Universal anthrax coverage?

You probably wonder why President Clinton continues to insist on all
U.S. armed forces personnel — including reserve and National Guard
units — being inoculated with a vaccine to protect them in the event
they are exposed to anthrax on the battlefield. Apparently it is
because he once read a novel — “The Cobra Event” by Richard Preston —
and he misunderstood what he had read.

Not since President Clinton’s first directive upon taking office —
overturning Department of Defense policy prohibiting homosexuals from
serving in our armed forces — has he done anything so prejudicial to
good order and discipline within the military. The General Accounting
Office reports that Reserves and National Guardsmen are resigning in
droves because of the mandatory anthrax vaccination program.

Why is the program so controversial?

Anthrax is a naturally occurring bacteria. The U.S. Army has had the
responsibility for developing vaccines and antidotes to protect all our
armed forces from viruses, bacteria and other naturally occurring
disease-causing agents which our armed forces would likely encounter in
various foreign climes.

The vaccine that is being used to vaccinate all of our armed forces
had been developed by the Army in the1950s. The six-shot vaccination
schedule (with annual booster shots) had been approved by the Federal
Food and Drug Administration in 1970. The FDA-approved vaccine had been
determined to be effective against cutaneous exposure to the naturally
occurring strains of anthrax infecting cattle and, rarely, humans.

President Yeltsin had acknowledged, in 1992, that the Soviet Union
had had a program in which biological warfare agents were developed and
that an accidental release of anthrax spores had occurred from a
military facility near Sverdlovsk (now called Ekaterinburg) on April 2,
1979, which killed 64 people.

The U.S. Army hadn’t been working on biological weapons since the
Biological Weapons Convention had been signed in 1972 but is still
required to develop vaccines and antidotes for such weapons.

The problem the Army had was that our own scientific community
refused to help identify possible Soviet biological agents for which
vaccines and antidotes were needed. Our scientific community insisted
that the trustworthy Soviets could not possibly be developing such
weapons and therefore the untrustworthy Army’s request was merely a ploy
to enlist them in the Army’s own biological warfare program. Thanks to
Yeltsin, those U.S. scientists who refused to help the Army all know
their trust — and mistrust — was misplaced.

Now, the Army anthrax vaccine was never intended to counter the enemy
use of anthrax spores as a biological weapon on the battlefield — and
the vaccine has never actually been shown to be effective against the
inhalation by humans of such anthrax spores. But in the Gulf War, since
there had been reports that both Iraq and Iran had used anthrax in some
form on the battlefield, more than 150,000 U.S. troops were given the
six-shot vaccination regime.

We now know that the Iraqis had tons of biological agents — some of
it anthrax — at the time of the Gulf War. They had actually loaded
some into missile warheads and bombs. However, there is no evidence
that Iraq actually used biological weapons at any time and in any place
in the Gulf War. The principal reason the Iraqis say they didn’t use
them on the battlefield — even as a last resort — is the fear that
they would not be effective. Had the Iraqis used them, they intended to
use them against Israeli civilians as a weapon of terror.

In 1997, when Clinton gave the order to vaccinate all our troops, he
presumably had no expectation that our troops would soon be engaged in
combat with an enemy using anthrax as a weapon on the battlefield. What
was the imminent threat — then and now — that could justify
vaccinating more than two and a half million Army, Navy, Air Force,
Marine, Reservists and National Guardsmen with the anthrax vaccine?

Well, only a few months after giving that order, Clinton did launch a
mini-war from 20,000 feet with Iraq and the principal targets were the
sites where Iraqi anthrax was suspected to have been made or stored.
But almost no U.S. sailors or soldiers were ever in a position during
that mini-war wherein they could have been exposed to Iraqi anthrax.
Certainly there was no reason — so far as we know — to suppose that
millions of U.S. servicemen would be exposed to anthrax in that
mini-war.

As for his decision, now, to continue the mandatory anthrax
vaccination program, despite the evident demoralization it is causing
among our armed forces, what could have justified that? Another Gulf
War — an October Surprise?

