The Washington Post has this article on the BioShield program. It’s a bit of a scorecard on the four-year old program, and the score doesn’t look good for homeland security. Let’s take a look, agent by agent.
- Old Anthrax Treatment: “As the result of an effort that began before BioShield, there are enough antibiotics in the national stockpile to treat 40 million people for more than 60 days, HHS says. Stockpiles also include 9 million doses of an anthrax vaccine produced by Emergent BioSolutions of Gaithersburg, with another 1 million to be delivered by the first quarter of this year.” You might know “Emergent BioSolutions” better as BioPort — the controversial supplier of anthrax vaccine to the Defense Department.
- New Anthrax Treatment: “The agency is struggling to develop a more modern anthrax vaccine that could be administered in fewer doses and with fewer side effects. In 2004, the agency tapped a small California firm, VaxGen, for an $877 million contract to deliver 75 million doses of an anthrax vaccine. VaxGen encountered delays and technical problems, and HHS canceled the contract in December after the firm failed to begin human testing on time.” VaxGen just laid off half its force and its CEO resigned.
- Botulinum Antitoxin: “Cangene has begun delivering the first of 200,000 doses of an antitoxin, which would have to be delivered shortly after patients show symptoms to counteract the effects of the toxin. There are currently no plans to pursue a vaccine, according to HHS.” Bot tox is not really a mass casualty agent, more of an assassination tool. Not sure the victims will know what they have prior to… ah, dying. Not sure why this is even in the stockpile.
- Smallpox: “There is a stockpile of more than 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine, enough for everyone in the United States, according to HHS. That effort began before BioShield.” Good news — lots of vaccine. Bad news — this is the old smallpox vaccine, which has odds on killing people who take it. No work for a new smallpox vaccine is underway.
- Potassium Iodide: “Enough potassium iodide to treat 1 million people is already in the national stockpile, according to HHS. Potassium iodide doesn’t treat most aspects of radiation exposure, but scientists believe it can protect the thyroid gland from cancer in such an attack.” Great! Now we don’t have to worry about stunted growth! Does nothing for the rest of your irradiated body, though.
- Plague and Ebola: “Despite President Bush’s mention of plague and Ebola in his State of the Union speech, the government has yet to contract with any company to produce a defense. HHS officials say the implementation plan to be issued in the next few months will include a roadmap to address both threats. Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health is pursuing research on vaccines for both. NIH has completed the first phase of human testing for the Ebola version and is seeking volunteers for the second, according to an NIH official, who said it would be several years before it could be stockpiled.”
So how’s your scorecard look? Four years ago, President Bush announced BioShield as key initiative of the “Biodefense Strategy for the 21st Century.” It took two years just to get the legislative language into shape. Four years later, we’re still not much better than we were before 9/11. The administration’s homeland security policy for medical biological countermeasures has failed.
– Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist
UPDATE: I failed to consider the British company Acambis work on a new, safer smallpox vaccine. It’s in an IND status, not approved for general non-emergency use. I don’t think that the R&D work is being funded through BioShield, however. They’ve been working on the vaccine for several years, with a large international customer base in mind.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I simply don’t understand why Smallpox, which was eradicated some thirty years ago after the most successful global immunisation campaign in history, is considered to be a bioterror risk.
I would have thought that if anyone were truly worried about this they would resume the childhood vaccination campaigns of yesteryear.
Dan – there are people who believe that Russian smallpox source (the US still has a source also) may not be as secure as one would like. Also other countries may have developed it also, using old stocks. The idea of a national vaccination policy was viewed as impractical and dangerous, thus the “voluntary” innoculation of emergency responders was proposed by the White House, and that policy flopped.
Eric – some cities like NYC and LA have some good distribution plans. For the smaller locals, there is a practice known as “ring vaccination” which the WHO has used successfully (basically surround an infected area and work inward). And please excuse my spelling, I can’t ever seem to get “dying” right. I had C-averages in high school english.
Excellent post. Just shows how this administration is focused more on propaganda than real solutions. If any ‘real’ research is being done in these areas, they are probably so deeply classified that they won’t come to light until decades later, or in the event of a catastrophe.
Jason
There is no substantive evidence that I’ve come across that there are any stocks outside of those held by Russia and the US, so I’d be interested if you could solidify your assertion a little.
Whilst there is a fifteen year history of claims of insecure Russian stocks across the WMD domains, it’s notable that there has yet to be an observable result eventuating from these claims; and as far as both bio and chemical agents are concerned, time elapsed diminishes risk.
Global vaccination policies are what led to the eradication of the disease in the first place, so a US national campaign, for example, cannot be dismissed as impractical. However, it would be statistically “dangerous” to implement a vaccination campaign in the face of a non-existent threat, as people will die for no actual benefit – and this seems to be the nub of the problem when presenting smallpox as a bioterror issue, as no-one really believes there’s a threat.
Siga technologies has been releasing great progress over the last year on a smallpox treatment.ST246 has shown great results and and can target more then just smallpox.Just thought I would give some positive info to research since it seems all the vaccine work over the last few years has been a joke.
Seeds for the movie IAM LEGEND, biowar Kills mankind save 1??
Same Trend here??
See 1971 Omega Man with Chuck Heston.
Scary this Biowar stuff.