A Biodefense Boondoggle

As pharmaceutical companies line up for multimillion-dollar contracts to make bioterrorism vaccines, some question whether the industry is up to the job.

Image: AP/Wide World Photos

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On October 17, 2001, almost two weeks after Robert Stevens died of pulmonary anthrax at a hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida, the Bush administration unveiled its plans to build up, in a big way, the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile—the drugs, vaccines, chemical antidotes, antitoxins, and other medical supplies that are kept at the ready to respond to large-scale bioterrorist attacks. The White House asked Congress for more than $1.1 billion in emergency funds to expand the two-year-old program, and some lawmakers were soon talking of increasing that amount to as much as $10 billion. Little wonder that many of the nation’s pharmaceutical companies, aided by their Washington lobbyists, have been angling for seats aboard what one industry critic calls “another gravy train to cash in on some big government contracts.”

But the pedal-to-the-metal push to stockpile vaccines has left some lawmakers and public-health advocates questioning whether Washington may be throwing good money after bad. Exhibit A in the debate has been BioPort Corporation, the nation’s sole manufacturer of anthrax vaccine. Since 1998 the Defense Department has pumped more than $130 million into BioPort, a small, privately held company in Lansing, Michigan, in hopes of stockpiling enough vaccine to protect all 2.4 million U.S. soldiers and reservists against anthrax. The Pentagon has continued paying BioPort even though the company repeatedly failed Food and Drug Administration inspections and, as a result, was prohibited from shipping any vaccine.

One reason for the Pentagon’s reluctance to cut BioPort loose may be the company’s most prominent shareholder, retired Admiral William J. Crowe, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Reagan and Bush administrations. Crowe received a 12.5 percent stake in the company, according to his spokesman, for lending his name and expertise. BioPort’s CEO, Fuad El-Hibri, is a German-born businessman who has founded and operated a dizzying array of companies, including a Panama-based franchise operation called BurgerLand International. Last year El-Hibri and his wife each made $1,000 contributions to George Bush’s presidential campaign, a gesture that was matched on the same day by three other BioPort executives. El-Hibri did not return calls for this article.

Late last year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the Pentagon was trying to help BioPort stay in business, but added that the contract “may not be savable.” The department is now banking on a 10-year, $343-million contract with DynPort, a joint venture of defense contractor DynCorp and Britain’s Porton International Ltd., to procure a variety of new vaccines for diseases including anthrax and smallpox.

On the civilian side, the vaccine stockpiling effort is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, which contracts with pharmaceutical companies. Industry officials have said they will need substantial subsidies to develop and produce vaccines. The first case of sticker shock for the department came in October, when several large drug companies submitted bids to make smallpox vaccine, with price tags up to four times higher than what the department had estimated.

Some critics warn that the industry simply may not be able to fulfill national security needs. In recent years, manufacturing problems at some companies and unexpected withdrawals from the market by others have led to shortages of vaccines for influenza, tetanus, pneumonia, and childhood meningitis. In November, a federal antiterrorism commission headed by Governor James Gilmore of Virginia called for the creation of a government-owned facility to develop and produce vaccines for certain dangerous diseases. “The private sector is unlikely to be the answer to some of the more difficult vaccine issues,” the commission said in its report. Just days later, citing “the inability of the private sector to meet the country’s needs for vaccines,” the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine renewed its call for the creation of a federal agency to oversee the vaccine supply.

In the wake of last fall’s anthrax attacks, such proposals have been gaining support on Capitol Hill. “The idea of saying, ‘Let’s contract with a private firm and let them do it,’ that’s misguided,” Senator Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.) said during a Senate hearing on bioterrorism in October. “There are certain things only government can do, and, in this case, the private sector has failed us terribly.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate