Now that at least one American has died from inhaling anthrax, perhaps you’re thinking that it “was the right thing to do” for President Clinton to have ordered all U.S. armed forces personnel – including reserve and National Guard units here at home – to be inoculated with an anthrax vaccine developed by the U.S. Army. Perhaps you’re thinking that it would also have been the right thing to vaccinate – as Clinton seriously considered doing – all the police, fire, public-health and other emergency officials in cities throughout the country.
Well, Clinton reportedly gave that order because he had read a novel, “The Cobra Event,” which revolves about a bio-attack – but not of anthrax – on New York City, and had misunderstood what he read. Outbreaks of disease caused by certain biological warfare agents – like smallpox, for example – can spread and can become epidemic or even pandemic. But the disease caused by the anthrax bacteria does not “spread” from one individual to another.
Anthrax is a naturally occurring bacterium. The U.S. Army has long 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 being used under the Clinton order had been developed by the Army in the 1950s, and had been determined by the Food and Drug administration to be effective against cutaneous exposure to the naturally occurring strains of anthrax infecting cattle, sheep and, very rarely, humans.
According to the medical experts, the disease resulting from cutaneous anthrax exposure develops relatively slowly, is relatively easily treated, and usually does not prove fatal, even if not treated.
However, if the victim actually inhales an anthrax aerosol, the disease develops very rapidly, is difficult to treat, and almost always proves fatal, if not treated.
The Army anthrax vaccine was never intended to counter the enemy use of anthrax aerosols as biological weapons on the battlefield – and the vaccine has never actually been shown to be effective against the inhalation of anthrax aerosols.
In the Gulf War, since there had been reports that Iraq had previously used anthrax in some form on the battlefield, more than 150,000 U.S. troops were given the FDA-approved six-shot vaccination regime. We now know that the Iraqis had produced tons of chembio agents and had actually loaded some ‘liquid’ anthrax into missile warheads. However, they had never solved the difficult problem of transforming their liquid anthrax in the warhead into an effective anthrax aerosol over the target, so they never used anthrax or any other chembio weapon.
Meanwhile, President Yeltsin acknowledged, in 1992, that the Soviet Union had had a program in which biological weapons were successfully developed and that an accidental release of an anthrax aerosol had occurred from a military facility near Sverdlovsk (now called Ekaterinburg) on April 2, 1979, which killed 64 people. The Russians have apparently since developed a vaccine that is effective against anthrax aerosol inhalation, have stockpiled it, and have just offered to supply us with however much we need.
But, face it. It will never be possible – try as we may – to prevent every chembio terrorist attack. We’ve been hit, and we’re going to be hit again, even if we find bin Laden and kill him. However, it would be a mistake for the director of the Office of Homeland Defense to give vaccines – even one effective against anthrax aerosols – to hundreds of millions of Americans, as President Clinton seriously considered doing. (Of course, vaccination against smallpox, which can spread, is a different story.)
Instead, what we almost desperately need – and will need for the duration of the War Against Terrorism – is the chembio equivalent of a smoke detector. At present, it is days, even weeks, before the medical experts know that someone has been the victim of a chembio attack, and it frequently takes even longer for them to figure out what their patients were hit with. Rather than trying to vaccinate everyone against every conceivable chembio agent a terrorist might use, what the president and Gov. Ridge should concentrate on is developing – perhaps in cooperation with the Russians – technologies and methodologies for detecting all kinds of chembio agents in real time.
The sooner we know what we’ve been hit with, the sooner we can go about mitigating the consequences to the victims. That’s the way to thwart terrorists – deny them their victims.
