Pentagon to cut back anthrax program

The Omaha World-Herald ^ | May 18, 2002 | Editorial Staff

[vannrox]

Published Saturday May 18, 2002 Pentagon to cut back anthrax program

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon wants to abandon its policy of anthrax vaccinations for all troops and limit shots to those at the highest risk, officials said Friday.

A planned announcement of the new policy two weeks ago was delayed because of questions about how much vaccine U.S. civilians might need in case of a bioterrorist attack.

In trying to rebuild a program hobbled for two years by a drug shortage, officials are considering such issues as intelligence assessments, dosing requirements and other national- security considerations, said Jim Turner, the Pentagon spokesman on health issues.

The program was started in 1998 to vaccinate all 2.4 million members of the active and reserve military but was radically reduced after factory violations by the nation's sole anthrax vaccine manufacturer left the Pentagon with a dwindling supply.

In addition, there was strong reluctance by some soldiers to take the shots.

The Food and Drug Administration cleared Lansing, Mich.-based BioPort's manufacturing plant in January to produce the vaccine and to release 500,000 doses already made.

After a three-month study on how to rebuild the program, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last month approved a plan to set aside the original policy of vaccinating the whole force, according to officials who have seen it.

The plan now is to vaccinate only those at risk - and not disclose who they would be for security reasons, officials said. The thinking is that would-be attackers would not know which troops are protected.

As for U.S. civilians, health officials have said there's no need for them to have the anthrax vaccine unless there is an attack.

President Bush's Homeland Security Office is trying to figure out how much vaccine might be needed for police, firefighters, rescue squads and others who would be first responders to any attack in America.

The Pentagon shared vaccine with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last fall, when five people died and 13 were sickened by anthrax-laced letters.

Postal workers and Senate employees received protective antibiotics in case they had been exposed to anthrax. After 60 days of that, medical experts offered them choices of continuing antibiotics, adding vaccinations or ending treatment.

Believing Iraq and other nations had produced anthrax weapons, then-Defense Secretary William Cohen in 1997 ordered the immunization of the armed forces.

Shots started in 1998 for soldiers at the highest risk - in the Persian Gulf and Korea - then moved beyond. As the drug shortage developed, the military scaled back, eliminating troops on the way home from deployments, then those in Korea and lastly those in the gulf.

For two years, the vaccine has been reserved for injections to troops on special missions and for researchers.

Some military personnel believe the vaccine causes health problems, and hundreds have been forced from the armed forces after refusing orders to take it. The government insists the vaccine is safe.

Earlier this week, the administration asked a federal judge in Washington to dismiss a lawsuit filed by an Air Force captain and a former Air Force major challenging the mandatory anthrax vaccines.

The new plan doesn't rule out the possibility that all forces might one day be vaccinated.

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[The Great Satan]

The focus of the US biodefense effort is no longer the protection of troops, but the protection of the civilian population. During his recent visit with UK Prime Minister Blair, Cheney told Blair that the US intelligence assessment is that Saddam will unleash large-scale biological attacks on the British and American civilian population if and when we attempt to remove him from power. The prime candidates for such attacks would be anthrax, a capability Iraq has already advertised in the follow-up threats issued to US media and government figures subsequent to the destruction of the World Trade Center, and smallpox. To contain the threat, the United States governmnet just contracted for the development of a anthrax vaccine that can be delivered after exposure, and 25 million doses for use in the event of multiple urban releases in a coordinated, 9-11 style sleeper attack. The US government has also ordered enough smallpox vaccine to immunize the entire US population. Supplies of the new anthrax and smallpox vaccines should be available within two years, but we should not expect any major confrontation with Saddam Hussein to occur before such time, owing to the risk of multiple-megadeath-scale retaliation by the Iraqis.

[The Great Satan]

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[Mitchell]

And what is Saddam Hussein's calculation? He may be tempted to strike first, before the vaccines have been produced in sufficient quantity. After all, his power will be significantly dissipated if we can defend against his WMD.

This is very much like the Cold War argument against building an ABM (anti-ballistic missile) system. The argument goes like this: If someone is able to build an ABM system, then that side might be tempted to launch a first strike since they might view a nuclear war as survivable. Therefore, if someone starts to build an ABM system, the other side may feel compelled to launch a first strike before the ABM system is completed. Thus the act of building an ABM system is said to be inherently unstable.

Isn't our current situation unstable in the same way? Our vaccine plans essentially mean that we are starting to build an anti-biological weapons system. Once we are able to defend against anthrax and smallpox, we may be able to depose Saddam Hussein. Therefore he must act now while he has a chance. [If this is correct, the logical conclusion is that we must, in fact, act first, before the vaccines are ready, since we must pre-empt his logical first strike. And he, in turn, must strike even before we do, etc. That's why this situation is so unstable. The slightest hint of anything, or nothing, could trigger action on one side or the other.]

