Government Executive - Authors - Marina Malenic

Experts say civilian smallpox shots not needed

Marina Malenic — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0400

It is the first time officials connected to the Bush adminstration have publicly said that no further immunizations are necessary.

"We don't need to vaccinate the first-responders," Donald Henderson, a former senior Health and Human Services Department adviser, told Time magazine last month.

Federal officials have distributed smallpox vaccine supplies nationally in sufficient quantities to enable first responders and other emergency medical personnel to receive the inoculation in time to protect them following an attack, said Henderson, who ran the World Health Organization program that eradicated smallpox in the 1970s and is now a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

"The difference between now and where we were at 9/11, is that now we have a lot of vaccine, in a number of cities we have the capability to deal with an outbreak pretty quickly," Henderson, who continues to advise Health and Human Services a part-time basis, told Global Security Newswire last week. "We are in a very different position," he added.

"In an emergency we have the vaccine ready, and ready to move very quickly. Our first priority, the health care workers in emergency rooms that would be first in contact with the disease - 250,000 would fall into the category - could be vaccinated very quickly in case of an attack," he said.

Two years ago, the Bush administration announced a smallpox vaccination program, with a target of inoculating 500,000 military personnel and 500,000 civilian health workers. The military program succeeded in meeting its goal and even surpassed it - more than 625,000 service members have received the vaccine - and the U.S. Defense Department last month expanded the effort to include all personnel deployed by U.S. Central Command and, for the first time, select units within U.S. Pacific Command.

However, the civilian program never got off the ground due to concerns about the vaccine's side effects, according to Jerome Hauer, a former Health and Human Services acting assistant secretary and director of the Response to Emergencies and Disasters Institute at George Washington University. While the administration encouraged millions of first responders and other medical professionals to volunteer for vaccinations, in the end fewer than 40,000 received the inoculation.

"I don't know that there has been a huge policy reversal rather than that it just fell apart," Hauer told Global Security Newswire last week.

Because no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the end of the war, Hauer added, there has been no impetus to continue smallpox vaccinations.

"Once the war ended and no WMD were found - no smallpox, no biological agents - at the end of the day the sense of urgency waned," he said. "People felt there was no need to go through the risk of being vaccinated unless the threat became immediate," he added.

"The sense of urgency by the first responder community also waned," Hauer said. "Barring something new, it would be extraordinarily difficult to get first responders vaccinated," he added.

However, there is good reason to believe that biological warfare programs using smallpox remain a threat, Henderson said.

"At this point, the same factors that rated smallpox as high as it was are still there," he said.

Hauer agreed.

"We were concerned about smallpox in the hands of terrorists well before Iraq," he said.

Henderson explained that in the early 1990s a group of Soviet "bioweaponeers" said that smallpox was "at the top of their list" of biowarfare agents under development.

"They admitted their intent to use smallpox in ICBMs and small bomblets for dispersal," said Henderson, adding that some Soviet weapons scientists may have left those labs to work elsewhere.

"It's hard to know who they are now working for," he added.

Henderson said there are indications that other countries may be involved in such efforts as well.

"Soviet scientists at the time said that there had been activities with smallpox in North Korea," he said.

"Whatever was going on or my have gone on in Iraq was not the only factor - we did not know anything more about Iraq than we did about Iran or Syria, for example," he said. "It takes few people and not a lot of money to set up such a program. It's not like nuclear work," he added.

]]>

Defense Department to expand vaccinations

Marina Malenic — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Previously, approximately half of deployed personnel had been vaccinated in Central Command, which includes the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters of operation.

"It was probably well over half, but this includes everyone," said William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. "Probably more will be affected in the Pacific Command than in the Central Command," he added, without discussing specific numbers of expected inoculations or a vaccination schedule.

He said this would be the first time U.S. service members on the Korean Peninsula under the Pacific Command would receive the vaccinations.

Winkenwerder said the decision to expand vaccinations was not in response to any specific threat. "There is no substantial change to the threat situation," he said.

The vaccination program would continue to include personnel in selected units assigned or deployed for 15 or more consecutive days, according to Winkenwerder, including essential civilian employees and contractors. The Defense Department would offer the vaccinations to family members of those personnel on a voluntary basis, as it has done in the past, he added.

He said the decision to expand vaccination came after a periodic review of the program and an evaluation of potential threats.

"When we began these vaccination programs we stated that we would periodically review them, evaluating the threats to our forces and vaccine availability," he said. "We recently completed such an evaluation and determined that the threat continues," he added.

He said the cost of the additional vaccinations would be relatively low and that the necessary doses have already been manufactured and stockpiled.

"Additional costs, we expect, are not substantial. Our total budget is roughly $30 billion, this is in the tens of millions," he said. "Sufficient funds have already been allocated in the 2004 and 2005 budgets," he added.

