Smallpox:  U.S. Can Safely Multiply Vaccine Through Dilution, Scientists Say

If an immediate crisis strikes, the current U.S. smallpox vaccine stockpile could be diluted enough to create 150 million effective doses, which would cover half of the U.S. population, scientists reported yesterday (see GSN, March 28).

Furthermore, the dilution of the current stockpile and the release of 70 million to 90 million vaccine doses by the French pharmaceutical company Aventis Pasteur, along with current orders for more than 200 million doses are expected to provide enough smallpox vaccine for the entire United States before the end of this year, said Health and Human Service Secretary Tommy Thompson.

“We will have enough vaccine to save and protect every American should there be an outbreak,” Thompson said.

The results of the dilution study, announced yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine, indicated that the current U.S. stockpile of 15 million doses of the smallpox vaccine remained effective even when diluted to a tenth of its original strength.

The study’s results are “great news for Americans,” Thompson said.

If there were a need for additional vaccine, the United States probably would use a fivefold dilution method, according to the Washington Post.  In the event of a smallpox bioterrorist attack in several locations at once, however, the study shows the vaccine could be diluted even further and still remain potent, according to government researchers.

“If this were an absolute emergency that we needed 150 million doses, I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending that we go with the 1-to-10” dilution, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which sponsored the study (Justin Gillis, Washington Post, March 29).

Aventis Donates Doses

Aventis is expected today to announce that it will donate to the United States the more than 85 million doses of smallpox vaccine long stored in company freezers, according to company officials.

Aventis will be reimbursed for some of the costs of thawing the vaccine, testing it and placing it into vials, said Richard Markham, Aventis U.S. operations chief executive officer.  The United States has also agreed to protect the company from any liability if the vaccine causes harm, he added.

“It has lost some potency but it is still a useful vaccine,” Markham said.  “Hopefully we will never have to use it.”

Aventis had been testing the doses, which are more than 40 years old, for months and told the government about them years ago, according to company officials.  The United States did not take interest in them until last fall’s anthrax attacks, Markham said.

Aventis and the United States agreed to not release information on the stored vaccine doses to the public in case they turned out to be ineffective.

“None of us wanted to get people’s hopes up and then find out that we could not use it,” Markham said (Melody Petersen, New York Times, March 29).

Should Vaccination Program Be Restarted?

NIAID Director Fauci, along with several health experts, yesterday said the time might be right to resume voluntary smallpox vaccinations.  Restarting a mass smallpox vaccination program, however, counters current U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, according to the Los Angeles Times (see GSN, Dec. 17, 2001).

Last year, with a small U.S. smallpox vaccine supply available, the CDC recommended that a smallpox outbreak be handled through identifying cases, quarantining and vaccinating anyone exposed.  With the supply of vaccine now likely to be less of a factor, experts have called for a re-evaluating the best way to defeat a smallpox outbreak.

“Despite the fact that mass voluntary vaccination is not recommended in the CDC plan, there are many who would like to have the opportunity to make their own decision about smallpox vaccination,” Fauci said in an New England Journal of Medicine editorial yesterday.

“The strongest argument for preemptive mass vaccination is that it would eliminate smallpox as an agent of bioterrorism,” Fauci said.  “Accordingly, it would eliminate the disarray, confusion and panic that would most likely accompany simultaneous attacks at multiple locations.”

The CDC’s containment strategy is unlikely to work in the event of a bioterrorism attack using smallpox because of the large numbers of unprotected people, said several experts in the journal.

“Widespread, voluntary vaccination before exposure will greatly reduce the number of victims if an attack occurs,” said William Bicknell, former director of the Massachusetts Public Health Department.

The major risk of a mass vaccination program would be that out of every million people vaccinated, one or two would die and hundreds more would become seriously ill, Fauci said (see GSN, Nov. 21).

“In most circumstances, that would be unacceptable,” said Edward Campion, senior deputy editor of the journal, adding, however, “we now fear bioterrorism in a way seven months ago was unthinkable.”

The CDC approach would probably result in thousands of deaths before the public health system would have the chance to respond to a smallpox outbreak, said Charles Pena, a defense policy expert at the CATO Institute.

“If it’s the government’s responsibility to protect against a future attack, the best way is to take preventive measures, not responding afterwards,” Pena said.

