Q & A: Meryl Nass, MD (Anthrax Vax and more)

March 18, 2011

Excellent from Meryl Nass

Q & A: Meryl NassAnthrax expert doubts FBI's case

»

Southwest Harbor Dr. Meryl Nass, an internal medicine

specialist at Mount Desert Island Hospital’s Gilmore Health

Center, first became interested in anthrax in the late 1980s. As she

became more involved in anthrax research, traveling to Zimbabwe to

investigate an anthrax epidemic that occurred in the late 1970s, Nass

became acquainted with Bruce Ivins, one of the federal government’s

leading anthrax vaccine researchers. When Ivins committed suicide on July

29, 2008, and was subsequently named by the FBI as the culprit of the

2001 anthrax attacks, Nass started blogging about the case at

anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com. Since then, Nass has helped push the

news media toward taking a more critical look at the FBI’s case. She has

been quoted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall

Street Journal as an anthrax expert, and has testified before the Senate

and the House of Representatives on anthrax and other health and

bioterrorism issues. A variety of news organizations have now

editorialized in favor of an independent investigation of the case, and

in February, the National Academy of Sciences determined that the

scientific evidence in the FBI’s case was not conclusive, further

undermining the investigation, which was one of the largest in the

bureau’s history.

BHT: How did you get involved in this whole issue?

MN: That’s such a long story…I knew a lot about anthrax. I had

already done a lot of work on anthrax starting in 1988 or 1989, and so

when the letters were sent, you may recall that people had a lot of

questions about how to deal with them. The public. And there were

problems with the spokespeople from CDC [Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention] and HHS [Department of Human Health and Services]…There were

a lot of changes in who was going to be the spokesperson and there were a

lot of issues about who was responsible for the investigation. People got

changed several times early on, and media were calling me for interviews

because I was already known to do some work in anthrax. So I started

posting answers to queries on my website at that time. I made suggestions

about how one might mitigate the problem and how individuals would

respond and later talked about doing investigating and that sort of

thing, and even was calling people I knew at [u.S. Army Medical Command

installation] Fort Detrick to get more information when I had a

particular question. So anyway I did that. That was it. I wasn’t

investigating who sent the letters at all. I don’t have any forensic

training. I only know about anthrax. But I did know most of the people

who have been in the field of anthrax for a long time because it’s a very

small number of people.

BHT: About how many?

MN: When I went to my first international anthrax conference in

1998, there were probably between 100 and 150 people there. Maybe 200 at

the most. In those days, there weren’t a lot of people.

BHT: And how would you describe your role in that small

field?

MN: I started out as being a layperson, who it’s such a long

story I was a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. I was

interested in arms control. I lived in Amherst, Mass, and there were

demonstrations in Amherst by students who discovered that UMass

[university of Massachusetts] had Pentagon contracts for doing anthrax

research, and I wound up being asked to read the contract and report back

to my Physicians for Social Responsibility group. This was back in 1988

or 1989. So it turned out that the contract, which was named “Studies for

an improved anthrax vaccine,” actually had nothing to do with developing

vaccines but was about a sort of rudimentary form of genetic engineering

of anthrax. And so the fact that there was a contract that was sort of

obfuscating by name what it was actually doing I found interesting, and I

thought I better just look into this a little more…I just went through a

lot of materials and discovered two things that I thought were important

at the time, one, being that although the army and the federal government

had a policy on what research they felt they could legally do because

there was an international treaty banning biological warfare that’s sort

of specific about the kinds of peaceful, protective, defensive research

that could be done and what kinds of research were prohibited by

international treaty, that the U.S. could be construed to be doing

research that its own mission statement and the international treaty said

it shouldn’t be doing. A.

