July 2004

Below is a listing of bioterrorism-related events this month, part of an ongoing bioterrorism chronology that begins with Sep 11, 2001. To see events from other months, go to the Bioterrorism Watch index page.

July 29

Early-detection system announced in North Carolina
North Carolina State Health Director Leah Devlin announces that all of her state's hospitals with emergency departments will be participants in a new surveillance system intended to warn of infectious diseases outbreaks and terrorist attacks, according to the Associated Press. The system, scheduled to begin operation Jan 1, 2005, will electronically collect, report, monitor, and investigate clinical data. The project, expected to be the first of its kind in the country, is funded by the federal government.

July 26

Project Bioshield not popular with all biotech companies
Some of the US biotechnology companies supposedly in line to benefit from the recently passed Project Bioshield legislation (see July 21 item below and CIDRAP News story) are criticizing it instead, says a Washington Post story. Among the drawbacks the companies see to developing drugs for use in a biological attack are the length of time it takes to develop new agents, the small profit margins associated with them, and the potential for lawsuits. About 100 of the 1,000 biotech companies in the United States are doing biodefense work.

Plant scientists express interest in tracing bioterrorists
The American Phytopathological Society—a group of plant disease experts—plans to put a new emphasis on plant forensics, which combines the science of plant pathology with aspects of criminal investigation. They hope their work will make it possible to trace the origin of an intentionally placed disease in US crops and perhaps lead to prosecution, according to a Global Security Newswire article. Organization of a working group is planned for the upcoming annual meeting of the group. The US Department of Agriculture has a list of nine pathogens it believes are the most likely agents for use by bioterrorists. The economic impact of an attack on crops could be tremendous, as even one confirmed report would likely lead to quarantine against international distribution.

July 22

Hungary unveils mobile defense lab for Olympics
The Hungarian military demonstrates its high-tech mobile biological defense lab, which will be sent to Athens to help protect against terrorist attack at the Olympics. The lab, a large tent that has its own security system and TV cameras, can be folded and transported on the back of a truck.

Acambis still hot on trail of smallpox vaccine
Acambis, a British company hopes to win at least half the estimated $900 million US contract for smallpox vaccine, according to a Reuters story. Clinical trials of the company's vaccine, ACAM2000, a cell-culture smallpox vaccine, were suspended in April (see April 13 item) after myopericarditis was suspected in three recipients. Acambis previously received two contracts from the US government to supply 209 million doses of smallpox vaccine, and it has contracts for the vaccine with 11 other countries.

July 21

Project BioShield becomes law
President Bush signs Project BioShield, which provides industry with incentives to develop vaccines and treatments for bioterror and chemical agents, speeds the approval process for such discoveries, and allows the government to use certain agents in times of emergency even before FDA approval if needed. The legislation was passed by the Senate in May and by the House earlier this month. Bush says the project will "rally the great promise of American science and innovation to confront the greatest danger of our time." (See CIDRAP News story.)

Small device may detect bioterrorism agents, diseases
Scientists in the Boston area are working on a paperback-sized device that can sense trace amounts of anthrax, ricin, and other lethal agents, the Boston Globe reports. The sensor would be integrated into ventilation systems to detect acts of bioterrorism in offices buildings, malls, subways, and other venues. The federal government has invested $2.1 milion in the work. Meanwhile, Boston physicians are scheduled to study whether the same device can determine various diseases in patients by sensing and analyzing gases in their breath.

Bivalent anthrax vaccine to begin Phase 1 trial
Vical Inc. announces initiation of a Phase 1 clinical trial of it DNA vaccine for anthrax. Up to 52 healthy adult volunteers will receive the vaccine to test first for safety and next for immune response. The vaccine is a cationic lipid-formulated, bivalent plamid DNA anthrax vaccine. Subjects will receeive three doses or placebo and will be followed for 1 year.The Vical vaccine targets both anthrax protective antigen (PA) and lethal factor (LF), whereas the vaccine now licensed for use in the United Statesas well as others under development target only PA.

Smallpox vaccine gets fast-track FDA designation
The FDA gives fast-track designation to Barvarian Nordic's IMVAMUNE third-generation smallpox vaccine candidate. The designation is intended to facilitate  the development of new therapies for life-threatening conditions and to expedite their review. Bavarian Nordic is conducting trials of the vaccine to evaluate the immune response it generates in comparison with Dryvax and to evaluate the new agent in populations in which Dryvax is contraindicated.

