It turns out that the US government got behind that idea of
testing the vaccine in a very big way. As reported in the New
York Times on September 18, 2006, the government, in response to
the anthrax attacks, embarked on Project BioShield, a $5.6
billion effort to exploit the country’s top medical and
scientific brains and fill an emergency medical cabinet with new
drugs and vaccines for a host of threats.What is interesting
about BioShield is that one company, Vaxgen, was awarded a
contract for $877.5 million to produce a large amount of an
anthrax vaccine. That vaccine was described in this way:
VaxGen's rPA102 vaccine is composed of a purified protein called
recombinant Protective Antigen (rPA) and an aluminum salt
routinely used in many vaccines. This design produces a vaccine
that is expected to be well characterized and consistent across
manufacturing runs. Recombinant Protective Antigen induces
antibodies shown to neutralize anthrax toxins. rPA102 cannot
cause anthrax infection.And yes, Dr. Ivins is an