Washington Times – Three years and eight months after the anthrax attacks of October 2001, the civilian vaccine stockpile finally got its first doses of anthrax vaccine. The doses arrived a few weeks ago, a federal official revealed in congressional testimony Tuesday, shortly after industry officials and congressmen turned up the heat on the Department of Health and Human Services to show some tangible progress in building up the vaccine stockpile. The result: A stockpile that can cover about 170,000 people, which is not even enough for Des Moines, Iowa. Federal officials anticipate that the bulk of vaccine they are counting on to build the stockpile won’t start arriving until 2006 at earliest, and possibly not until 2008. The story of why the stockpile remains so small nearly four years after the attacks is an object lesson in the disappointing politics and science of biodefense.
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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 18th, 2005 at 3:32 am and is filed under Anthrax. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.