Ricin the attack on Georgi Markov another Bulgarian defector, Vladimir Kostov, survived a similar attack. Kostov was standing on an escalator of the Paris metro when he felt a sting in his lower back above the belt of his trousers. He developed a fever, but recovered. After Markov's death the wound on Kostov's back was examined and a ricin-laced pellet identical to the one used against Markov was removed. Several terrorists and terrorist groups have experimented with ricin and caused several incidents of the poisons being mailed to U.S. politicians. For example, on May 29, 2013 two anonymous letters sent to
Ricin would generate enough heat to denature it. Once deployed, an area contaminated with ricin remains dangerous until the bonds between chain A or B have been broken, a process that takes two or three days. In contrast, anthrax spores may remain lethal for decades. Jan van Aken, a German expert on biological weapons, explained in a report for The Sunshine Project that Al Qaeda’s experiments with ricin suggest their inability to produce botulinum or anthrax. A biopharmaceutical company called Soligenix, Inc. has licensed an anti-ricin vaccine called RiVax™ from Vitetta et al. at UT Southwestern. The vaccine is safe and