More CDC Dirty Work re: ANTHRAX Vaccine – Meryl Nass, MD
Wed, 20 Nov 2002
More indications that non-medical considerations are influencing the government’s anti-bioterrorism vaccine policy.
In her column on RedFlags Weekly, Dr. Meryl Nass, board member of The Alliance for Human Research Protection, challenges the ethics of the newly revised anthrax vaccine trial recommendations issued this week by Center for Disease Control (CDC).
http://www.redflagsweekly.com/extra/2002_nov19.html
The recommendations will spearhead the enrollment of civilians in “unethical and inappropriate anthrax vaccine research.” The purpose of the trial is to provide safety and efficacy data to justify expanding the vaccine’s license for civilian use. But if the experimental process will put civilians –including pregnant women and children–at serious unjustifiable risks of harm.
The credibility of government assurances about the vaccine’s safety have been dashed by the recently released report by the General Accounting Office (GAO). The GAO found that 85 percent of those who were vaccinated reported experiencing some type of reaction. “Of those experiencing side effects, 24 percent had adverse effects considered serious enough for the shots to be discontinued.”, [See AHRP Infomail, Nov 18, 2002]
The CDC acknowledges that: “no cases of anthrax have been detected among persons recommended to take antimicrobial prophylaxis after the terrorist attacks of 2001.” In other words, antibiotic treatment, post-exposure to anthrax, proved 100% effective–even though less than half of the people prescribed did not complete the recommended 60 day treatment.
Dr. Nass alerts us to the following extremely disturbing fact: “No data have been obtained on the effect of anthrax vaccinations in pregnant lab animals. Humans were the first species CDC wanted to study the vaccine on, and they made a special effort to recruit pregnant civilians for their anthrax vaccine trial last winter.”
“I believe this is unethical. That is because the Navy has done a study indicating that anthrax vaccination during the first trimester of pregnancy increases birth defects. A preliminary report was published last year (in the MMWR, vol 51, number 6)”
Dr. Nass points out that until recently, the Defense Department failed to implement an alternative treatment to protect against anthrax. As early as 2990, she had recommended that anthrax immune globulin should be stockpiled: “An effective anti-anthrax globulin will likely save many exposed persons, even after they get ill.”
“the impediments to this treatment was that having immune globulin available meant anthrax disease might not be fatal after all, negating the need for vaccinating all the troops.”
http://www.redflagsweekly.com/extra/2002_nov19.html
CDC revised recommendations: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5145a4.htm