# Dr. Larry M. Bush - Bug Hunter
[Atlanta Journal-Constitution](http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/floridadoctorfirstclue.html): About **6:30 a.m.** Oct. 2, Dr. Larry Bush, an infectious disease specialist at JFK Memorial Hospital in Atlantis, received a call saying his help was needed with a gravely ill patient.
[Esquire:](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a1501/esq0303-mar-anthrax/) Larry pads into the hospital shortly before eight o'clock. a slender man with an unruly fringe of wiry hair .. (Dr. Bush is) (a) **bug doctor ..** a **hunter**, .. tracking **microscopic trophies** .. figuring out how to kill them.
[Abrams/Bush: ](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa012948)Dr. Bush examined a by-then comatose man, interviewed his wife standing at the bedside, and hastened to the laboratory to inspect a Gram-stained sample of his cerebrospinal fluid.
[Atlanta Journal-Constitution](http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/floridadoctorfirstclue.html): When Bush saw the fluid, he found it "grossly cloudy" -- a sign of something other than meningitis.
[Dr. Larry M. Bush:](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a1501/esq0303-mar-anthrax/) I realized then that we might have something very unusual here.
[Dr Bush](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/14/us/nation-challenged-disease-anthrax-threats-points-limits-health-systems.html) (thought) I've got to make sure this isn't anthrax.
**Diagnosis**
[Dr. Larry M. Bush](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/14/us/nation-challenged-disease-anthrax-threats-points-limits-health-systems.html): When you see rod-shaped bacteria in the spinal fluid, you become particularly concerned. I was .. trying by the process of elimination to determine what they could *not *be. I was thinking they could be listeria, but they didn't fit the pattern.
[NY Times Oct 14 2001:](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/14/us/nation-challenged-disease-anthrax-threats-points-limits-health-systems.html) (H)e realized only a handful of rod-shaped bacteria fit the .. shape he was peering at under the microscope. That handful included anthrax.
[Dr Larry M. Bush](https://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/criticaldoctorfirstFLcase.html): I thought, '**Why not anthrax? Right here. Right now.'**
[NY Times Oct 14 2001:](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/14/us/nation-challenged-disease-anthrax-threats-points-limits-health-systems.html) **(W)ithin six hours** of examining Mr. Stevens, (1-2pm, Oct 2) Dr. Bush says he was convinced the man had anthrax.
[Dr. Randall Wolff:](https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=20011021&slug=detect20) We were hesitant to mention the word because of all the implications. **I mentioned at the time that**, considering the World Trade Center bombing, this bacillus is more likely to be anthrax than two weeks ago.
[Bush to Abrams:](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a1501/esq0303-mar-anthrax/) I've got a guy in the ER and I think he has anthrax. No. I'm pretty sure he has anthrax. Do you know what that means?
[Bush/Abrams](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a1501/esq0303-mar-anthrax/): Bioterror.
[New York Times:](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/books/chapters/the-demon-in-the-freezer.html) At two o'clock on Tuesday morning, Maureen took him to the emergency room of the John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Palm Beach County. A doctor there thought he might have meningitis. Five hours later, Stevens started having convulsions.
The fact that anthrax popped into Dr. Bush's mind had not a little to do with recent news reports about two of the September 11th hijackers casing airports around south Florida and inquiring about renting crop-dusting aircraft. Anthrax could be distributed from a small airplane.
At around four o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, October 5th, he (Stevens) suffered a fatal breathing arrest.
On Saturday, October 6th, Sherif Zaki and his team of CDC pathologists arrived in West Palm Beach in a chartered jet.