Anthrax dispute suggests Bioshield woes

[tocqueville]

By PAUL ELIAS, AP Biotechnology Writer
Sat Sep 30, 11:48 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO - By now, millions of anthrax vaccine shots developed through cutting-edge genetic engineering were supposed to be filling a new national stockpile of biodefense drugs.

Instead, five years after anthrax attacks left five dead, sickened 17 and panicked the country, the nearly $1 billion contract awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to a tiny and struggling San Francisco Bay Area biotechnology company is plagued with misfortune and delays.

Delivery has been put off until at least 2008 — and maybe later — while the government and VaxGen Inc. trade barbs over who is at fault. The dispute has further tarnished Project Bioshield, a government program that has alienated many potential biodefense contractors.
.......

Since awarding the contract to VaxGen, HHS has doled out another $1 billion in contracts, including two this year worth a combined $505 million to the Canadian company Cangene Corp. for another anthrax treatment, as well as a drug to treat botulism.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061001/ap_on_he_me/project_bioshield_dispute_1

[Montagnard]

1. Just read in Susskind's Book

That in the summer of 2003 the CIA learned that al Qaeda did indeed have weapons grade anthrax. An arrest in Ayutthaya,Thailand led the CIA to an al Qaeda safe house in Kandahar where a small potent amount of anthrax was found. The house was supposedly a bio-lab.

Three years later and the Bush regime cannot enforce a contract to manufacture any protection from an anthrax attack...I might add the sort of weapon that was used in a major attack on the country after 9-11...still unsolved.