The first use of a human anthrax vaccine took place in 1954.[i] The primary purpose, like all vaccines, was to provide some prophylaxis for human beings from contracting the anthrax bacteria, which is typically found in cattle. Those most likely to come into contact with the anthrax spores were livestock handlers and people who might be handling animal hides in leatherworking factories or similar circumstances. The first comprehensive field trial of a human anthrax vaccine was conducted at goat-hair processing mills from 1955-59 in the northeastern United States by Dr. Philip Brachman. This study has come to be known as the Brachman Study because it is, essentially, the only data available on the subject.[ii] In this study, 369 workers in the mill who handled animal hides were vaccinated against the bacteria. The results, while not spectacular, certainly indicated that the vaccine was effective against catching anthrax from handling pelts and hides that had the spores: to be precise, the vaccine trial was designed to provide prophylaxis against contacting anthrax via contact with the skin. The study showed a “high confidence level of 93% effectiveness” and a low of 65%, a fairly significant spread.
The Michigan Department of Public Health first produced the Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed (AVA) under an Investigational New Drug application (DBS-IND 180) in 1966. MDPH filed a license application for the manufacture of Anthrax Protective Antigen, Aluminum Hydroxide Adsorbed in 1967. The specification for manufacture is based on U.S. Patent 3,208,909. The license application references an article published in “Applied Microbiology” that details the production process. The license to manufacture AVA, granted in 1970, has two parts. One license is for the facility, the Establishment License Application (ELA); the other is for the product itself, the Product License Application (PLA). MDPH produced AVA continuously (if in small quantities) from its first contract (PH21-68-2064) in 1968 until 1997 when MDPH split off its biologics division and privatized it into the Michigan Biologic Products Institute. MBPI in turn sold the facility and its licenses to BioPort, Incorporated, in 1998, a subject to which we will return in detail later.
Bacillus anthracis is a bacteria that survives in its environment by exuding enzymes that break down surrounding compounds, such as fats, proteins, and polysaccharides (complex sugar molecules). The bacteria then absorb these byproducts. In addition to secreting the enzymes, which serve a nutritional gathering function for the bacteria, anthrax also secretes two toxins, or poisons, known as lethal factor (LF) and edema factor (EF). These two toxins only work, however, when combined with a protein known as Protective Antigen (PA). A vaccine will be effective against anthrax if it confers a certain level of antibody response to the PA, thus inhibiting the expression of LF/EF. In other words, if the vaccine causes the immune system to create enough antibodies that will fight and overwhelm the Protective Antigen, it is considered effective.
The anthrax vaccine is unique among vaccines in that there is no step in the manufacturing process for purifying the active fraction of the vaccine. The vaccine is made by growing a non-virulent strain of anthrax in a culture. This culture is filtered to remove the bacteria, but the remainder, including the proteins and enzymes, is absorbed onto aluminum oxyhydroxide. The antigens that are absorbed are then centrifuged out of the solution and, without being “washed”, are then resuspended into a saline solution with some preservatives. Because of the way in which the bacteria secretes enzymes and absorbs proteins, the vaccine is
composed of an undefined crude culture of supernatant adsorbed to aluminum hydroxide. There has been no quantification of the protective antigen content of the vaccine or of any of the other constituents, so the degree of purity is unknown. Standardization is determined by an animal potency test.[iii]
One would think that this statement must have come from an anthrax vaccine opponent, except that it is from an article authored by Colonel (Dr.) Arthur Friedlander, U.S. Army – as of 2004, the Chief Researcher at the U.S. Army’s Medical Research laboratory at Ft. Detrick, Maryland – and Dr. Philip Brachman, head of the original study on the previous Merck Pharmaceuticals-manufactured anthrax vaccine. As Dr. Friedlander notes, the antibody titer – the level of antibodies produced by the body in response to the vaccine, measured by a blood test – varies widely from lot to lot of the vaccine and is measured by injecting guinea pigs and measuring antibody response. This variety is due, in part, because the manufacturing process, developed in the 1960s, is antiquated by modern microbiology standards, which now control how a vaccine is judged for licensing purposes. All of this means that even under ideal conditions, the vaccine is likely to produce significant differences in potency from batch to batch. The problem with the AVA is that it has never been manufactured under anything even approaching ideal conditions.
