by Jennifer Pritchett
Northern News Services

NNSL (Feb 14/97) - Dan Dragon spends his summers in a protective suit and a mask designed to keep a deadly disease at bay.

He's Canada's leading specialist in anthrax, the bacterial disease that killed more than 200 bison near Fort Providence in 1993.

A native of Yellowknife, Dragon was working with the Department of Renewable Resources that summer and decided he wanted to find better ways of dealing with the bacteria in the event of a future outbreak.

Now in his fifth year of study at the University of Alberta, he expects to finish his PhD in the study of anthrax in two years.

Dragon said the fact that the disease can lie dormant for hundreds of years intrigues him.

He recalls a story he'd heard in which a man in central Europe came in contact with the bacteria while he was refinishing a goatskin leather chair from the 15th century.

"The guy pricked his finger while he was refinishing the chair for a museum," he said. "They attributed it to the spores on the inside of the leather that had been there for hundreds of years."

In 1993, Renewable Resources employees had to burn the carcasses of bison that died because the spores can infest vegetation and kill all kinds of animals, from moose to humans.

Bison seem particularly susceptible to the disease because it attacks their immune system, said Dragon.

"It affects mostly herbivores, and doesn't affect carnivores as much -- humans fall somewhere in between," he said.

"Wolves gorge themselves with bison meat that's literally crawling with the bacteria, and they don't die," he added.

While this deadly bacteria isn't a problem right now, its extremely long dormancy period means that it can strike at any time.

"It lies there in some dead animal waiting to attack any passing by animal," he said.

Not just a concern in the NWT, anthrax is a worldwide bacteria, with major hot spots in developing countries in Africa.