Doubts Persist Among Anthrax Suspect’s Colleagues
http://www.nytimes.com/
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON — Military personnel, under the threat of court-martial, were refusing inoculations of an anthrax vaccine. The vaccine’s sole manufacturing plant was ordered to shut down. Researchers were turning up evidence possibly linking the vaccine to illnesses of soldiers during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.
It was hardly the thank you that Dr. Bruce E. Ivins expected for his years of labor to produce a vaccine that would protect military personnel from an anthrax attack by the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein or some other adversary.
The criticism, which reached its peak in 2000 and early 2001, was clearly starting to get on Dr. Ivins’s nerves. “I think the **** is about to hit the fan ... big time,” he wrote in a July 2000 e-mail message about the inoculation program, according to a government affidavit. “It’s just a fine mess.”
This turmoil has now been cited by federal investigators as a key part of the reason they believe that Dr. Ivins sent out anthrax-laced letters in the fall of 2001 — as such an attack would, in a single stroke, have eliminated the skepticism and second guessing about the need for an anthrax vaccine.
The investigators suggest that Dr. Ivins had been struggling with psychological problems, and was on medication and undergoing counseling after being overcome by what he described as paranoid, delusional thoughts. The trouble with the vaccine, they argue, may have been enough to set him off.
But Dr. Ivins’s former colleagues reject that two-part theory, saying it is just one of many flaws in the evidence presented by the government in an unconvincing case.
There was a real threat, the former colleagues acknowledged, that the anthrax vaccine Dr. Ivins had worked on during that period, known as Anthrax Vaccine Absorbed or AVA, might be pulled from the market.
Most troubling were problems at the Michigan manufacturing plant, which had been shut down in 1998 after the Food and Drug Administration uncovered serious flaws.
Dr. Ivins and other researchers, however, had been working on a more advanced alternative vaccine — considered safer and more effective — so there was no reason for such a rash act, his former colleagues say.
“There was a lot of consternation, a lot of pressure to rescue this thing,” said Jeffrey Adamovicz, one of Dr. Ivins’s fellow researchers at the time. “But if AVA failed, he had his next vaccine candidate. It was well on its way to what looked to be a very bright future.”
The vaccine controversy erupted in the late 1990s, after the Defense Department ordered the inoculation of all 2.4 million active duty and reserve troops, starting with those most likely to confront biological attacks in war zones, partly because Iraq had confirmed that it once had a large stockpile of anthrax that was destroyed after the first Persian Gulf war.
By 2000, more than 570,000 military personnel had complied with the order, and hundreds had filed an “adverse event report” after receiving the shots, citing reactions that included fatigue, dizziness and muscle pain, and more serious conditions like thyroid disorders and rhabdomyolysis, a muscle ailment.
Congressional hearings were held, and dozens of House members signed a letter to the Pentagon calling the mandatory vaccination program “a flawed policy that should be immediately stopped.”
Protests were also organized.
“What the government is doing is wrong, and it is time to wake up America from its comfortable stupor and say ‘no more,’ ” said a Pennsylvania woman, Gloria Graham, at a 2000 protest over the vaccine, which Ms. Graham said had sickened her son.
The Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, at Fort Detrick, Md., where Dr. Ivins worked, had been assigned by the Defense Department to help BioPort, the company that owned the Michigan manufacturing plant, to fix any problems so production could resume.
“Unfortunately, since the BioPort people aren’t scientists, the task of solving their problem has fallen on us,” Dr. Ivins wrote in a June 2000 e-mail message.
The situation became dire as the vaccine supply dwindled, leading Dr. Ivins to speculate openly that the program might be halted. “That would be bad for everyone concerned, including us,” he wrote. “I’m sure that blame will be spread around.”
The pressure was intense for the team at Fort Detrick that had been working on the effort, a group of about half a dozen scientists and technicians, said Dr. Adamovicz, Dr. Ivins’s former colleague.
“It was a big concern for us,” Dr. Adamovicz said in an interview this week. “We wanted obviously to see this vaccine succeed.”
The stakes were particularly high for Dr. Ivins, who, for nearly a decade, had been leading experiments in which laboratory animals — rabbits, monkeys and mice — were injected with vaccines that each had slightly different additives in an effort to increase their effectiveness.
Critics of the program were accusing the Defense Department of using one of the experimental formulas, which featured an oil-based additive called squalene, in vaccines given to military personnel in the gulf war, a decision, they contended, that may have caused autoimmune diseases among returning soldiers.
“It is well documented that the U.S. military has a history of administering experimental vaccines to the troops,” said Gary Matsumoto, who was doing research on a book on the anthrax program and who had submitted Freedom of Information requests to the Army requesting access to Dr. Ivins’s laboratory notebooks.
The Defense Department denied conducting such experiments on troops and defended the vaccine, saying it was both safe and effective, and necessary to protect the military from a possible attack. Dr. Ivins’s notebooks, which were released to the public, suggested, however, that he had found that the vaccine might be making some of the test animals sick.
“Although all vaccinated monkeys survived, they appeared to be sick over the course of two weeks,” Dr. Ivins’s laboratory report said.
In his e-mail messages, Dr. Ivins expressed particular contempt for Mr. Matsumoto and his requests for copies of internal Army test results.
“We’ve got better things to do than shine his shoes and pee on command,” Dr. Ivins wrote, in August 2001, about Mr. Matsumoto. “He’s gotten everything from me he will get.”
What the Justice Department has not produced is evidence documenting that Dr. Ivins’s frustrations motivated him to retaliate with the anthrax letters.
Gerard P. Andrews, another of Dr. Ivins’s former colleagues, said he knew that Dr. Ivins was frustrated, but that he doubted that Dr. Ivins would consider such a step.
“Nothing is unimaginable,” Dr. Andrews said. “But I would definitely say it is doubtful.”