July 19

Governors participate in bioterrorism tabletop
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge hold a tabletop exercise on bioterrorism on the final day of a National Governors Association meeting. The scenario involved simultaneous anthrax attacks in several cities. Among concerns raised during the discussions that occurred were pressure on National Guard troops, funding shortages, and administrative logjams, according to a New York Times story. Said Ridge, "At the end of the day . . . the homeland is secure when the home towns are secure."

Pharma company gets patent for MVA for smallpox and other infectious diseases
Bavarian Nordic is granted a patent on its proprietary MVA-TN technology. The patent includes MVA-BN as a smallpox vaccine (IMVAMUNE) and extends to use of the same technology for developing vaccines against other infectious diseases. The patent also covers use of MVA-TN for generating immunity through priming and boosting vaccination schedules. MVA stands for modified vaccinia Ankara, a weakened form of the vaccine in use to date.

July 18

CIA briefs smaller communities on terrorist threat
The CIA, with the FBI, is sending counterterrorism experts out to hold terrorism briefings for state and local law enforcement agencies, according to a New York Times story. Briefings have been held in about a dozen cities and are scheduled for many more. Many of the presenters are analysts from the CIA Directorate of Intelligence. Briefings in smaller communities represent a shift in the CIA's approach to countering terrorism, according to experts, and reflect the government's willingness to try new ways of deterring an attack.

July 16

USAMRIID labs close for anthrax investigation
Several laboratories at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Frederick, Md., are closed temporarily to allow FBI agents to carry out further searches for evidence in the 2001 anthrax attack investigation. There is speculation that the anthrax spores and/or the person who sent them by mail may have been connected with USAMRIID, and numerous searches of the premises have been carried out previously.

GAO report says DHS far short of fulfilling recommendations
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) releases a report to the House Select Committee on Homeland Security stating that the Department of Homeland Security and the agencies it absorbed at its start have implemented fewer than half the key security recommendations made by GAO since 1997. The report was commissioned by Jim Turner, D-Texas, the ranking Democrat on the committee. "We need to regain our sense of urgency and implement the reminaing recommendations now to strengthen our borders and ports and make our communities safer from terrorist attack," he says in a statement.

July 15

BSL-2 and 3 labs to be built in former Soviet states
ThePentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency will build four Biosafety Level 2 and 3 laboratories in former Soviet states, according to an Associated Press report. Two labs will be in Kazakhstan and one each in Georgia and Uzbekistan; the labs will study both human and animal pathogens. The idea is to gather all the dangerous pathogens in the area into central labs where access can be controlled. The labs will also offer work to displaced scientists. The facilities, which will cost $24 in design and $100 million in construction, are scheduled to be finished by September 2007.

July 14

Project BioShield passes the House
The US House of Representatives approves Project BioShield by a vote of 414-2. The bill, which reserves a $5.6 billion funding reserve, guarantees that pharmaceutical companies that develop vaccines and drugs against agents of bioterrorism will have a buyer (the government) for their products. It also allows the government to distribute newly developed drugs in an emergency, even if they have not been approved by the FDA. BioShield was passed by the Senate in May and was first mentioned by President Bush in his State of the Union address in January 2003. Bush is expected to sign the bill quickly. "This is the largest first-responder program ever enacted in American history," states  Christopher Cox, R-Calif., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. Pharmaceutical companies remain concerned that the bill does not include language relieving the companies for liability for injury that vaccines or drugs ordered by the government might cause. (See CIDRAP News story.)

Hungary to provide mobile lab at Olympics
A 9-member team of physicians and biologists from Hungary are being sent with their mobile laboratory to the Olympic Games in Athens. The lab is capable of detecting a chemical or biological attack within 1 hour, according to Hungary's defense minister, Ferenc Juhasz. Deployment of the lab, which will cost Hungary $135,000, is being done as part of NATO's efforts to secure the August games.

'Virtual public health service' on the horizon?
Speaking before the House Government Reform Technology Subcommittee, Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., says the country needs a "virtual public health service"—an information technology infrastructure that ties together every health facility. Without this, he said, responding to a widespread emergency is "like the beginning of the railroad era, where you had to change trains at every state line" because of different track sizes, according to a Govexec article. Richard Weisman, Florida poison control information center director, illustrated the importance of this challenge by describing the communications problems following discovery of anthrax at the Boca Raton American Media building in 2001. It took 36 hours, he said, for CDC to send a fact sheet to his facility, and only half the area emergency departments ever received it. Gingrich suggested that the needed changes could be accomplished if the government committed 1% of all healthcare spending to healthcare information technology. Clair Broome of the CDC said the new Public Health Information Network's goal is to provide the capabiltiy for real-time communication across state and local health departments, clinical care facilities, federal agencies, public health laboratories, and law enforcement agencies.