Mass vaccinations, however, are not a foolproof method of preventing smallpox outbreaks, according to experts who have worked in the global operation to eradicate the disease.

In Bangladesh in 1972, 80 percent of the population was vaccinated but 70,000 smallpox infections were reported.  In 1976, after health officials used a containment strategy, no cases had been reported, even with only 78 percent of population vaccinated.

“At the moment, the risk of a complication from smallpox [vaccine] is far higher than the risk of smallpox,” said Stanley Foster, a former U.S. health official who headed the smallpox eradication program in Bangladesh (Ornstein/Garvey, Los Angeles Times, March 29).

Destroy Samples, Public Health Leaders Say

The deans of more than half of the U.S. schools of public health called this week for the destruction of the two known stockpiles of smallpox virus samples, kept separately at the CDC and at a Russian research institute (see GSN, March 18).

The destruction of the samples “will reduce other nations’ concerns that they must acquire and experiment with the virus to maintain parity with the U.S. and Russia,” said the statement drafted by Alfred Sommer of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“We strongly believe that the best defense against one particularly dangerous, potential terrorist agent, smallpox, is a global campaign to eradicate the virus from the face of the earth,” said the statement, which was signed by the deans of 18 out of 31 U.S. accredited public health schools.

Sommer said he was pleased at the support his statement received, which was prompted by reports in January that U.S. Army researchers had succeeded in fatally infecting monkeys with smallpox for the first time in an attempt to create an animal model for developing new drugs (see GSN, Jan. 29).  Somers said he had sent the statement to other public health school deans because he was concerned that the Army research could have started a biological weapons arms race.

The deans’ goal of eradicating smallpox, however, is unrealistic because some of the tons of smallpox produced by the former Soviet biological weapons program has probably made its way to other countries, said Peter Jahrling, a top Army scientist who headed the monkey study.

“The dream of global eradication was shattered by the Soviet betrayal,” Jahrling said.  “We can’t put the genie back in the bottle” (Scott Shane, Baltimore Sun, March 29).

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Anthrax:  Experts Debate Possible New Sept. 11 Connection

Experts are debating whether the Sept. 11 hijackers had a connection to last autumn’s anthrax attacks, prompted by a recently released information that one of the hijackers might have had cutaneous anthrax, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, March 25).

In January, an FBI official asked two experts from the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies to review the findings of a Florida emergency room physician who had treated one of the Sept. 11 hijackers for a black lesion on his leg last June.  The FBI official told Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby, who head the center, that he was worried the FBI was not taking the possible connection seriously enough.

In a memo publicly released last week, O’Toole and Inglesby said the Florida physician’s diagnosis of cutaneous anthrax was “the most probable and coherent interpretation of the data available.”  Since the memo was released, experts such as D.A. Henderson, head of the U.S. Office of Health Preparedness and Richard Spertzel, former head of U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, have agreed with the diagnosis, according to the Post.

The memo, however, raised doubts about any possible connection between the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the anthrax outbreak, the Post reported.  The hijacker was examined only days after arriving in the United States, which could mean that the lesion developed before he entered the country.  A Florida man who examined the hijacker before sending him to the hospital said the lesion was a “gash,” which is different from lesions typically associated with cutaneous anthrax.

It also is “highly unlikely” that the man would have contracted cutaneous anthrax on his lower leg — the location of the hijacker’s lesion, said Thomas McGovern, the leading anthrax expert for the American Academy of Dermatology’s bioterrorism task force.  The hijacker’s infection, a one-inch black lesion with red edges, could have been anything from a boil to an improperly treated scrape, he said.

O’Toole and Inglesby, however, said they were concerned that the FBI is not treating the connection seriously enough.  They said the hijacker’s infection, lacking pain or other factors such as diabetes, was specific to anthrax and should be treated with suspicion.

“It would be reassuring and useful to know how investigators in the anthrax investigation have determined that this is unlikely to be anthrax,” Inglesby said.

“We wanted to make sure the heads of the intelligence agencies knew the specificity of the diagnosis,” O’Toole said, explaining why she and Inglesby prepared the memo.  “I was afraid they didn’t understand that almost nothing causes a black (lesion) in an otherwise healthy young man.  Apparently they didn’t know that, and that’s upsetting” (Fainaru/Connolly, Washington Post, March 29).

