By Mark S. Zaid and Patrick G. Eddington©

The Washington Times

Sunday, October 10, 1999, Page B5

Four years after Desert Storm, United Nations inspectors discovered that Iraq had weaponized aflatoxin, a known liver carcinogen. American intelligence failed to detect the Iraqi program, and Pentagon biological detection devices would not have detected the substance if it had been used. The 150,000 U.S. troops secretly inoculated against Iraq's known anthrax bombs would have fallen victim to the Iraqi aflatatoxin weapon without ever knowing what had happened. By simply fielding an obscure yet deadly poison, Iraq demonstrated how easy it was to outfox America's limited biowarfare program. Nearly a decade after the Gulf War, the Pentagon has learned little from the experience.

The department's ongoing Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP) has fueled a growing debate about the safety and military utility of biowarfare vaccines. Although no state has ever used anthrax in battle, Pentagon officials fear our troops may breathe weapon-dispersed anthrax spores. How did a program designed to protect our forces become such a policy disaster?

In December 1997, the Secretary of Defense assured all that the AVIP would only proceed after four specific conditions had been met. These included supplemental testing of the vaccine's potency and purity, implementation of a tracking system for recipients, establishment of operational guidelines and a review of the program by an independent expert. Not only have none of these conditions been fully met, but the existing evidence reveals that the AVIP is a potentially unsafe and militarily unnecessary venture.

Contrary to Pentagon claims, the originally licensed anthrax vaccine has never been proven safe and effective in protecting humans against an aerosolized (i.e., inhaled) anthrax biological warfare threat. As a biological warfare prophylactic, the existing vaccine is experimental, a position taken by the Senate Veterans' Affairs committee in December 1994.

The Army's Surgeon General testified before Congress last week that the vaccine is believed to be effective against all known strains of anthrax, despite earlier concessions that "we don't know if the vaccine would be effective." The former deputy head of Soviet Union's bioweapons program has confirmed that the Russians genetically altered anthrax

spores; expatriate Russian scientists working in Iraq, Iran, or North Korea could almost certainly replicate the feat rendering the existing vaccine useless.

Potential long-term health effects of the anthrax vaccine have never been studied, as General Accounting Office (GAO) investigators confirmed to Congress last April. Moreover, GAO analysis of Pentagon data suggests the actual systemic adverse reaction rate to the vaccine is as much as 70 times higher than previously reported - a giant medical red flag for those concerned about the health and welfare of the troops.

Internal documentation suggests the Pentagon is well aware of the vaccine's potential problems. For years, the Army secretly indemnified the vaccine manufacturer from tort liability. In the current indemnification memorandum dated September 3, 1998, the Secretary of the Army wrote that the vaccine manufacturing contract "involves unusually hazardous risks associated with the potential for adverse reactions in some recipients and the possibility that the desired immunological effect will not be obtained by all recipients." The memorandum also concedes that "there is no way to be certain that the pathogen used in tests measuring vaccine efficacy will be sufficiently similar to the pathogen that U.S. forces might encounter to confer immunity," a key charge of AVIP's critics. Despite a lawful obligation, the Army failed to disclose these documents during legal proceedings involving the vaccine. The documents became public only after being leaked to the authors.

The threat of an anthrax attack remains in dispute. Last week the Deputy Secretary of Defense testified before Congress that the AVIP was implemented based on conclusive evidence obtained in 1997 that Iraq still possessed the capability to utilize weaponized anthrax. Yet GAO investigators who have reviewed classified information found that "the nature and magnitude of the military threat of biological warfare (BW) has not changed since 1990, both in terms of the number of countries suspected of developing BW capability, the types of BW agents they possess, and their ability to weaponize and deliver those BW agents." Not only is the threat questionable, but whether true protection exists - particularly from an attack with a genetically engineered anthrax bioweapon - is debatable.

Indeed, key American allies have rejected the anthrax vaccine. The United Kingdom recently stopped its voluntary vaccination program after more than 70% of its personnel opted out. France never had a program. And while the Pentagon believes the risk of attack is so imminent that it requires the Marine Band to receive the vaccine, the State Department's program is voluntary, although American Embassy personnel are at the same or greater risk in high threat areas.

The AVIP itself has become a threat to American national security. The Pentagon's much-vaunted "total force" program--the system whereby the Guard and Reserve units can be quickly called up to fight--is being ripped to shreds as members refuse the vaccine.

To date, up to 400 fighter and transport pilots are in the process of resigning or simply not reenlisting solely due to the anthrax vaccine. Many pilots, who fly for commercial airlines during the week and drill on weekends, have chosen this path rather than potentially place their civilian passengers at risk. America's ability to deploy its armed forces in future conflicts is being compromised--all for the sake of a vaccine against a weapon that our forces will probably never face, particularly since rogue states and terrorists will engage in efforts to pursue other biological weapons leaving U.S. military biomedical specialists chasing their vaccine tails as they squander hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. There is a better way.

First, the Pentagon should properly fund a force-wide, real-time biological weapons detection and decontamination capability. As the GAO has noted in numerous reports over the past decade, the Pentagon has paid short-shrift to these issues. Indeed, the technology and supplies already exist. During the Gulf War, the Pentagon purchased 40,000 anthrax detection kits capable of isolating anthrax spores in less than 20 minutes. The kits can be coupled with antibiotics which have been proven to work if administered shortly after exposure. Rectifying these shortfalls will not only improve readiness, it will reduce the necessity of invasive, high risk/low payoff vaccine programs.

Second, the FDA must be forced to live up to its mandate. Biowarfare-related vaccines should be approved only after all questions regarding their safety and efficacy have been addressed by a nongovernmental panel of biomedical experts, and only after all available noninvasive biomedical defense alternatives have been explored. The FDA must not lower its standards simply on assertions of national security or alleged military necessity.

Third, the Pentagon should reconsider its arbitrary punishment protocol for service-members who refuse the vaccine. While most refusers have received non-judicial punishment, some have been court-martialed. These otherwise honorable and loyal service members have been tarnished with criminal convictions that may haunt them for the rest of their lives merely for refusing a vaccine.

Finally, the Pentagon must abandon its "enemies list" approach to critics who raise legitimate questions about its biomedical defense programs. Playing straight with the troops about the limitations and risks associated with vaccines is an essential step in not only properly protecting the force, but in restoring confidence in the chain of command.

(Mark S. Zaid is a Washington, D.C., attorney defending anthrax refusers and the Executive Director of The James Madison Project, a Washington-D.C. non-profit organization. Patrick G. Eddington is a former analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency, and the author of Gassed in the Gulf.)