And B, I decided if everyone was so concerned about anthrax I would look

at recent anthrax epidemics and would see what they looked like. So I did

that, I went back 15 years, and I pulled all the articles on anthrax

epidemics and read them, and discovered that one in Zimbabwe had entirely

different characteristics than all the others. And it became obvious to

me in early 1989, that this was probably due to biological warfare, and I

was a physician, but I wasn’t an infectious disease doctor, or

bio-warfare expert by any means, and I decided that I would just read

some more about this, and if it was possible I’d publish a paper on it,

because it was important in terms of arms control that people become

aware of how these things have been used in the real world, and so over a

period of three years I did a lot of reading, I did research, I went to

Zimbabwe…Anyway, I wrote what turned out to be a very important paper

published in 1992 showing that the Zimbabwe epidemic was very different

from normal epidemics and was almost certainly due to biological warfare,

and the other thing this paper did was sort of develop a model for how

one might analyze suspect epidemics. Having done that, all that work,

real researchers knew of this work, because it was fairly high quality.

It was as if it was written by somebody who knew a lot about

anthrax…

In 1997, it was announced that the U.S. was going to immunize all of its

troops for anthrax…and that this would be the lead-in to vaccinating all

their troops against a number of biological warfare agents. But they were

going to start with anthrax because anthrax was already licensed and

these other vaccines were still in development, except for smallpox,

which was also licensed. I wrote a very short paper, which was just to a

Listserv called ProMED-mail, which discussed epidemics, and I pointed out

in this short paper with five or six references that there was no

published evidence for efficacy or safety for anthrax vaccine, and before

the government started up a wholesale program to vaccinate 2.5 million

people, some of this data needed to be generated or published. That

little nothing got cited in the Lancet, one of the biggest medical

journals in the world.

After that, somebody who read that asked me to write a review article on

anthrax vaccines, which I did, which was published in the beginning of

1999, and people started calling me. If they went on the computer and

typed in anthrax vaccine, my name would pop up. So, I got a lot of people

calling me telling me they were sick from anthrax vaccine. The first 50

or 100, I told them I didn’t think that was probably accurate that the

symptoms didn’t seem to be vaccine related, didn’t resemble symptoms for

other vaccines. And then after I got hundreds of people calling me I

realized that there was really something different going on with anthrax

vaccine, and I worked for a number of years trying to get that vaccine

investigated properly and stopped until we had a better version. So I

wound up testifying before congressional committees and things like this,

and then later I had to testify to congressional committees on Gulf War

Syndrome and bioterrorism. Anyway, that’s sort of what happened to me.

One thing lead to another.

So then the anthrax letters, I really didn’t pay attention to who sent

them until Aug. 1, 2008, when the FBI announced that this fellow who was

actually an acquaintance-slash-friend of mine had committed suicide, and

they said he was the person who had done it. A lot of information that

was provided to the public seemed to me to be inaccurate, exaggerated and

did not speak to the heart of the issue, did not provide the evidence

that he had done it, and so I started just writing on my blog about this,

and people picked it up. So I’ve done a lot of interviews about the

anthrax letters, too.

BHT: So what was your connection to Ivins?

MN: Well, Ivins was the main anthrax vaccine researcher at Fort

Detrick, so I knew his work. But actually we had met at a conference on

biological defense in 1991. We both attended this conference in

Baltimore, I think it was three days, and we happened to sit next to each

other. And we started talking, and we became friendly, and I told him

about the research I was in the process of doing on Zimbabwe, and he sent

me some materials that were relevant, and then later when I saw him at

conferences, and was working on anthrax vaccine, he again would give me

information that he thought was relevant, and we’d talk about our

respective work. You know, I didn’t know him well, I just saw him at

conferences, but we had known each other over a number of years.

BHT: On your blog, right after the FBI sort of pinned him as the

guy, right after he killed himself, you clearly said, ‘He did not do

it.’

MN: I don’t know about that. You’ll have to show me what I wrote

then. What I remember now is thinking, ‘They’re making a ridiculous case.