At the same time that the original Brachman study’s results were being published, the development of the anthrax vaccine continued apace. Interestingly, the vaccine used in the Brachman study was originally made by Merck Pharmaceutical, but it was changed in both content and production method by a new manufacturer, the Michigan Department of Public Health. This changed vaccine, not the original one used in the Brachman study, was patented by the U.S. Army in 1965.[iv]
In 1967, an application was submitted to the National Institute of Health’s Division of Biologics Standards to get a license for the patented vaccine. A study was conducted at a Talladega mill using the newly-patented vaccine: this study’s results have never been published. There was correspondence between the NIH and the head of the Talladega study indicating that there were problems with the methodology. Dr. Philip Coleman, the head investigator, wrote candidly to the NIH: “As to the efficacy of the vaccine, we have no real method of determining the protection afforded.”[v] There were also memos exchanged regarding the scientific validity of the Talladega study. An ad hoc licensing oversight committee sent a memo to a Dr. Margaret Pittman of the Department of Health Education and Welfare (HEW), the forerunner to the Dept. of Health and Human Services (DHHS), pointing out that “[t]he lack of cases of anthrax in an uncontrolled population of approximately 600 persons in the Talladega mill can hardly be accepted as scientific evidence for efficacy of the vaccine.”[vi] Notwithstanding these problems, Doctor Pittman recommended licensure of the vaccine on February 10, 1969, while acknowledging that “clinical data establishing efficacy of the product had not been submitted and that data be requested from NCDC (National Communicable Disease Center).”[vii] Efficacy data was a prerequisite to licensure by the 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendments to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, previously detailed in Chapter 5.[1]
On November 2, 1970, the license for the anthrax vaccine was recommended for approval by HEW without any of the required efficacy data. [viii] The License was granted on 10 November 1970. In an interesting twist, the efficacy data from the earlier Brachman Study was substituted, submitted, and accepted (yet no documentation of this submission has been uncovered). The Brachman Study is actually referenced on the approved package insert, even though the vaccine used in the Brachman Study differed from the licensed vaccine in strain, formulation, and production method. While there are those who will argue (and DoD representatives have before Congress) that the vaccines are sufficiently similar to allow conclusions to be drawn, that is a scientific debate. As a legal matter, it holds no weight. There is absolutely no way today, under the existing regulatory-licensing framework, that a company could get a license for a drug from the FDA by substituting a study from some other company’s drug, made by a different production method, using a different strain of bacteria. As one former FDA official who worked in the Department at that time expressed, “these were the days when we were trying to help the industry.”[ix]
When the Department of Biologics Standards was transferred under the FDA in 1973, a review began of all previously licensed vaccines that had not been required to show the necessary efficacy data. The anthrax vaccine would not undergo the necessary review for efficacy data until 12 years later, in 1985. During this review, the FDA concluded that “safety of this product is not a major concern, especially considering its very limited distribution…”[x] The committee also noted that “[a]nthrax vaccine poses no serious special problems other than the fact that its efficacy against inhalation anthrax is not well documented.”[xi] Finally, the Panel concluded that “there is sufficient evidence to conclude that anthrax vaccine is safe and effective under the limited circumstances for which this vaccine is employed.”[xii]
During the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP) rollout, the DoD publicly long claimed that “the vaccine has ‘an impressive safety record’” and that “it has been widely used for thirty years,” but neither of those statements can be squared with the 1985 review, which resulted in a proposed rule that was never been acted upon.[xiii] The 1985 review noted that “[i]mmunization with this vaccine is indicated only for certain occupational groups with risk of uncontrollable or unavoidable exposure to the organism. It is recommended for individuals who come in contact with imported animal hides, furs, wool, hair (especially goat hair), bristles, and bone meal, as well as laboratory workers involved in ongoing studies on the organism”[xiv] The license was granted in 1970, but the vaccine was not widely distributed nor widely used, given the narrow slice of the population involved in animal hide handling. In fact, in November of 1971, the Division of Biologics Standards of the National Institutes of Health, noting an apparent increase in reports of adverse reactions after individuals received booster shots, published guidance on the vaccine’s shot regimen.
