Food Safety:  FDA Awards Contract to Review Food Safety

The U.S. Food And Drug Administration announced yesterday that it has awarded a contract for a research group to review the nation’s food safety (see GSN, June 12).

“The Institute of Food Technologists review will focus on preventative controls and research needs that might be used for eliminating or reducing the risk of an intentional act of terrorism or contamination for high- and medium-risk combinations of various food commodities and agents,” the FDA said in a statement.

The institute will look at possible technologies that could protect the food supply.

The review, which is scheduled for completion in June 2004, will not be made public, Reuters reported (Reuters, July 15).

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Smallpox:  New York Might Dump Hundreds of Smallpox Doses

New York state might have to destroy hundreds of doses of smallpox vaccine because so few volunteers took part in the immunization program, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, June 30).

In January, state officials ordered 8,000 doses, in 80 vials, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  As part of U.S. President George W. Bush’s smallpox immunization campaign, New York officials estimated that 16,000 volunteers would receive the vaccine, but only 747 have so far stepped forward.

The expiration date is nearing for some of the doses left in the 26 vials that were opened, AP reported.  The opened vaccine expires after 90 days and will have to be destroyed, according to New York state Health Department spokeswoman Kristine Smith (Associated Press/Newsday, July 15).

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Anthrax:  U.S. Postal Service to Begin Anthrax-Detection Equipment Tests

The U.S. Postal Service is expected today to begin testing a new anthrax-detection system at postal facilities in 15 cities, according to the Los Angeles Times (see GSN, June 9).  The tests are expected to last for one month, the Postal Service said (Los Angeles Times, July 14).

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French Response:  France Unprepared for Biological Terrorist Attack

France is not prepared for a biological weapons attack, according to a report from the French health and research ministries released last week (see GSN, March 25).

“The country has shown in recent years a limited ability to deal with the problem of infectious diseases, which means it is one of the least prepared for the problem of a massive epidemic,” the report says.

The report said that the French government has not taken the threat of biological terrorist attacks seriously enough.  The ministries also accused the French military of not taking steps to defend against chemical or biological warfare.

“The level of the country’s preparedness against infectious diseases is embryonic, and this is the consequence of political choices that have been made,” the report says (Reuters, July 9).

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U.S. Response I:  Experts Criticize Plan to Monitor Air for Pathogens

Experts are continuing to criticize a Bush administration plan that has placed sensors around the country to constantly monitor air quality for evidence of biological terrorism, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Jan. 24).

Supporters said the plan, dubbed “Biowatch,” allows authorities to discover if a dangerous agent has been released long before victims become ill.

“Prior to it being rolled out, the only real way to tell if a biological agent had been released was to see if people started turning up sick or worse,” said Bob Bostock, homeland security chief for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Critics said the system’s sensors would not detect harmful agents in enclosed areas such as airports or subways, and outdoor biological attacks would probably not spread far enough to reach the sensors.

“The probability of being able to identify something in time to make some sort of public health decision, is pretty small,” said Jacqueline Cattani, director of the Center for Biological Defense at the University of South Florida.  “If you saw planes going over and releasing major clouds of this stuff, there’s a chance that people would get suspicious a long time before anybody checked the filters,” she added.

Calvin Chue, a researcher at the Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies at Johns Hopkins University, said the cost of the system will be high and the probability of detecting an attack will be low.

The system includes at least 31 cities, and the White House announced earlier this year it expects the program will cost $1 million per city each year (Associated Press/NBC, July 11).

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U.S. Response II:  Biological Defense Projects Divert Funds From Other Medical Research, Experts Say

Experts have said that the Bush administration’s plans for increased biological defense research could take away necessary funding from other medical research projects, BBC News reported yesterday.

For example, the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases plans to spend $145 million to purchase and test a new experimental anthrax vaccine (see GSN, July 10).  Half of that funding, however, will be taken from research projects on other diseases, such as AIDS, under White House orders due to a lack of congressional funding, according to BBC News.

Luis Montaner of the Wistar Institute said he had just begun an AIDS research project when his funding was cut.

“This basically means for our own research that we have to scale back, to readdress our aims and perhaps accomplish less than what we would have hoped we could accomplish,” Montaner said.  “If there is a commitment that bioterrorism needs to be met by a comprehensive scientific agenda which includes, for example, anthrax vaccines, that should not be at the expense of other, equally important research programs,” he said (Richard Black, BBC News, July 10).

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Anthrax:  Clinical Trials Beginning on Next-Generation Vaccines

Scientists are beginning two new clinical trials on the next-generation anthrax vaccine, the U.S. Defense Department announced yesterday (see GSN, July 7).

Three government agencies, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program, are collaborating on a clinical study at the University of Maryland, the Pentagon said in a release.  That study is designed to advance other developing vaccines, according to Lydia Falk, the director of the Office of Regulatory Affairs in the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at NIAID.

“We can begin to compare the responses we see in humans to what had been observed in animals,” Falk said.  “That’s a critical part of the development of these vaccines.  The more preliminary investigative work that we can do, the more it benefits the entire field.  Our hope is that the information we gain will be able to add to those building blocks that would lead to an accelerated development plan,” she added.

A British company, Avecia, is under contract with NIAID to begin clinical trials soon on a recombinant protective antigen vaccine.  The trial is using a single, harmless component of anthrax to produce the vaccine, effectively eliminating risk to the subject (Karen Fleming-Michael, U.S. Defense Department release, July 10).

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