Vaccine reccomend for the Hill in DC

[Guest guest]

Anthrax Vaccine Urged for Hill Staff

Health Officials Want Inoculations To Start This Week

By Shankar Vedantam and Ceci Connolly

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, December 18, 2001; Page A01

Federal health officials yesterday began urging Capitol Hill workers to take

an as-yet unlicensed anthrax vaccine as part of a

plan sparked by fears that deadly spores may be lurking in the employees'

bodies and could erupt once antibiotic treatments

end.

Two military anthrax experts met with about 70 staffers to outline the

rationale for the unprecedented inoculation proposal,

which could involve as many as 3,000 Senate and U.S. Postal Service employees

in Washington, New York and New Jersey.

Health officials are anxious to begin the vaccinations as soon as possible

because many of the 10,000 Hill staffers and postal

workers who had been put on 60 days of antibiotics after the bioterrorism

attacks this fall have begun finishing their courses.

That means they could be at risk of falling ill soon if anthrax spores are

lingering in their lungs and their immune systems have not

been primed to respond.

Officials want vaccinations to begin this week after Health and Human

Services Secretary Tommy G. approves the

plan.

Health officials said they began briefing the Capitol Hill workers first

because Hill officials specifically requested that they do so.

They said they would be available to brief all employees who would be

affected by the plan.

But the plan is already generating controversy and confusion. District health

officials are unconvinced the vaccination is

necessary, but at the same time, they are concerned that not enough vaccine

may be available for everyone at risk. The vaccine

itself is controversial because the company that makes it has had a long

history of problems and has yet to receive final

approval by the Food and Drug Administration.

" There are only 10,000 doses of the latest batch of vaccine -- and that is

the lot that the Capitol Hill physician has requested, "

said Larry Siegel, Washington's deputy health director. " We have made it very

clear that if it is released, we want access to the

same lot. " Siegel contested claims from federal officials that only 3,000

people were at high enough risk to need the vaccine.

" There's no science yet that will allow anybody to make a determination that

any of the 3,500 people in Brentwood [postal

facility] are at any lower risk than the people in the Daschle suite, " he

said. " If anybody is going to be offered vaccine,

everybody should. "

On Capitol Hill, a Senate aide said the 90-minute briefing was calm and

informative. The group was told that " extensive studies "

of the anthrax vaccine showed no serious side effects, although the three

injections can be painful.

Lt. Col. Grabenstein, head of the anthrax vaccine program at the Army

surgeon general's office, said vaccinations of

524,000 military personnel had found only low risks such as sore arms, aches

and fevers. Combining vaccine with antibiotics is

the " best insurance " against developing anthrax, Grabenstein said.

The Senate staffers considered most at risk are those who worked in the

sixth- and fifth-floor offices of Senate Majority

Leader A. Daschle (D-S.D.), which received a letter laden with anthrax

spores in October, and the adjoining fifth-floor

office of Sen. Feingold (D-Wis.), as well as other officials who

visited there after the tainted letter was discovered, said

Greg , chief of infectious diseases at the National Naval Medical

Center.

For congressional staffers who did not come in direct contact with the

tainted letter, officials will offer the vaccine but not

necessarily recommend it, said yesterday.

The first Capitol Hill staffers exposed to anthrax spores are completing

their allotted 60 days of treatment.

Postal workers considered most at risk are those who worked with the four

employees who developed inhalational anthrax,

those in buildings where tainted letters were opened and those with positive

nasal swabs, officials said.

Postal spokeswoman Krathwohl said no decision about the vaccination

plan had been made by the Postal Service or

unions.

" It's an area that few of us know anything about, " said Barry Burns, chief

shop steward in the motor vehicle section of the

Brentwood facility. " The only thing we can do is put our trust in [the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. We have

very little trust of postal management and what the post office was telling

us. As of yet, we have no reason to distrust CDC. "

For months, health authorities have been publicly advising people exposed to

anthrax to take only the two-month course of

antibiotics to protect themselves from developing the life-threatening

disease.

But at a meeting Saturday, officials disclosed that two weeks before the

first letter arrived, senior government physicians on

Capitol Hill had met with officials from the FBI, the CIA, the Justice

Department and several other agencies to prepare for an

anthrax emergency.

" We all agreed " that anthrax vaccinations combined with antibiotics would be

the collective approach, said Eisold, the

physician for Capitol Hill.

But when the anthrax scare began Oct. 15 and thousands of workers in the

Senate and at postal facilities were declared at risk,

there was not enough vaccine available to immunize everyone.

" The ramifications of the actions that I would take on the Hill were far

broader than I had originally anticipated, " Eisold said.

The government doctors scuttled their plan, which would almost certainly have

been criticized for giving vaccines preferentially

to lawmakers and powerful people over mail carriers. So instead, only

antibiotics were recommended for everybody.

About a month ago, the CDC quietly laid the foundation for a vaccination

program by filing a request for an experimental

program with the FDA -- a necessary step because the proposed vaccine had not

passed all the agency's licensing

requirements.

At the time, the CDC said the vaccine was being stockpiled for health

officials who would have to respond to future bioterrorist

attacks, and possibly for use in people for whom antibiotics did not work.

The Defense Department subsequently released

some vaccine stocks to the CDC, making it possible to inoculate about 3,000

people.

Over the last few weeks, decades of anthrax research on animals and a

recently declassified Canadian study reminded doctors

that taking people off antibiotics for 60 days could leave them defenseless

afterward against anthrax spores that lay dormant in

their lungs. When the medicine is stopped, the spores could germinate,

producing disease.

The vaccine has not received final FDA approval because the company that has

an exclusive contract to make it for the

military, BioPort Corp. of Lansing, Mich., has had a series of problems. As a

result, the new inoculation plan is formally being

classified as experimental.

The vaccine has been generating controversy for years because of its use by

the military to protect soldiers against possible

biological weapons. Some soldiers refused to get vaccinated, saying they were

concerned about the vaccine's safety. But health

officials maintain that the vaccine has been shown to be safe. The holdup

with the FDA's final approval has been over BioPort's

manufacturing facility, not the vaccine itself, officials said.

Staff writers Avram Goldstein, Lancaster and Rick Weiss contributed to

this report.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company