Economic stimulus funds go to anthrax vaccine development
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Gram stained cerebrospinal fluid showing gram-positive anthrax baccilli (purple rods). Wikipedia. Public domain
Despite no evidence of a continuing threat eight years after “Amerithrax,” the U.S. government continues to fund anthrax vaccine development. Should economic stimulus funds be spent on redundant vaccines with an inglorious past?
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has awarded Emergent BioSolutions Inc. yet another large grant to develop and manufacture an anthrax vaccine, this time using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which was signed into law on February 17 to stimulate the growth and recovery of the U.S. economy.
The latest grant is for $4.9 million over two years to further develop dmPA7909, an advanced anthrax vaccine that has the potential to “confer a rapid immune response following only two doses, long-term stability to enable ambient storage in the Strategic National Stockpile, and the potential to be distributed in a national emergency without the need for cold chain storage conditions,” according to the company’s press statement.
Emergent has a busy anthrax program consisting of an already licensed vaccine and six more novel anthrax vaccines and immune-related therapeutics in development.
Company senior vice president W. James Jackson, PhD, said in a statement that the award will help the company “support the U.S. government's approach of funding the development of multiple medical countermeasures against the threat of bioterrorism."
Emergent’s BioThrax (Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed) is the only FDA approved vaccine for the prevention of anthrax infection. Since 1998, the U.S. government has procured about 34.5 million doses of BioThrax. During that time period, nearly 8.7 million doses have been administered to more than 2.2 million military personnel.
The Department of Defense resumed mandatory anthrax vaccination for military personnel, and for some “emergency-essential” DoD civilians and contractors in certain geographic areas or roles, in October 2006.
The anthrax vaccine has been implicated for the death of one service member, while other complaints of vaccine-related deaths and illnesses have been discounted.
Medical Industrial Complex?
In 2001, there were several mysterious cases of anthrax believed to have been used as a biological weapon in the United States. Of 11 people who came into contact with inhalational anthrax, five died. There were seven confirmed and four “probable” cases of cutaneous anthrax; all survived. There were also several heavily publicized mailings of anthrax spores to congressional and news media offices in September and October 2001.
Nothing since.
Bruce E. Ivins, one of two scientists suspected by the FBI of unleashing the anthrax, died in 2008. According to an in-depth feature in the Washington Post published after his death, Ivans died, officials said, from an overdose of Tylenol.
The FBI now considers the anthrax case closed but a story in the Feb. 25, 2009, Nature resurrects it. The article states that the bacterial spores mailed to victims in the anthrax attacks don’t match the bacteria that implicated Ivins.
Steven J. Hatfill, another scientist working at the same biodefense laboratory, but with forged PhD credentials, was under suspicion but later exonerated. In June 2008 Hatfill received a $5.8 million out-of-court settlement from the Justice Department over a violation of the Privacy Act.
While working at the Army biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., Ivins and other Army specialists had filed for a patent for a method of making a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine in March 2000, according to the Post's investigation. The patent was awarded in May 2002 and later sold to Emergent BioSolutions for $2 million.
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That is what is believed to be correct.
So why are they continuing the research?
I don't want to play at paranoids here but could it be that the company and the administration know something we don't?
Why is the federal government using stimulus dollars to fund anthrax vaccine development when it has the $5 billion Project BioShield fund? The fund exists to provide companies like Emergent with research and development dollars to bring new medical countermeasures to the federal government.
It is further proof that the Congress and the administration had no real strategy when they passed the stimulus bill. The recovery act was a bill to allow for a spending spree.
First, the evolution of the anthrax business just seems too "neat" to be taken seriously. A patent for an anthrax vaccine, developed in an Army bioweapons lab, is applied for in 2000, the anthrax attacks occur in 2001 and the patent is obtained in 2002. The scientist who developed the vaccine is accused of the anthrax attacks and commits suicide days before he is to appear in court. The FBI considers the case closed but other scientists published in a prestigious journal are saying the evidence against him is erroneous. Eight years after the attacks the government is still funding anthrax vaccine development. The company mentioned here is involved with seven different anthrax therapeutics. There are other companies working on the same vaccine. Hmm. Who wouldn't have questions?
As for the second question about the appropriateness of applying economic stimulus funds to anthrax vaccine research: We need to be better watchdogs after the waste we've seen in terms of money spent inappropriately following Hurricane Katrina, on the wars and Iraq reconstruction efforts, to name a few. The $786 billion contained in the stimulus bill was sold as an economic recovery, jobs and green technology bill. I hope the majority of the money goes toward its expressed purpose because we are going to be paying for it for a long, long time.
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