Anthrax Dispute Suggests Bioshield Woes

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/thrive/2006/sep/30/093001385.html

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.

"We have all come to understand that there is more complexity than it originally appeared," said Thomas Inglesby, deputy director of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biosecurity.

The anthrax attacks of 2001 prompted passage of Project Bioshield, which promised to build national drug stockpiles to be used in case of a bioterror attack.

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