Add to this the fact that Saddam Hussein is adding to his WMD arsenal each day that we wait. I won't be surprised if we attack suddently, swiftly, and without warning.

[Mitchell]

I had meant to add that the previous argument doesn't depend on Iraq being the sender of the anthrax. It depends only on the U.S. government knowing who the sender actually is.

[america-rules]

The issue most don't see with these shots is the actual death rates after normal healthy people get them. The anthrax shots are making alot of military very sick and the smallpox shot kills 1-3 percent of those who get it.

Do the numbers and 1 percent of 250,000,000 is a very huge number of dead without any attack!

[The Great Satan]

Add to this the fact that Saddam Hussein is adding to his WMD arsenal each day that we wait. I won't be surprised if we attack suddently, swiftly, and without warning.

The one thing we are not going to do is strike suddenly, swiftly, and without warning -- so forget about it.

There really is no surefire solution to this problem. The current situation is not some accident of nature, but the result of careful planning and patient, long-range effort by a wily and ingenious adversary. As you observe, the situation is very delicate, which is why there will be no more sudden moves on either side, after Saddam's stunning 9-11 opener. Just a jockying for position around the edges. We will try to shore up our defenses -- but there is no sure defense against biowar, only risk management. We will try to isolate Saddam, and we will probably succeed -- the US has many strings it can pull to make that happen, given time. Meanwhile, Saddam will continue to foment conflict between the muslim world and everybody else, gambling that the US will eventually find itself entagled in one or more Vietnam-style quagmires, lose its nerve, and withdraw from the region. It's not an unreasonable calculation, given the protective shield of the anthrax. It's also a harbinger of the multipolar world to come -- pretty soon, seeing how effective the bioterror blackmail threat is, every tin-horn dictator is going to want in, and there's really not much can be done to stop it.

[Mitchell]

The issue most don't see with these shots is the actual death rates after normal healthy people get them. The anthrax shots are making alot of military very sick and the smallpox shot kills 1-3 percent of those who get it.

I don't think this is the death rate for normal, healthy people who receive the smallpox vaccine, is it? It was my understanding that if you don't give the vaccine to immune-compromised individuals (AIDS patients, people with transplants, etc.), then the rate of side effects goes way down.

[Mitchell]

Why wouldn't Saddam Hussein attack at some time before (probably shortly before) the vaccines are produced and delivered, since that could well be his last chance?

[The Great Satan]

You are correct to point out the problem with any vaccine is that you have to innoculate many more people than will ever be exposed, even if there is an attack, which may well lead to unacceptable casualties purely from side effects of the vaccine. In the case of something like anthrax, which must be treated within around 24 hours to have a reasonable chance of recovery, the problem will exist even for treatment after an attack has been recognized. As soon as the first few hundred NYC subway riders start checking into emergency rooms, all four million people who ride the NYC subway every day will have to be treated fast, even though in reality only a small fraction of them may have actually been exposed. It's a non-trivial problem.

The new anthrax vaccine (the one we have just ordered 25 million doses of) can be used after infection. I doubt that there would ever be a situation were we want to vaccinate whole populations much before the fact, owing to the risk of side effects. I could, perhaps, see a situation where we have military action to remove Saddam ongoing in Iraq and people in our major cities are offered the option of getting shots -- especially if Saddam chooses to more publicly underline the consequences of taking him out at that time, as I suspect he might well do. But a general public vaccination against anthrax is not on the cards, IMO.

[The Great Satan]

Why wouldn't Saddam Hussein attack at some time before (probably shortly before) the vaccines are produced and delivered, since that could well be his last chance?

You assume the vaccines are some kind of magic bullet. In fact, they just give us a thread of hope. Historically, Saddam's bioweapons efforts have envisaged a cocktail of agents, precisely to subvert such measures. We can never be sure that we would be safe, even if we had the vaccine and the infrastructure to deliver it to 25 million people in the space of 24 hours. The aim of the WTC/anthrax one-two play was to show (a) Saddam is willing to inflict massive casualties on the US mainland and (b) he has "human missiles" in the form of sleeper agents forward-positioned in the US and unfazed by the thought of dying in the attack. Sleeper agents + bioweapons means we can never take him out with confidence that he will not be able to inflict megadeath-scale casualties on the civilian population, regardless of the specific germs or toxins involved.

