Government Fear Mongering: Phony Anthrax Threat
by Vera Sharav and Meryl Nass, MD
The Obama Administration led by Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services (DHHS), is engaging in fear mongering promoting the specious claim that children are less safe than adults in the unlikely event of a bioterrorist anthrax attack. Lacking any credible evidence of an anthrax risk, Secretary Sebelius —a political appointee—is invoking fictional scenarios of a simulated anthrax attack to override hard-won Federal statutes that were enacted over the last 35 years to protect children from medical experiments that put them at risk with no benefit.
"Secretary Sebelius asked the [Presidential] Commission for ethical advice on the development of medical countermeasures for children. The question that sparked this broad charge from Secretary Sebelius to the Commission is how to treat children who have been exposed to anthrax; it was a question that arose during a Homeland Security exercise" https://bioethics.gov/cms/
Simulated exercises (or "War Games") are NOT evidence-based! The safety hazards of BioThrax are substantiated by documented evidence.
FACT: There is no credible evidence of an impending anthrax threat: no government official has ever cited any evidence of such a threat.
FACT: FDA has not licensed BioThrax for use following exposure to anthrax spores. The BioThrax label warns: “The safety and efficacy of BioThrax in a post-exposure setting have not been established.”
FACT: Antibiotics—not the anthrax vaccine—are the proven protection against anthrax. Antibiotics proved to be 100% effective for people exposed to anthrax-laced letters in 2001. The FBI concluded that the sender was a US military scientist—who is dead.
FACT: If ever children were exposed to anthrax spores, they would be given antibiotics, such as Ciprofloxacin or Doxycycline, which have been FDA-approved for pediatric use against anthrax—and recommended by CDC.
Safety data from a “pivotal safety / immunogenicity trial” conducted by CDC at taxpayer expense has been withheld from the public.
Partial findings reported in 2008 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): 186 people suffered 229 “serious adverse events”[SAEs] during the trial with 7 deaths: “The following AEs were classified as serious (SAE), consistent with US regulations: death, life-threatening event, initial inpatient hospitalization or prolongation of hospitalization, significant or persistent disability or incapacity, congenital anomaly or birth defect, and a medical event that required medical or surgical intervention to prevent one of the other outcomes.” 12% of the subjects in CDC’s “pivotal trial” suffered SAEs.
The purpose of the experiment is NOT to SAFEGUARD children, but to justify increased expenditure for anthrax vaccine--BioThrax--to expand the civilian stockpile.
The Alliance for Human Research Protection is urging citizens to write to your elected officials and to your media contacts to express your concerns about the exploitation of children—who are legally precluded from exercising their human right to informed consent—in medical experiments not of their choosing. Help ensure that children’s human and legal rights are protected from unwarranted, high risk, painful medical experiments. Government officials must be stopped from reducing children to laboratory animals.
Read the facts at: https://www.ahrp.org/cms/
Read the fully documented facts in our 40 page letter to Amy Gutmann, Chair, the Presidential Commission on the Study of Ethics:
https://www.ahrp.org/cms/