Officials Offer Reassurances Over Brentwood Decontamination

Meanwhile, U.S. Postal Service and Washington municipal officials Wednesday attempted to reassure postal workers and area residents that the Brentwood Road postal facility decontamination plan is safe (see GSN, March 27).

“Most of us do not trust what they tell us,” said one postal worker, eliciting a round of applause from the meeting.

“Tear it down,” said a Brentwood-area resident.  Officials, however, have said demolishing the facility could cause anthrax-tainted dust to spread through the city.

Washington health officials attempted to calm the audience at the public meeting.

“Nobody is going to be left hanging out there with poison in their community,” said Washington Health Commissioner Ivan Walks.

Thomas Day, Postal Service vice president for engineering, and other officials said no part of the Brentwood decontamination plan would be put into action until the details were agreed to and explained to the public.  “Zero tolerance” of all anthrax would be the standard before the facility is reopened and put back into operation, they said.

“If there is any doubt, then we won’t leave the machines there, and we won’t open the building,” Day said (Francis Clines, New York Times, March 29).

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Smallpox:  Aventis Discovers up to 90 Million Vaccine Doses

The French pharmaceutical company Aventis Pasteur has found 70 million to 90 million forgotten doses of smallpox vaccine stored in company freezers, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, March 19).

The newly discovered doses could give the United States time to develop better formulas for smallpox vaccines while still being able to protect its citizens with the current vaccine supply in the event of a smallpox bioterrorism attack, according to experts.

“It’s a great insurance policy,” said D.A. Henderson, director of the new U.S. Office of Health Preparedness.

Aventis, whose U.S. operations are based in Pennsylvania, is currently negotiating with the Health and Human Services Department over giving the vaccine supply to the government, according to government sources familiar with the discovery.  Issues that still need to be negotiated include how much, if any, payment Aventis would receive for the doses and what level of liability the company would have if there are problems with the vaccine.

“There are legal things that still need to be finalized,” said Health and Human Services spokesman Bill Hall, adding that Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson hopes to have negotiations completed before next week.

“Until then, our hands are tied,” Hall said.

Because of rising fears that smallpox might be used in a bioterrorism attack, researchers have conducted studies to determine whether the current smallpox vaccine stockpile can be diluted to provide more doses with the same level of effectiveness (see GSN, Feb. 6).  Early studies have shown promising results with fivefold and tenfold dilutions, according to U.S. health officials.  The final results of those tests are expected today, the Post reported.

If the current vaccine stockpile were diluted to produce 10 times the current number of doses, it would only provide enough to vaccinate half the U.S. population, but the Aventis discovery more than makes up the difference, according to the Post.  The Aventis vaccine appears to be fully potent and health authorities might also be able to dilute it fivefold if necessary, said a government scientist.

The Aventis discovery could lead to a decision to re-offer smallpox vaccinations before an outbreak occurs and before a through analysis of the impact of such a program is considered, warned Tara O’Toole, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies.

“Doing that without proper foresight and planning could be a disaster.  It could kill people, that’s for certain, and it could undermine the government’s credibility,” O’Toole said.  “There are very significant ethical issues involved in saying, ‘OK, you can have it and you can’t.’  This is no small challenge” (Rick Weiss, Washington Post, March 28).

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Anthrax I:  Hoax Letters Target Hispanic-American Organizations

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

In mid-March, Hispanic-American organizations and lawyers in Washington and southern California received hate letters that warned about a white powder included in the envelopes, although the powder  later tested negative for anthrax, sources told Global Security Newswire this week (see GSN, Dec. 7, 2001).

Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said this was the first time his organization had received hate mail that included an implied anthrax threat.  He is concerned it could happen more often in the future, he said.

About 40 organizations and lawyers received hoax letters, said Anna Lopez, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.  The organizations included the Washington offices of the League of United Latin Citizens, the Aspira Association, Southwest affiliates of the National Council of La Raza and the Sacramento, Calif., office of the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, among others.

The letters, postmarked from Oakland, Calif., with no return address, were sent in plain envelopes with typed-out addresses, and did not arouse suspicion when they arrived, said officials from several of the groups targeted.  Inside was a letter attacking Hispanic immigration to the United States and filled with ethnic slurs.  The sender claimed to be from India and warned the recipients of a white powder at the bottom of the envelope.

“And by the way, watch out for the white powder … envelope,” one passage in the letter said.

