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Military defends mandatory anthrax vaccine

Reuters Health
July 23, 2000


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Washington. Anthrax is a "viable biological warfare threat as deadly as the Ebola virus," according to a panel of experts from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Defense.

At a recent meeting, the experts underscored the safety and efficacy of the anthrax vaccine and defended its mandatory vaccination requirement among U.S. military personnel.

Controversy over the safety of the vaccine and its alleged link to the Gulf War syndrome prompted the American Public Health Association’s Governing Council to urge the military to delay the vaccine program or make it voluntary.

"There are very few diseases as deadly as anthrax, which is on par with the Ebola virus, with mortality approaching 100 percent in those who have not been vaccinated," said John Grabenstein, MD, deputy director of clinical operations at the Department of Defense.

"The Soviets in two production facilities produce more than 2,000 tons of anthrax each year and have 200 more tons of weaponized anthrax on hand at all times," said Air Force Lt. Col. Donald Noah. Fourteen other countries, including Iraq and North Korea, also are believed to have stockpiles of anthrax bioweapons, he said.

Military history illustrates that giving soldiers a vaccination option "is not a good idea," Grabenstein said. He provided the example of the Boer war, in which 2 percent of the 14,000 British soldiers who took the typhoid vaccine contracted the disease. In the unvaccinated group, 9,000 of the 58,000 troops who contracted typhoid fever died. "We do not intend to make the same mistake," Grabenstein said.