The one anthrax vaccine approved in the United States, called BioThrax, is made by Emergent BioSolutions Inc of Rockville, Maryland. The company reported $215.9 million in sales of BioThrax, its only licensed product, in 2012.
The ethics commission took up the issue after a biodefense panel recommended in 2011 that the anthrax vaccine be tested in children. That endorsement, by the National Biodefense Science Board, came with the caveat that such a study also get the go-ahead from a bioethics panel. It did, albeit conditionally. "We have to get this precisely right," panel Chair Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, said at a news conference. "Many significant steps would have to be taken" before a pediatric anthrax vaccine trial could be considered, she said. But she added that it is important "to develop the knowledge needed to save children's lives" in the event of an anthrax attack.
Balancing the need to protect children against the need to know, for instance, the safe dose of the vaccine, made this "one of the most difficult ethical reviews a bioethics board has ever conducted," Gutmann said.
Activists said the board was wrong not to oppose unequivocally testing the anthrax vaccine in children. Vera Sharav, founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, predicted that such a study would cause "moral harm for us as a nation and suffering for the children. They should have said, 'thou shalt not.'"
Federal regulations set a high bar for research on kids. If the chance of their benefiting is minuscule or nil, and the potential risk even minimal, children are usually off-limits.The presidential bioethics panel conceded that "there is no prospect of direct benefit to children" who participate in an anthrax-vaccine study, Gutmann said. According to the biodefense board, children in such a study would face more than minimal risk (defined as a risk no greater than that in daily life or at a check-up), mostly because the side effects of the vaccine in children are unknown.
Because the vaccine poses more than minimal risk to children, any proposal for testing it in them would have to clear several hurdles, the commission said. One pre-requisite for such a study is rigorously testing the vaccine in the youngest adults, starting at age 18.
"You'd work your way down from 18-year-olds," said Dr. John Parker, a retired army major general and chairman of the biodefense board. "If it were safe you'd go to 17 year-olds, then 16-year olds." After each round showing minimal harm, "you'd ask permission to move on to younger children."
The youngest age for testing is not clear, said Parker, "but the immune system of very young children is different from older people's." Results in 16-year-olds or even 5-year-olds might not reveal whether the vaccine is safe in babies, who would therefore have to be studied, too.
http://vactruth.com/2013/01/06/paralyzed-after-meningitis-vaccine/ which has been reporting regular updates on the situation. [10]
Where are statements from the involved organizations – WHO, GAVI, PATH, UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? Why has this vaccination program not been suspended? What are these organizations going to do about the atrocity that has happened in Gouro?
Incidentally, have you seen the video where Bill Gates says be believes in Genocide and that vaccines can help with that!!!!!!!!
http://www.beyondconformity.org.nz/_blog/Hilary%27s_Desk/post/Vax-ganda_-_Idiotspeak_or_Bullseye/[url=which has been reporting regular updates on the situation. Why has this vaccination program not been suspended?
