along with retired colonel randall larson, a retired terror expert. obviously, what dana was talking about and capturing it so eloquently was just the fear that this creates. and obviously not linked to this event. this understanding is they weren't certainly talking -- di...

Possible person of interest in the case. just a little background on this poison, ricin is a poison that is found naturally in caster beans, and any amount, an amount in fact the size of a head of a pin can kill an adult. there is no specific test for exposure and there is no antidote once exposed. there have been two cases recently the fbi discovered several vials of ricin in a motel room near the vegas strip in 2008 and in 2004 authorities discovered traces of the poison on a letter opening machine in the office of then senate majority leader bill frist. what have we learned from this fbi bu...

If it's treat ned lab, if -- treated in a lab, made in a lab it can be highly, highly toxic but it has to be made by someone who knows what he's doing. i mean, caster beans become ricin but accrued form of it is not likely to do you a lot of harm. if it is refined and deliberately made into a powder that can be breathe ned or in jessed -- breathed in or in jessed or in skwrebgted into the system -- injected into the system you can die, because the problem with ricin is we don't have an antidote to it. jon: if you're exposed to it, if somehow it's injected into your person or in a powder form y...

Cornyn republican. all suspicious packages all have been cleared as safe. the level of anxiety over our safety is peeking not too dissimilar to those extremely tense days following 9/11. remember the rumors anthrax is in your building? people running out of buildings? >> i had to self-medicate myself at every bar just to get over that. i have a problem covering these stories simply because ricin when -- whatever it is which i guess is a made from caster beans, i guess. anybody can generate this kind of terror. the ease it can be committed conversely dictating the news. if somebody can send a l...