Lopez said she noticed something on her hands as she read the letter.  She then saw the white powder, dropped the letter and called 911, she said.

Field-testing conducted on the powder came back negative for anthrax, Lopez said.  Further testing on the powder by the FBI also came back negative for anthrax and other harmful substances she said.  The scare, however, did close down many of the Washington offices of the targeted groups for a day, officials from several organizations said.

The Justice Department and FBI have opened an investigation into the case and are treating the hoax as a hate crime.

“All anthrax hoaxes are serious violations of federal law,” said Attorney General John Ashcroft in a press release.  “Perpetrators of criminal acts, targeting Americans because of their race or heritage, will not be permitted.  We are committed to identifying, tracking down and prosecuting domestic terrorists who threaten the lives and welfare of innocent Americans.”

Larry Gonzalez, Washington director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said he was pleased that the Justice Department had made the case a top priority, especially in terms of the amount of resources devoted to the case, and that they had decided to classify the incident as a hate crime.

Lopez said she met with the Justice Department last week and was assured the investigation is “a high priority,” adding that she was “thus far satisfied” with the progress of the investigation.

Wilkes, however, said he did not think the scare was being taken as seriously as it should.  The FBI agents that arrived at the League of United Latin American Citizens “didn’t strike me as a crack team,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say that it was top priority,” Wilkes said, adding that federal law enforcement officials appeared to become progressively more concerned as the scope of the case increased.

Both the FBI and the Justice Department said they would not comment further on the case, because of the ongoing investigation.

Why Hispanics?

Officials from several of the groups targeted said they did not know why their groups, or Hispanic-American groups in general, were the targets of such a hoax.

There are some who blame immigrants for the Sept. 11 attacks, despite U.S. President George W. Bush’s best efforts to dispel that idea, Wilkes said.  There has been an increase in anti-immigrant feelings, and targeting immigrants in general is not as taboo as targeting specific ethnic groups, he said.  There are some people who feel they can get at nonwhites by targeting immigrants, he added.

Both Lopez and Gonzalez said their groups might have been targeted simply because they have the words “Hispanic” or “Latino” in their names.  Whoever is responsible could have made the assumption that every Hispanic-American organization is involved with immigration issues, Gonzalez said.

Whoever is behind the hoax might not have had some purpose in mind, and instead just wanted to take advantage of the current climate to cause fear, officials from the several of the organizations said.

“I want to think it’s one person who is a very disturbed individual who wanted to scare people,” Lopez said.

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Anthrax II:  Connecticut Woman Might Have Died From Junk Mail

New developments have emerged in the cases of last autumn’s inhalational anthrax victims Ottilie Lundgren and Thomas Morris Jr., while U.S. military officials assess the effects of anthrax vaccine and authorities begin cleanup activities at the Brentwood Road postal facility in Washington, according to reports.

Lundgren, the Connecticut woman who died of inhalational anthrax in November, might have contracted the disease by ripping up contaminated junk mail, a Connecticut health official said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 20).

None of Lundgren’s first-class mail passed through mail-processing centers contaminated with anthrax, said Connecticut state epidemiologist James Handler.  About 80 percent of her mail was bulk mail, however, and some of that passed through the Trenton, N.J., mail-processing center that became contaminated after handling anthrax-tainted letters sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

Anthrax spores could have cross-contaminated mail as it passed through the Trenton facility, and then that mail could have contaminated mail-processing machines in Connecticut, according to the New York Times.

Testing conducted at a Wallingford, Conn., postal distribution center discovered anthrax spores on four out of 13 mail-sorting machines, Hadler said.  One machine that handled primarily bulk mail had 3 million spores still remaining on it a month after contaminated mail is believed to have passed through.  At another machine, one out of 52 columns of mail bins also tested positive for spores — the same column used for mail on Lundgren’s route, the Times reported.

Because the mail was so lightly contaminated, Lundgren probably was the only person in her town to become infected, according to scientists.  Due to her age, the 94-year-old Lundgren might have only needed to be exposed to a few spores to contract the disease.

Hadler said he believes it was appropriate to advise all people to open mail gently (Denise Grady, New York Times, March 27).

Victim’s Family Files Malpractice Lawsuit

In the case of Thomas Morris Jr., a Washington postal worker who died of inhalational anthrax last year, Morris’ family has filed a lawsuit charging that a Maryland medical center misdiagnosed Morris’ symptoms shortly before his death (see GSN, Nov. 8, 2001).

