Smallpox Vaccine Gift to U.S.

A pharmaceutical company agreed Friday to donate more than 75 million doses of smallpox vaccine to the U.S. government, greatly speeding federal health officials’ goal of being able to vaccinate every American in the event of an outbreak of the deadly disease.

The doses had been stockpiled at the Swiftwater, Pa., branch of the French vaccine maker Aventis Pasteur since the United States ended its mandatory inoculation program in 1972. Federal health officials said they believed the doses were potent but that they must undergo further testing.

“If we determine that the Aventis vaccine remains effective, we could substantially boost our nation’s smallpox vaccine stockpile at relatively little cost to taxpayers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said Friday. He called the additional doses “a huge insurance policy.”

Smallpox was eradicated worldwide in the late 1970s but is considered one of the most dangerous of potential bioterrorist threats, because U.S. officials say they cannot be certain that former Soviet stockpiles of the virus did not fall into the wrong hands. Officials believe such an attack is unlikely.

The U.S. government last fall ordered 154 million additional smallpox vaccine doses at a cost of $2.76 per dose from Acambis, a British pharmaceutical company that had previously been contracted to provide 54 million doses of the vaccine by 2004 or 2005. All those doses now are expected to be delivered by year’s end.

The announcement of the government’s immediate access to additional doses, valued by company officials at $150 million, comes a day after federal health officials announced they would be able to successfully dilute the existing 15.4 million doses in the U.S. stockpile, making it possible to vaccinate five times as many people with the supply on hand.

The Washington Post first reported the existence of the vaccine in Thursday’s editions, saying the Aventis stockpile has been “long forgotten” in the company’s freezers.

A company spokesman, however, said the U.S. government has known about the supply for years and the company offered the doses to federal officials shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Before the terrorist and anthrax attacks, Aventis had considered destroying the supply.

“Since mid-October, we have had numerous discussions with a number of government agencies,” said Aventis spokesman Len Lavenda. “This was not stumbled upon, a janitor did not find it sweeping a hallway, but there are a number of reasons it was not publicly exposed.”

Thompson said Friday that the existence of the Aventis stock was kept quiet because federal officials did not want to raise expectations about the available doses of the vaccine until they knew the 30-year-old batches would work.

Laboratory testing has already indicated the Aventis supply is as effective as the vaccine already in the government’s hands, officials said, and clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health are scheduled to begin shortly to confirm the vaccine’s value before the government acquires the supply.