by
Dee Ann Divis
Senior
Science & Technology Editor
Submitted
by Denise Nichols,
Chairwoman of Committee on Gulf War Illness
For more information you may contact Denise
Nichols at: DSNurse@aol.com
WASHINGTON,
DC, March 11(UPI) - Congress
will look into whether the Department of Health
and Human Services overstepped its authority
when it gave the Department of Defense permission
to vaccinate military personnel with a controversial
anthrax vaccine despite a court injunction
halting the program.
The
hearings will be called in the next couple
of months by Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn.,
chairman of the House Subcommittee on National
Security, Emerging Threats and International
Relations. Shays has been asking HHS officials
for information on their decision to approve
Emergency Use Authorization since it was issued
Jan. 14 at the request of the Defense Department.
HHS
made its ruling based on the new Bioshield Act,
which grants the Secretary of Health and Human
Services the right to permit use of a vaccine
for an otherwise-unapproved use if there is
an emergency or potential emergency.
Paul
Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense,
asked for permission in a Dec. 10 letter saying
he he "determined there is a significant potential
for a military emergency involving a heightened
risk to the United States military forces of
an attack with anthrax."
That
use of Bioshield is beyond the intention of
Congress, Shays said.
"We
believe HHS acquiescence in the DoD request
unjustifiably expands and distorts the scope
of emergency use authority envisioned by the
Act and strays well beyond the legislative intent
of the provision," Shays wrote in a March 9
letter to HHS secretary Michael Leavitt.
The
anthrax vaccine, called Anthrax Vaccine Absorbed
or AVA, manufactured by Bioport of Lansing,
Mich., has been the subject of three lawsuits,
a congressional investigation and some 100 courts-martial
of personnel refusing the vaccination. Critics
of the program say the medication can cause
serious, even life-threatening, reactions and
is not approved for the prevention of inhalation
anthrax--the biodefense application at the center
of the DOD vaccination program.
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