Well, apparently, it has more to do with a perceived terrorist threat
than a battlefield threat. Recall that of the so-called weapons of mass
destruction, only the terrorist use of nukes can be prevented at the
source. That is, no one can make a nuke unless they can get the very
expensive and very difficult to make “fissile” materials. It follows
that nuke attacks by terrorists can be prevented. Clinton hasn’t done
even a fraction of what Congress has demanded he do to prevent nuke
attacks, but that’s not the point of this column.

On the other hand, chemical and biological agents are cheap and easy
to make and there is literally no way to prevent a terrorist from making
or acquiring them. Reportedly, Clinton didn’t realize the significance
of that until he read “The Cobra Event,” which involves a bio-attack
(not anthrax) on New York City.

Now, if there is one thing Clinton has done as president, it is to
rattle the cages of a lot of potential terrorists around the world. So,
Clinton promptly got a bunch of experts together and they recommended a
bunch of high-profile, very expensive “legacy” kind of things Clinton
could do to mitigate the effects of a chem-bio terrorist attack on the
U.S.

According to the New York Times article dated Jan. 22, 1999, Clinton
said he was weighing a proposal to give anthrax vaccinations to police,
fire, public health and other emergency officials in cities throughout
the country. (That, in addition to the ongoing Department of Defense
anthrax vaccination program.) He said he was considering developing new
vaccines, stockpiling antibiotics, and setting up emergency medical
teams in major cities.

Clinton said he was weighing a proposal from the Defense Department
to establish a commander in chief for the defense of the continental
United States — a step that would go far beyond the civil defense
measures and bomb shelters that marked the Cold War.

Clinton said that of all the new threats, the one that “keeps me
awake at night” is the possibility of germ attack as described in “The
Cobra Event.”

“A chemical attack would be horrible, but it would be finite,” he
said, adding that the chemical caused disease “would not spread. But a
biological attack could spread.”

So it seems that the DOD anthrax vaccination program has now been
lost in the grass of the larger Clinton vision to provide vaccines and
antidotes for the total U.S. population to anthrax and other chem-bio
agents he considers likely to be used by terrorists.

President Clinton is right that outbreaks of disease caused by
certain biological warfare agents could spread and could
become epidemic or even pandemic. But not anthrax. Airborne
anthrax spores, when inhaled, are absorbed and cease being spores.
Anthrax spores will kill only the individuals who inhale them, and the
disease caused cannot “spread” from one individual to another.

So, if Clinton is continuing the DOD vaccination program because he
believes that the exposure of the troops in a small unit to anthrax
could wind up spreading disease throughout the whole Army, he is
mistaken. Similarly, if he wants to give the anthrax vaccine to tens of
millions of American police, fire, public health and other emergency
officials in cities throughout the country because he believes that they
could not otherwise safely come to the assistance of a small community
of individuals exposed to anthrax spores, he is mistaken.

Now, it is altogether a good thing that there is something related to
U.S. national security that keeps Clinton awake at night, worrying.
But, whatever the merits of the initial decision to vaccinate all our
armed forces, to protect them against anthrax, it should now be obvious
that the effect on the military of that mandatory vaccination program
has been devastating. Certainly that is the message that the General
Accounting Office has just presented to Congress.

Instead of causing so much grief amongst the troops by mandating that
they be vaccinated against some bacteria — which in all probability
they will never ever be exposed to — Clinton and Gore would be far
better off giving the Army and our scientific community (including the
national labs) the funds they have needed for the past eight years to
fight the generic chem-bio agent battle, on the homefront as well as in
the field. Rather than vaccinating the entire population against
“germs” that cannot spread, like anthrax, Clinton should seek funds for
identifying — perhaps in cooperation with the Russians if our own
scientific community still won’t help us — possible “designer germs,”
viruses and bacteria and developing methods for detecting these
biological agents in real time.

In the meantime, anthrax vaccinations of U.S. troops — as well as of
police, firemen, public health and other emergency officials throughout
the country — should be made voluntary.