The multimillion-dollar lawsuit claims medical malpractice, wrongful death, negligence and other errors in Morris’s death, according to the Washington Post.  The Kaiser Permanente health plan that owns the Maryland medical center and nurse practitioner Alan Korff are named as defendants.

According to the lawsuit, Morris went to the Kaiser Permanente Marlow Heights Medical Center on Oct. 18 and claimed he had trouble breathing, along with other anthrax-exposure symptoms.  Morris told Korff he though he had contracted anthrax, but Korff and physician supervisors told Morris that he only had a virus, the lawsuit said.  They told him to take Tylenol and sent him home, according to the lawsuit.

Morris “died needlessly because of the negligence,” said Johnnie Cochran Jr., one of the lawyers representing the Morris family.  Two other Washington postal workers who were treated for anthrax at a different hospital eventually recovered, Cochran said.

Kaiser Permanente spokeswoman Susan Whyte Simon said Korff had contacted Maryland health officials about Morris’s case and followed their recommendations.

Morris “died because someone put anthrax into an envelope and sent it through the mail,” said a Kaiser Permanente official, adding that it would “provide a response through the court system” to the lawsuit’s allegations (Fernandez/Castaneda, Washington Post, March 27).

Vaccine Effects on Pregnancies Studied

Meanwhile, the current U.S. anthrax vaccine does not appear to have a negative effect on women’s fertility, according to a study conducted on U.S. Army soldiers (see GSN, March 1).

The study, conducted on women in the Army who were not pregnant when they were vaccinated, found that the vaccine did not appear to have a negative effect on pregnancy and birthrates, according to the Associated Press.  Researchers at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash. conducted the study and the results are expected to be published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

It appears that the vaccine also does not increase the chance of later birth defects when given to nonpregnant women, according to the study.  The results on birth defects, however, were not conclusive because of the low numbers of pregnancies occurring among the women involved, researchers said.

The new study contrasts with the findings of a prior U.S. Navy study, which found possible connections between an increase in birth defects and the anthrax vaccine when used early in pregnancy (see GSN, Jan. 18).

There have been major questions raised about the accuracy of the Navy study, said William Winkenwerder, assistant defense secretary for health affairs.  The results of the Army study were “reassuring to women in the services,” he said (Lindsey Tanner, Associated Press, March 26).

Brentwood Mail Facility Cleanup Has Begun

At the anthrax-contaminated Brentwood Road postal facility in Washington, some cleanup activities have begun, according to CNN.com (see GSN, March 26).  The bulk of the decontamination effort — pumping the building full of chloride dioxide gas — will not begin until at least late May, said Thomas Day, U.S Postal Service vice president for engineering.

Before the chlorine dioxide process begins, postal officials plan to conduct a weeks-long community outreach program to allay fears of residents near the facility, according to CNN.com.  Postal officials are also expected to talk with postal workers about their concerns over the Brentwood decontamination effort.

Chlorine dioxide gas was chosen to kill anthrax spores inside the Brentwood facility because of its success in decontaminating the Hart Senate Office Building.  One major difference, however, is the size of the buildings — 100,000 cubic feet of space were decontaminated at the Hart building, while the Brentwood facility is 17.5 million cubic feet.

“Just sheer size is one of the challenges,” Day said yesterday, describing the Postal Service’s plan to decontaminate Brentwood.

The building layouts are also different.

Brentwood is “an open, easily accessible area. … It’s hard to make the complete comparison,” Day said.  “The Hart building was a classic office environment with lots of nooks and crannies and bookshelves and desks and everything else” (Brad Wright, CNN.com, March 26).

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U.S. Response:  Bush Nominates NIH Head and Surgeon General

By Kerry Boyd
Global Security Newswire

U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday announced nominees for two top public health positions, the director of the National Institutes of Health and the surgeon general (see GSN, March 20).  Both are key positions in responding to the threat of bioterrorism, he said.

Bush nominated Elias Zerhouni, Executive Vice Dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, to lead the NIH and Richard Carmona, a medical professor at the University of Arizona, for surgeon general.

“We’re improving our public health system to make sure that we can respond quickly to any biological threat that our country may face,” Bush said yesterday at the White House in Washington.