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON — Military personnel, under the threat of court-martial, were refusing inoculations of an anthrax vaccine. The vaccine’s sole manufacturing plant was ordered to shut down. Researchers were turning up evidence possibly linking the vaccine to illnesses of soldiers during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.
It was hardly the thank you that Dr. Bruce E. Ivins expected for his years of labor to produce a vaccine that would protect military personnel from an anthrax attack by the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein or some other adversary.
The criticism, which reached its peak in 2000 and early 2001, was clearly starting to get on Dr. Ivins’s nerves. “I think the **** is about to hit the fan ... big time,” he wrote in a July 2000 e-mail message about the inoculation program, according to a government affidavit. “It’s just a fine mess.”
This turmoil has now been cited by federal investigators as a key part of the reason they believe that Dr. Ivins sent out anthrax-laced letters in the fall of 2001 — as such an attack would, in a single stroke, have eliminated the skepticism and second guessing about the need for an anthrax vaccine.
The investigators suggest that Dr. Ivins had been struggling with psychological problems, and was on medication and undergoing counseling after being overcome by what he described as paranoid, delusional thoughts. The trouble with the vaccine, they argue, may have been enough to set him off.
But Dr. Ivins’s former colleagues reject that two-part theory, saying it is just one of many flaws in the evidence presented by the government in an unconvincing case.
There was a real threat, the former colleagues acknowledged, that the anthrax vaccine Dr. Ivins had worked on during that period, known as Anthrax Vaccine Absorbed or AVA, might be pulled from the market.
Most troubling were problems at the Michigan manufacturing plant, which had been shut down in 1998 after the Food and Drug Administration uncovered serious flaws.
Dr. Ivins and other researchers, however, had been working on a more advanced alternative vaccine — considered safer and more effective — so there was no reason for such a rash act, his former colleagues say.
“There was a lot of consternation, a lot of pressure to rescue this thing,” said Jeffrey Adamovicz, one of Dr. Ivins’s fellow researchers at the time. “But if AVA failed, he had his next vaccine candidate. It was well on its way to what looked to be a very bright future.”
The vaccine controversy erupted in the late 1990s, after the Defense Department ordered the inoculation of all 2.4 million active duty and reserve troops, starting with those most likely to confront biological attacks in war zones, partly because Iraq had confirmed that it once had a large stockpile of anthrax that was destroyed after the first Persian Gulf war.
By 2000, more than 570,000 military personnel had complied with the order, and hundreds had filed an “adverse event report” after receiving the shots, citing reactions that included fatigue, dizziness and muscle pain, and more serious conditions like thyroid disorders and rhabdomyolysis, a muscle ailment.
Congressional hearings were held, and dozens of House members signed a letter to the Pentagon calling the mandatory vaccination program “a flawed policy that should be immediately stopped.”
Protests were also organized.
“What the government is doing is wrong, and it is time to wake up America from its comfortable stupor and say ‘no more,’ ” said a Pennsylvania woman, Gloria Graham, at a 2000 protest over the vaccine, which Ms. Graham said had sickened her son.
The Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, at Fort Detrick, Md., where Dr. Ivins worked, had been assigned by the Defense Department to help BioPort, the company that owned the Michigan manufacturing plant, to fix any problems so production could resume.
“Unfortunately, since the BioPort people aren’t scientists, the task of solving their problem has fallen on us,” Dr. Ivins wrote in a June 2000 e-mail message.
The situation became dire as the vaccine supply dwindled, leading Dr. Ivins to speculate openly that the program might be halted. “That would be bad for everyone concerned, including us,” he wrote. “I’m sure that blame will be spread around.”
The pressure was intense for the team at Fort Detrick that had been working on the effort, a group of about half a dozen scientists and technicians, said Dr. Adamovicz, Dr. Ivins’s former colleague.
“It was a big concern for us,” Dr. Adamovicz said in an interview this week. “We wanted obviously to see this vaccine succeed.”
The stakes were particularly high for Dr. Ivins, who, for nearly a decade, had been leading experiments in which laboratory animals — rabbits, monkeys and mice — were injected with vaccines that each had slightly different additives in an effort to increase their effectiveness.
Critics of the program were accusing the Defense Department of using one of the experimental formulas, which featured an oil-based additive called squalene, in vaccines given to military personnel in the gulf war, a decision, they contended, that may have caused autoimmune diseases among returning soldiers.
“It is well documented that the U.S. military has a history of administering experimental vaccines to the troops,” said Gary Matsumoto, who was doing research on a book on the anthrax program and who had submitted Freedom of Information requests to the Army requesting access to Dr. Ivins’s laboratory notebooks.
The Defense Department denied conducting such experiments on troops and defended the vaccine, saying it was both safe and effective, and necessary to protect the military from a possible attack. Dr. Ivins’s notebooks, which were released to the public, suggested, however, that he had found that the vaccine might be making some of the test animals sick.
“Although all vaccinated monkeys survived, they appeared to be sick over the course of two weeks,” Dr. Ivins’s laboratory report said.
In his e-mail messages, Dr. Ivins expressed particular contempt for Mr. Matsumoto and his requests for copies of internal Army test results.
“We’ve got better things to do than shine his shoes and pee on command,” Dr. Ivins wrote, in August 2001, about Mr. Matsumoto. “He’s gotten everything from me he will get.”
What the Justice Department has not produced is evidence documenting that Dr. Ivins’s frustrations motivated him to retaliate with the anthrax letters.
Gerard P. Andrews, another of Dr. Ivins’s former colleagues, said he knew that Dr. Ivins was frustrated, but that he doubted that Dr. Ivins would consider such a step.
“Nothing is unimaginable,” Dr. Andrews said. “But I would definitely say it is doubtful.”
