Global Security Newswire

The Bush administration will not move forward with the anticipated purchase of a drug to treat victims of a nuclear or radiological attack, McClatchy Newspapers reported yesterday (see GSN, March 7).

The Health and Human Services Department for more than a year considered buying sufficient amounts of a California firm's drug to treat 100,000 people.  The drug developed by military researchers would protect bone marrow against the effects of radiation, according to license holder Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals.

The agency ultimately determined that no drug on the market met its needs, but declined to elaborate on its reasoning or say how many products were considered.

"We determined after very rigorous scientific and technical review that no competing product out there met our requirements," said HHS spokesman Bill Hall.  "That doesn't change our commitment for purchasing products for all types of radiological and nuclear threats."

Administration of the Hollis-Eden drug must occur within four hours of exposure.  Agency officials had worried about that limitation, as it could take 24 hours or longer for emergency personnel to reach the majority of victims in a nuclear detonation area.

The drug's supporters counter that it could be delivered before any incident so that it would be already available to first responders.  The drug could be used to treat hundreds of thousands of people evacuating a strike area, they argued.

For now, the United States is left with outdated drugs for countering radiation, McClatchy reported.  The government is expected to review its criteria and then request new proposals.

The antiradiation drug contract was to be offered under Project Bioshield, the troubled $5.6 billion program to fund development of countermeasures for terrorist attacks involving biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear weapons (see GSN, Feb. 22).

The program so far has provided almost $800 million for development of biological countermeasures and another $27.6 million for radiation drugs.  Health and Human Services last year canceled the program's flagship contract for production of 75 million doses of a new anthrax vaccine (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2006).

"It seems as though HHS has dropped the ball," said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (R-Miss.).  A panel subcommittee is expected to conduct a hearing on the matter in April.

"It is unacceptable that we continue to lack countermeasures to radiation poisoning," said a spokesman for Representative Tom Davis (R-Va.) (Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers, March 7).