WIKIMEDIA, U.S. ARMY MEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF INFECTIOUS DISEASESProminent Washington consultant Richard J. Danzig encouraged the U.S. government to invest in anti-anthrax drugs while reaping profits from a company that sold those same products, The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday (May 19). The company, Human Genome Sciences, made $334 million selling the anthrax antitoxin raxibacumab to its sole customer, the federal government, at $5,100 per dose. Human Genome Sciences paid Danzig at least $1 million in director's fees and stocks between 2001 and 2012.
Danzig became a director of Human Genome Sciences in May 2001. Later that year the company began work on an anthrax antitoxin after the September 11 terrorist attacks and a spate of anthrax-laced letters being mailed to government officials and media organizations. Danzig warned government defense officials in invitation-only seminars that terrorists could engineer the anthrax bacterium to be drug-resistant. He eventually urged officials to buy stockpiles of antibiotic alternatives.
It is not clear whether antibiotic-resistant anthrax was a real threat. “U.S. intelligence agencies have never established that any nation or terrorist group has made such a weapon, and biodefense scientists say doing so would be very difficult,” The Times wrote. Scientists told the newspaper that making antibiotic-resistant anthrax is “not a trivial endeavor” and ...