The Defense Department continues to reserve a portion of the vaccine supply for use by other federal agencies.

"The Office of Homeland Security heads the planning effort among federal agencies for use of the vaccine in case of a domestic emergency," Winkenwerder said.

Anthrax remains one of the top biological warfare threats to U.S. troops, according to Winkenwerder.

"Some of our adversaries, we suspect, possess anthrax," he said.

To date, the Defense Department has vaccinated more than 750,000 service members with more than 2.2 million doses of anthrax vaccine. More than 625,000 service members have received the smallpox vaccine since December 2002, he said.

]]>

Energy Department outlines plan for securing nuclear materials

Marina Malenic — Wed, 26 May 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Large quantities of spent fuel and radiological sources must be secured or disposed of from hundreds of aging or decommissioned research reactors to ensure the nuclear material does not fall into the wrong hands, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a speech to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

"The recent revelations of the complex network established by A.Q. Khan give startling scope to the nonproliferation challenge we collectively face," Abraham said. "Coupled with the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bali, and, most recently, Madrid, we are forced to assume that rogue states and terrorists, in concert with for-profit proliferators, will act vigorously to achieve their ends," he added.

In response to what Abraham called an "evolving proliferation threat" posed by nuclear materials, the United States is set to establish a new organization within the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration.

The Global Threat Reduction Initiative will focus exclusively on efforts to "secure, remove, or dispose of" a broad range of "nuclear and radiological materials around the world that are vulnerable to theft," Abraham said.

The U.S. plan calls for:

Partnering with Russia to repatriate all Russian-origin fresh highly enriched uranium fuel by the end of 2005 and accelerate and complete the return of all Russian-origin spent fuel by 2010. Such projects would be undertaken on a priority basis according to the degree of the security threat posed in each case.
Accelerating and completing the repatriation of all U.S.-origin research reactor spent fuel under an existing U.S. program from locations around the world within a decade.
Working to convert the cores of civilian research reactors that use highly enriched uranium to instead use low-enriched uranium fuel, both in the United States and worldwide.
Identifying other nuclear and radiological materials and related equipment not yet covered by existing threat reduction efforts and, addressing the most vulnerable facilities first, fill any gaps that would allow a terrorist to acquire such materials.

Abraham said U.S. funding should be "more than sufficient" to secure U.S.- and Russian-origin materials and to convert international reactors to use low-enriched uranium fuel, but that additional resources would be needed for the remaining work.

"We will need more funds -- and heightened international cooperation -- to finish the job," Abraham said. "Dedicated as we are to this effort, it is also clear to me that a truly effective nonproliferation regime is made up of the collaboration of efforts by all of us, not just a few. This is particularly the case regarding the collection of materials that are not of Russian or American origin, or that may be located in places where cooperation requires a broader international effort, and that pose certain challenges that the United States and Russia cannot address alone," he added.

The Energy secretary proposed that a Global Threat Reduction Initiative Partners' Conference be scheduled for this fall. He said the event would examine methods of nuclear material collection and security in locations worldwide where a broader international effort is necessary.

Abraham is scheduled to travel to Moscow Thursday and is expected to sign a bilateral agreement with Russia formalizing elements of the initiative involving that country.

"We are very close to a government-to-government agreement to go from an ad hoc to a more formalized and very systematic program to retrieve fresh and spent fuel and convert reactors to work without them," Abraham said, according to the Financial Times.

]]>

Energy Department moves to boost security at nuclear labs

Marina Malenic — Mon, 10 May 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Speaking at the Savannah River nuclear site in Aiken, S.C., Abraham said plans include:

Consolidating nuclear material. Abraham said the number of facilities that require the highest level of protection would be reduced. Specific plans include permanently removing weapon-grade nuclear material from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; expediting construction of a Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, allowing on-site consolidation of nuclear materials; and possible relocation of defense-related work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, allowing for removal of weapon-grade nuclear material from the facility.
Enhancing protective forces. The department would consider creating a specialized security unit to guard facilities, with training and capabilities similar to military special forces units.
Federalization. Abraham discussed the possibility of federalizing DOE security forces, many of which now use contracted personnel.
Protecting sensitive information. The department would expand performance testing of information systems to help "identify our actual and potential vulnerabilities to existing and emerging cyber threats."
Keyless security environment. Citing past problems with lost keys at some installations, Abraham announced his intention to "do away with the use of mechanical keys," and replace them with new technologies.

Abraham said the consolidation of nuclear materials is "one of the surest ways" to keep weapon-grade uranium and plutonium from falling into the hands of terrorists.

"We must make certain changes," Abraham said. "We must adapt to a world that changed three Septembers ago," he added.

]]>