|
US health chief derides
Labour smallpox claim THE Government was under fresh pressure last night over its award of a £32 million smallpox vaccine contract to a Labour donor when its explanation for the deal was rejected by one of America's most senior public health officials. Dr Donald H Henderson, the director of the US Office of Public Health Preparedness, told The Telegraph that there was "not a whit of evidence" to support ministers' claims that they had no choice but to give the contract to PowderJect Pharmaceuticals, whose owner gave Labour £50,000 last year. Ministers have insisted that PowderJect was chosen because no other company could deliver the Lister strain of smallpox vaccine in time. Alan Milburn, the Health Secretary, said that it was the only "appropriate" strain. When leading scientists complained to this newspaper that there was "no medical reason" to prefer the Lister strain, officials said privately that it was needed as protection against the possibility that terrorists had acquired specific smallpox virus stocks produced in the former Soviet Union. That claim was comprehensively rejected last night by the scientist chosen by President Bush to protect America against biological attack, however. "I have access to a lot of information, both classified and unclassified, and I have never even heard this. There is not a whit of evidence, absolutely none," Dr Henderson said. The US government chose a rival British company, Acambis, to produce hundreds of millions of doses of another strain of smallpox vaccine last year. Acambis, which is based in Cambridge, is angry that the Department of Health did not allow it to make a full bid for the contract. Officials at the Department of Health insist that the company was approached but was rejected because it was offering the New York Board of Health strain of the antidote rather than the Lister strain. Dr Henderson's rebuttal was made days after Tony Blair defended the deal to MPs, insisting that the award of the contract had been made "in line with national security". "There is no difference in the antigenicity of these strains," said Dr Henderson, a former director of the World Health Organisation smallpox eradication programme. "Goodness knows, we collected huge amounts of data during the global eradication programme and there is not a bit of evidence for that." The US official further undermined British ministers' defence of the PowderJect deal by saying that Russia itself had used the strain of vaccine bought by the US. Dr Henderson's outspoken rebuttal will add to questions surrounding the secret award of the contract to PowderJect, which is owned by Paul Drayson, a Labour-supporting tycoon. The company's shares have risen by £4 million in recent days. It emerged last week that PowderJect is not manufacturing the vaccine itself but is being paid a £20 million fee to act as the distributor. Bavarian Nordic, a Danish company, will make the 30 million smallpox vaccine doses. The contract has been roundly criticised for failing to follow normal public procurement rules. The former head of the Government's Better Regulation Task Force, Lord Haskins, added his voice to the criticism last week. The Government now faces the prospect of a legal challenge by the pharmaceutical companies that were not allowed to bid for the contract. "It is nonsense to claim, as Tony Blair has done, that this contract was awarded according to the 'normal' rules," said one industry figure.
|
 |
|
||||||||||||
|
|