NIH Director

Zerhouni, who immigrated to the United States from Algeria, is a professor in radiology and biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins and is known for his skills in both research and management, Bush said.

If the Senate confirms Zerhouni’s nomination, he will lead an organization that has grown significantly in the last 25 years and that — if Congress approves Bush’s fiscal 2003 budget proposal — will receive a $4 billion budget increase next year (see GSN, March 8).

Bush urged Congress to approve the proposed NIH budget, stressing the organization’s role in fighting terrorism.

“Medical research will improve our ability to identify and respond and treat infectious diseases, whether they occur naturally or are used as terrorist weapons,” Bush said.

“The NIH has taken a leading role in this important front on the war against terror.  The work of the National Institutes of Health have never been more promising, and never been more important,” he added.

Surgeon General

At the University of Arizona, surgeon general nominee Carmona oversaw the development of management plans for WMD and anti-terrorism preparedness and consequences, said Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson in a statement yesterday.

Carmona has unique experience in both law enforcement and community health services, Bush said.  He has served as a Green Beret in Vietnam, a police officer, a SWAT team member, a nurse and a physician.

“Dr. Carmona has redefined the term ‘hands-on medicine,’” said Bush.  “Dr. Carmona is an experienced voice to help educate Americans about the best precautions and response to the threat of bioterrorism.”

The surgeon general’s primary responsibility is to be “America’s chief health educator,” according to Bush.  The surgeon general also runs the Public Health Service Commission Corps, consisting of 5,600 health professionals who respond to emergency situations, such as the Sept. 11 attacks and subsequent anthrax attacks.

Senate Approval

The Senate must approve Bush’s nominees.  Senate Health Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) told the New York Times that Zerhouni is “a distinguished scientist with an impressive career as a scientific administrator.”

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Anthrax I:  Spore Traces Found in Afghan Laboratory, Myers Says

U.S. forces discovered traces of anthrax and ricin, a toxin derived from the castor bean, in at least five out of the 60 laboratories examined in Afghanistan, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers said yesterday (see GSN, March 25).

“The caveat to that is that there’s such minute amounts that the anthrax could be naturally occurring and the ricin could be there because of the castor bean,” Myers said.  The Pentagon found “no conclusive proof of active agents,” he said.

Operators at an anthrax laboratory discovered over the weekend near Kandahar appear to have attempted to shut down the facility before leaving, Myers said, adding that the laboratory did not have the necessary equipment to produce biological weapons.

“There was a dryer.  There was an autoclave,” Myers said.  “Not all the equipment you would need was there, but there was some of the equipment.  Looked like some of it had been tried to have been destroyed.”

The laboratories in which the traces were discovered might have been using the agents legally because both anthrax and ricin have “dual” — military and civilian — uses, according to United Press International.  U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, however, said al-Qaeda’s history of attempting to obtain biological weapons makes the peaceful use of such agents unlikely.

“We have so much evidence in writing of the desire to develop capabilities, chemical and biological capabilities, that the fact that it’s dual-use is saying a pistol’s dual-use — it can shoot a target or it can shoot a person,” Rumsfeld said (Pamela Hess, United Press International, March 25).

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Anthrax II:  U.S. Postal Service Prepares Massive Cleanup at Brentwood

U.S. postal officials are expected to release details today of plans for decontaminating the anthrax-tainted Brentwood Road mail-sorting facility in Washington, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, Feb. 15).

Officials cleaning Brentwood will model the project on the decontamination of the Hart Senate Office Building, in which crews successfully used chlorine dioxide gas to kill anthrax spores, the Post reported (see GSN, Feb. 7).  The Brentwood cleanup operation, along with the decontamination of a postal facility in Trenton, N.J., is expected to cost $35 million, postal officials said.

“If there’s any message I want to give you, it is that we’re going to make sure we get it right, so that there is an effective treatment and (Brentwood) is effectively decontaminated,” said Thomas Day, U.S. Postal Service vice president for engineering.  “We are absolutely committed to getting this done, but we need to get it done right.”

The Plan

To decontaminate the Brentwood facility, contractors will pump chlorine dioxide gas into the 17.5 million-cubic-foot building and keep the gas at a set concentration and humidity level for 12 hours, according to the Post.

