|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Haggling Hinders Access to U.S. Anthrax Vaccine
The United States has designated only 159 vials of anthrax vaccine for civilian use — sufficient for 530 people — despite an interagency agreement signed last April in which the Defense Department agreed to provide at least 2 million doses of anthrax vaccine to the civilian stockpile by Sept. 30, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, July 21). Legal and bureaucratic disputes among federal agencies have blocked vaccine transfers for civilian use, according to congressional and administration officials. They added that the federal government is also seeking a new vaccine that could prove both less expensive and more efficient, but has yet to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. “It is a shocking lack of preparedness to have only 159 vials set aside for civilian use when we know that al-Qaeda would not hesitate to launch an anthrax attack against the United States,” said U.S. Representative Jim Turner (D-Texas), the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security. The delay is not causing a safety risk for civilians, according to Health and Human Services and Defense Department spokesmen. BioPort, the nation’s sole producer of licensed anthrax vaccine, is storing nearly 1 million doses — enough to vaccinate more than 330,000 people, they said. “The bottom line is, if there is a civilian crisis that would require vaccination of the population, there is enough anthrax vaccine to do that,” said Bill Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. “It would just take a phone call to get that vaccine transferred from the Pentagon to the stockpile.” However, the Defense Department announced in June that it was expanding its anthrax and smallpox vaccination programs (see GSN, June 30), and the BioPort doses have been set aside for that purpose, according to Defense Department officials and a spokesman for the company. Months of infighting over such issues as which agency would purchase the BioPort vaccine indicated a lack of attention to biodefense, said Jerome Hauer, a former assistant secretary with the Department of Health and Human Services. “We now have bureaucrats and lawyers running bioterrorism preparedness,” said Hauer, who left the administration to head a biodefense center at George Washington University (Judith Miller, New York Times, Aug. 20).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