The Division considered it advisable to reevaluate the need for annual boosters and possibly the amount of the booster dose . . . Although the record is unclear as to whether or not the Division requested the manufacturer to conduct a reevaluation, no such reevaluation has been done to date.[xv]
Part of the problem may stem from the vaccine’s shot regimen, which consists of the first three shots given within 2 weeks of each other, and then annual boosters for a total of 6 shots to complete the series.
The DoD’s media campaign, rising to over $70 million dollars spent for a website and other educational information for the troops, includes literature that says the anthrax vaccine “has been safely and routinely administered in the United States to veterinarians, laboratory workers, and livestock handlers for more than 25 years.”[xvi] An April 2000 Congressional House report noted, however, that “testimony at the March 24 hearing indicated between 100 and 300 civilians may receive the vaccine each year. Since approval, and prior to the AVIP, fewer than 68,000 doses had been distributed apart from stocks used in Operation Desert Storm.”[xvii] Shortly after the vaccine was licensed, the mills began closing as the garment industry changed. The risk of exposure and infection from anthrax spores by the general public disappeared. The vaccine’s use became limited to experiments on laboratory animals, the researchers conducting the experiments, and the staff at the manufacturing plant. Proof of this is that from its licensing until 1988, when the DoD sought to increase the production lines for it, only 68,000 doses of the vaccine had been produced by MDPH and MDPH had never made a lot of more than 7500 doses at one time. If vaccination consists of six shots plus annual boosters, the number of possible persons inoculated is so small as to not even be statistically significant for long-term safety studies. The 1985 Panel noted that “[t]he vaccine manufactured by the Michigan Department of Public Health has not been employed in a controlled field trial.”[xviii]
Finally, there was never any effort to track long-term health effects from those who received the vaccine. There was no database maintained or other central records kept to track an individual’s long-term reactions to the vaccine. The Institute of Medicine conducted a review of all available literature and concluded that “[t]here is a paucity of published peer-reviewed literature on the safety of the anthrax vaccine.”[xix] It also noted that “[t]here have been no studies of the anthrax vaccine in which the long-term health outcomes have been systematically evaluated with active surveillance.”[xx] At no time in the history of the anthrax vaccine did their exist, or has their existed, support for the DoD’s claims of “an impressive safety record.” In truth, the DoD’s claims are particularly hollow and appear to be part of a campaign of disinformation. As a Congressional Committee noted in April 2000, “[p]reposterously low adverse report rates generated by DOD point to a program far more concerned with public relations than effective force protection or the practice of medicine.”
The vaccine’s licensed product insert expresses an expected systemic adverse reaction rate of 0.2 %. In May, 1999, the Department of Defense reported a total of 123 Vaccine Adverse Events Report System (VAERS) filings with the FDA, but included only 65 of those in the calculation of an adverse reaction rate of 0.007 percent of 890,888 vaccinations given to that date. This means one of two things: either the vaccine is more safe than the product label indicates by a factor of 100, or the data is being underreported. Under pressure to conduct at least some studies, the DoD has done so and those studies have suggested much higher adverse reaction rates than the PR claims. In a study at Tripler Army Hospital, Hawaii, the data showed that 2.2% of men missed one or more shifts of duty after the first shot, 2.0% after the second, and .9% after the third. For women, the numbers were higher, consistent with other studies conducted. Women in the Tripler study indicated rates of 5.5%, 5.0%, and 3.9% for the first second and third shots, respectively.[xxi] A study on soldiers in Korea on systemic reactions also revealed significantly higher adverse reaction rates. Men and women were surveyed regarding symptoms of fever, malaise, and chills. In each of these categories, the numbers reflect numbers that are in some cases 1000 times higher than what DoD has testified to before Congress or stated in press releases. The Korea study’s numbers for men and women after the first shot are:
Fever – 0.9 % men, 2.8% women; Malaise – 6.0% men, 15.6% women; Chills – 1.5% men, 5.5% women. Second shot systemic reaction rates are similar or higher.[xxii] What is disturbing about these numbers is not the adverse report rates themselves; the most disturbing thing is that DoD had similar numbers from a survey taken of soldiers inoculated from 1977-1996 at Fort Detrick, Maryland.[xxiii] This means that the DoD has had similar adverse reaction rates the whole time it has been claiming publicly that the vaccine has the “preposterously low” rates that they have been reporting. Completely provable lies.
