News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The US government yesterday canceled its $877.5 million contract with VaxGen Inc. for a new anthrax vaccine, after problems with the vaccine's stability caused the company to miss a deadline for starting a clinical trial.

(CIDRAP News) – Though the United States observed the fifth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks this fall, the nation's public health emergency preparedness has improved slowly and remains inadequate, according to a report last week from the nonprofit organization Trust for America's Health (TFAH).

(CIDRAP News) – Soon after the terrorist attacks of 2001, Congress approved emergency funds to teach hospital staffs how to recognize and respond to bioterrorism attacks, and today the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its first report on those efforts.

(CIDRAP News) – VaxGen Inc., which is developing a new anthrax vaccine for the US civilian stockpile, announced last week it was postponing the latest clinical trial because of potential problems with the vaccine's shelf life.

(CIDRAP News) – The Pentagon announced this week that it will resume, after a 2-year hiatus, mandatory anthrax vaccination for troops and other personnel stationed in the Middle East and South Korea.

August 10, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – An outbreak of anthrax that began in early July, the largest ever recorded in Saskatchewan, has now killed at least 746 farm animals in that province and neighboring Manitoba, according to Aug 9 statistics from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it is developing a technology that can identify real or fake bioterrorism agents faster and more cheaply than existing methods.

The technique uses mass spectrometry to sort out different species and strains of bacteria and distinguish them from inert substances such as flour and cornstarch, often used in bioterrorism hoaxes, the FDA said in a news release yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – The US government announced Jul 28 that it will add 10,000 courses of anthrax immune globulin (AIG) to the strategic national stockpile.

(CIDRAP News) – A man is being treated for cutaneous (skin) anthrax and 36 farms are under quarantine because of livestock deaths in what has been called the largest anthrax outbreak in the history of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.

The disease has killed 149 animals on the quarantined farms in northeastern Saskatchewan, according to today's update from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government announced plans today to buy 20,000 treatment courses of an experimental anthrax antitoxin from Human Genome Sciences Inc. (HGS) for $165 million.

Full payment for the product, called ABthrax, is contingent on its licensing by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a news release.