The spat began with the publication at the end of July of an interim report by the Potomac Institute (Arlington, VA) suggesting that the Lister strain of smallpox vaccine chosen by the UK Department of Health was not the best strain to counter the most likely source of a terrorist threat, a weaponized version of the India 1 strain of smallpox. Steve Prior of the Institute reportedly called the choice of the Lister strain “indefensible.” The UK press seized on the story, drawn to it by concerns about how the UK government's smallpox vaccine contract was awarded (Nat. Biotechnol. 20, 421, 2002). After a vague and somewhat unorthodox tendering process, the contract went to PowderJect Pharmaceuticals (Oxford, UK) whose chair and CEO is Paul Drayson, a prominent donor to the ruling Labour party.
Neither PowderJect (Oxford, UK) nor Acambis (Cambridge, UK), the company producing smallpox vaccine for the US government, would be drawn into discussions about the choice of vaccine types. Rob Budge, head of corporate communications at PowderJect, says, “At the end of the day, we are just a supplier and we supply what our customers—in this case the UK government—requires.” A spokesperson for Acambis points out that in its work with the US government, it had been asked to produce a version of the vaccine that was already registered in the US, the Wyeth Dryvax, a live virus vaccine derived from a New York City Board of Health strain. Although the amount of vaccine the company was required to produce increased from 54 million to 155 million after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the strain chosen did not change.
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