Long After the Start of the "War on Terror," a Conflict of Interest about an Anthrax Scare Comes to Light

In May, David Willman writing for the Los Angeles Times broke a story of a somewhat new variant on the conflict of interest theme, one that has not gotten a lot of attention, but should.The issue was medical, with a twist, - how to best treat a bioterror attack with anthrax engineered to be resistant to multiple drugs, an event that luckily is not known to ever have occurred.  The story came from the bad old days of the "war on terror," but only has now come to light years later. The Alarm RaiserThe story opened thus,Over the last decade, former Navy Secretary Richard J. Danzig, a prominent lawyer, presidential advisor and biowarfare consultant to the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, has urged the government to counter what he called a major threat to national security. Terrorists, he warned, could easily engineer a devastating killer germ: a form of anthrax resistant to common antibiotics.In particular,Danzig began warning about antibiotic-resistant anthrax after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the mailings of anthrax-laced letters that fall.The powdered anthrax in the letters killed five people but was not resistant to common antibiotics. Asked what gave rise to his concern about resistant strains, Danzig cited conversations with 'people whose technical skills exceed mine.' One of them, Dr. Robert P. Kadlec, a bioterrorism advisor in the Bush White House, said he and others were concerned that terrorists could develop such a we...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: Human Genome Sciences deception terrorism biotechnology government GlaxoSmithKline conflicts of interest Source Type: blogs