There will be no one inside the facility during the decontamination operation.  Instead, engineers will operate Brentwood machinery remotely so every part is exposed to the gas.  There is no risk of a spark from machines igniting the gas, and the gas has been shown to be harmless to the machines, said Dennis Baca, Postal Service manager for environmental management policy.

After the gas has been in the building at the needed concentration and humidity levels, which engineers will monitor and maintain, it will be sucked outside the facility and made harmless by passing through scrubbers before being released into the outside air, the Post reported.  Hazardous material teams will then enter the building to collect more than 3,000 test strips for determining whether any anthrax spores remain.

Washington health officials have said the decontamination plan is still in an “embryonic” stage and that there are many details that sill need to be worked out, including how to make sure that no chlorine dioxide gas leaks from the building.  Any such leak would likely dissipate into the air and only cause burning eyes and a runny nose, according to experts (Steve Twomey, Washington Post, March 26).

Koplan Defends CDC

Meanwhile, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Jeffrey Koplan yesterday defended the way his agency handled the onset of last fall’s anthrax attacks (see GSN, Feb. 22).

At the start of the outbreak, government officials were criticized for poor communication with physicians and the public.  Federal officials, such as Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, were attacked for giving out information some believed would have been better coming from medical professionals, according to the New York Times.

Today, “we’re all agreed that it’s worthwhile early on to have a public health professional talking to the press,” about bioterrorism issues, said Koplan, who announced his resignation from the CDC last month.

Koplan also disputed rumors that he threatened to resign as CDC director at the beginning of the anthrax attacks unless the CDC was allowed to talk publicly.

“That is absolutely untrue,” Koplan said, adding that to have quit “in the midst of the anthrax attack would have been both unprofessional, unpatriotic and inappropriate.”

Some critics have complained that the CDC is not used to the harsh and brutal tone of politics in Washington, the Times reported.  The agency should be above such issues, Koplan said.

“What’s most important in an investigation of an outbreak like this is not the rough and tumble of Washington politics but the rough and tumble of dealing with a dangerous infectious agent when loose in the field, and that is were we apply our attention,” Koplan said.  “That is the wrestling match I prefer for us to get into, not Washington politics.  Let those up there dwell with that” (Lawrence Altman, New York Times, March 26).

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Anthrax I:  United States Finds Al-Qaeda Anthrax Laboratory

A top U.S. official yesterday confirmed reports the United States has discovered a laboratory in which al-Qaeda attempted to develop anthrax and other biological weapons (see GSN, March 20).  There was no evidence al-Qaeda successfully produced the weapons.

At the site near Kandahar, Afghanistan, “there was evidence of the attempt by [Osama] bin Laden to get his hands on weapons of mass destruction, anthrax or a variety of others,” Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

“What we found in that site, and in fact, what we have found in several sites is evidence of the attempt,” the general said.  “We have not yet found a place where we see weaponized weapons of mass destruction.”

“The laboratories, based on what we’re able to take from it, documentation, vials and so forth, was dedicated to that purpose [developing weapons of mass destruction] … In hot pursuit was bin Laden and were agents of al-Qaeda, but we have not seen a successful product of their labors up to this point,” Franks said (Meet the Press, March 24).

Other officials also confirmed the reports.  “U.S. Special Forces operating in the vicinity of Kandahar found a possible al-Qaeda chemical and biological research facility,” said Central Command spokesman Lt. Commander Matthew Klee.

The facility “contained some laboratory equipment and possibly was intended for use in a biological warfare production effort,” Klee said (BBC, March 24).

The Laboratory

Officials did not find any biological agents in the laboratory, which was under construction when al-Qaeda agents left it.  U.S. intelligence officials believe al-Qaeda would have needed foreign assistance to turn their research into an effective WMD program, the New York Times reported Saturday.

The equipment and documents at the site, however, indicated that al-Qaeda wanted to produce anthrax, the Times reported.  The laboratory contained medical equipment and supplies that scientists could have used for legitimate research but also to produce biological warfare agents, U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials refused to say whether they had information from a former al-Qaeda agent or local resident who might have provided information about activities at the laboratory.

The discovery of the laboratory provides more evidence to support U.S. officials’ belief that al-Qaeda was working to develop weapons of mass destruction but has so far failed, according to the Times.

“It is another example that they had an appetite for developing biological agents,” said a U.S. official.

