U.S. Stockpiles Smallpox Vaccine

The Bush administration has signed a contract to buy 155 million doses of smallpox vaccine from a British firm, preparing for the possibility terrorists would try to spread the deadly virus.

The contract with Acambis Inc. will bring the nation's stockpile to 286 million doses of the vaccine by the end of next year, promising protection for every American should bioterrorists attack with the all-but-extinct virus.

The government will pay $428 million for the doses, which will help the United States bolster defenses against the potential weapon, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said on Wednesday.

"The risk does exist and we must be prepared," said Secretary Thompson.

He expected the government would receive the doses by early to late fall of next year.

The vaccine can be administered four days after exposure to smallpox and still offer protection. For that reason, and because the vaccine can cause some rare but deadly side effects, officials have no plans to resume the routine vaccinations of Americans that ended in 1972.

Highly contagious, smallpox kills about 30 percent of its victims and leaves others disfigured. There is no effective treatment once someone falls ill, but giving a vaccine in the days immediately following exposure can prevent illness.

Smallpox was declared eradicated worldwide in 1980, marking one of the greatest successes in modern medicine. The United States and Russia keep the only official supplies of the smallpox virus, but experts fear other countries or groups may have access to the agent and could unleash it as a biological weapon.

Thompson said that buying the new vaccine is sure to prompt demand for the shots by some Americans and debate in Congress and at the White House over whether vaccinations should resume.

The government already has 15.4 million doses of smallpox vaccine on hand, and each of them will be diluted to create five doses, bringing the total to 77 million. Researchers are studying whether each dose could be further diluted, to get 10 doses from each one.

In either case, the diluted vaccine would only be used if the new doses had not yet been delivered, or if they ran out, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

The new contract will cost the government $2.76 per dose. That's less than the $509 million that the Bush administration has asked from Congress to pay for the new vaccine.

The initial budget request assumed that the government would need to buy 250 million doses, but new research has found that the existing vaccine can safely be diluted, meaning much less new vaccine is needed.

To make the newest batch of vaccine, Acambis has teamed with Baxter International, which will begin brewing doses immediately at an undisclosed European factory, said Acambis spokeswoman Lyndsay Wright. Acambis' own manufacturing will begin soon at a factory in Cambridge, Mass., she said.

"Between the two o us, we have the manufacturing capability," she said.

After the vaccine is manufactured, it must be tested in clinical trials and then approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA promised a sped-up review but promised not to lower its standards.

Bioterrorism experts say a smallpox attack is unlikely, but it could overwhelm communities were it to occur. The virus is highly contagious, and nearly a third of its victims die.

"Obtaining the vaccine represents an important insurance policy," said Dr. D.A. Henderson, who led the global campaign that eradicated smallpox and is now Thompson's top bioterrorism adviser. "This is not because of any particular threat or new threat or anything of that sort. It's simply a prudent thing to do at this point in time."

Thompson added that while the risk of a release of the virus is low, it is real.

"We hope that increasing our smallpox vaccine stockpile would serve as a deterrent to any individual terrorist who would consider using smallpox as a weapon against us," he said.

HHS officials have been negotiating for weeks with several drug makers for the new smallpox contract. Two other companies were in the final bidding, Merck & Co. and GlaxoSmithKline.

Final offers were submitted last week. Thompson said Acambis was chosen because of its experience and because its offer was lowest.

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