July 13

Hatfill sues New York Times
Steven Hatfill, the former US Army researcher who was called a "person of interest" early in the FBI investigation of the 2001 anthrax mail attack, sues the New York Times, claiming columns by writer Nicholas Kristof in 2002 defamed him by pointing to him as a likely culprit. The Times says the lawsuit lacks merit, noting that Hatfill had been identified by the government by name before their columns began. Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee  for Freedome of the Press, said of Kristof, "He is a columnist and what they would have to prove is that the facts he wrote were false. They would also have to show malice."

NYC home to new high-security lab
New York City announces the opening of a new 20,000-square-foot biosafety level 3 laboratory that will likely avoid the need to send samples to the CDC for testing in the event of a biological threat or emergency. At the time of the 2001 anthrax attacks, only two people worked in the city's existing high-security laboratory. The new lab will normally house about 20 scientists and technicians but has the capacity for 100 if required.

Boston and New York will have 'chempacks' by convention time
CDC-provided "chempacks,"which contain antidotes to chemical and biological agents that bioterrorists might use, will be shipped to Boston and New York in time for the political conventions scheduled in those cities for Jul 26-29 and Aug 30–Sep 2, respectively. Distribution of the packs to states across the country has been in progress, but Boston and New York were moved up on the list to assure they would have them by the time of the conventions. The Department of Homeland Security stresses that no specific intelligence has pointed to the cities as targets and that the shipments are part of "routine activities" being carried out by HHS to "raise the level of preparedness throughout the country," according to a Boston Globe article.

Expert panel calls on government/industry collaboration on smallpox therapies
A group of distinguished researchers publish a report stating that the best approach to a potential release of smallpox by terrorists is the "establishment of a major collaborative research effort to develop new antiviral drugs that would involve the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, universities and government agencies," according to a press release from Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). The report appears in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and delivers recommendations of the panel arrived at during a 2-day workshop on application of the latest biological information, technology, and experience to the study of smallpox. Lead author Stephen Harrison of HHMI commented that "The Department of Defense has a lot of experience with commissioning [antiviral drugs] and acting as the sole market for them . . . but the federal health agencies do not, so we recognized that such arrangement would require significant changes in how they interact with industry."

July 12

Florida building declared free of anthrax
The former American Media Inc. building in Boca Raton, Florida, is declared free of anthrax spores early in the day by Karen Cavanagh, chief operating officer of BioONE and Sabre Technical Services, which carried out the decontamination. The building was fumigated with chlorine dioxide beginning yesterday. Workers will continue testing the building for up to 8 weeks before it is reopened. BioONE, the company established by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, plans to move into the building, which was the site of the first anthrax letter received in the 2001 attacks.

July 6

Judge hears secret details of anthrax investigation
FBI lead investigator Richard L. Lambert presents detailed information on its anthrax investigation, called Amerithrax, to US District Judge Reggie B. Walter. The information remains classified but is expected to affect the judge's decisions around a lawsuit brought by Steven Hatfill, a "person of interest" in the case, against federal officials. (See March 30 item and see item below under July 4.)

July 5

Found terrorist manual spurs alert to Asia over bioterrorist threat
Asian Asian government officials are told at a chemical weapons conference in Malaysia that they need to prepare for biological, chemical, radiologic, and nuclear attacks by terrorists. Spurring the warning in part was the recent discovery in the Philippines of a terrorist manual on development of biological and chemical weapons.

July 4

Possible breakthrough in anthrax investigation
FBI investigators of the anthrax mail cases of 2001 have found that the agent involved was a mixture of two slightly different anthrax samples, according to two nongovernment experts who were told of the discovery, reports the Baltimore Sun. The pattern caused by the combination gives the bacteria in question a distinct "fingerprint" that could help trace it to a particular laboratory. The research leading to this discovery is part of the emerging scientific discipline called bioforensics—a discipline that uses genetic analysis and other methods to track germs to their place of origin, explains the Sun article.

Researchers take an important snapshot of anthrax
Scientists record a finely detailed 3-D image of how anthrax toxin enters human cells. Their findings are expected to help researchers design both antitoxins to anthrax from harming the body and treatments that can be used later in the disease when antibiotics are no longer sufficiently effective. The study, published online in the journal Nature today, was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (See CIDRAP News story.)

For other months' installments, go to the Bioterrorism Watch index page