Service members must OK anthrax inoculation, court told
By Gordon Trowbridge
Times staff writer
Attorneys for six military members fighting the Pentagon’s anthrax vaccination program argued Monday that a law designed to protect service members from experimental drugs should apply to the controversial vaccine.
The arguments, in a legal brief filed Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, are the latest step in a long battle over the vaccine. The court earlier this month asked both the government and the anonymous plaintiffs in the case to file briefs on whether a 1998 law, passed in response to concerns over Gulf War illness, requires the Pentagon to seek permission before injecting those in uniform with the vaccine. The law applies to any drug being used in any application not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Earlier, government attorneys had argued that law doesn’t apply to the anthrax shots because the vaccine was licensed by the National Institutes of Health in the 1970s under an earlier system. Several years ago, the FDA took over vaccine licensing from the NIH.
But in passing the experimental drug rule, “Congress saw fit to impose strict limits for vaccines,” tougher rules than the original NIH license, the brief filed Monday argues.
The government is seeking to overturn a lower-court ruling blocking the mandatory vaccinations. But it received new ammunition on Friday, when the FDA repeated an earlier finding that the vaccine is safe and effective for use against inhaled anthrax spores — the kind most likely to be used in a weapon. The plaintiffs have argued that FDA misused other research findings in reaching that decision.
That decision could open the way for the government to resume mandatory vaccinations, but Defense Department officials said the shots will remain voluntary for now.