[Mitchell]

This is undoubtedly true. But will he be convinced that we will still be deterred after obtaining the vaccine, or will he think that we plan to attack at that point? The time period while the vaccines are still being produced is the riskiest -- since, if he intends to attack, it would make sense for him to do so before we are prepared with vaccines, rather than afterward. [This is true even though the vaccines may not be as effective in practice as we would like.]

There's also the related problem of stopping him before he gets nuclear weapons. (Plus, Pakistan already has the atomic bomb.) All someone has to do is let an atomic bomb fall into al-Qaeda's hands "accidentally," without specific instructions. Who would we retaliate against for the resulting attack, in the absence of evidence that any particular state was responsible? And, in the absence of retaliation, what would deter them? [This may be very similar to the anthrax situation.]

In the long run, it's not clear what can be done to stop the level of disorder in the world from increasing. We're going to be conducting a continuing series of holding actions for a long, long time.

[The Great Satan]

Saddam isn't going to get nuclear weapons, nor would they give him anything he hasn't already got with the anthrax. The Israeli destruction of the Osirak reactor in 1981 was Saddam's cue to pursue an alternative, unconventional strategy for the acquisition of WMD. And pursue it he did.

[Mitchell]

Pakistan is the place to worry about nuclear weapons getting into the hands of terrorists. (I think it's a mistake to focus solely on Iraq, or even to think entirely within the nation-state system of organization that we're accustomed to. The whole picture is more complicated than that suggests, especially with respect to the Islamic world.)

[The Great Satan]

I think there's one guy in the Islamic world who is well-organized, highly motivated, techno-savvy, and a big thinker: Saddam Hussein. All the stuff about guys in caves who don't know how to tie their own shoe-laces suddenly mutating into James Bond master criminals is hokum, IMO.

[Mitchell]

Forget about�������� "guys in caves who don't know how to tie their own shoe-laces." Pakistan has nuclear scientists who were able to design an atomic bomb, and Pakistan was able to obtain sufficient fissile material to construct dozens of bombs, from all reports.

[Mitchell]

And, I should add, the major Pakistani nuclear scientists are apparently supporters of the Taliban and radical Islam.

[The Great Satan]

The thing is, I want to focus on the core problem, so we can identify it and respond to it rationally, not run around in a thousand different directions like a chicken with its head chopped off. The whole Islamic world did not suddenly, simultaneously turn into a credible threat to civilization overnight. Somebody specific designed the 9-11 operation and the anthrax follow-up. Somebody specific -- the same person or country, almost certainly -- supplied the hijackers with the most sophisticated weaponized anthrax ever produced. Who that specific person was (and it wasn't OBL, I'll wager -- he doesn't know jack sh*t about anthrax) should be our #1 focus of attention, not all the people who might be a problem at some unspecified, indefinite time in the future.

[Mitchell]

Your point is well-taken. But let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that Iraq initiated the entire plan (both 9/11 and anthrax), and then got al-Qaeda to implement it. Iraq and al-Qaeda have different ultimate goals, even though their short-term purposes may coincide.

Al-Qaeda's immediate goal is to create so much disorder that a fundamentalist Islamic rebellion ensues over much of the Muslim world, with the "moderate" governments in Islamic countries falling. You can see this plan in action with regard to both Israel and India.

Pakistan is a prime target for this strategy. Its government is ostensibly moderate (or at least willing to follow the U.S. lead publicly), but extreme Islamic elements probably comprise the actual majority of both the government and the public. Pakistan has atomic bombs there for the taking.

Pakistan may actually be more dangerous than Iraq. Saddam Hussein isn't suicidal, and he tries to make rational military calculations (although he isn't very good at that). He works within the nation-state world structure. He can be deterred by the same sorts of things that deter other countries.

But the Muslim fundamentalists cannot be dealt with on the same terms. They seek to overthrow the current world political and social structure (whereas Saddam Hussein just seeks to dominate part of it). They are willing to take suicidal actions toward their goals. Their calculations are often irrational, based on religious dogma rather than objective military assessments. The combination of these things makes it extremely difficult to deter them in a traditional sense.

Overall, the Islamic extremists are a much more difficult problem to deal with, and much more dangerous, than Saddam Hussein. And Pakistan is arguably their center -- technologically, politically, and socially.

[The Great Satan]

Disagree. I think the Islamic fundies are paper tigers. The big thing that has happened has been the destruction of the World Trade Center and the subsequent threat with highly-sophisticated, weaponized anthrax. That's all one operation, planned, bankrolled and coordinated by one man, Saddam Hussein. Al-Qaeda may have supplied the man-power but, like the hopeless stumblebums that Ramzi Yousef used for the original WTC attack, they couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery on their own. That's my take on the whole thing.