US controls bird flu vaccines over bioweapon fears

[Guest guest]

US controls bird flu vaccines over bioweapon fears

By ROBIN McDOWELL, Associated Press Writer Sat Oct 11, 7:12 AM ET

JAKARTA, Indonesia - When Indonesia's health minister stopped sending

bird flu viruses to a research laboratory in the U.S. for fear

Washington could use them to make biological weapons, Defense

Secretary Gates laughed and called it " the nuttiest thing " he'd

ever heard.

Yet deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export

regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines

for avian bird flu and dozens of other viruses to five countries

designated " state sponsors of terrorism. "

The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological warfare.

Under this little-known policy, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria and

Sudan may not get the vaccines unless they apply for special export

licenses, which would be given or refused according to the discretion

and timing of the U.S. Three of those nations — Iran, Cuba and Sudan —

also are subject to a ban on all human pandemic influenza vaccines as

part of a general U.S. embargo.

The regulations, which cover vaccines for everything from Dengue fever

to the Ebola virus, have raised concern within the medical and

scientific communities. Although they were quietly put in place more

than a decade ago, they could now be more relevant because of recent

concerns about bird flu. Officials from the U.S. Department of Health

and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

said they were not even aware of the policies until contacted by The

Associated Press last month and privately expressed alarm.

They make " no scientific sense, " said Palese, chairman of the

microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

He said the bird flu vaccine, for example, can be used to contain

outbreaks in poultry before they mutate to a form spread more easily

between people.

" The more vaccines out there, the better, " he said. " It's a matter of

protecting ourselves, really, so the bird flu virus doesn't take hold

in these countries and spread. "

U.S. Commerce Assistant Secretary Wall declined to

elaborate on the precise threat posed by vaccines for chickens

infected with avian influenza, except to say there are " valid security

concerns " that they " do not fall into the wrong hands. "

" Legitimate public health and scientific research is not adversely

affected by these controls, " he said.

But some experts say the idea of using vaccines for bioweapons is

far-fetched, and that in a health emergency, it is unclear how quickly

authorities could cut through the current red tape to get the vaccines

distributed.

Under normal circumstances it would take at least six weeks to approve

export licenses for any vaccine on the list, said Monath, who

formerly headed a CIA advisory group on ways to counter biological

attacks. All such decisions would follow negotiations at a " very high

level " of government.

That could makes it harder to contain an outbreak of bird flu among

chickens in, say, North Korea, which is in the region hardest hit by

the virus. Sudan and Iran already have recorded cases of the virus in

poultry and Syria is surrounded by affected countries. Cuba, like all

nations, is vulnerable because the disease is delivered by migratory

birds.

Kumanan , whose research at the University of Toronto focuses on

policymaking in areas of health protection, said it would be ironic if

the bird flu virus morphed into a more dangerous form in one of those

countries.

" That would pose a much graver threat to the public than the

theoretical risk that the vaccine could be used for biological

warfare, " he said.

The danger of biological warfare use depends on the specific virus or

bacteria. But most experts agree that bird flu vaccines cannot be

genetically altered to create weapons because they contain an

inactivated virus that cannot be resuscitated.

It's also unlikely they would be used to create a resistant strain of

the virus as part of efforts to wreak havoc within global poultry

stocks. If enemy states wanted to do that, they could make their own

vaccines or turn to a less hostile country like China, said Ian

Ramshaw, an expert on vaccine immunology and biosecurity at The

Australian National University in Canberra.

" I can think of no scientific reason how a terrorist organization

could use such a vaccine for malicious intent, " he said. " I personally

think it's a rather silly attitude and the U.S. is probably going

overboard as it has in the past with many of its bioterrorism

initiatives. "

Meanwhile, bioethicists say limiting vaccines could also raise moral

questions of whether some countries should be denied because of

decisions based on foreign policy. They said the export controls

appear inconsistent, as Libya, Iraq and two dozen other countries

suspected by the U.S. of having biological weapons programs do not

face restrictions on the export of poultry vaccines.

" If there really is a serious threat, to be consistent we'd have to

more heavily regulate who has access to the vaccine, " said

Selgelid, who co-authored the book " Ethical and Philosophical

Consideration of the Dual Use Dilemma in the Biological Sciences. "

" There are malevolent actors in the U.S. just like there might be in

all these other countries, " he said.

The policies were initially put in place amid biosecurity fears in the

mid-1990s and then bolstered after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and

subsequent anthrax letter mailings. The vaccines are among a long list

of other items barred to rogue states over fears they could be used to

make weapons of mass destruction, from technology and chemicals to

dangerous pathogens.

Bird flu has killed more than 240 people across the world since 2003,

nearly half of them in Indonesia.

Indonesia's health minister Siti Fadilah Supari first drew widespread

attention when she boycotted the World Health Organization's

50-year-old virus sharing system last year, saying pharmaceutical

companies were using viruses from developing nations without their

knowledge to make expensive vaccines. She has since called for the

creation of a global stockpile of drugs or other forms of

benefit-sharing.

http://news./s/ap/20081011/ap_on_re_as/as_bird_flu_biological_warfare_4