Would you give anthrax vaccine to a child? DHHS Secretary Sebelius would
I am honored to be on the board of the Alliance for Human Research Protection and to be working with its dynamic President, Vera Sharav, on stopping a dangerous trial of anthrax vaccine in healthy children.
Why sacrifice healthy children for this purpose, when the vaccine does not even have a useful role in post-exposure prophylaxis of anthrax? Even FDA agrees: it has failed to license the vaccine for this use. As the label notes:
“The safety and efficacy of Biothrax in a post-exposure setting have not been established.” http://www.biothrax.com/prescribinginformation_biothrax_us.pdf
Vera and I have written a stunning report on the hyped threat, pseudoscience, and careful attention to the avoidance of facts–all necessary in order to support a trial whose only possible raison d’etre is to shovel yet more public funds into the coffers of the anthrax vaccine manufacturer, Emergent Biosolutions, and its CEO (Fuad El-Hibri)’s pockets.
Our long report is written in the form of a letter to the Chair of the federal advisory committee making recommendations for the pediatric trial.
A brief discussion of this matter can be found here.
There will be further posts over the next few weeks on this matter.