Would you give anthrax vaccine to a child? DHHS Secretary Sebelius would

I am honored to be on the board of the Alliance for Human Research Protection and to be working with its dynamic President, Vera Sharav, on stopping a dangerous trial of anthrax vaccine in healthy children.   

Why sacrifice healthy children for this purpose, when the vaccine does not even have a useful role in post-exposure prophylaxis of anthrax?  Even FDA agrees:  it has failed to license the vaccine for this use.  As the label notes:

“The safety and efficacy of Biothrax in a post-exposure setting have not been established.”  http://www.biothrax.com/prescribinginformation_biothrax_us.pdf

Vera and I have written a stunning report on the hyped threat, pseudoscience, and careful attention to the avoidance of facts--all necessary in order to support a trial whose only possible raison d'etre is to shovel yet more public funds into the coffers of the anthrax vaccine manufacturer, Emergent Biosolutions, and its CEO (Fuad El-Hibri)'s pockets.

Our long report is written in the form of a letter to the Chair of the federal advisory committee making recommendations for the pediatric trial.  

A brief discussion of this matter can be found here.

There will be further posts over the next few weeks on this matter.