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Response on Anthrax Vaccine Disappoints
By Ridgely Ochs
Newsday STAFF WRITER
January 18, 2002
The scientist in charge of the federal government's program to dispense the anthrax vaccine to postal workers and others who may have been exposed to the deadly bacteria says he is disappointed by how few have chosen to take it.
"It is lower than I would have liked to have seen," said Dr. Bradley Perkins, the principal investigator on the anthrax vaccine program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
More than 10,000 people, including postal, other government and media employees, were given 60 days of antibiotics because of fears they were exposed to anthrax sent through the mail. Because of concerns about the resiliency of the bacteria's spores, the CDC in late December offered these people an additional 40 days of the antibiotic Cipro or 40 days of antibiotics plus three shots of the anthrax vaccine over a one-month period. The reason for offering antibiotics plus the vaccine was to provide a "bridge" while the body built immunity from the vaccine.
So far, 1,467 people, including 244 in New York City, have chosen to take the added 40 days of Cipro, according to CDC spokeswoman Kathy Harben. Only 182, including 13 in New York, have opted for the Cipro plus the vaccine, she said.
While the vaccine has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in a six-dose regimen since the 1970s and has a good safety record, it has not been approved for preventing anthrax in those who may have been exposed already. This is why so few have opted for it, Perkins said.
Because it's an off-label use offered by the government, those opting to take the vaccine are actually part of a clinical trial.
As a result, the public health message has been a complicated one. The head of the CDC, Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, was quoted last week in news reports as telling postal workers that while he would not hesitate to take the vaccine if he had had significant exposure to the disease, "if I were in your shoes and had taken 60 days of antibiotics and felt lousy from it, my answer might not be the same."
For William Smith, president of the New York Metro Area Postal Union, this was enough to steer him away from endorsing the vaccine.
There also has been uncertainty about production of the anthrax vaccine itself. The nation's only maker, BioPort Corp. of Lansing, Mich., has been unable to get FDA approval to make and ship the vaccine because of production problems.
The FDA sent the company a letter late last month saying that it has met production requirements at its laboratory but a separate facility in Washington state that puts the vaccine into vials still needs approval.
Wide Net
Report: More Than 300 Questioned in Anthrax Probe
Reuters
N E W Y O R K, Jan. 18 — Investigators have interviewed more than 300 former or current employees at laboratories able to produce anthrax similar to the kind that killed five people in the United States last year, The Wall Street Journal reported today.
"We've done over 300 interviews at places we consider really critical," the Journal quoted an official close to the investigation, whom it did not name, as saying. "I can tell you categorically that we've given a lot of people shakes [bt] there was nothing to it," the official said.
The newspaper quoted Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, who heads the biological arms-control panel for the Federation of American Scientists, as saying that some experts were upset at the investigation's slow progress and have given the FBI a list of likely suspects.
The FBI had received shortlists of suspects, including some highly placed members of the bioweapons community, more than two months ago, she said, according to the paper's online edition.
The FBI confirmed that it had received and investigated several lists but that they had no definite suspects and were pursuing all avenues of investigation, the newspaper said.
FBI representatives were not immediately available for comment.
Anthrax-tainted letters were sent to two U.S. senators and to media outlets in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Five people have died from anthrax since early October, and 13 others have been infected.