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Experts Question U.S. Anthrax Vaccine Plan
Experts have questioned a Bush administration plan to order a new $877 million anthrax vaccine whose developer is experiencing financial troubles and which has not been proven effective in humans, the New York Times reported Saturday (see GSN, Dec. 9). The vaccine contract with California manufacturer VaxGen is part of Project Bioshield, a multibillion-dollar effort to build a drug stockpile and other defenses against biological terrorism. VaxGen, which is to produce and deliver 75 million syringes of vaccine beginning in early 2006, has had recent difficulties with accounting irregularities and lawsuits related to research on other vaccines, according to the Times. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute at Fort Detrick, Md., has tested the vaccine on mice, guinea pigs and monkeys, producing varying levels of protection against anthrax, the Times reported. Those results have led some doctors to question the vaccine’s efficacy. “We don’t know the concentration of antibodies in humans that are needed to confer immunity to anthrax,” said Steven Wolinsky, head of the division of infectious diseases at Northwestern University’s medical school. Some experts question the value of Project Bioshield in its entirety. “This anthrax threat is extraordinarily exaggerated,” said Victor Sidel, a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. “All of this is simply playing to the politics of fear.” Bush administration officials, however, insist that preparation for a possible anthrax attack remains necessary. “For us to say let’s wait and do nothing would be an abdication of our responsibility for homeland security,” said William Raub, principal deputy assistant secretary for public health emergency preparedness at the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. In the event of an anthrax attack, victims would be treated with antibiotics followed by vaccination. The plan would rely on rapid distribution of antibiotics and vaccines, a task Bush administration officials acknowledge could not be done effectively today. “We are not where we want to be by any means,” Raub said (Eric Lipton, New York Times, Dec. 11).
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