Company, Group Call for Public Anthrax Vaccination
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Backed by former military experts and a consumer information group, the company that makes the anthrax vaccine asked on Thursday why the government was not talking more about vaccinating the public against anthrax.

The company, BioPort Corp. of Lansing, Michigan, said at a news conference it was ready to ramp up production and to find partners to make more vaccine if asked to do so by the government.

"Why, after a bioterrorist assault with anthrax spores, have preparations shifted from anthrax to smallpox?" asked Dr. Gilbert Ross, executive director of the American Council on Science and Health, a consumer information group, said in an interview.

The U.S. government is preparing a contingency plan for vaccinating emergency and health workers, and potentially large numbers of the public, in case of a smallpox attack. It is also vaccinating the military against both smallpox and anthrax.

It had been quietly moving to prepare for a biological strike even before the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax letter attacks that killed five people beginning last October.

But the attacks brought the issue to a very public fore.

Also on Wednesday, Senators Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, and Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, introduced a joint bill that would stimulate private sector development of new medicines, vaccines and antidotes to protect against biological, chemical and radiological attacks.

The bill, which has very little chance of passage so late in the session, includes incentives including tax breaks and patent protections.

"We aren't yet ready for the next chemical and biological arrows that may be shot at us by terrorists, so we need to encourage our biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries to build the shields that will protect us," Lieberman said in a statement.

Anthrax is considered the No. 1 biological weapon of choice, because it is easy to obtain -- it is a fairly common infection in goats, cattle and deer -- it can be made in a form effective as a weapon and is deadly when inhaled and left untreated.

The letter attacks showed how easy it is to infect people with a small amount of powder and experts say a covert attack, with anthrax poured, for instance, into a ventilation system, could sicken thousands before anyone knew what had happened.

Anthrax infection can be treated with antibiotics. The vaccine requires a six-shot course and it only offers temporary protection, with regular boosters needed.

Smallpox, on the other hand, is a frightening disease that once killed millions before it was eradicated in 1979. There is no treatment and it can be passed from person to person.

But BioPort, the ACSH and several others, including retired Lt. General Ronald Blanck, a former surgeon-general of the U.S. Army and retired Maj. General Randy West, a former defense department anthrax expert, said the issue of widespread anthrax vaccination needs to be discussed more widely.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working on a new, more effective vaccine and has said in the past that because antibiotics work so well against anthrax, it does not recommend routine vaccination against the bacteria.