posted 07-30-2002 09:48 AM               

Britain buys 'wrong' vaccine for smallpox

By David Charter, Chief Political Correspondent

Health Department's deal with Labour donor 'indefensible'

THE Government has bought the wrong vaccine to protect Britain’s population from a smallpox attack by terrorists, according to new research seen by The Times.

A study of the threat from the deadly virus by one of the world’s leading authorities presents new evidence that the most likely type of vaccine to defeat an attack was rejected by the Department of Health.

The report will cause fresh embarrassment for the Government over its choice of smallpox vaccine and will prompt calls for an inquiry by the House of Commons Select Committee on Science.

Ministers already face an investigation by the National Audit Office over their controversial decision not to put the vaccine contract out to tender before awarding it to PowderJect, a company run by the Labour donor Paul Drayson, in January.

Dr Drayson has given £100,000 to the party, including £50,000 a few weeks before winning the £28 million contract. The choice of PowderJect was defended by ministers who said it was the only company able to supply the right strain of vaccine in the right time, even though the US is buying a different strain from a rival British company.

But the author of the new research told The Times that he could find no reason why the Government did not choose the same vaccine as the US. Steve Prior, a senior scientist at the Potomac Institute, one of America’s leading research institutes, said the Lister strain of vaccine ordered from PowderJect had not been proven to work against endemic smallpox.

His research showed that the vaccine developed by the New York City Board of Health conquered the virus in India, which is now known to be the source of “battle-strain” smallpox, the one understood to have been passed to Iraq.

Dr Prior said that the Government would find out if its gamble on the smallpox vaccine was successful only when it was tried on the first victim of any bioterrorist attack.

“There will not be a second chance to get this right, that is the problem,” Dr Prior said. “We will not use these vaccines until someone is convinced that the threat is real and at that stage it is too late to say ‘Do you think we got the right strain?’”

Asked for his reaction when the British Government opted for the Lister vaccine, Dr Prior said: “I was very surprised . . . for the Department of Health to suddenly come out and say, ‘we know something about the threat that nobody else knows that means we have to have Lister’ was very surprising. “When you are making decisions of this magnitude, you cannot afford to make the wrong one and you certainly cannot afford to make it for the wrong reasons . . . I think it is indefensible.”

The US is buying 209 million doses of the New York vaccine from the Cambridge-based company Acambis at a cost of $428 million (£275 million). Acambis, which was beaten by PowderJect for the British contract, would not comment on the new research. A spokesman for PowderJect said: “In terms of the strain chosen, that is obviously a matter for the Government.

There has been a public statement that we were the only company that could provide the vaccine it wanted in the required time frame.” However, the new research has added to the fears about the choice of vaccine held by Ian Gibson, the Labour MP who chairs the Commons Select Committee on Science. He has already placed several parliamentary questions about the Government’s decision to buy the Lister vaccine.

“I have been asking questions and I remain dissatisfied with the answers I have had about the choice of vaccine,” Dr Gibson said yesterday. “I am concerned that if there was an attack, would our vaccine be effective against the particular strain used? This new evidence suggests that we may be barking up the wrong tree. “We want to have effective vaccines and it is not clear that we have at the moment.

The Government is very keen to use the Lister strain for whatever reason and I cannot find any real credible reason why they are using the strain that they are using. It is not clear to me what is good science in this field because of the shroud of secrecy around the issue.”

The Department of Health said its choice was based on expert advice, although this has not been published. A spokesman said: “Our decision to choose the Lister strain was taken with expert scientific and medical advice to the Department of Health, including that from the Ministry of Defence.

The Lister strain is also the choice of our European partners.” But Liam Fox, the Conservative health spokesman, said: “It is disturbing to think that the Government has got the wrong vaccine which could leave the public at risk, and even worse that it could have bought the wrong vaccine simply to send business the way of a Labour donor.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-369278,00.html

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