U.S. agents have been searching more than 60 sites in Afghanistan where they suspect al-Qaeda had been operating during the Taliban’s rule.  Only a few samples showed any possible biological agents in very small amounts.  U.S. officials continue to search the sites and investigate evidence, the Times reported (Michael Gordon, New York Times, March 23).

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Anthrax II:  Officials Examine Sept. 11 Hijacker’s Connection to Disease

Federal investigators are examining a report that one of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks was treated for a skin lesion that could have been caused by anthrax three months before last fall’s deadly mailings, U.S. officials said Saturday (see GSN, March 13).

Experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Biodefense Strategies prepared the report after examining the documents of a Florida doctor who treated Ahmed Ibrahim al-Haznawi, who was a hijacker on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, said U.S. officials.  The experts concluded that anthrax was the most likely diagnosis for a lesion found on al-Haznawi’s leg, said Tim Parsons, spokesman for Johns Hopkins University’s school of public health.

Physician Christos Tsonas treated al-Haznawi for the lesion in June, the Associated Press reported Saturday.  Al-Haznawi said he developed the lesion after bumping into a suitcase, but after the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax mailings, Tsonas concluded that the lesion was consistent with anthrax, according to the AP.

FBI officials, however, said they did not think there is a connection between the Sept. 11 hijackers and last fall’s anthrax attacks.

“This was fully investigated and widely vetted among multiple agencies several months ago,” said Assistant FBI Director Jon Collingwood in a written statement.  “Exhaustive testing did not support that anthrax was present anywhere the hijackers had been.  While we always welcome new information, nothing new has, in fact, developed” (Associated Press/New York Times, March 24).

The report, along with prior evidence that the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks were also interested in obtaining access to cropdusting planes, could mean that the Sept. 11 and anthrax attacks were connected, said an FBI official.  Scientists and FBI agents, however, have found no connections in the course of their investigation, the official said.

“We did look into this sometime ago.  This was fully investigated,” the FBI official said.  “It’s a theory, but there’s no evidence.  It’s just not there.  We just have no evidence to feed the speculation that any of those guys came into contact with anthrax.”

“Amerithrax” Investigators Trudge Ahead

Investigators are concerned that the “Amerithrax” investigation into last fall’s anthrax attacks might become a “Unabomber-type investigation” — one that takes years, and possibly a lucky break, before it is solved, said a senior U.S. Justice Department official (Shogren/Meyer, Chicago Tribune, March 24).

FBI investigators had been prepared for a bioterrorism attack conducted in a subway or from an airplane but were surprised by the use of letters, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“None of the training exercises I participated in anticipated that type of delivery,” said a top law-enforcement official involved in the case.  “We had virtually no crime scene in the traditional sense.  We only have the envelopes and the letters and the anthrax.”

So far, one of the most difficult things in the “Amerithrax” investigation has been how to analyze the powder found in the anthrax mailing for clues that might lead back to a suspect, according to the Journal (see GSN, Feb. 26).

Investigators are nonetheless making progress, said two senior law enforcement officials.  One step has been to narrow down the number of U.S. laboratories that have stocks of the Ames strain of anthrax, the same strain that was used in the attacks.

Analysts have conducted a comprehensive review of the possible facilities that could have supplies of the Ames strain, the officials said (see GSN, Feb. 27).  Out of about 22,000 potential U.S. facilities, “We’ve come up with what we think is a pretty tight list,” said one of the officials, adding that the number is less than 100.

Investigators have also had to develop ways to test and analyze the most pristine anthrax samples — those taken from the tainted letter mailed to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).  To do so, the FBI brought to together about 20 experts from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Science Foundation and other research groups, according to the Journal.

“They came up with a flowchart of all the different tests that should be attempted in order to find out how was it made, where was it made, how old is the sample — all these questions,” one of the officials said.

Once tests were developed, FBI researchers created samples of harmless bacteria similar to anthrax to conduct dry runs.  Additionally, to conduct the sophisticated tests needed, the FBI took time to get needed contracts and secrecy agreements to use outside laboratories, the Journal reported.

One test conducted by an outside laboratory determined the ratio of atomic isotopes in a specific element in the powder.  The ratio varies based on where the element comes from, investigators said.  For example, the isotopic properties of oxygen and hydrogen in rainwater vary depending on the water’s geographic location, they said (Schoofs/Fields, Wall Street Journal, March 25).

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