The problems with the anthrax vaccine are not mere quibbling, but rather raise significant questions about how this vaccine is made, its component parts, and the actual lots that are currently sitting on the shelf at the manufacturer’s facility, ready to be shipped or already shipped to the DoD for use on service members.[2]
[1] See Chapter 5, pp. 48-50.
[2] I would remiss if I did not give credit to the research conducted by Major Russ Dingle, USAFR, whose knowledge about the anthrax vaccine manufacturing process is encyclopedic in its breadth and depth. Any errors are entirely mine.
[i] Wright, GG. Et al. Studies on Immunity in Anthrax. The Journal of Immunology. Vol. 73 No. 6 pp387-391
[ii] Brachman. P.S. et al. Field Evaluation of a Human Anthrax Vaccine. American Journal of Public Health. Vol. 52 pp. 632-645
[iii] A.M Friedlander and P.S. Brachman, “Vaccines”, ed. Plotkin and Mortimer, 1994 edition chapter 26, pg. 737.
[iv] Pubis, M. Wright, GG. Anaerobic Process for Production of a Gel-adsorbed Anthrax Immunization Antigen. United States Patent Office Record. September 28, 1965. page 1471
[v] Philip Coleman, Acting Chief, Investigational Vaccines Activity , letter to Division of Biologics Standards, National Institutes of Health, 25 January 1968.
[vi] Ad Hoc Committee letter to Dr. Margaret Pittman, 6 February 1969.
[vii] Dr. Margaret Pittman, letter to Dr. Sam Gibson, 10 February 1969.
[viii] HEW memorandum from Margaret Pittman to Reference No. file 67-70. 2 November 1970.
[ix] Conversation with Mr. Sammie Young, former Director of Biologics Division of the FDA.
[x] 21 C.F.R. 51002, 51008
[xi] Id.
[xii] Id.
[xiii] DoD Press Briefing, Dec. 5, 1997. Available at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/ then follow links to 1997 archives.
[xiv] 21 C.F.R. 51002, 51008
[xv] GAO Report T-NSIAD-00-48, Testimony of Dr. Kwai-Cheung Chan, Director, Special Studies and Evaluations, National Security and International Affairs Division
[xvi] See note xii.
[xvii] April 2000 Shays’ report, citing Prepared statement of Dr. Kathryn Zoon, Director, FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, NSVAIR anthrax hearing (II), pp. 52-53.
[xviii] 21 CFR 51002, 51008
[xix] “An Assessment of the Safety of the Anthrax Vaccine”, A Letter Report, Committee on Health Effects Associated with Exposures During the Gulf War, Institute of Medicine, 30 Mar 2000
[xx] Id.
[xxi] GAO Report, T00-48, Table 3.
[xxii] GAO Report T00-48, Table 2.
[xxiii] See GAO Report T-NSIAD-99-226, July 21, 1999. Table below shows the results of Ft. Detrick study.
| Dose number | Males percent (# of doses) | Females % (# of doses) |
| First | 3.75 (1013) | 3.86 (259) |
| Second | 3.06 (979) | 7.29 (247) |
| Third | 1.71 (938) | 5.06 (237) |
| Fourth & Later | 3.40 (5062) | 7.06 (747) |