They have provided a lot of completely circumstantial and in many cases

irrelevant pieces of information, and have not demonstrated’ If you

speak to anybody who knows about this case, you will learn that there is

no physical evidence linking Ivins to the anthrax letters. There were

hundreds of people that had access to Ivins’ flask, and that’s been

well-documented in the media. Basically, the FBI’s entire case rests on

the fact that Ivins was a peculiar individual and had a lot of hang-ups,

and he happened to have a flask that most likely served as the progenitor

material for anthrax that was grown and then put into the letters. But he

had also shared that material with several other labs, and so any of them

could also have supplied the progenitor material. So, basically that’s

the FBI’s entire case, and it’s not very satisfying for anyone who has

looked into it.

BHT: What is the role of this company Emergent BioSolutions

formerly known as BioPort in this whole story?

MN: I probably don’t have all the pieces. But there’s a fellow

named Ibrahim El-Hibri…He and his son somehow purchased a lot of anthrax

vaccine at the time of the Gulf War from the U.K., and sold it to Saudi

Arabia at 100 times mark-up, and I got this from the person who was in

charge of the bio-defense program in the U.K., so that’s real. So they

were investors, they were probably slightly crooked, slightly sleazy…so

they got into bio-defense, and apparently Admiral Crowe, who was

chairman of the joint chiefs at one point and then became the U.S.

Ambassador to the U.K., was friendly with Ibrahim El-Hibri supposedly

he suggested to the El-Hibris that they may want to purchase bio-defense

vaccine manufacturers, or maybe the anthrax company. And the company that

made anthrax vaccine in the U.S. for many years was actually part of the

Michigan Department of Health, and they had not been keeping it up, it

had not been making too much money, and it had been failing FDA [Food and

Drug Administration] inspections. So FDA was going to shut them down

unless they made expensive renovations…

In any event, Michigan was making all the vaccine that was being used by

people like Ivins to do animal testing. So they were the only licensed

manufacturer in the United States of human anthrax vaccine. And so they

were maybe going to close…FDA issued a notice of intent to revoke the

licenses for the plant in 1996, 1997. So, the El-Hibris got in there and

made a deal where they put $3.25 million dollars down…and bought the

plant in September of 1998, and subsequently have spent a lot of money on

lobbying, and have managed to sell large stockpiles to the Department of

Health and Human Services for civilians in the event of an anthrax

attack, as well as to the Defense Department. On their $3.25 million

dollar investment, they’ve made between $500 million and a billion

dollars.

BHT: What percentage of the contracts that have gone to

bioterrorism related issues have gone to this company since

2001?

MN: It’s very hard to say. Because there are a lot of different

contracts, and the contracts are often for variable amounts depending on

what the government wants, and depending on if they meet certain

benchmarks at the time. But they have sold over 25 million doses to HHS

at about $25 a dose, so that’s about $625 million dollars…And they’ve

sold the military I’m not sure how many doses. But in 1997, when they

were going to shut the plant down, it was $2 and change a dose…They’ve

made way too much profit on this vaccine, which is very inexpensive to

manufacture…But the day before they bought it, the Army gave them free

indemnification, which meant that were there any lawsuits, then the Army

would pay. The manufacturer would not be responsible.

BHT: So there’s this compulsory program for anthrax vaccine for

service members. In your testimony, to Congress you’ve talked about the

effect of this vaccine, and how soldiers have not wanted to take it. What

is this vaccine doing to these soldiers and why are they being compelled

to take it?

MN: Oddly enough, and I wasn’t really expecting this at all, when

I started being concerned about the vaccine, it seems that the most

common serious side effect is something like Gulf War Syndrome, which is

something like fibromyalgia, or chronic fatigue syndrome. The way Gulf

War Syndrome is defined by the CDC is pain, cognitive or emotional

impairment and fatigue. Any two of those three, basically, thousands of

people who have gotten sick from anthrax vaccine have developed this kind

of illness. You don’t have to have had anthrax vaccine to get this kind

of illness. People who never got anthrax vaccine can have it. People who

went to the Gulf and were not vaccinated can have it. The efficacy for

humans of this vaccine is just unclear. The safety is also unclear,

because there haven’t been any good studies to indicate how much of a

concern my concerns are. Do these side effects happen in 1 percent of

troops, in .01 percent of troops, in 10 percent of troops? We don’t know.

