The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7209 p150
3 August 2002

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Potomac Institute for Policy Studies (www.potomacinstitute.org)
European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA) (www.emea.eu.int)

Controversy over smallpox vaccine

The Government has been accused of choosing the wrong strain of smallpox for the emergency vaccine reserve stock it has ordered from Powderject Pharmaceuticals.

Smallpox vaccine for the United Kingdom will be made using the Lister strain. American stocks will be made using the New York City Board of Health (NYCBOH) strain.

The Times newspaper on 30 July quotes Dr Steve Prior, head of the defence medical countermeasures programme at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Washington DC, as saying that the NYCBOH strain is more likely to resemble the "battle-strain" believed to have been used by the former Soviet Union in its biological weapons programme. Cultures of this strain may have passed into the hands of terrorists.

However, recent guidance from the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products suggests that either strain can be used to produce smallpox vaccines.