Britain's vaccine likely just as effective as U.S. version.(Brief Article)

2002 SEP 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- The claim that Britain's smallpox vaccine is less likely to protect people in the event of a bioterrorist attack than the U.S. version sparked a political row. But the U.S. government's top adviser on smallpox has told New Scientist in its August 10, 2002, issue that they are both equally likely to work.

The claim that the British vaccine is inferior was made by Stephen Prior of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. He looked at which vaccines were used where, and with what success, during the eradication programs of the 1960s and 1970s.

Two vaccines were used widely during this time. One was developed by the Lister Institute in Britain, the other by the New York City Board of Health. Last year, as fears grew that terrorists would try a smallpox attack, the U.S. ordered the NYCBH strain from a company called Acambis. This April, Britain ordered the Lister strain from another company, PowderJect.

The British government is already under fire for awarding the contract to PowderJect without putting it out to competitive tender, especially as the head of the company has made contributions to the governing Labor Party. So the media seized on Prior's charges that PowderJect's vaccine may not protect against the India-1967 smallpox strain most likely to be used by terrorists; India-1967 was mass-produced by the Soviet Union.

Prior said the Lister strain was used later in the eradication drive, in places where the virus was no longer in circulation, whereas the NYCBH strain was more widely used where smallpox was still endemic, especially in India, where India-1967 was probably circulating. "It would therefore seem logical to have any vaccine-based defence ...