There’s no data. I have lots of anecdotal data, where some sergeant went

and queried all the people in his platoon who got sick, so I’ve heard

several thousand stories of illness, but I don’t have good data.

BHT: Is this compulsory vaccination program for soldiers still

ongoing?

MN: Yes. It’s been much easier to avoid getting other vaccines,

except smallpox. For civilians, there are three potential ways to avoid

vaccines. There’s a philosophical exemption, there’s a medical exemption

and there’s just refusal. For soldiers, there are those similar ways to

avoid vaccination, and it’s not that hard to get one of those waivers,

but for anthrax vaccine and smallpox vaccine it’s very hard to get a

waiver, unless you’ve already gotten sick from the vaccine and you can

maybe get a waiver for more doses.

BHT: Do you think anthrax is an important enough threat for the

amount of resources that have been devoted to it? What was it like before

2001 when no one had heard of this?

MN: Then, there were the 150 people in the world. That was an

international conference, including people from Russia, China, Germany,

France, Canada. There was very little attention devoted. As I said, the

vaccine probably wasn’t very good, because we don’t have any data really

to support its use. It made sense to do more research. Ivins was

basically almost it in the United States for anthrax vaccine research.

Because those conferences weren’t anthrax vaccine conferences, those were

anthrax conferences. He was the vaccine guy. He was the top vaccine guy,

and other people who worked on anthrax worked on other aspects of

anthrax.

BHT: What was his position on the vaccine owned by Emergent

BioSolutions?

MN: I never got a quote from him. I don’t know what he thought of

it.

BHT: What’s your hunch about what actually went on with these

letters?

MN: Well, it’s not a hunch. Let me just back up. Two things. My

job is internal medicine, and that means I have to make diagnoses, that’s

mostly what I do, is figure out what’s wrong with people. So I’m used to

for 30 years that I’ve been a doctor I’m used to gathering bits of

information that are incomplete and trying to make suppositions about

what’s going on. So for the anthrax letters, it seemed that they were

probably not written by an Arab. That if the person who wrote them wanted

to kill people they wouldn’t have said, ‘This is anthrax, take

penicillin.’ At the same time, the anthrax was highly virulent that was

used, so I would say that the person or persons who sent the letters were

aware that there might be deaths, and accepted that. I would say that the

anthrax vaccine program was likely to end. I have seen a draft report

that was going around the Pentagon suggesting that mandatory anthrax

vaccinations be stopped. At the same time, there was a good possibility

that the Patriot Act was not going to be passed. I think Leahy or Daschle

were not happy with it. And we know from O’Neill who was [ W.]

Bush’s first treasury secretary, that when he first started going to

meetings of the Cabinet, he learned that the Bush administration was very

interested in being involved in a war with Iraq. This was before 9/11.

So, putting this kind of information together, it seems that the anthrax

letters, and particularly since the anthrax in them probably had as its

progenitor a U.S. Army laboratory, that this was something like the

Tonkin Gulf incident, which could have provided ammunition for us to

attack Iraq, even if though there was no other evidence that Iraq had

been involved with 9/11, and also helped push the Patriot Act forward,

and helped encourage the spending of money for bioterrorism, because when

9/11 was only airplanes hitting buildings, why would you spend money on

bioterrorism after that? So those are things that certainly happened

afterward that were helped along by the letters, and whether the person

or persons who sent the letters had that in mind, I can’t say. But people

who wanted those things to happen may have had a motive.

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Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian

Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Washington State, USA

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March 18, 2011