Notes from the Pentagon Vaccine Shortage

[Guest guest]

Notes from the Pentagon...Vaccine Shortage

Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough

Washington Times (Inside the Ring column)

June 16, 2000

The Food and Drug Administration will decide not to approve the last

available batch of anthrax vaccine, we are told.

The Pentagon on Monday will run out of the anthrax vaccine, Bernard Rostker,

the nominee for undersecretary of defense for readiness, told senators this

week.

The Defense Department program to inoculate 2.4 million members of the armed

services will grind to a halt because the FDA last weekend rejected three of

the last four remaining batches of the antidote for the biological weapon

that kills 99 out of 100 persons exposed to the " weaponized " spores. The FDA

will disapprove the fourth batch, too, we learned.

Enough vaccine is left €  ’· about 200,000 doses €  ’· to continue vaccinations

for

the service personnel who already have begun to receive the series of six

shots. But no new vaccinations will begin as a result of the shortage of

vaccine.

The Pentagon had been hoping a federal license for the only manufacturer of

the vaccine, Michigan-based BioPort Inc., would be approved soon. But we are

told that such approval is not likely this year.

Current Pentagon policy calls for all service personnel deployed to the

Middle East or Korea to be vaccinated. The vaccine shortage could create

problems in the near future for the military because there may be a shortage

of vaccinated personnel for troop rotations. " This is creating a whole pool

of people who can't be sent or changed, " one U.S. official told us.