News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) formally stated yesterday that the licensed anthrax vaccine is safe and effective for preventing all forms of anthrax, including inhalational anthrax, thereby undermining the rationale of a recent court injunction that halted the Pentagon's anthrax vaccination program.

(CIDRAP News) – In response to a federal judge's order this week, the Department of Defense (DoD) said it would suspend the anthrax vaccination program for military personnel.

"The Department will stop giving anthrax vaccinations until the legal situation is clarified," DoD officials said in a statement dated yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Stating that US soldiers should not be used as "guinea pigs for experimental drugs," a federal district judge in Washington, DC, yesterday granted a preliminary injunction against the Department of Defense's (DoD's) mandatory anthrax vaccination program.

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved a new test that clinical laboratories can use to help identify anthrax in cultures of bacteria from people potentially infected with the pathogen.

Dec 31, 2002 (CIDRAP News) – Individuals receiving smallpox vaccine should wait 3 weeks before donating blood, according to guidance issued yesterday by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The recommendations are being issued as a precautionary measure to reduce the "very slight risk" of bloodborne exposure to vaccinia virus in certain patient populations, according to the agency.

(CIDRAP News) – A combination of vaccines that included smallpox and anthrax might have contributed to the death of a young Army reservist last April, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Postal Service (USPS) reopened post offices in the Washington, DC, area last week after further tests dismissed a preliminary finding of anthrax at a Navy mail-handling facility in Washington.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Postal Service (USPS) closed 11 post offices and facilities in the Washington, DC, area yesterday after routine air sampling indicated possible anthrax at a mail handling facility at the Anacostia Naval Station in Washington.

"Out of an abundance of caution, the Postal Service has decided to close and test facilities for biohazard contamination," USPS spokesman Azeezaly Jaffer said in a statement yesterday evening.

(CIDRAP News) – To bring coherence to a poorly coordinated national effort, the United States should focus its current bioterrorism preparedness program on four specific threat scenarios involving anthrax, smallpox, botulinum toxin, and foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), according to a report by defense consultant and former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government awarded two contracts totaling more than $150 million this week for further testing and initial production of new anthrax vaccines designed to be safer and require fewer doses than the existing vaccine.