Senator seeks review of government purchase of anthrax drug

WASHINGTON — The chairwoman of a Senate subcommittee that oversees federal contracting has called for reviews of the government’s purchases of an anthrax drug whose manufacturer paid former Navy Secretary Richard J. Danzig more than $1 million in director’s fees and other compensation.

In letters sent this week to the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) noted that Danzig wrote in a 2003 Pentagon-funded report that a drug to combat antibiotic-resistant anthrax should be produced “as soon as possible” and that stockpiling such a product would deter a biological attack.

Danzig served then and for the next decade as a consultant to both federal departments — and as a member of the board of directors of Human Genome Sciences Inc., a company that was developing such an anthrax drug.

The government ultimately paid Human Genome Sciences $334 million for 65,000 doses of the drug, raxibacumab, also known as raxi. The company and the rights to its products were sold in August to GlaxoSmithKline.

McCaskill, in her letter to the Defense Department’s acting inspector general, said she was concerned that Danzig “may have improperly influenced the government’s assessment of the need to acquire anthrax countermeasures.” The senator pointed out that raxi has a shelf life of only three years, that it cost the government about $5,100 per dose, and that its effectiveness in humans was unknown.

McCaskill’s letters cited a May 19 article in The Times as the basis for her concern.

The Times reported that Danzig had promoted the supposed threat of terrorist-engineered, antibiotic-resistant anthrax, while at the same time prodding the government to stockpile a new type of drug to defend against it and encouraging Human Genome Sciences to develop raxi. Of seven papers Danzig has written about bioterrorism since 2001, only one — the 2003 report — disclosed his tie to Human Genome Sciences.

Danzig, who has helped shape confidential assessments of the nation’s biodefense needs in his government consulting roles, defended all of his actions as proper. He said that he had tried to improve policymakers’ understanding of biodefense issues, including the threat of antibiotic-resistant anthrax, but that he never lobbied the government to buy Human Genome Sciences’ product.

Danzig said Friday in response to McCaskill’s letters that he had “repeatedly and appropriately disclosed” his position with Human Genome Sciences “and never lobbied for the acquisition of its drug.”

In addition to his federal consulting positions, Danzig is an appointee to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and the Defense Policy Board.

Federal law bars U.S. officials, including consultants, from giving advice on matters in which they or a company on whose board they serve have a financial interest.

david.willman@latimes.com